Big Finish Reviews+ Sixth Doctor: Fortunes of War by Tony J Fyler

Read by Colin Baker.

Tony goes back to the front.

Fortunes of War is the third and – no spoilers, but probably final – part of a story which has taken three Doctors at different times in their lives to solve. As such, if you haven’t heard both of the earlier parts, Men of War and Horrors of War, you’re going to be just a little lost coming into this one.

The first two parts were read by former companion actors Peter Purves and Katy Manning, but neither of them were written from the point of view of those companions, though Steven Taylor and Jo Grant were accompanying the First and Third Doctors respectively. Here we’re blessed (general rule of thumb – this man’s presence on a project is always a blessing) by having Colin Baker read the final part of the story, and as such, we’re allowed a particular treat – a story written from the Doctor’s perspective, and narrated in the first person, in his voice.

If you react to that with a ‘So what?’ you’re missing the point. The Doctor we see on screen is almost always illuminated for us through the prism of his companions, and it depends how well they understand what’d really going on in that confounded brain of his how good an illumination that is – at the risk of infuriating the Classic Who fans, look at Amy Pond explaining the Doctor’s choice of where to stand in Asylum of the Daleks and Clara Oswald searching for a Doctor in the haystack of history for some of the best in over fifty years. But here, we’re right there in his mind, which means when the Sixth Doctor, now in rather more control of his Tardis than either of his predecessors, decides to return one final time to the trenches of World War I, we see him hesitate before opening the door, and hear him admit to us what he would never admit to a companion or the world – his trepidation at what he knows he has to do once the doors open, once events are set in motion.

What he has to do is put things right. Time has been bubbling in all the wrong places and in deadly, horrible ways in the trenches, firstly infesting the mud with the lifetimes of soldiers who ‘should’ be dead, and secondly through a kind of possession in a field hospital, with soldiers dying again and again, like a ghastly precursor of a great and terrible time war. This time when the Doctor goes back, he has to put it right, aware as he is of the consequences his actions will have.

Consequences?

Consequences, because if time is put right, the friends he made on his previous visits, Captain Mark Steadman and Nurse Annie Grantham, will have to die. Can the Doctor knowingly condemn them to death for the sake of the bigger picture, the web of time and his solemn duty as a Time Lord?

It’s a story that’s set up to tug the heartstrings right from the off, and it does that more than somewhat, especially when the source of the temporal disturbance is revealed, showing in turn the utterly ambivalent nature of the universe – it doesn’t care who lives or dies, only what is ‘right.’ Only what happens.

Baker’s performance here feels like a later, off-screen Sixth Doctor, one whose flame of moral outrage has grown a little circumspect, if not in all circumstances, then at least when faced with the impossible dilemmas not only of the First World War, but with the tangling of time and the pull of duty and compassion. What ultimately emerges is a less self-satisfied Doctor than the on-screen version ever had the chance to be, but one who faces a very ‘New Who’ dilemma, and argues it through with himself in our hearing, before proving he is the same person he’s always been, and always will be – he is the Doctor, with all that that entails. Never cruel. Never cowardly. Always clever. Always kind.

Colin Baker as an audio Doctor has been wowing audiences for more than a decade now, most especially at Big Finish. Justin Richards here gives him a chance to be perhaps more New Who than he’s ever been, and Baker eats it up with a spoon. The result is a release that you’ll devour eagerly too, for all its moral and temporal complexity, but ultimately for Baker in one of many moments of ultimate audio triumph as the Sixth Doctor, that flower of moral outrage at things that are wrong infused with an equal flood of compassion for ordinary people, and both tearing him apart, and forcing him to go to places inside himself that are uncomfortable, and do things he probably shouldn’t do. It’s a remarkable performance that’ll sweep your emotions ahead of it, and a fitting conclusion to a story that has at several points confronted us with the challenges of being the Doctor. Baker and his Sixth Doctor give us a lesson in what sets the Doctor apart from every other would-be meddler in time and space. You have to be the cleverest life form in the room, absolutely. But you also have to be the kindest.

Who Reviews Apollo 23 by DJ Forrest

Written by Justin Richards

For BBC Books

Published 2010

A man walks towards the bandstand during a lunch break, and dies of asphyxiation and a woman walking her dog not across the park dies on the dark side of the moon, her pooch by her side, and an astronaut suddenly appears in a shopping mall, right outside a fast food restaurant.

‘Houston, we have a problem!’

This was my first introduction to the Eleventh Doctor stories, that I read a long time ago, so it was a nice revisit. It’s a Doctor and Amy story, and takes place on Base Diana, on the dark side of the moon. There are illegal experiments with hardened criminals, who are undergoing treatment to remove the bad side of their brain, and have new memories replace them. However, nothing is ever as it seems, and before we’re midway through the story, the Doctor has discovered the truth, along with Amy, who at this point, has discovered that, poking your nose into things that are out of your intelligence range, can get you into serious hot water.

The Doctor in his usual, 'must help the locals fix their quantum displacement device', does so, only to discover that the locals up and sabotage it – why, well there’s the thing, it’s not revealed until nearly the end of the story, but there’s plenty in the story to keep you entertained until the big reveal.

I do enjoy the Amy Pond companion stories, and sometimes when Rory gets involved it often brings with it an enjoyable humour about it – but as I’ve noticed with Rory, he’s often an afterthought.

Justin’s novel is an enjoyable read, and there are plenty of characters involved in the story that you’re waiting for them to become who you imagine them to be, and unless I’d seen something similar on the television, I was still waiting for the UNIT guy to become something more than a suit and dark glasses kind of guy.

As with all Who stories, this one is no different. There’s some brainwashing aliens doing horrendous stuff to humans, because their own bodies can’t sustain them in different elements – and it’s not too difficult to picture them in your mind.

Some novels have that kind of ‘talking down to you’ feel about them. This one, by far, does none of those things. It’s an enjoyable read, and as you would expect from the front cover, it’s set in America – as well as on the Moon.

  

Who Reviews Death Riders by DJ Forrest

Written by Justin Richards

For BBC Children’s Books

Published 2011

You can tell pretty much from the off that this book is directed at children, as oppose to adults. The font is larger, it’s a shorter story in comparison to other novels, and much of the story telling is for a younger age group – but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable. In fact, given that this is the 11^th Doctor, which appealed, I think, more to the younger groups, it’s Amy, and indeed Rory, that keep the story going with their ever-witty comebacks.

You can tell also by the names of some of the characters, that there’s a child feel to the story. Perpetual Pete, the health and safety guy, who from the outset put me in mind of Stinky Pete from Toy Story, and was probably crafted from that very character – who knows!

The story does have that grizzly Who factor about it. It’s set on an asteroid, and inside the mining tunnels lies creature’s hell bent on escaping their Perpetual chamber, by the music chords from a harmonica, but it’s certain musical chords which will release them.

To be honest, it’s a craft of engineering how this story comes together, and how in the final desperate attempts to ensure the creatures never escape that had me almost run late for work one morning, as Amy and Rory battled against the Drexxon (wiry wool creatures with savage teeth and claws, but look like soft space monkeys), as they climbed out of the rollercoaster ride about to plummet into the bright light from the chamber.

The Doctor, for all his wit and charm, didn’t own the story in perhaps the same way as he’s owned many of the other novels I’ve read over the past few months. It was the work of the companions that pulled the story together, only giving the Doctor one moment of triumph, when he realised who was controlling who – but I shan’t give everything away in this novel.

Justin Richards, has Who stamped right through the middle of him. He’s written so many novels and fact files, that I’d be pushed to list them all, and I’ve read a fair few of them. I’ve loved nearly all of them, and I’d probably admit that, despite there being a little bit of the Doctor involvement in this story, it was still an enjoyable story to read, even if the ending was a little cringy.

.

Big Finish Reviews+ Doctor Who: The Early Adventures: The Morton Legacy

Tony’s trying on jewellery.

The Early Adventures are a way to tell new stories with the first two incarnations of the Doctor.

The Morton Legacy is more or less Doctor Who meets Dickens, without doing anything as straightforward as actually introducing the author into the story. It’s Bleak House with bling, as Josiah Morton, gentleman collector, helps himself to a strange blue box he finds on a street corner, and hides it away in his secret warehouse of curios. When a strange little scruffy man and his two companions come asking questions about the box, he’s happy enough to accommodate them, but won’t show them the box or his warehouse, meaning they have no choice but to help him to make sense of some peculiar recent events.

Morton’s life and fortune is bound up with a case in chancery, a common enough story. But then, out of nowhere, people on the other side of the case of his questionable inheritance start to die, struck down it seems by an invisible monster.

Is the Morton legacy a blessing, or a curse? Or is Josiah Morton as innocent and honourable a gentleman as he seems after all? Writer Justin Richards – very familiar with the period from his work with Big Finish and elsewhere - draws his story strands together, seeming to lead us in a very particular direction and channelling Dickens every step of the way. As well as Morton, there’s his daughter Jemma, who seems well-brought-up if rather clueless, but who also has a particular fascination of late for a rather unusual necklace her Papa obtained from an intrepid explorer. Is she all she seems, or more?

Richards gives us plenty to be thinking about – how do our heroes get back to the Tardis? What’s killing the enemies of the house of Morton? Is someone controlling the invisible beast? What’s the role of the necklace? – and then adds elements from up and down the social scale to push the story along. There are criminal thugs who want Josiah Morton’s loot, inscrutable servants who know more than they’re saying, explorers needing funds to finance their next expedition, and policemen with very little imagination but a good grasp of Being Suspicious, all of which combine to give The Morton Legacy action, a rich cast of suspects and more atmosphere than you could poke a stick at.

In fact, Richards leans heavily on period atmosphere and Dickensian storytelling traditions, but he and experienced audio director Lisa Bowerman also move the tale along at a pace, so you’re rarely given time to stop and ponder the mechanisms of what’s going on. 

The Morton Legacy has something of a switchback ending, which may lead some more curmudgeonly fans to feel like they’ve been cheated of the satisfying solution they were anticipating, but Richards’ solution has something of an Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes feel to it – at all times, go with the simplest explanation of all the available facts first. It’s the kind of ending that on TV would have relegated all the good work of The Morton Legacy to an ‘also-ran’ story, but in audio, the work of Frazer Hines in particular sells the piece, the Doctor both explaining the true nature of the villainy, and refusing to bend his moral judgments in response to it, giving him the adamantine, alien feel of a later Doctor like Tom Baker’s.  

The Tardis crew are on great form in terms of their performances here, with Hines  making you forget you’re not actually listening to Patrick Troughton much of the time, and Anneke Wills doubling down too, giving us both a strong-willed Polly and an even-toned narrator to push the story along and deliver much of the atmosphere.

The Morton Legacy is a story of domestic 19^th century terror, murder, mystery, legal battles and necklaces of doom. Despite that left-turn ending, and an occasional preponderance of the narration which makes it feel rather more like ‘narrated scenes’ or a ‘missing story’ than  the Early Adventures usually do, it’s a story you’ll enjoy for its atmosphere and its new take on the Troughton Doctor among the eminent Victorians. 

Who Reviews Code of the Krillitanes by DJ Forrest

Written by Justin Richards

You know when I said, I’d be hard pressed to find a story of Justin’s that I didn’t like – well I might have just found it. Although, the story itself is brilliant, but the way the story is told is perhaps what grates on me. Yes, yes, I know, Doctor Who is a family show, directed towards children just big enough to see over the dinner table. Well actually, it’s not, it’s for the Mums and Dads, the brothers and sisters, the grannies and grandads, and all those in between. Everyone loves a bit of Doctor Who, and at no point during the series do you ever feel you’re being talked down to – unless you look at the writings of the 12^th Doctor and some of the 11^th, but definitely none of the 10^th, or so I thought.

Code of the Krillitane is a short sharp shot of an adventure, and by short, it’s less than half the size of a standard novel, and the writing is large, so that in itself geared my feelings towards the ‘I’m reading a kid’s book and I’m not sure I’m happy about that.’

When you get passed that however, the story stands quite literally as a normal Doctor Who story, although I did miss Anthony Head and K-9 and perhaps Sarah Jane Smith. But the premise of the Krillitanes hadn’t really changed from how they were back in 2006 at Defry Vale high school.

In this story however, they’re taking control of the minds of everyone, not just school kids, but the entire internet. Everyone was gaining a brain, and could fathom out puzzles and problems as if they were filling in the easy peasy small crossword in The Telegraph. It’s still about the oil. It’s still about taking over a new body, but there’s much more happening at Brainy Crisps factory, and that’s where I’ve reached so far in the story.

I like the idea of the story, I just wish I wasn’t being treated as if I were a child. I mean, OK, I’m a big kid at heart – but I don’t want to feel as if I’m being talked down to.

So, if that weren’t the issue in the novel, I think I’d find a lot better things to say about Code of the Krillitanes by Justin Richards.

Who Reviews Martha in the Mirror by DJ Forrest

Written by Justin Richards

Published 2008 for BBC Books

Castle Extremis – whoever holds it can control the provinces either side that have been at war for centuries.

I can never fault the imagination of Justin Richards. Not once. Ever. And once again he proves the point. I enjoyed this story from the very beginning to the very end – even if I did have to read the beginning in daylight because from the very first page, I had a feeling I was going to have nightmares.

The story has that kind of feeling you’ve read something similar before, and from the instant the man is shot in the first paragraph, to Janna and Tylda, and the goings on within the castle grounds, I had the feeling, it was very Harry Potter-ish. But that’s not a bad thing, because if you can recall something familiar, as it paints a picture in your mind of castle interiors and strange goings on, then it helps.

I also enjoyed the goings on of the two robots that I couldn’t help but imagine were the android versions of the Chuckle Brothers, and if I heard either of them saying ‘To Me’ ‘To you’ I’d have died laughing.

The 10^th Doctor has brought Martha Jones to an adventure theme park, or an adventure theme park before it was even considered to be one. It’s at the very early stages of a peace treaty between the Zerugians – a reptilian race, not unlike a crocodile in features, and the Anthiums who seemed humanlike. The castle itself is at the ‘head of the Sarandon Passage. If either side (the Zerugma’s or the Anthiums) wish to rule over the other, they have to take the Castle first.’

So, someone did, very secretly, with a mirror that nobody thought existed. That everyone thought had been banished into deep space and destroyed.

It’s a really clever idea, and somewhat familiar if we think back to the girl with the red balloon in the Family of Blood story some time ago, with Martha and the 10^th. It’s mentioned in the book.

The Mortal Mirror is meant to be a fake. A replica of the old. Merely just a one way mirror, nothing creepy about it at all. I like the idea behind the mechanics of the Mortal Mirror. It again reminded me of another Harry Potter scene in a later book. But again, this is a good thing as it builds on the imagination further.

I did get a little confused over the little girl Janna, but that was answered towards the end of the story.

And the very end of the story, there’s a little gem of a chapter that takes you by surprise, and leaves you wondering – did he really plan that? Wow!

Martha in the Mirror is an ingenious idea, and the fun and games within the pages, and the amount of thought that has gone into the story, the ideas, deserves the highest award. It’s fantastic, brilliant and I can’t wait to read another. Although, I’ll have to wait until the 11^th incarnation for that to happen.

Big Finish Reviews+ Wave of Destruction by Tony J Fyler

Tony gets Radio Frantic for a new season 

of Fourth Doctor stories.

In a world where the deaths of legends has recently made the universe we know feel a little shaky round our ears, Who-fans, rejoice! Rejoice at the fortune which still, more than thirty-five years after he stopped playing the Doctor on TV, gives us brand spanking new Fourth Doctor stories, with Tom Baker sounding as bold and unpredictable as ever.

Season five of the Fourth Doctor stories on Big Finish audio kicks off by bringing the chronology forward again – Baker has done seasons with Louise Jameson’s Leela and the now sadly-passed Mary Tamm as the First Romana, but we’ve never been this far forward.

Recapturing the double-act of Season 17 on TV, and of recent novelisations, the Fourth Doctor and the Second Romana are back, Lalla Ward and Tom Baker sparking off each other in that accepting but often quite exasperated way that made them such fun on screen.

They’re back in the 1960s, and in a neat move, the story picks up with them sitting in the Doctor’s house in Baker Street, where they were heard in The Auntie Matter, sending K9 off in the Tardis on a magical mystery tour round time and space to confuse the Black Guardian. Back then, Mary Tamm was Romana, and it’s a mark of the slightly absurdist tone of Wave of Destruction that The Auntie Matter, set in the 1920s, picks up here in the 1960s with Ward’s Second Romana, just as K9 returns from his trip. It’s that delicious absurdity of tone that studs Doctor Who throughout 52 years with little moments of genius, their causes cheap but their effects priceless, and Justin Richards taps into that vein here in a way that feels unique to this Doctor and companion pairing, a kind of bafflegab moment of madness, absolutely thrown away and twice as impressive as a result. Soon though, Wave of Destruction really kicks in and gets going, with laboratories and dead bodies that, as it turns out, aren’t quite as dead as several others in recent months have been. There’s a thoroughly annoying pirate radio station with the jingle from hell too (Something about pirate radio stations seems to dog the Doctor’s footsteps. If you haven’t heard the audiobook version of Dead Air, with David Tennant narrating in first person as the Tenth Doctor, you really should, and you really should right now). And pretty soon – because like most Justin Richards stories, this one belts along like a supercar driven by a White Rabbit - there’s an alien invasion to deal with that can only be thwarted by everybody playing a very specific part, which leads to properly funny Doctor Who comedy. Richards was asked to provide a story that had the tone of Season 17, something a little lighter than usual, and while, as he says, he never strives to emulate City of Death, because that’s a pathway littered with the broken bodies of weeping would-be comedy geniuses, he delivers something with a bit of that story’s ethos, never afraid to let comedy be comedy, without ever compromising the deadly seriousness of the approaching, world-conquering threat.

If Mary Tamm’s Ice Queen Romana was ripe for comedy by having her comfort zone ripped out from under her, there’s something almost delicious about hearing Ward’s Romana get the same treatment – while Tamm was arch in response, there’s something grittily, fumingly furious about the Second Romana when, in this story, she’s called on to do things she considers ridiculous and beneath her. While the Doctor goes off to talk to equipment manufacturers for the making of A Clever Thing, Romana is packed off with the daughter of the nearly-dead man (Professor Lanchester, investor in pirate radio because his son is a DJ, fiddler about with waveforms, because…science!), to go shopping for shoes and appalling sixties pink plastic handbags. What’s more, when the said DJ son, Mark (played with a louche charm by Karl Theobald) is caught up an antenna mast, the Second Romana has to step into his shoes and spin some discs – to save the world, obviously. You honestly haven’t lived until you’ve heard Ward’s crawling-with-discomfort Romana, robbing the horrible DJ patter of the confidence it requires to sound like anything other than nauseating rubbish, as if she’d rather face down a squad of Daleks single-handed than speak another word of it. It’s priceless stuff, and Richards wickedly admits on the extras that part of the tone was developed outward from this scene.

The alien threat in Wave of Destruction…

Aww, bless. Without revealing who’s planning to invade this time, you sort of have to feel sorry for the aliens in this audio. They began their life on TV, and were staggeringly, mind-bogglingly dull and ineffective. There’s something entirely mystifying about that, because they have unique abilities that really should make them properly “Ooooh!” scary – but rarely do. Big Finish has been significantly kinder to them than TV was, and their particular skills have been put to effective use on a number of occasions, including here, but it’s as though they know they’re bottom of the League of Scary Invaders and need to pull up their Socks of Evil in Wave of Destruction, so they give a lot of blood-curdling speeches and get quite giggly and hysterical at the thought of human beings dying in their millions. What’s more, again as if aware they have something to prove, they’re a pretty trigger-happy bunch this time around, and good people die with a regularity that adequately serves to ramp up the actual threat they pose. But if they do a lot of ranting, at least these aliens give Tom and Lalla a chance to show off the Doctor and Romana’s particular skills, and their different approaches to being threatened. Romana nips into a TV shop (cue a sneaky New Who reference), and the Doctor gives a counter-speech which is part authentic Fourth Doctor, part New Who breathtaker, more in line with the Tenth Doctor’s ‘no second chances’ nature. The solution to the invasion threat, as mentioned, requires everybody to be in a particular time and place, doing particular clever things. Cleverly. If that sounds flippant, it’s unintentional, because actually giving the Doctor, two companions and a couple of humans something credible and clever to do in order to save the world is no mean feat within the space of a quick two-part story.

Overall, should you get Wave of Destruction? Well, of course you should, but you knew that coming in. It’s Tom Baker and Lalla Ward, ably assisted by John Leeson as K9 in a deliciously satirical mood. It’s Season 17 all over again, but with a new script by Justin Richards on great form. It’s funny as hell without ever overbalancing the ‘We will kill you now because we want to’ threat of the aliens (who, incidentally, I’m not crediting, so as not to spoil the surprise, but who deliver a newish take on an old enemy). And it’s got the rollicking energy of a season-opener to push along a script that’s anarchic, satirical, funny and dark by turns. This is Justin Richards being brilliant and fair and pouring his energy into a script that has a lot to deliver, and knocking it out of the park. Wave of Destruction is one to get at any price.

Who Reviews The Clockwise Man by DJ Forrest

Written by Justin Richards

For BBC Books

First published May 19th 2005

The Clockwork Man kind of gives it away a little as to what the story is about, and you get the feel that you’ve seen and heard of these monsters before, and to an extent you have. But what this story does, is tell of another type of clockwork monster, that can convey human characteristics, almost flawlessly in fact, so that unless you were sure that there was no clock in the room, would be unable to detect any hint of a droid.

I like this story. There’s a hint of history in this novel, of the Russian tsar and the family in hiding. There’s trouble afoot in 1920s London, people are being attacked by heavy handed thugs, but what they’re searching for is unclear for quite a while.

The fact that this story is set in London, makes it more exciting. Sure, a journey into the wide blue yonder on a planet that doesn’t really exist, makes for some fun reading – but knowing that the story is Earth based, well, I just find it more appealing really.

This is a 9^th Doctor story with Rose Tyler in tow. No Captain Jack I’m afraid, but enough characters to keep the story going as there were in the 3^rd Doctor story – Carnival of Monsters.

Justin Richards is one of my favourite Who writers. His novel ‘The Deviant Strain’ is still one of my ultimate favourite 9^th Doctor novels, plus it also features Jack Harkness. The Clockwork Man is again a wonderful story packed full of twists and turns and a few smiles here and there especially when you find out what’s in the room above Rose Tyler’s in the hotel. It’s very stiff upper lip, country club kind of attitude in much of the guests, but it’s enjoyable to read and not as stuffy as a few old ‘classic’ period novels. Especially as, when the chips are down, they all come out fighting!

I love the 9^th Doctor novels. Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor is perhaps a little more brusque with Rose. He likes her, enough to want to keep her alive to send home to Jackie once in a while, but he does allow her to think for herself, even if he does sigh a little when she doesn’t click automatically on what the hell he’s talking about. Some of the time through the story, I often wasn’t sure what he was getting at either – and I’m not blond!

Overall, it’s a great story and definitely one to pick up on a wintry evening, when the fog is settling and the street lights come on. It’s not a scary book, as some have been of late. It’s enjoyable though. And you may need a hanky – just saying!

Big Finish Reviews+ The Darkness of Glass by Tony J Fyler

Tony Fyler looks through a glass darkly.

There are certain periods and certain scenarios that just work with different Doctors and different companion combinations. Earlier in the run of Fourth Doctor stories, it became clear that he and the First Romana were perfectly suited to tales of 1920s elegance or Victorian steampunk. The Fourth Doctor and Sarah-Jane (indeed, also the Third Doctor and Sarah-Jane) were perfectly suited to spacefaring, futuristic adventures. With Leela, the Fourth Doctor just somehow fits into gothic stories of dark corners, mystical monsters, and creepy oddness. As a discovery it’s no doubt reinforced by the fact that they found this relationship out on TV in time to deliver some of the best Who in decades, in stories like Horror of Fang Rock and The Talons of Weng-Chiang. The Darkness of Glass is right in that vein – indeed on the extras to this release, Louise Jameson describes it as Horror of Fang Rock MEETS The Talons of Weng-Chiang. There’s validity in that description, though it also brings a New Who sensibility to bear – there’s more than one Vashta Nerada shudder in this story.

The story is set in 1907, on a windswept island (thank you, Fang Rock - an association also explicitly mentioned within the context of the story), and deals with a meeting of a society of lanternists – illusionists who use magic lanterns or glass slides to perform their beautiful trickery. What’s more, it harks back a hundred years to 1807, with the inclusion of a creepy supernatural legend about the greatest lanternist of them all, and how he was haunted by a demon of darkness, with appalling, gruesome consequences. The sense of being in a world where superstition and technological advancement sit side by side, sometimes with a good bit of jostling for supremacy, is laced throughout the tone of the script and the sound design – it’s a pre-World War time, a world that’s part imperial, part colonial, and where spiritualism, mysticism and firm religious conviction sat alongside staggering scientific and industrial progress and a sense of unbounded hope and possibility. While the characters who gather on the island are products of this world, their regular referral back to the world of 1807 shows both how far society has come since then, and at the same time how brittle that progress can be when the lights go out.

Writer Justin Richards seems to have given serious thought to the pacing of his mystery here, and the gothic tone intensifies by degrees, with an almost Sapphire and Steel creepiness as the picture of what is really going on becomes clearer. When people in the here and now start to die, as they do, it’s the realisation of a mad idea, and the sound design keeps you tightly in the frame of the drama, rather than ever letting you snap out of it to think ‘that’s ridiculous.’ The Darkness of Glass never gives you the breathing space of that much rationality, conjuring its claustrophobic environment, laying its mysteries, and piece by piece, building up an enemy against which it seems impossible for the Doctor and Leela to prevail. As with the best such stories, there’s a good amount for Leela to do here, and her faith in the Doctor is beginning to be matched by her own justified self-confidence as they work together though apart to defeat the so-called ‘demon’ at the heart of the terror.

As far as the evil is concerned, there’s a touch of Midnight about the thing – it’s never explicitly named, nor ever explicitly rationalized, which, given that it’s referred to as a demon throughout the story is a brave step for a series like Doctor Who. The eventual solution and ending is also dark like the best black coffee – it leaves an impression on you long after you’ve stopped experiencing it directly. Again, that’s partly to do with the writing, which clearly leaves both the evil’s nature and the question over just how vanquished it is open for potential future stories, and partly down to the sound design, which renders the idea of ‘screaming glass’ in a fingernails-down-a-blackboard way that makes the thing sound entirely alien and entirely without an easy physical reference point in the human imagination.

One to buy, then?

Unreservedly, yes – it’s a standout story of the season. Experience The Darkness of Glass today – you’ll never look at stained glass in quite the same way again.

Big Finish Reviews+ Doctor Who: The Darkness of Glass by Jeffrey Zyra

By Justin Richards

Starring Tom Baker and Louise Jameson

The year is 1907 and The Doctor and Leela are cut off from the TARDIS when the path they are walking on is covered up by the ocean when the tide came in.  Stranded on a small island The Doctor and Leela find sanctuary in a castle where members of the Caversham Society have gathered on the 100th Anniversary of the death of Mannering Caversham who was the greatest Magic Lanternist who ever lived.

But things aren’t as they seem as The Doctor discovers that Caversham was a supernaturalist and might have conjured up a demon.  The Doctor also discovers how Caversham caught the demon and now that people are dying believes that someone might be trying to conjure the demon and that would be bad for everyone in the castle and on Earth.

The Darkness of the Glass was a pretty good audio adventure.  I really liked the paranoia feel to it as everyone was trapped in the castle and worried about who or what was killing them off one by one.  It did have an Agatha Christie feel to it especially if you have read And Then There Were None.   I did like the mystery of this adventure as you wondered how The Doctor would figure out who was trying to bring back the demon.  It was also pretty clever the way in which the demon was originally trapped and how they went about to bring it back.  I won’t say how you’ll have to listen for yourself to find out. 

The Darkness of Glass had once again good performances from Tom Baker and Louise Jameson as the gave the story that feel that it could have been in season 14 as it had that Gothic feel to it.  Justin Richards did a wonderful job with The Darkness of Glass as it was a pretty good mystery and suspenseful romp for The 4th Doctor and Leela and I can’t wait for his next one.

Grade A

Who Reviews Doctor Who: The Secret Lives of Monsters by DJ Forrest

ISBN: 978-1-849-90770-5

‘Keep your wits about you and your eyes open.  Don’t blink, don’t get complacent.  And watch out for the monsters – because you never know when they might…..’ Doctor John Smith – former scientific advisor to UNIT

I’m a geek, an ultimate fan of the Whoniverse and all that sail within it. Obviously my love of Who came before my love of Torchwood – it goes without saying really, and whenever I see a hardback Who book I have to have it.  As beyond the glossy hardback cover are equally glossy inner pages that smell of the ink they were printed on, shine with the illustrations and photos of the creatures you have only fantasised in dreams and action games, that you convinced every grown up you were only involved with because the kids wanted to play them.

I’m a mad collector of glossy hardbacks with the Who images, but they have to be decent books, I’m not going to collect it just because it says Doctor Who.  I have to know that the information contained alongside the photographs is filled with enough detail I could practically break down that creature and rebuild it in my head.  Although to be fair, given the amount of Who episodes I’ve watched over the years, that level of imagination doesn’t have to work too hard.  Only where a new character that hasn’t had any screen time is worthy of a little bit of creative imagination!!!

Published in 2014 by BBC Books – Doctor Who: The Secret Lives of Monsters is written by Justin Richards with illustrations by Peter McKinstry.  There are 16 monsters contained within the pages, from Oods to Daleks, Cybermen to Zygons, with Weeping Angels scaring us into the past. 

In much the same style as that of the Torchwood Archive book written by Gary Russell, this holds some level of that style of writing.  The book is classed as Non – Fiction, which to most of us means that this book is about the facts of the creatures including the Behind the Scenes look at how they were made, from the first cast, to the actual finished product.  But it portrays the details of the Cybermen and Daleks that you first encounter as if they are very real, and with the backed up evidence of witnessed reports, it’s very much like those old UFO sighting books you read as a kid, desperate to know if there really was life on other planets, now hurtling their way to Earth. 

‘In this book we bring together the evidence that has emerged over the past few years and throw light into the darkest corners of the universe.  We draw on information from the secretive UNIT organisation, and the even more shadowy Torchwood Institute.  Many of the classified documents we refer to are only available now thanks to the untiring efforts of investigative journalists……’

A lot of books you buy have a portfolio of each character, summed up in a thinly detailed Top Trumps style rating, but this doesn’t.  I’m in love with this book.  There is so much detail I could gush about it for days, but I still probably couldn’t fully detail it without photographing every single page, but where’s the fun in that? It would be better to own your own copy.  It’s priced at £20, you could buy it for half that price on Amazon, or you could visit your local library and ask them nicely to order it in for you so you could stroke the front cover and pore over the pages and hope that the next 6 weeks drag so you can keep it for as long as possible, because my friends, this book is absolutely brilliant and I for one, do not want to part with it. 

I managed to nab this book at the library before anyone else had a chance to read it…I have to give it back next week, unfortunately.  *pouts*

The book took the author Justin Richards 6 months to compile and you can definitely tell that a lot of hard work and researching had gone into it. 

If you didn’t enjoy the Classic era of Who, or you were too young to really follow it, this book will tease you back into the enjoyment of the characters such as the Yeti, which looks like a taller version of the 2^nd Doctor’s fur coat if that photo is anything to go by.  Oh sorry, you’ll have to obtain the book to see what I’m talking about.

It’s like the Adventure Books for Boys that you read as a kid, the moment you turn the page you’re suddenly absorbed into a story about monsters that have the feeling of being more fact than fiction, backed up with documents and snippets of confidential papers from Torchwood and Queen Victoria, collaborations from various scientific bodies, all converging to bring the history of the Daleks and Cybermen together, noting down where they came from, which era of Cybermen attacked Canary Wharf, the life of Davros, the details of the Osterhagen System do I need to go on?

Seriously can’t I keep it?   

Oh and don’t forget to read the After Word, that is absolutely vitally important. 

  

News Happy Birthday Justin Richards

Justin Richards is one of my favourite Who writers, whose books include The Deviant Strain featuring Captain Jack Harkness with the 9^th Doctor and Rose.  Justin is also known for his works outside of Who such as The Wolfstone Curse and The Never War – The Suicide Exhibition.  Read the interview we had with him last year. http://projecttorchwood.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/interviews-justin-richards.html

Happy Birthday Justin,

Did you know on this day in 1968 Episode 1 of The Mind Robber was broadcast?  It was Season 6 and starred Patrick Troughton as the Doctor with companions Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot.

Writers were Peter Ling and Derrick Sherwin and Director was David Maloney.

The TARDIS explodes, propelling her crew into a strange world peopled by fictional characters...*

In 1987, Episode 2 of Time and the Rani was broadcast.  It was Season 24, Andrew Cartmel was Script Editor, the Doctor was Sylvester McCoy and his companions were Melanie Bush and Ace 148.

Kate O’Mara also featured as The Rani with Donald Pickering as Beyus.

The Rani kidnaps the newly regenerated Doctor for his brainpower...*

Other birthdays today are: Andrew Lincoln, Sam Niell, Walter Koenig, Morten Harket, Amy Winehouse (1983-2011).

Resources:

Campbell (2000) Doctor Who Pocket Essential Guide*

©BBC Doctor Who 1963

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-The-Mind-Robber/dp/B0006PTYOM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1410695735&sr=8-1&keywords=doctor+who+the+mind+robber

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Time-Rani-DVD/dp/B002SZQCDO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1410695833&sr=8-1&keywords=doctor+who+time+and+the+rani

Beyond The TARDIS The Wolfstone Curse Review by DJ Forrest

Written by Justin Richards

ISBN: 978-1-84877-551-0

Published by Templar Publishing

Operation Velvet Claw

‘It’s what you don’t know that kills you.  But I do know this; the next 24 hours could change the course of the war.

   Am I exaggerating?  I certainly feel like I have the whole future of the world in my hands.  Not just me of course – Acer is in charge.  And Boffin’s the man who first discovered the terrible secrets of Castle Wolfenburg......’

The story begins during the Second World War and the evil scientific experiments by the Nazi’s in the fortress known as Castle Wolfenburg.  From there the story leaps into present day and takes up the lives of Peter, a bored teenager up from the city with his dad, discovering that he’s completely cut off from his Facebook addiction and his friends, and helping on an archaeological dig in the Cotswolds.  There he meets David Forrest, son of the wealthy businessman, Sebastian Forrest who is funding the dig.  The Forrest’s are an incredibly wealthy and very connected family and carry a lot of weight throughout the story, there are a lot of exciting chapters involving both David and his Dad and some very interesting discoveries about them both.  I do recall a lot of ‘Ahhhh so that’s who he is...’  as I worked my way through the novel.

In the public house which also runs a small bed and breakfast, the boys get to know Carys, the daughter of the owner, who knows a lot about the wolves in the sanctuary not far from the pub, and knows of the legends of the land, about the Manor, and the flowers that grow only in this one place in the Cotswolds, and about the legend of the werewolves.

There are many characters within the story that are all linked in some small way.  The manor itself conjures up an image in the mind of many an old manor I’ve walked around over the years, with windows with latticed glass panes that hide an abundance of secrets within.  When Peter spots a girl desperate to escape from an upstairs room, he returns a day too late and discovers claw marks on the bare floorboards, and a teddy ripped to shreds, with his mind racing at all possibilities, he is spooked by something inside the manor, and indeed so was I, given that I read this chapter late one night!!!

Justin Richards is one of my favourite writers of fiction, having read and loved his novel ‘Deviant Strain’ involving Captain Jack Harkness with the 9^th Doctor and Rose Tyler, I again found the same delights within this novel.  Ok not with the Doctor or Captain Jack, or indeed Rose Tyler, but the level of intrigue, lots of running, and one hell of an imagination, and many ‘spooked’ moments through the story.  I’d like to note here, that if you are going to read this at night, that you make sure you don’t have a dog in the room, one that barks at anything, and always barks at that particular moment when one of the leading characters is about to come pretty close to a snappy snarly werewolf!!!

The story never dips once, there aren’t any moments when you want to skip a few pages because the explanations are a little too long winded, every part of the novel, every piece of detail is perfect.  This novel is also enhanced with ‘augmented reality technology’.  You have to download the free Wolfstone app to your smart phone to see the hidden content. 

Published by Templar, the paperback cover has a strange feel to it, not sticky but not smooth, yet despite this, it’s one heck of a ride and ‘if death were an animal, she WOULD be a wolf.’

5/5

Who Reviews August 2013 The Deviant Strain by DJ Forrest

Review by DJ Forrest

Published by BBC Books

ISBN 0-563-48637-6

A Doctor Who novel featuring Captain Jack Harkness, Rose Tyler and 9th Doctor

Release date September 8, 2005

   ‘I used to think I was scared by death. Or by facing death – by combat and action and the uncertainty of the battlefield.  Not any more.  No, now what scares me is the possibility I might live to grow old.  I might wake up one day tired and wasted and unable to even open a beer.  I might need crutches and a hearing aid and help getting dressed.  When and if I get to that point, it’ll be my memories that’ll keep me going.  The fact I’ve lived through so much, survived so much to get there.  Do you want to get old?” he asked prodding Sergeyev in the chest.  ‘Do you want to end up with only your memories to make up for the loss of your faculties?”  He pointed across the room.  ‘Look at her. Look!  She’s there already.  Nineteen, and she can barely walk on her own.  She should be looking forward to her whole life, not staring at the end of it and wondering what happened.  If she can wonder at all.’    

Quote from Captain Jack Harkness, The Deviant Strain

The Deviant Strain brings the 9^th Doctor, Rose Tyler and Captain Jack Harkness to the Novrosk Peninsula, Russia, where 15 nuclear reactors in 15 rusting nuclear submarines pose a real threat to the small inlet, where a ramshackle bunch of civilians live and work and drink.  Where the testing facility run by a skeleton crew who hate Alex Minin, hides a dark secret, and where something is stealing the very essence of the human population seen by Georgi, a blind sailor with second sight.  Something is coming in the darkness, shuffling and sliding and it’s growing in strength, but is it what the villagers fear, is it really Vourdulak?

This story is after the Doctor Dances and before Boom Town, and is by far, one of the best Captain Jack stories in Doctor Who novels that I have read so far.  Jack has answered a distress signal while onboard the TARDIS and much to the Doctor’s dismay, they have to respond to it.  The Doctor shows some dislike to Jack for this, but when they work together to solve the mystery, they become stronger than ever before.  Jack is far darker in this story than I’ve seen him in any other story, even those of Torchwood that I have read so far. 

A young boy Pavel Vahlen has been found dead in the circle of stones on a cliff side and a young girl Valeria Momentova has been aged by unknown forces much older than her 19 years.  She has no reaction when she is found by Jack and the cluster of Russian soldiers that have joined him in the search of the woods.  Although she breathes and her heart beats, there is no other reaction, no movement, it is as if something has taken her very essence, her memories.  Jack is angered by this, and the fact not only does nobody offer to help, but that her father also turns his back on her.   Something is keeping the villagers in fear, something of the Old Russian folklore, something very sinister.

I’ve read this book before, and then recently, I read it again and found it still as interesting as the first time.  It’s full of detail, so full you can picture yourself freezing on the dock, in the snow and ice and cold, despite reading this book in the midst of a heatwave. 

You can picture the 9^th Doctor and his companions very easily and although we all know them, there’s no over description of them in the book, which is something I like about Doctor Who and of course Torchwood novels, there’s no need to reintroduce the characters.  Justin’s depiction of the 9^th is just as you expect him to be, just as you see him on the tv screen, grinning and acting typical of the 9^th, his sarcasm and wit, knows no bounds.  Rose again is no different to how we see her portrayed on the screen by Billie Piper, she’s just as inquisitive and comes out with just the level of commentary you would expect from her, and Jack, although at this time, he was a new character, from what we’ve seen of him already, in Torchwood, right up to Miracle Day, this depiction of Jack holds nothing back and you can almost feel where the darkness comes from. 

From the first page the book had me hooked, and this afternoon while I pondered on where to start with the review, I’d already ploughed through 96 pages.  With this amount of knowledge about submarines, especially nuclear submarines, the writer had to know something about this, he must surely live on the coast and have a view of the sea.  Yet if you take a look at page 253 you’ll discover just how far from submarines Justin actually lives!