Big Finish Reviews+ The Eighth Doctor Time War 3 by Tony J Fyler

The very notion of a Time War is enough to give you a blinding migraine the moment you cross its threshold, because not only do all the laws of life as we understand it bugger off to the restaurant at the end of the universe at that point, but  all the laws of conventional storytelling give a bit of a hopeless shrug and trudge after them too. Cause and effect, life and death, past and future as determined by memory – everything goes immediately into flux and what you could very easily end up with is a long, loud, looping, endless scream as the walls of causality stove your head in.

This – with additional notions about budgets – is possibly why Russell T Davies, no stranger to ambition and himself the inventor of the idea of the last great Time War, regarded its events as ‘unfilmable.’

We’re a long way on from that declaration now – we’ve seen the last day of the Time War on TV, and in audio, Big Finish has been giving us angles on the conflict for quite some time and in plenty of ways – we’ve heard some of the adventures of the War Doctor, we’re gloriously continuing to hear what the War Master was up to during the days of the war, we’ve lived through some of the Time War from a Gallifreyan perspective, and in particular, alongside his adventures with at least slightly earlier companions, Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor – the last of the ‘pre-war’ Doctors, and as such the Doctor who brings the crusading moral certainties of the Classic era to their point of universal crisis when faced with unparalleled horror – is moving inexorably towards the point where his position of neutrality or sheer, dogged cheerful helpfulness becomes untenable, and he becomes the Doctor who could fight a war.

The third box set of Eighth Doctor Time War stories deals with temporal flux, the mathematics of survival, moral ambiguity, and the cost of a clear memory, while delivering some hardcore storytelling and an arc that seems designed to push the Eighth Doctor nearer and nearer to the edge of exhaustion, while giving him some solid, if slightly desperate, speeches encapsulating those old and increasingly frayed moral certainties.

No no, come back, it’s also got some really fun bits, honest!

If there’s a story that comes closest to proving why a Time War would be unfilmable, it’s Matt Fitton’s The State Of Bliss, an opening story that will absolutely leave you needing a long lie down in a dark room. Bliss, the Eighth Doctor’s companion played by Rakhee Thakrar, has always had a whiff of temporal anomaly about her – her origin story jumped about a bit at first, absolutely on purpose, and while her role in the second Eighth Doctor Time War box set was more stable, she became a person of interest for the Time Lords involved in fighting the war as a result of being a temporal oddity. They love a temporal oddity, those big-hatted devious Gallifreyan gits.

The State Of Bliss seems to explain why Bliss is such a question-mark in the primordial soup of time and space. We get to see various snippets from her life or lives, and the characters with whom she formed some of the bonds that led her to where she is. The plot underneath all this is screamingly devious and yet altogether logical and mundane, when eventually explained in words of a lowish number of syllables. Without going into too much spoilerific detail, a line from the story declares that ‘a fruit machine always pays out.’ The reason Bliss is the way she is can be expressed by the fact that it very rarely pays out the first time you pull the handle.

There’s a quite stunning naturalism to the performances in this story from actors of great quality, including Nina Wadia as Bliss’ tutor Professor Deepa, Anjli Mohindra as her mate and potential partner Calla, and John Scougall as her other mate and probably more entirely optimistic wannabe partner, Ryall. All these actors make for a scenario that lives and breathes like a real memory, like peering into Bliss’ diary of her student days. Most impressive of the lot though is Thakrar herself, who more than in either of her previous box sets, really comes into her own as a companion in this third outing, developing that comfort in quipping that is sometimes necessary when running alongside the Doctor, and marking out Bliss’ character as determined, able, brilliant when necessary and possessed of a strong moral sense which amplifies – and occasionally props up – the Doctor’s own. Think somewhere between a Clara Oswald and a Jo Grant, with a little of something that’s unique to Bliss herself, and you get an attractively natural, real-seeming person. Which, let’s not forget, is no mean feat when playing someone who’s less than usually sure of her own origins or nature.

The regularity with which we’re forced by experience to say lovely things about Lisa McMullin’s stories is probably sickening to some. But she will keep knocking things out of the park. In The Famished Lands, she steers away from the esoteric timey-wimeyness of Matt Fitton’s opener and demands we consider war as a real thing. The Vale of Iptheus may be far from the chrono-quivering front lines of the Time War, but the effects of the conflict are having real, horrifying consequences there. As Britain hangs on a precipice of uncertainty over the effects on trade of a no-deal Brexit, McMullin gives us a story that has the cutting off of trade routes at its core. With those routes severed, imports dry up. When imports dry up, the responsibility of feeding a mass populace falls solely of a domestic planetary government. And when there’s not enough to eat, people will end up simply starving to death.

The Doctor and Bliss arrive on Iptheus to discover happy starving people, but there’s much more to the story than that. Dealing with governmental paternalism up to and beyond the point of the death of swathes of its own citizens, there’s some solid sci-fi in the story too, with food that fills you up but gives you no nutritional benefit, and a somewhat Harryhausen twist that’s both horrifying and a geeky delight to hear. Make no mistake though, this is a hard-hitting story of the state, the individual, the mathematics of who gets to survive in times of crisis and why – and it will probably shock you. Science fiction at it’s best is supposed to shock you and make you think about your own world. Lisa McMullin’s story in this box set will do just that. It’ll also give you possibly the most memorable McGann Doctoring in the set, in his response to questions about why he’s doing a particular thing. Just listen – you won’t miss the moment.

Roland Moore’s Fugitive In Time has a somewhat Pertweean feel – the Doctor on a mission for the Time Lords, and accompanied by a Time Lord, Adele Anderson’s superb new take on Tamasan, a more scorched-earth strategist who’s followed the Doctor through the Time War arc. A planet locked off by virtue of an unfriendly atmosphere, the Daleks in orbit waiting to come and seize a particularly juicy piece of techno-kit, and the Doctor and his friends going undercover in a semi-feudal land to find a special visitor from the stars. Any story which can feature the legend that is Wendy Craig as a genetic scientist from a species so morally dodgy as to be faced with eradication from the timeline by the Time Lords has got to be worth a listen, and here, we see very clearly the difference between Tamasan’s straight down the line Gallifreyan dedication and the more freewheeling, open-minded, open-hearted approach of the Doctor to people and species the ‘official’ history would cast as villains.

And then there’s the Valeyard.

Michael Jayston. As the Valeyard. During the Time War.

I know – shut up and take alllll the money, right?

The War Valeyard, by John Dorney, is more or less everything you think you want in a Valeyard story, with a dollop of something extra-interesting on top.

The delicacy with which you need to write a Time War Valeyard story should not at any point be underestimated, especially when aiming at an audience which has already experienced the more morally ambiguous War Doctor, and the War Master, somewhat driven by the war towards the dark side of the status quo. What space, in all that moral tapestry, exists in which to write a particular Time War Valeyard story? How can he be different, if at all, from the Trial of a Time Lord Valeyard? How can he even be there during the Time War?

John Dorney gives Jayston room to play, both in terms of the sharp, verbose Trial Valeyard, and the new and noticeably different Time War Valeyard, in a story that conflates issues of memory and identity. ‘A man is the sum of his memories, you know; a Time Lord even more so,’ said the Fifth Doctor in The Five Doctors. And in a space and time in which even the Doctor will later repudiate his own claim to the name of the Doctor, putting heroism behind him, Dorney creates an identity issue that might help the Valeyard find a different way to be.

You can, if you’re a fan of transposing personal issues into your science-fiction, see The War Valeyard as an examination of memory in the face of something like dementia – if you’re not who you think you are, but you act as you believe you would, what is the ‘reality’ of your life and circumstance? And is it kinder to snap you out of a comfortable, pleasurable fiction or to leave you in a state of confusion and medication if it makes you happier than any colder, darker reality would be?

If you don’t want to do any of that of course, you can enjoy The War Valeyard as a cracking meet-up between the Eighth Doctor, the Daleks, and the Valeyard in a time and space that allows him a freedom he’s never previously had. Oh and you’re going to want to listen to the ending. Many, many times. The ending is guaranteed squee-fodder, and will get you writing pleading tweets to Big Finish to beg for some kind of sequel. (Note to self – would that make it a squeequel?)

(Second note to self – never, ever say that again…)

All told, there’s a balance across the four stories here that gives the set a distinctly Time War feel – mind-melting alternate timeline-bleed in The State Of Bliss, socially conscious sci-fi with some really hard hits in The Famished Lands, a daring quest into unknown territory with dubious allies, implacable enemies and a hearty line in double-crossing and chicanery in Fugitive In Time, and a joyful dissertation on memory and character in The War Valeyard. Along the way, a cast of impeccable quality – Jayston, Wadia, Mohindra, Craig help the regulars to achieve a level of naturalism which anchors their adventures in human, understandable emotions and reactions, even as increasingly the universe is falling to pieces round their ears. You might have to push harder than you’re used to just to get through The State Of Bliss because of its reality-shredding premise, but it pays you off for your effort, and acts as the gateway to what is probably the best set in the Eighth Doctor Time War series so far.

Big Finish Reviews+ Terror Firma by Jeff Goddard

When finally escaping the Divergent Universe, returning to N-Space and regaining a sense you’ve been cut off from, the last thing you want to do is walk straight into Davros and the Daleks. This was not the Doctor’s lucky day.

Terror Firma was originally released back in 2005 and it features Paul McGann as the Doctor, India Fisher as Charley Pollard and Conrad Westmaas as C’rizz. With the Divergent Universe storyline having come to an end with the preceding story this is a heavily battered and beaten Doctor returning to the regular Universe, or N-Space and there is a sense throughout the piece of things being ever so slightly off.

This is further compounded by Davros literally unravelling before the Doctors eyes as ‘the Emperor’ takes a stronger and stronger hold on him.

Set in Folkestone long after a Dalek Invasion and subsequent conversion into Daleks of vast swathes of the population of Earth Terror Firma is a story that leaves you unsettled and ill at ease from the outset. It’s a story of lost memories, lost senses of self and even lost companions. Joseph Lidster has built a bleak, scarred world that faces up to its adversities with that peculiarly and uniquely British stiff upper lip. As the world has succumbed to the onslaught of Davros and his new Dalek army, so the resistance masquerade (not that it requires much effort) as dinner-party hosting, alcohol swilling and vol-au-vent munching middle class norms.

As the Doctor and his friends get separated and thrust into this world that Davros has spawned in his madness it’s clear that nothing is as it seems. Everything is askance and nothing and no-one can be taken at face value.

Lidster has cleverly used the gap between the TV Movie and Storm Warning, the first Big Finish McGann story, to create a whole period where the Doctor travelled with Samson and Gemma Griffin, but why can’t they, or the Doctor remember these adventures? Why can’t Samson even remember Gemma, while his mother mourns her and drowns her sorrows at the same time?

The real stars of the piece however are the Doctor and Davros, as they face one another for (at least until The Stolen Earth) seemingly the final time. This can be considered a direct sequel to Remembrance of the Daleks, at least from the perspective of Davros (and if you discount War of the Daleks) and the Doctors actions in Remembrance are the direct motivation for Davros in Terror Firma.

With many callbacks to previous encounters between the two, both onscreen and audio, there is plenty to relish in the dialogue between the two and both McGann and Terry Molloy give this one their all, Molloy giving possibly his finest ever performance as he deftly portrays the conflict of Davros finally succumbing to the Dalek he has always been. McGann’s Doctor, darker, scarred and suffering following his touch with Zagreus and self-imposed exile in a Universe without linear time is exactly the man he needs to be, and he brings a dark edge to his portrayal now but you always get that sense that he is yearning to be the Doctor of old.

Charley and C’rizz are both absolutely put through the wringer too her, and as always Fisher and Westmaas give their all, and further prove why they are such a great TARDIS team.

Julia Deakin as Harriet Griffen, mother to the ‘forgotten companions’ Samson and Gemma, gives a frankly stunning performance as both a bereaved mother and woman who wants to put an end to the invasion of her planet.

Samson and Gemma played respectively by Lee Ingleby and Lizzie Hopley have an incredibly difficult task, having to show us both the before and after of their characters. We get snippets of their time with the Doctor throughout the story and it makes you yearn for more. What I wouldn’t give for a series of their adventures. But then they also must portray the aftermath too, both of them changed almost beyond recognition and this is something they do with remarkable clarity.

Terror Firma has long been a favourite of mine, primarily because I am a huge Davros fan being a child of the 80s and one who was terrified by Terry Molloy’s performance throughout my childhood, but also because this is the kind of story only Doctor Who can do and get away with, with its juxtaposition of the everyday, the kitchen sink drama and the utterly insane and bleak science fiction. Lidster crafts these two with skill and precision and leaves you feeling physically drained by the end. I’m not the kind of person to give marks out of ten, but if I were this would be top marks all round.

Something of a masterpiece.

Big Finish Reviews+ Ravenous 1 by Tony J Fyler

Tony’s feeling peckish.

The Eighth Doctor’s straight, non-Time War chronology last saw him defeat the Doom Coalition by the smidgenest of smidgens, but there was a cost to be paid – Helen Sinclair, the Doctor’s friend from 1960s Earth (Hattie Morahan) was sent spinning off into almost certain oblivion with the Eleven, a Time Lord whose eleven incarnations are all accessible within his current body, and who frequently fight for dominance of his arms, legs, brain and mouth. It’s a great concept, brought to life with some degree of manic genius by Mark Bonnar.

Ravenous begins with the Eighth Doctor and his other friend, Liv Chenka from Kaldor City (home of the Robots of Death), hot on the trail of their friend, trying to rescue her from the machinations of the multi-faced, multi-minded monster.

Except much to Liv’s intense irritation, there’s a good deal of faffing about before they can actually get any credible rescuing done.

In defence of John Dorney though, who writes the first two episodes of this box set, it’s faffing of an exceptional class and quality. Faffing with a cherry on top, in fact. First up, Their Finest Hour brings Ian McNeice’s Winston Churchill crashing into Classic Who territory. It’s a wartime story that in particular pays tribute to the bravery and brilliance of the Polish airmen who played a vital role in the Battle of Britain. It’s also a relatively straightforward premise, almost worthy of Douglas Adams – in the skies above Britain, there’s a slab of…nothingness. A big oblong patch of nothing-there, which is heat-raying planes and pilots to incredibly thorough destruction. Needless to say, it’s not from around here, and the Doctor and Liv are called in to twiddle screwdrivers at it and make it go away.

McNeice’s Churchill and McGann’s Doctor have an easy, bouncy repartee in Dorney’s script, but the stand-out star of the story is Nicola Walker as Liv Chenka. Since she first appeared in Sylvester McCoy story Robophobia, Chenka’s been getting better and better, more comfortable with the business of bouncing around space and time saving people, and in Their Finest Hour and in fact throughout this box set, she rocks your world and pushes the stories on with a sense of indefatigable belief that, knowing Big Finish, probably means she’s set to meet a stick end pretty soon. She’s reached the level of mickey-taking, problem-solving, citizen of the universe competence familiar from New Who companions like late-stage Amy Pond or Clara Oswald, only with a joyfully dry undercutting wit and her own set of distinct skills.

There’s punch and poignancy in the story which you can hear coming if you’ve listened to enough Doctor Who from Big Finish, but Dorney pitches his punch just right to achieve a balanced result, and for all it’s a detour on the road to finding Helen, it feels like a worthwhile one, and a rich experience.

How To Make A Killing In Time Travel, Dorney’s second story in the set, is more outrageously comedic than Their Finest Hour. The action centres on a genius scientist who turns absolutely rubbish criminal. It’s a ‘desperation romp,’ the comedy coming from what people in horrifying situations do to try and push their luck to a satisfactory conclusion. There’s blackmail, chicanery, a robot with a funny translation circuit, a positively Trumpian financier…oh and a couple of royal warring scorpions. Because why wouldn’t there be a couple of royal warring scorpions?

Against that background, the Eighth Doctor and Liv wander round like Holmes and a highly savvy Watson, switching off machines here, investigating murders there, dealing with galaxy-imperilling temporal implosions and generally saving the day. It’s a rich, fun, runaround bit of business, and a complete, concise world that’s going terribly terribly wrong. Again, you’ll be listening to everything Nicola Walker says, because she’s an utter joy, but kudos too to Judith Roddy as Stralla Cushing, an unexpected driver of the drama here, along with the comedy-blackmail duo of Sarah Lambie and Jane Booker as Gorl and Dron respectively, of whom it would have been fun to hear more in future encounters with other Doctors.

The final two episodes of Ravenous 1 are a single connected story that get the Doctor to his object – in this case, a reunion with Helen. But Helen Sinclair is not quite the woman she was when she last saw the Doctor – she’s spent a lot of intervening time with The Eleven, in a penal colony-cum-asylum where the inmates are remarkably docile, as a result of a very special diet.

The Kandyman was an interesting concept when he was first devised, as an obsessive, flavour-demented chemist who made sweets so good they killed people. When he was eventually realised on-screen as Hell’s Licorice Allsort Assortment, yes, he looked absurd, but actually, if you stopped and thought about him for a moment and watched his mouth move, you could still get a shiver out of the will to survive beneath that absurdity.

Matt Fitton brings the calorie-compulsive chemist back to Doctor Who, and does it rather more as his creator, Graeme Curry, envisaged, a slick-faced, sugar-sheened humanoid with an android intelligence hidden in his sucrose-based body. He’s played by Nicholas Rowe as a brilliant, brittle figure – important, powerful but desperate to be recognised for his brilliance and the role he plays. In World of Damnation, the first part of the two, he’s responsible for pacifying the prisoners on the planetoid where The Eleven and Helen have been hanging out, working on The Eleven’s control issues and getting rather close.

Needless to say, by the time the Doctor and Liv get there, things are getting out of control, and here we learn not only how the Kandyman has been plying his trade, but also why it’s really not a good idea to cross him. It’s a joy to hear the Eighth Doctor and the Kandyman banter, both of them significantly older than they were in The Happiness Patrol. As disorder threatens to overwhelm the prison, we’re introduced to new important characters, including a crab in a robo-suit and a deeply sweet couple, comprised of a criminal and a nervous ultra-psychic – annnd why not? – and as the action moves into Episode 4, Sweet Salvation, there’s a satisfying underlying logic revealed to what the Kandyman’s actually up to, who his friends and allies are, and what, exactly, the ‘Ravenous’ might be. If life is all just chemistry, then sweets can kill, can pacify, can modify the mindset of anyone who eats them, and free will dies of disobedience or hunger.

Sweet Salvation is well plotted and better paced, so it ramps up the return of the Kandyman, the creepy hints at the Ravenous, and the battle of the egos as the Kandyman, The Eleven and the Doctor pit their wits against each other. Ravenous 1 overall is definitely two episodes of productive, enjoyable faffing and a two-parter of ramped-up, amped-up action, but it works for all that, the styles of the stories feeling right within the first stage of this new Eighth Doctor boxsetathon. Will you enjoy every episode of the four this time out? Absolutely – what you get are three interesting, character-rich, plot-driven stories that let Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor shine, bring Nicola Walker’s Liv Chenka screaming up the ranks of all-time best companions with a box set that shows her to the best advantage in her Who history so far, and gives the other characters, from Morahan’s Helen to the Eleven and the Kandyman, to Churchill and the smaller players with lives and stories and  agenda of their own, quite enough time and space to graft themselves onto your memory with meaning and impact. It’s a jewel, this box set, boding well for the beginnings of another long multi-set arc for the Eighth Doctor. Ravenous 1 will leave you (appalling reference alert!) thoroughly satisfied, but hungry for more.

Who Reviews The Eighth Doctor Comic Book Vol #1 by Tony J Fyler

Tony’s got a To-Do list, and he’s not afraid to use it.

The Eighth Doctor has, since his first and almost only appearance on our screens, been the great Potential Doctor.

His on-screen span was short but up until the point of his replacement by Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor in the revamped show in 2005, Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor was still the current Doctor, meaning from curtailed beginnings, he was the Doctor who kept the torch alive more than any other in the fans’ imaginations, out there somewhere in the multiverse, having adventures, just waiting for the world to fall in love with Doctor Who again.

If this seems a frivolous point, it shouldn’t – McGann’s Eighth Doctor was the subject of a whole range of ‘New Adventure’ books, building a whole universe of stories outside the scope of his until recently single TV appearance. And when Big Finish began producing new audio adventures for Classic Doctors, McGann was an early recruit, and has been a faithful friend to both the company and its fans ever since – he’s still having Eighth Doctor adventures to this day on audio, for all they’ve grown from one or two disc releases into something a bit more grand and epic in scale.

So the time for the Eighth Doctor to make his debut at Titan Comics is long overdue, and this year, he made it, in the hands of well-respected Who writer George Mann, and artist Emma Vieceli.

Across five issues, Mann and Vieceli became, in a way, Doctor and Companion themselves (though which was which would be telling), establishing a less random travelling pattern for the most Tiggerish and enthusiastic of Doctors, by the simple device of a To-Do list written by one of his other selves and hidden in his own Welsh cottage – yes, folks, the Doctor owns a cottage in Wales now. They established a story arc that would take the Doctor through those five issues, and delivered him a great new companion in Josie Day, an artist with technicolour hair and, as she was to prove, a striving gift for goodness. With those elements dropping quickly and neatly into place, the Eighth Doctor and Josie were set up to have a short series of very episodic, tonally different adventures, each of which had a strong hook, a philosophical core, a good bit of running, and a broad scope for them both to show their personalities to any potential new readers, while allowing seasoned Eighth Doctor fans to nod sagely at how fundamentally right the Eighth Doctor sounded.

He sounds very very right, because one thing George Mann knows is tone. From the Doctor’s first appearance in this five issue series, he’s as we know him – bouncy, enthusiastic, impossible, occasionally mystical, name-dropping, slightly divorced from reality, slightly alien, but with a fierce emotional intelligence when he understands what’s required of him in any given situation.

The situations range from the kind of ‘companion training wheels’ story that many New Who companions have had in order to bed them into our consciousness – here, Josie’s artworks start coming to life, which would be all fine and dandy if she drew landscapes. She doesn’t. For some reason she can’t understand, she draws monsters, plucked from her imagination, but familiar to every Who-fan. When the subjects of her paintings step from their frames and go off to terrorise the local village, it’s Josie who has to find a way to defeat them, which she does in a satisfying manner.

The second story here takes us off into the wilds of space, to a world under devastating bombardment by lethal shards of crystal. What complicates matters is that if the crystals get you, and you don’t die, you begin to change your state into something…else. The Doctor and Josie find themselves trying to act as honest brokers between two powers who are chronically misunderstanding one another, and again, while the Doctor leads the way, it’s actually Josie who succeeds, the purity and simplicity of her heart and her message managing to find a way forward for both the inhabitants of the world and those who are raining crystal down on their heads. There’s a little of the good bits of The Rings of Akhaten here, only Mann, free from the strictures of TV, delivers something with emotionally satisfying notes all along the way, including the Eighth Doctor up against the odds, struggling to maintain his temper.

Issue 3 gives us a bit of gothic horror, not in fog-swirled London, but in that other bastion of Victorian mystery, Edinburgh (home of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde). There’s more than a hint of that story here, with dark doings beyond the glass of a magician’s mirror, alternative versions of people escaping from the mirrorworld and the originals, the things of which the others were reflections, being kept, imprisoned and drained, in a dismal dimension on the other side of the looking glass.

It’s a story that does well to contain itself within a single issue, and which could if need-be return to plague the Eighth Doctor in future adventures. It’s also the issue in which Vieceli on artwork really starts to put her indelible stamp on the style of the adventures – given a visual challenge she rises to the demands of a world of mirrors excellently well, conjuring both the vibrancy of Victorian Edinburgh and the brightness of its theatres, and the dinginess and washed-out sense of the mirrorworld with aplomb, and also delivering a mindless plague of shudderworthy creatures in a way that still gives us the creeps, disembodied hands seeming to reach through the panels, escaping into the reader’s world.

Vieceli’s art is very strong in the fourth issue too – in fact, as we shift to an English country house mystery in the early 1930s, Vieceli’s art is crucial in delivering the menace, and once you’ve seen it, you won’t be able to immediately look away. You’ll want to, because again, she brings the shudders in issue 4, but you won’t be able to. Storywise, Mann’s on relatively easy street in this issue – there are creepy creepers aplenty, making use of the sci-fi trope of malevolent plant life, and there are also some solid riffs on the idea of alien technology mistaken for folkloric reality. Mann also manages to get in a socio-political point about the nature of the British upper classes along the way to defeating the spirits of the forest in what is essentially Who Does Fairy Tale Much Better Than In The Forest Of The Night.

The fifth story here has resolutions to deliver, and it delivers them, via a tale set in the future, that channels some David Tennant stories into its DNA, especially New Earth, aboard a space-floating Bakri Resurrection Barge, where the 0.0001%ers in society come to get themselves recreationally reborn. There is rebellion, there is the threat of carnage, and the Doctor throws his weight around trying to broker a peace, but there are genuinely resolutions to find, and some of them – in particular as they apply to the truth about Miss Josephine Day – will take you entirely by surprise before this issue, and the series is out. And just in case you were silly enough to relax at that point, there’s an additional Easter egg appearance that gives the whole mini-series more satisfying sense even than it’s had up to now.

The Eighth Doctor’s first mini-series at Titan is an unqualified success; Mann’s capturing of the McGann Doctor’s voice and his essence is delightful, Josie’s a great modern companion who more than stamps her personality across the series, and who saves the Doctor, on average, about as often as he saves her. The issues feel carefully selected to give windows into different types of Who story, and the whole is lightly, wittily illustrated by Vieceli, who comes into her own as the series progresses, giving some of the creepies a dose of realism that makes you shudder.

Pick up The Eighth Doctor, Volume 1 today and add to the sum total of Eighth Doctor stories you own with five tales less bogged down in epic sturm und drang than some of the more recent Big Finish box sets, letting the essential puppydog bounce of the Eighth Doctor a little more to the fore.

Big Finish Reviews+ The Chimes of Midnight by Reece Morris Jones

Released February 2002

Hallowe'en 1938. 'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house not a creature was stirring...

But something must be stirring. Something hidden in the shadows. Something which kills the servants of an old Edwardian mansion in the most brutal and macabre manner possible. Exactly on the chiming of the hour, every hour, as the grandfather clock ticks on towards midnight.

Trapped and afraid, the Doctor and Charley are forced to play detective to murders with no motive, where even the victims don't stay dead. Time is running out.

This story, that arrives just about half way into the 8th Doctor and Charley Pollard's adventures together, is unusual. Part detective story, part horror, part personal tragedy, its unconventional formula allows it to hit the story sweet spot of keeping you on your toes and wanting to listen to more. In fact the first time I listened to it, I was so engrossed I completely forgot I was meant to be going out for a meeting with someone!

The Doctor and Charley land in the servant’s part of an old Edwardian mansion, populated by the staff of the master upstairs. Drawn by a blood curdling scream they dash to help, only to find it's too late. As the hours move to midnight, one by one the staff all die. Then it all starts again...

As such, it's a break from the usual murder mystery fable – the Doctor and Charley are aware they are trapped in a story that re-writes itself on the fly to account for any interruptions, so they have to figure out the cause and the real culprit fast, before they become a part of the act.

The Chimes of Midnight keeps air fraught with tension at all times by being lean and mean. Nothing is wasted in the script and as soon as one part of the solution of the mystery is unearthed and threatens to turn things stale, it metamorphoses to catch the Doctor and Charley (and us, the listener) off guard.

Constantly on the back foot and forced to try and work within ill defined and every changing rules, things are kept unpredictable. It was one of those rare tales that kept me (a longtime Who fan) feeling like I didn't know what would happen next. Things are kept tense by a soundtrack that enforces how everything feels unstoppable, always containing a tick of a clock one way or another, as a reminder of that fateful countdown to midnight.

What's most surprising is the emotional core at the centre of the story, that not only plays into Charley and the Doctor's larger arc, but also covers the fate of those 'downstairs', revealing a life that isn't that great if you don't happen to fit into the working life of servitude and what happens when the only person who cares about you is snatched from your grasp.

All in all, it's a great story. Perhaps more low key than many would expect from Doctor Who, but it reaps the rewards of that. Complex, gripping and all over a superb production, it's one of the high points of the 8th Doctors travels with Charley. Perhaps one of the best of the 8th’s and, dare I say it, all time Doctor Who stories. If you have any interest in the show, you owe it to yourself to buy this.

Big Finish Reviews+ The Sword of Orion by Reece Morris Jones

Released February 2001

It’s hard to quite ‘get’ the 8th Doctor’s adventures without experiencing quite a few of them for yourself. The TV movie, whilst providing some of the groundwork for Paul McGann’s portrayal, is otherwise a bit of a distraction. The audio series themselves are too, because so many early adventures he had were experimenting, not only with a mostly unexplored incarnation of the Doctor, but the very format of how to present Doctor Who via sound alone.

Throw the fact that this and many of the monthly series were written and produced by people who were essentially fans and nothing more, it’s unsurprising that the early 8th Doctor adventures were a mixed quality. Thankfully, Sword of Orion is on the higher end of this, even if it’s sometimes rigid adherence to the traditional format does have downsides.

Picking up almost right after the events of the first 8th Doctor audio drama, it finds The Doctor and his companion Charlie Pollard, a woman the Doctor rescued even though she should have died, investigating an Alien bazaar. Before long, they stumble onto the events that form the majority of the audio drama, namely the crew of the old trash liner and their discovery of a lost ship, The Sword of Orion, and its sleeping passengers…

The first time I listened to this, it started playing on my phone at random and I had forgotten that the Cybermen were the antagonists of the piece. Not knowing who the villains of the piece were greatly enhanced the tension of the opening few episodes as a whole, before their eventual reveal. Not that this is likely to happen often due to how proudly Big Finish advertise it as a Cyberman story first and foremost, but if you get the chance to buy it for a friend or family member, I recommend letting them listen to the audio with limited knowledge of it.

Random aside out of the way, Sword of Orion is primarily a ‘base under siege’ story, where all the main characters spend much of the time trapped in one location, trying to repel a Cybermen attack. It’s also a story that follows the conventions of Doctor Who before its 2005 reboot almost to the letter. For fans of that era it’s a welcome blast from the past, as the whole story is lain out and set up, ready for a third, action packed, act. Like those older tales, it does flag a bit in the second act as various characters spend time being captured and escaping, or dicking around trying to understand things we the audience figured out last episode.

Still, the cast do an admirable job and managed to breathe life into what in some cases were pretty stock characters. Michelle Livingstone as Captain Jenson in particular, perhaps because she was doing most of the heavy lifting plot wise, was a multi-layered character and level headed character one who I enjoyed spending time with. Bruce Montague was an admirable baddie as Grask, even if he gets side lined early on by the Cybermen threat.

It’s also worth mentioning the score. The feel of it being a traditional episode is helped immensely by the score, which links scenes with short synth interludes. Only seconds long at most, they still manage to build tension or convey what mood the scene coming will be bringing.

Added to that is the more subtle things that we take for granted in an audiobook; the sound of running, laser guns firing, the death rattle of a Cyberman. All sound like they fit very much into the ‘old’ Doctor Who world, one of dodgy sets and slightly dodgier costumes. Your tolerance for these sound effects will obviously depend on your liking of the old series and older ways of presenting science fiction in general, but I found it positively delightful.

If you are a fan of Doctor Who in general I would say this is a must buy – we get to see how the Doctor and Charlie react in a very action orientated setting and the story just zips along, as each side plots and counter plots against one other to achieve their own goals. If you are a fan of the new format Doctor Who, but were always put off the old show by the fact that it looks like each episode had a budget of 12 pence, consider this a faithful adaption that retains all that was good about the old format, whilst missing out on the bad parts.

8/10

Doctor Who: Sword of Orion is available from Big Finish as a download only file.

The Mothership The Night of the Doctor: A Mini Episode - Doctor Who: The Day of the Doc...

The Night of the Doctor: Minisode

50th Anniversary: November 2013

The Mothership #SaveTheDay 8

#SaveTheDay

Eight

Photo Source

©BBC Doctor Who 1963

Who Reviews Enemy Aliens by DJ Forrest

 Doctor Who: Enemy Aliens (Destiny of the Doctor 8)

Audiobook

By DJ Forrest

Written by Alan Barnes

Readers: Michael Maloney, India Fisher

Running Time: 1hrs

Publisher: AudioGo Ltd

Number of CD’s: 1

Release date: 01/08/2013

Its 1935, London, and the 8th Doctor and his companion Charley Pollard have an investigation to uncover.  After a message that was cut short in the Tardis by unknown circumstances, they are made aware that an enemy alien invasion is coming to Earth and are made aware also that William Tell is part of the plot.  They also have to find the Secret Key in the Hidden Lock.

When Charley begins humming the tune to Rossini’s William Tell Overture, strange and disturbing things begin to happen.  And when they visit the Trumps Music Hall and begin to ask one of the acts on stage, a man who can foresee the future the man is killed by an unknown assailant.  But as the crowd scatter in mad panic, and Charley picks up the gun that has landed at her feet a good looking man comes to her aid, posing as a policeman and they leave the music hall together.

Led out of the music hall the man whom she discovers isn’t really a police officer but is unsure who he may be wakes up in his apartment to noises downstairs.  The Doctor had been arrested the day before, his hands covered in blood from the dead man whom he’d tried to save, but to no avail.  But according to the papers of the day, had escaped from the custody of the police and was at large, along with Charley Pollard.

I’ve never read any of the 8th Doctor stories and found this a delightful audiobook narrated by India Fisher who through her narration reminded me of the black and white movies I used to watch as a kid, the St Trinian’s jolly hockey sticks and What-ho accents!  She’s very clear in her pronunciations and although she covers the voice of the Doctor, she is helped along in the story by Michael Maloney who covers the voice of Hilary Hammond.  The good looking man who saves Charley but hides a dark secret!

The story is a very jolly affair, despite the levels of trouble both Charley and the Doctor become embroiled in but what I found most enjoyable about this story was that it featured the Thames Clyde train that took the adventure into Dumfriesshire, which is very close to home.  I did smile at the mention also of the citadel on the English border that was quite amusing.

The 8th Doctor came across an awful lot like the 11th in the way he spoke and reacted, and I wonder if that’s down to the writer who has also written 11th Doctor Stories.

.

The story is well put together and you have to pay a good deal of attention to the plot as it reaches a very dramatic conclusion that I found really ingenious in its description.  I’m not giving any clues on that as this is a new story and it’s something you’re going to have to find out for yourself.

India Fisher is a British actress who has provided the voiceover for MasterChef and also the voices for a series of sci fi audio dramas such as Doctor Who and Big Finish Productions and the Sci Fi Channel UK’s online audio version of Blake’s 7 playing Lora Mezin.

Michael Maloney is an English actor whose first appearance saw him as a teenager in the 1979 drama series ‘Telford’s Change’. He has since gone on to appear in many film and television programmes, radio and stage dramas, including ‘Truly, Madly, Deeply’ and ‘The Thick of It’.

Alan Barnes is a British writer and editor, his notable works are Judge Dredd and Doctor Who.

He worked as editor of Judge Dredd Magazine from 2001 to December 2005 and worked for five years at Doctor Who Magazine progressing from writing strips to becoming joint editor in 1998 to sole editor from 2000 to 2002.

This is a delightful audio, which also includes a few place names I’m familiar with along the route.  Well worth a listen to, and well worth hunting out a few more audio adventures with the 8^th Doctor and his companions.