Big Finish Reviews+ Kingdom of Silver by Matt Rabjohns

If the Daleks catch sight of you, they will either enslave you or exterminate you. But with the Cybermen, if they catch you, they will make you like them. That for me makes them one of the most fearsome and abominable monsters in the history of the show. I have grown so sorely discontent with the way the modern era TV show portrays the Cybermen as clod hopping stomping robots. They seem to have totally forgotten the notion that Kit Pedlar and Gerry Davis original made for the Mondasians. That they were once human but their cybernetic scientists noticed their race was weakening and so they upgraded to survive, losing all emotion and sense of mercy and pain along with it. The Cybermen as a concept are extremely frightening. And the most frightening thing of all is that they could one day become a reality. How far is too far for our human race???​

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What Big Finish do always that makes all their Cybermen efforts far better than any new series stories is that they do remember the Kit and Gerry brief. Every single Big Finish Cyberman story has added new nuances and depth to the creatures without ever losing the fear factor of what makes them one of the most enduring aliens to have been in the show. ​

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Kingdom of Silver is no more than a superb story by James Swallow. His story is rich in characterisation and the alien society of Tasak comes alive very well from the outset. A planet recovering from a long war and licking its wounds. ​

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Terry Molloy is extraordinary in his role of Magus Riga. He is a world away from the selfish and cruel Davros and its so brilliant to hear him tackle a different role for once. Magus Riga is a firm leader, but not just an overblown stuffed shirt. In fact, he is even still prepared to die for a friend who betrays him. That to me makes him a thoroughly potent character and one that you immediately care about. His selflessness is wonderful and Terry does a fantastic job and totally sells the role without any problem at all. ​

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James George has the perfect voice for a villain. And his Merel is a right nasty scheming devious whatsit indeed. He is everything that Riga isn't. A slimy power-hungry creep who ends up being trapped by his own bloodlust when he succumbs to becoming a hollowed-out metal shell. This is always the tragedy of anyone who thinks they can outwit the Mondasians.​

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The chemistry between Neil Roberts's Temeter and Kate Terence's Sara is also very strong. Temeter and Sara are a believable pair of battle-weary Orion Androids, and some of the scenes of their reunion are touchingly done. And they spar well with Sylvester McCoy in this story. It’s always interesting hearing a companion lite story, to see how the Doctor copes on his own when facing diabolical threat. Sometimes this could mean there is no one left to reign him in. But in Kingdom of Silver the Doctor's only plan is to halt the re-emergence of yet another Cyberman tomb world. But in no way does this story really resemble Tomb of the Cybermen. But it does share the same emotional impact of the loss of lives as that classic story did. You care for the people presented on Tasak.​

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Nick Briggs is his usual awesome self as the voice of the Cybermen. Every kind of Cyberman this talented guy can do without the slightest hint of trouble. ​

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I am a huge fan of stories where the Doctor avidly and succinctly warns people about a threat. then they take no notice of him or lock him up and then find out to their cast and dire horror that he was right. The Doctor is not an idiot guys, you should always take note of his warnings. It’s also great to see a story where the darker, more manipulative aspect of Seven are for once rested and we see the intensely moral side of this Doctor too. He does truly strive to rid the worlds he visits of evil, but sometimes his deviousness comes at a price. But Kingdom of Silver has Sylvester's Doctor just be the moral centre of the story, and I for one love this approach to his character in this tale. ​

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Okay, I will admit that maybe this story isn't really boasting anything new or revelatory about the Cybermen. But what it is a very, very strong story indeed with a big emotional core and a superb display of the cold machine logic of the Cyber Race. But there are still a few moments of good humour around to lighten the darker aspects of the story, but they are never once over the top. Ah, and one cannot overlook the disturbing image of nano Cyber bots quickly converting the inhabitants of Tasak too, it’s a very graphic image but it works well within this audio drama. Scenes of Ardeth being converted are particularly harrowing and shocking. ​

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James Swallow is a superb writer, and one can tell he knows his Mondasians. I'm a little sad that I've not seen his name on an audio story now for quite a while. But of the ones of his I've heard this is the supreme crowning moment.

Big Finish Reviews+ Short Trips: Dead Woman Walking by Tony J Fyler

Tony’s got worms.

Dead Woman Walking, by Roland Moore, is in many ways a thought experiment through the medium of Doctor Who. It embraces the struggle of macro-creatures like humans against micro-organisms, like viruses or worms, and asks us to examine which version of us is the ‘best self’ we could be. It encompasses responsibility, recklessness, power, manipulation and consequences, all within little more than half an hour of prime Doctor Who.

Now, if that makes it all sound a bit heavy, don’t worry – Moore’s a storyteller first and foremost, and he does due diligence by his responsibility to the listener, so what you get here is a story of Ace in a biological dilemma, being kept alive by  a biological entity which exists in symbiosis with a kind of living bomb which could blow apart the planet on which she’s standing, while a vicious civil war goes on around her. What you get here is the Doctor seemingly baffled as to how to give both her and the planet a future in which they’re not inextricably bound together, and Ace, being Ace, showing the true quality of her character. It would absolutely spoiler you to explain how that quality of character resolves itself into a solution, but in a time when fandom has been reflecting on the power and the admirable nature of the likes of Sarah-Jane Smith, this story does good service to Ace’s character, and to the way in which her journey made her better, able to affect situations merely by the content of her character.

While it has something of The Invisible Enemy about it, this story deals cleverly with the question of how far out of your comfort zone you’d go to get a good result. While Ace on-screen was very much the gung-ho teenager, reader to shout at things and blow them up to get them out of her angry way, this is an Ace that feels more mature than that, an Ace who, while by no means comfortable with it, is prepared to go the long way round a problem if it’s clear that that’s the way of least danger. An Ace prepared to suffer, to grow older, even if need-be to die to solve the problem, but in the meantime to be the best version of herself she can be, and hope it rubs off on people.

While the Doctor is forced to leave her behind on the world with the living bomb at its core, Ace’s job is to stay alive, locked into a symbiosis with that bomb, being, while still entirely Ace, a kind of still point to whom others can look, a beacon and a source of peace, and an example of the way they too could live their lives, bigger than any petty conflict to which they may be dedicated.

In many ways, the sub-structure of this story is a thank you to those who’ve written Ace over the decades, and to Sophie Aldred for giving such vivacious life to her. Hardly a farewell, it’s a story that nevertheless could stand as one of the character’s many best days, the kind of days we remember when all other days are gone – perhaps fittingly so, given both the story’s title and its central dilemma, in which Ace’s life depends on her not putting a foot wrong over an extended period. As such, there’s the fuzzy warmth of the best of funerals about it, which is somewhat thankfully undercut at the end by the relationship between Ace and the Doctor in one of its more spiky moments, one of his teachable moments putting her well and truly through the wringer.

Is Dead Woman Walking perfect then?

Not quite – in fact, the more grammatically minded among you will take a layer of enamel off your teeth early on, as the storytelling starts off in a lazy way with shifted perspectives, like ‘If Ace had been conscious, she’d have heard the tone in his voice…’

Maybe you have to be a pedant for this sort of thing to get to you. I’m led to believe there are at least one or two in the fandom, so if this sort of thing drives you screaming to your computer to write emails of complaint, take a breath. Push on through. The story itself is worth the occasional moment of grammatical seething. Especially if you’re an Ace fan, it’s a slightly more mature take on her character, where there’s more depth to her than the child who hit Daleks with baseball bats (much as we love that version). It’s an Ace who might be mad as hell at the Doctor’s hard schooling, but who knows enough to stand still and let the world, just occasionally, change around her, because of her. And because of who she is, to change for the better.

Big Finish Reviews+ Revenge of the Swarm by Tony J Fyler

Tony could really go for a prawn cocktail.

There are villains and monsters that immediately cry out for a repeat engagement with the Doctor, and then there are villains and monsters that, with the best will in the world, simply don’t. But if Big Finish has proved anything, it’s that it can take the least promising creatures (the Voord, say), and completely revolutionise what we know and what we think about them. That said, the company’s track record in doing this has had its downs as well as its ups – The Exxilons fell rather flat in terms of adding great swathes to our understanding. So when you write a sequel to 1977’s The Invisible Enemy, which was rather let down by some of its visual realisation on screen, you have two choices. You can adopt the idea that what we saw on TV in 1977 was 1977’s translation of the real Swarm, the real Nucleus, and that now it actually looks so much cooler than that through the medium of audio, or you can jump in with both feet, keep referencing the points of design and make-up naffness from 1977 and well and truly get stuck in to a world where a microscopic prawn wants to take over the universe.

So which is The Revenge of the Swarm – triumph or tragedy?

Honestly, it’s not really either. But just possibly, it’s both.

First of all, let’s clear up any speculation – we’re in ‘gosh that’s naff, it looks like a giant prawn’ territory. In fact, the joke is played rather too often for a laugh that depends on the audience a) Knowing what the Nucleus of the Swarm looked like in 1977, b) finding it endearingly funny, and c) having enough of a sense of humour to chuckle at the idea of taking it seriously. Even those who err on the Graham Williams/Douglas Adams side in the ‘seriousness’ debate though will laugh with exponentially decreasing frequency as the naff prawniness of the Nucleus is used for riff after riff.

The Revenge of the Swarm is, according to writer Johnathan Morris, the ‘Godfather II’ to The Invisible Enemy’s original. What he means by that is that the first two episodes act as a prequel to The Invisible Enemy, and the second two episodes act as its sequel. The danger, with a story like that is a bittiness of tone, and of ending up with a story that’s more like two half-stories welded together than a coherent, rounded, full-bodied and involving tale. After all, Morris himself describes The Godfather II as the ‘deleted scenes from the first movie, and some stuff that never made it from the book into the first film’. While The Godfather II has had great success and is even (with a straight face, no less) regarded by many critics as better than the original, thinking of it as a bunch of deleted scenes is perhaps not the most coherent strategy to adopt when writing what could be an updated, new, challenging story for the Swarm.

Sadly, the cut-and-shunt feeling not a danger that Morris particularly avoids. The first two episodes show the Nucleus of the Swarm not in fact having been defeated at all by Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor but hiding out in the Tardis itself, just waiting for the right moment to emerge and – and this is a thing that never particularly makes much sense – witness or ensure its own creation in the first place. None of that philosophical ‘I think, therefore I am’ cobblers for the Swarm, oh no – it wants to ensure its own creation, for some reason not trusting that its current existence predicates that creation. It’s a bit of a storytelling reach, mostly to show us the listener the moment of the Swarm’s creation.

Which is all very nice as far as it goes – it would have made a great subscriber’s extra as a simple two-parter, with the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Hector unable to actually defeat the Swarm’s plans, because they’re as aware as it must be of its own creation as a fact, but they appear to get this idea rather more than does the Swarm itself.

But then for episodes three and four, we’re catapulted forward in time to after The Invisible Enemy, when the Swarm has become not a biological but a computer virus, placing itself in the hub of all information flow between the colony worlds of Earth in a vast number of systems. That means the Doctor, Ace and later Hector all being digitised and fighting the wretched thing in a computer-generated environment that feels like it should be much more scary. The Nucleus is reborn in the physical world and then sets about absorbing energy to grow to the size of a planet, necessitating a two-pronged attack which eventually renders it probably not quite extinct again.

As stories go, episodes three and four could work, but because they’ve been cut and shunted onto the prequel episodes, there’s no time to really get to know or understand the characters we meet who befriend the Tardis team, so they end up feeling like little more than ciphers to a plot never given the space to develop.

In essence, Revenge of the Swarm feels like a fun, frivolous giveaway two-parter called Genesis of the Swarm (and yes, the Swarm actually uses the G-word about itself) and what should have been a full, separate four-parter, released at a later date, but instead has had two crucial episodes cut out and been welded onto the prequel. The tone doesn’t really connect and the accelerator seems to be stuck on from the word go in episode three.

A roaring success, then?

No, sadly not. It does tick a lot of fan boxes though - after all, it’s the Swarm, and John Leeson reprises his role as the Nucleus as though it was just last week he originally played it. What’s more, everyone likes an origin story, even if it’s not a particularly good or original one.  But in a second half full of ‘who-the-hell-are-you-again’ moments, there’s very little development of Ace or Hector – and what there is feels repetitive from other Hector stories; Ace trying to get him to remember being Hex, him flying off the handle and saying ‘don’t compare me to him’ in exactly the same intonation as Hex would have used. McCoy’s Doctor is also given surprisingly little to really do – the story appears to unfold at his feet, with one or two useful moments that could have been delivered by an OmniDoctor.

Ultimately, Revenge of the Swarm could have been significantly better had the two ‘halves’ of the story not been forced to act as a single entity, because in that process of turning two stories into one, the second story is left with too much to do, and too little time in which to do it well.

Big Finish Reviews+ An Alien Werewolf in London by Matt Rabjohns

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What I always love about Alan Barnes's writing is every single character he writes is so much larger than life. You can trawl back through his many audio scripts for Big Finish and always locate really rich and funny characters, even in his darker edged stories. This story is not one of them! This story is just packed full of good fun and some amusing light relief. A chance to have a breather and a few good laughs. ​

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It sounds to me that every one of the cast is really enjoying being in this story. It’s actually quite a relief for one every now and then to get a release from the overall far darker and more mysterious Seventh Doctor stories. Some of Big Finish's more recent seventh Doctor plays have been very thickly laid with doom and universal peril that it can start to drag if done continuously without a break every now and then.

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In fact, every single story of the Mags trilogy has been a welcome break from the norm with Big Finish. It’s great to just relax and listen to a genuinely fun tale, but still with enough good action and peril so as not to make it a farce. ​

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Samuel Clemens direction is slick and the sound design and score of this story is also different, but good different. You end up with a story that is extremely easy to get into, whereas some of the deeper stories can be at times hard to take all at once. ​

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Sylvester McCoy does his usual thing of just being fantastic as the Doctor. His interacting with Ace and Mags instantly lifts the story too. It is also great whenever one gets to hear alien races or creatures that aren't necessarily evil used well within a story too. ​

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Sophie Aldred gets to have some good scenes where she deals with the fallout of falling in with a pair of Feratus. The Feratus are a wonderfully comically written pair of vampires, and particularly good is how Ace just seems to take what happens to her in her stride and doesn't become flustered. One is always happy to hear her consistent guts and ballsy attitude. It’s what has made Ace one of the most enduring companions ever in the show.

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It could easily become gratingly silly to always just have baddy aliens running amok in every story. The Sin Eater is a perfect example of this trait. The Sin Eater is a very interesting and engaging character. Shiloh Coke is really decent in the role.

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Jacob Collins Levy's performance as Rufus has to be applauded in this story. His character is definitely a bad un, but he's a really excruciatingly enjoyable bad un. His Australian accent is commendable and his villain is saturated with good humour and wit. He judges the role perfectly, so that he never once goes overboard into caricature or pantomime. And his demise is very stark and rather unpleasant to visualise at the story's climax.

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There may not be a hugely abundant level of original material within this story. One has heard or seen countless Werewolf movies that all share the same repetitive strains. What Alan Barnes does with his story though that most film writers don't do these days is at least makes his story massively listenable and plain good old fashioned cool. The story works so brilliantly as a light hearted reprieve in the midst of the darker stories as I’ve already said. ​

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In fact, yes, I would say this story's plot is very, very like a comic strip. Outlandish and knavish interactions with great characters. ​

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The other good point is in film and TV werewolf transformations always seem to look naff. So, the audio medium is a far better kind of medium to have where you can imagine the visuals and not be disappointed by weak effects. That's always going to be a favourable addition to the mix when an audio leaves you free to make your own pictures of the places where the story is set. And in this story, there are no dull characters and no over excessive re-use of all the dull as ditch water werewolf and vampire traits we get so bored with seeing in the movies and remakes of movies. Sometimes the B Movies are more fun and good to watch than the multimillion-pound mega films too. And that's exactly the category this story falls into too. The lovable B Movie type that is still ripe with so much going for it! ​

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But of all the elements on display within the story, my favourite thing of all from this is Mags. Jessica Martin really gets to shine as the Vulpanan. There are some great character moments for her along the way in this story which does nothing but make me like and root for her character more as the story progresses. I have thoroughly enjoyed this Mags trilogy that begun with The Monsters of Gokroth and The Moons of Vulpana. I must send out a hearty clap to Jessica for coming back to the role and showing us what superb extra life there is in her amazing character. And she does kind of achieve her mission at the last hurdle here. She has been seeking to overcome her monster side, and the climax comes as a satisfying outcome, if leaving just maybe the hint of chance that maybe her monster could come back if she’s not careful.

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Re-iterating: Sometimes every now and then having a story that doesn't take itself too seriously is good to flow away with. One is OK with universal impending doom but in between some of us revel in the chance for some comic relief. Yeah, the title of the story is tacky and corny but why not? Surely you can have a bit of good humour in every aspect of the story.

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 An Alien Werewolf in London is never ever going to be the most brilliant or world changing story in the whole universe, but its consistently entertaining and amusing in equal measure. And, at the end of the day, what more can one ask from a Doctor Who tale than that?!​

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Who Reviews The Happiness Patrol by Matt Rabjohns

“Why don't you do it then? Look me in the eye.

Pull the trigger. End my life?!”

There are many Doctor Who stories which can be termed under the banner of “oddball”. And The Happiness Patrol is a fine example of this, and a very very good one at that too.

The story is one of the best of Sylvester’s three-part stories in that it somehow manages to give every character a real presence in just over an hour and a quarter. I for one am really surprised and saddened slightly that Graeme Curry was never invited back to the show after he submitted this frankly sparkling script to the production office of the time.

As someone who was born too late to really know everything to do with Margaret Thatcher, then I cannot possibly comment much on what I’ve seen many others say about the story, particularly in how they seem to equate Helen A’s character with Thatcher. But what I can talk about is my own viewpoint of what this story imparts to me.

The thought of an imposed regime ruling by terror to instil happiness is never ever going to work for one thing. It’s really vivid how Graeme brings over his subtle thoughts on regime control within this story. Helen A’s character is the total embodiment of that regime, and it was essential for the story to succeed that her character was played by a perfect actress.

Thank goodness that’s what we all got in Sheila Hancock. What she manages to do with the character of Helen A is create a villain who is totally self-centred, but also give her a slight touch of pathos so she is not actually an irredeemable baddie. In fact, her scene where she breaks down next to the dying Fifi I find to be a highly emotive and beautifully judged scene. She has just spent the last-minute raving to the Doctor about the virtues of happiness when she spots the wounded Fifi and immediately breaks and starts crying. This is one of those frequent special Doctor Who scenes that one always recalls well upon re-viewing.

But The Happiness Patrol is by no means a one villain show. Indeed, we also get the delicious Harold Innocent as Gilbert M. He is slimy and quietly nasty and is great to watch on the screen. His final scene in the spaceship with Ronald Fraser’s understated but believable Joseph C where they inform Helen A that they are leaving her behind to head to another planet is wonderfully acted and scripted. These heads of the state of the Terra Alphan colony are all superbly portrayed.

And I have a very soft spot for Leslie Dunlop’s wonderful Susan Q. She gets on so well on screen with Sophie Aldred that I was in fact snubbed to learn that she would not be joining the Doc and her on their travels at the end of the show. I honestly could have easily seen her fitting in brilliantly with her and Sylvester McCoy.

And yet another winning pair of performers are Rachel Bell and Georgina Hale as Priscilla P and Daisy K. The withering vulgarity both these women inject into their roles is wonderful and great to behold on screen.

Then we come to the other villain of the piece. David John Pope as the Kandy Man is decidedly wacky in appearance, yes, the great Bertie Bassett lookalike himself. But unlike Liquorice this robot is mean and extremely unpleasant as a character. He’s one of the most characterful robots the show ever produced and his look is strangely suited to the style of story that’s being told. The Kandy Man may look like a big sweetie, but he’s truly a heartless killer and sadist and his sniping interactions with Gilbert M lift the story up even more so again. His demise is also memorable. 

Even the lesser prominent characters such as John Normington’s Trevor Sigma is wonderfully judged. John gives a fine rendition of an interplanetary executive. His quiet manner and tone of voice are wonderfully offset against Sheila Hancock’s blustering Helen A.

Sylvester McCoy also has an absolute cracker of a scene in this story too when he confronts the two snipers on the watchtower. The dialogue between him and the frightened gun totting guard is absolutely sparkling and intense, and Sylvester is in his element and makes the hairs stand up on the back of one’s neck. This is definitely a reminder to those who need it of just how brilliant a Doctor he truly is. He’s dark and moody and mysterious and this makes his incarnation one of the meatiest and well developed in the show’s long history. I truly still believe Sylvester to be criminally underrated as the Time Lord.

Sophie Aldred also seems to be having a whale of a time in this story. All her Ace-isms have now emerged to the full and her chemistry with Sylvester is winsome and alluring in the extreme. They truly are one the finest double acts in the history of acting. They complement each other so very well indeed. And as I’ve already mentioned she is terrific besides Leslie Dunlop and they have some great scenes together.

I would go as far to say that The Happiness Patrol is a clear highlight of the Sylvester McCoy era. It boasts all the attributes that made his era so successful. The slightly darker and more mysterious time lord is starting to come out in his performance with some vigour in this tale and it bodes well to have a marvellous story starring such a strong actor in the lead role.

Having said that I can see why this story might not be everyone’s cup of tea. As I have mentioned its certainly an oddball story, but it has a mountain of strong themes and scenes going for it. What is even more amusing about the story is Terra Alpha under the rule of Helen A is supposed to be a happy euphoric utopia and yet everyone in the joint is miserable as sin! This is a brilliant touch.

Even the poor nearly half-starved Pipe People come over well too, although maybe perhaps they are the least written characters so maybe they do sometimes appear perhaps a tad superfluous. But they look good and actually for once do genuinely seem near starvation. But this is only a minor minor niggle in what is all round an extremely strong and compelling story. Truly a showcase of just how varied and imaginative the show can be when it puts its mind to it.

Who Reviews The Greatest Show in the Galaxy by Matt Rabjohns

“Is there no end to you weirdoes?!”

When Doctor Who reached its silver anniversary of 25 years on screen, we were treated to a very fine run of superb stories indeed. Season 25 proved to be innovative, extremely creative, and with its returning monsters given a fresh twist. A little hiccupette in the broadcasting schedule made it so the final story transmitted of Season 25 was The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, but this actually should have been displayed before Silver Nemesis. There is a scene where Ace picks up the character of Flower Child’s earring and has already been shown to have this earring on her jacket in Silver Nemesis. But broadcasting order quirks aside, this story firmly cemented its place as one of my all-time favourite Doctor Who stories ever. And I shall explain the many reasons why.

The Greatest Show in The Galaxy was also beset by several production problems too. It only made it to our screens by the skin of its teeth. Thank the good Lord that John Nathan Turner had the sense to suggest the production team set the story in none other than the BBC car park! Thus, this bright thinking on the producer’s part saved an awesome story and made certain that it reached our screens. Massive fan sigh of relief exhales from my lungs at this thought.

There is so much in this story that is extremely strong. For a start the story boats a superb score, that compliments the eerie atmosphere of the superbly scripted story. Stephen Wyatt’s script is character led, and every character has a good solid role to play. Even down to the Stall Holder native played with absolute aplomb by the late, great Peggy Mount. I can think of absolutely no other woman who could have done this small part any better justice than she did. Peggy is so absolutely delightful as the aloof and standoffish stall holder who is dead set against the goings on at the Psychic Circus, where the bulk of the story’s action takes place. She is given some truly sparkling dialogue and she delivers it memorably well.

The design of the villains of the piece, The Gods of Ragnarok, is extremely effective. The Gods being able to exist in two separate realities is a superb touch and is handled well. The God’s stone like Greek-Roman style of design leads to them being a very palpably realised threat, and they are never less than convincing. Sylvester McCoy is also given the chance to display his extra talents in the region of performing tricks and magic. There’s a rather amusing scene of him hanging upside down from his own umbrella and trying to snake out of a strait jacket!

The visual effects also come over very well, particularly the very effective Eye in the well deep in the heart of the Psychic circus. It’s an eerie little effect and adds to layers of growing fear and tension in the story too.

But what really strikes one about this story the most is the quality of the actors involved. T.P McKenna is simply the perfect choice to play the intergalactic explorer Captain Cook. His constant smarminess and vulgarity are not over the top and when the character is zombified in his final moments on screen T.P shines. His treatment of his strange alien assistant Mags is nasty and belittling and makes him one of those great characters one loves to detest.

Jessica Martin as Mags too is equally amazing. And her make up as she transforms into a werewolf at the climax to Part Three surely ranks as one of the finest scenes and cliffhangers of the season. The make up department must be given stark praise for the realism and superb look. Although I wonder how long it took to get Jessica done up so well? Anyway, the scene of the Captain using a stage moon lighting effect remains a brilliant and chilling scene, proving what superb scenarios Doctor Who always could come up with despite production and monetary short fallings.

Ian Reddington deserves to be placed high in the echelons of best Doctor Who villains ever. His turn as the fearful and creepy Chief Clown to me is little short of award winning. Every scene he is in, he dominates. He gives the character a layer of menace that is hard to emulate. A masterful delivery that makes him a standout amongst all those who have been fortunate enough to have played a Doctor Who baddy.

Rico Ross is also solid as the ill-fated Ring Master of the Circus. There seems to be something behind the relationship between his character and Morgana. Deborah Manship too is scene stealing as the Fortune teller. Both these two characters are treated to a memorable fate too, an outgoing denied to a lot of good characters in the shows history. Packaged off and vaporized is a nasty way to go, and yes the score playing through their demise adds to the impact of their departures.

Gian Sammarco is wonderful as the nerdy Whizzkid. He is so blatantly dim and portrays a devotee of the Psychic Circus almost to perfection. In fact, he does such a good job that one is a little sad at his demise in the ring. His youthful cloth headedness and naivety is wonderfully balanced.

Dean Hollingsworth again gives a delightful turn as the robot Bus Conductor. He’s given a wonderfully grating and annoying voice too and he looks brilliantly creepy all at the same time.

Of course, the chemistry too between Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred also drives the show from the start. Honestly, they truly are one of the best and most assured pairings of Doctor/Companion that the show has ever had. Ace is all teenage attitude and brave grit, and the Doctor is starting to fledge into his more darker persona. The one tinged with far darker mystery and suspense than had ever been dwelt on before in the show.

I honestly cannot find a single fault with this story. It’s strongly written, every character has purpose and there are plenty of very strong character led moments throughout the story.

One must also admire Sylvester McCoy in how he somehow manages to not even flinch as his life is threatened by the exploding circus mere metres behind him at the climax of the story. Honestly that massive explosion looks all the too close for comfort and one wonders whether Sylvester had strong words for the crew after that scene as to my eyes it looks too close for comfort! But his amazing lack of expression and surprise makes the scene a classic one.

The Greatest Show in The Galaxy is everything the best Doctor Who stories should be. Creepy, unnerving, riveting and non stop from start to finish. This comes extremely recommended from me with a decidedly beefy 10 out of 10 on all counts. I must just re-iterate thank goodness this story wasn’t cancelled…yes indeed!

Who Reviews Dragonfire by Matt Rabjohns

“Do you feel like arguing with a can of deodorant that registers nine on the Richter’s scale?!!”

Now let’s get the infamous out of the way at the beginning with this story. One cannot help but be baffled by the cliffhanger to part one. The Seventh Doctor for no readily apparent reason choosing to hang from his umbrella from a high perilous frosty slope is an image that one most certainly remembers well from this story. It’s just totally weird and inexplicable and for this reason does strikingly mar what is otherwise a solid and entertaining story. It must go down as the worst cliffhanger of the classic era, because there is absolutely no reason given in the script as to why the Doctor does this. Is it indicative of the chaos happening behind the scenes? Maybe. But one wonders how a flaw as big as this can be allowed to be placed in the story so bizarrely. Perhaps the only good thing about this scene is the absolutely incredible amount of facial expressions we get from Sylvester as his hands slide down the umbrella to its tip! Right that’s the major quibble out of the way, now let’s get back to the good points of the story.

Sophie Aldred gets her memorable debut as Ace McShane. And what an indelible and immediate impression she makes. Her verbal slanging matches with Sabalom Glitz throughout the story are a treasure and comedic delight. Male chauvinist bilgebag being the prime example of her wonderful language. Grade A hundred Percent Div is high up on the scale too. But despite her nitro nine cans and her sometimes loud mouth, we do get the glimpses of her true, insecure and unsure self. Sophie showcases just how fine an actress she is in that she is a young teenager in Ace, but yeah, she has a massive heart in there. Its clear from her debut scene that here is the next companion! And what a brilliant companion she turned out to be.

It is also a delight to see Tony Selby return as intergalactic Del Boy Sabalom Glitz. For once the production office saw some good potential in an awesome character and brought him back again, and he’s just as good the second time round. Perhaps it’s a bit of a shame that he isn’t assisted by Dibber this time, but I suppose one cannot have everything ever! But Tony is a brilliant actor and gives a brilliant performance and totally makes Glitz his own. Honestly, I think there is severe potential in the character and I can’t believe Big Finish have never thought of a spin off with Glitz and Dibber. That would be such a laugh.

Edward Peel is delightfully nasty and vicious as the unhinged Kane. He gives his character such a zeal and vein of cold evil and he is nothing less than a constant delight to watch on screen. And Kane’s melting faced ending is a superbly achieved effect for the makeup team. It’s very very unpleasant and striking for all the right reasons.

Patricia Quinn as Belasz is one of my favourite characters of the McCoy era. Patricia is such a fine actress, and she gives all she has in giving the best performance as the unsatisfied Belasz. One is almost saddened to see her so easily defeated and killed by Kane. But her character drives the show for two episodes. Her scenes with Tony Osoba’s Kracauer are nicely performed and never less than totally convincing.

Shirin Taylor must be given a mention too. Her affronted customer display with Ace is brilliant and a wonderfully comic moment in the story. But even more charming is the delightful Miranda Borman as Stellar. She is hands down my favourite character in this story. She doesn’t feel like a tacked-on character even though she isn’t integral to the main plot thrust of the story. But in her sparkly little blue dress and her totally innocent voice she is wonderful to watch.

The design of the Dragon itself is a triumph. I can’t help but think that this wonderful Dragon Jailer design was used as the basis for the aliens in Independence Day, as they don’t half bear a very close resemblance to it. Some superb design work was displayed during the McCoy era and that’s no lie. Mind you it’s pretty obvious in this story that the snow is just little blobs of polystyrene, sadly no attempt is made to mask its distinctive sound so it rather mars the effect somewhat. But one can’t expect £1,000,000,000 stuff from a tightly budgeted TV show.

Some of the directorial decisions in this story too seem a bit skew-wiff at times too. Such as when Mel and Ace are trying to escape from Glitz’s frosty crew and come to the stairs, we’re meant to believe that Mel trips onto the stairs and is stunned but it looks more like Bonnie Langford sits on the stairs and just moans from where I’m watching. Then there is the scene of the not even a drip of coffee that Ace hands to Mel which is cringingly poorly done.

Dragonfire is often derided and jeered at and I’ve often seen it stated as one of the worst stories from the whole history of the show. I am not sure it’s quite as bad as all that, but this is certainly, at least from my viewpoint, the weakest story of the McCoy era. But it does have a lot to recommend in it as I have already stated. This story could still stand head and shoulders over a sizeable chunk of the modern era of the show. At least aside from the aforementioned dumbfounded cliffhanger to part one, and a few iffy directorial slants, there is a whole lot of good on show.

The goodbye to Mel as a companion seems just a little too rushed and easy too for my liking. Although there is some nice dialogue given to the Doctor in this scene. And his grin towards Ace as she joins him on his travels is wonderful and just bodes well for the future. Dragonfire has a few faults along the way, but it’s not an out and out disaster of a story. It’s never going to be an out and out classic, but as an introduction for Ace things could have been a lot lot worse.

Ace would still go on to become one of the most fondly remembered companions of the classic era, so it is only fair that Dragonfire gets a mention. After all, it is her debut story. The first of many more to come.

Big Finish Reviews+ Gods and Monsters by Tony J Fyler

Tony needs a lie down.

Ohhh boy.

Let’s say one thing right up front: if you come to this story randomly, without having listened to much of the few years before it, you’re going to be utterly baffled by Gods And Monsters. This story’s a culmination, a drawing together of threads and a sprouting of seeds that have been embedded in a long arc of Sylvester McCoy stories at Big Finish, beginning with The Harvest, when the Doctor took on new companion Hex (the always-excellent Philip Olivier), going through a whole black Tardis/White Tardis time-space dichotomy… sequence, which brought military companions, Captain Lysandra Aristedes and Private Sally Morgan to the party alongside – and sometimes parallel to – Ace and Hex, and through a sequence involving techno-vampires and a thing called The Forge, all drawing towards a climax that can be summed up in six words: The Curse Of Fenric, Part 2.

Yep – that really shouldn’t be a spoiler to you, the cover art for this story’s crawling with Haemovores. What we’re dealing with here is the even-more-ultimate-than-last-time battle between Time’s Champion and Fenric, the Shatterer of Worlds. If the first round somehow made sense to you, you stand at least a fighting chance of making it out of this sequel alive.

Which is more than can be said for all of the Tardis crew.

On a world where physics appears to be on a lunch break, there are gods, there are monsters, and there are the two ancient players, the chess-game of the universe played for enormous stakes – if Fenric wins, its chains will shatter and it will final be able to fully manifest itself in our puny little universe of flesh. The Doctor pits his wits and the lives of his companions against the Elder God of chaos and death, but there are forces here that neither he nor Fenric have counted on – or have they?

Gods And Monsters is a full-on, high-octane, screamingly emotional ride into the scale of battle the Doctor’s been playing with Fenric since long before The Curse of Fenric popped up on screen. This is Doctor Who for people who liked the more convoluted New Adventure novel arcs, the Faction Paradox adventures, the Eighth Doctor’s audio sojourn into a parallel universe of far-out weirdness, or come to that, those who can follow the Time War box sets without coming over with a fit of the timey-wimey vapours. It’s by no means a story for the faint-hearted, the newbie, the wanderer-in. You need to put the work in to conquering the stories of a peculiar past before you’re ready to make sense of Gods and Monsters, by Mike Maddox and Alan Barnes.

If you’re ready for it though – if you’ve followed the threads and senses the impending climax – then Gods and Monsters delivers shocks, thrills, twists, blood, death and more besides, in a conclusion that, certainly more than The Curse Of Fenric, gives you the scale of the Elder Gods and the epic battle Fenric and the Doctor have been embroiled in. If anything, one of the problems with it is that it elevates the Doctor to Super-Godhood, more or less because anyone or anything less should absolutely fail. That’s the consequence of course of making your villain the ultimate ultimate ultimate evil. To beat it, you have to have a hero who’s bigger and better than anything you can currently imagine, and it rather runs the risk of pushing the doctor too far in that direction. That said, it does also punch him back down to being a David standing against his personal Goliath when people, when pawns and knights and players start to fall around him. There’s outstanding work by the companions in this story too, everything elevated, everything tense as a bowstring, with Ace, Hex, Lysandra and Sally all reaching points of destiny which define who they are and where they go from here. Certainly, after Gods and Monsters, nothing will be the same again for any of them, and arguably not for the Seventh Doctor either. It is, in a sense, the big battle that his life on audio has been building up to, the battle the Seventh Doctor’s life has been building to ever since the events of The Curse Of Fenric, and certainly the battle to which small events and large ones have been leading him in the audio stories leading up to this event.

The point of all of which rhetoric is that you really need to hear Gods And Monsters. Most Seventh Doctor fans are Curse of Fenric fans in any case, so the idea of an audio rematch with the Elder God is enough to make it irresistible to many. The fact that you need to put the work in and get through a whole slew of other audios to get the full effect of Gods And Monsters is somewhat unavoidable, and the journey is not particularly easy at many points – you’re going to need to keep a hold of your sanity as some of the stories that lead to this finale are bizarre in the extreme (The Magic Mousetrap, I’m especially looking at you…). But in a world where people watch eight seasons of Game Of Thrones just to find out what the hell eventually happens, Gods and Monsters is a story whose time has probably, finally, come.

Strap yourself in, go back to The Harvest, listen to a shedload of other stories first, and then prepare yourself for the epic screaming weirdness that is Gods and Monsters.

Big Finish Reviews+ The Monsters of Gokroth by Tony J Fyler

Tony does the monster mash.

There are characters studded throughout Doctor Who history who spark the imagination, who make you think ‘Oh, they’d have been good in more adventures than they got.’ Mags, the werewolf brought to the Psychic Circus in The Greatest Show In The Galaxy is certainly one such character, mostly, if we’re honest, because of her sympathetic portrayal by Jessica Martin.

Big Finish exists for many reasons, but one of them is the opportunity to fill in gaps, to open cracks in the canon and hear what might happen if we fleshed out events we’ve only dared imagine before. So, welcome back Mags, for three adventures with the Seventh Doctor as he’s getting on, putting things right, tidying away loose ends, rather than bringing down staggeringly powerful Elder Gods. He feels he has unfinished business with Mags, and goes to seek her out.

Mags, again played by Martin, is on a mission of her own, tramping across the planet Gokroth in this, the first of her three return stories, written by Matt Fitton. Gokroth has… monsters. It has frightened villagers. And it has a mad scientist in a tower. Do you really need to know any more?

We’re off to the races with a sci-fi take on some classic horror movies. Where are the monsters coming from? Are they being engineered by the mad scientist? Will the crowd ever take the plunge and storm the castle, pitchforks a-go-go? And what’s in it for Mags either way?

There’s a sub-story here about narratives, what they need, how they change and, especially at the mid-point in the story, how they can sometimes get pulled right out from under you. When Mags goes in search of the woman who might be able to help her regain control of her Vulpanan instinct to change with the phases of the moon, she instead runs into the Doctor, who sets himself up as a better authority, more able to help her achieve her goals. The nature of reality and truth is the prize up for grabs on Gokroth – but whether the terrified natives have either the gumption to seize it, or the guts to deal with what they discover, are entirely different questions. Meanwhile, Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh Doctor has his work cut out trying to get reason to prevail in a climate of binary contempt and fear, of secrets, lies, fake news, questionable history and the seductive notion of blaming the ‘other.’

McCoy is on top form in this story, delivering a Doctor closer to the version from the TV movie than to his early, busy, chess-playing, god-bating days. It’s a brave way to take his character development (and of course, it doesn’t stop anyone delivering more stories with a ‘younger’ Seventh Doctor in the future), and it helps to see this Seventh Doctor, while not exactly mellowing as such – he’d still be standing in the way of tyrants whenever it was necessary – but focusing more on the small stuff, the missteps, the paths not taken and the setting right of things unfinished. It speaks of a Doctor settling down to his life, all the most important elements on his to-do List of universal housekeeping ticked off, a Time Lord free to do individual good deeds for good people, rather than battling behemoths from the dawn of time.

Jessica Martin too fits back into the voice of Mags as though no years had passed since The Greatest Show. She has an interesting journey in this story – deciding whether to continue as planned and seek out the help of Dr Maleeva (she of the tower, and sounding too much like ‘Malevolent’ for it to be a coincidence that she’s portrayed as evil), or to put her trust in the funny little man with the strange blue box. The years between the Psychic Circus and Gokroth have not, we feel, been particularly kind to Mags, haunted as she is by the unpredictability of her own nature and the colossal potential for murder and mayhem that comes with it. There may well be monsters on Gokroth, but when we meet her again after all these years, Mags isn’t sure that she’s not one of them.

What we get through the course of this story’s ups and downs is a through-line where the Doctor is able to face the truth, no matter what it is, and when he offers to help her overcome her problems and get on with her life, Mags joins the Tardis and becomes a fully-fledged (or indeed fully-furred) companion. It’s been a long time coming, and The Monsters of Gokroth is a busy tale of truths, half-truths and nothing-like-the-truths from which Mags and the Doctor emerge surer of each other, ready both to trust and to travel, to find the answers to the outstanding questions of her life.

Pop along to Gokroth, and find the monster inside yourself.

Who Reviews Time and the Rani by Matt Rabjohns

When any TV show is beset with the problems of emerging and recovering after an imposed hiatus, it is always going to struggle. Especially when a lead actor in the role is rather unceremoniously dropped from the role for no readily good reason in the case of Colin Baker. Problems like these can become insurmountable. With regards to the regeneration scene pre-opening titles sequence it is jarringly obvious that Colin Baker is no longer in residence. Sylvester McCoy has the tricky job of convincing us that at first this is the sixth Doctor. But some rather dodgy effects work totally hampers his efforts, to make this the poorest ever regeneration sequence in the show's history. The reason for the regeneration is also left rather ambiguous and not explained well in the story. In the Target Book we are told it’s the TARDIS's tumultuous buffeting that causes his regeneration. This then begs the secondary question of how Mel is then also still alive and soon is shown to be unharmed by the experience.

If a wonderful show though can get past a slightly stumbling start, and then produce a rather splendid and fun story for Doctor Who, then one simply has to applaud it. Time and the Rani actually possesses much that is very good. For starters, the performance of Sylvester McCoy once he has actually assumed his mantle as the Seventh Doctor is remarkably polished. There is no "Let's see how long he takes to settle into the role" at all. He is immediately a totally new and fresh incarnation of the Doctor. Of course, his performance would be further developed over the course of his three-year stint, but for a first stab at being Doctor he succeeds admirably.

There are two distinct aspects to the Seventh Doctor. His clown act, and his devious master manipulator act. During his era these aspects of his character emerge at different times. Time and the Rani is definitely focused on the former of these two aspects. The Doctor in Time and the Rani is actually very similar to the Second Doctor, in that he is bumbling, and that he mashes up his proverbs horrendously. Yet the darker tones do emerge, especially in his first meeting with the Rani before he is drugged by the Rani. His scathing and unrelenting downers on the Rani's past actions are delivered with great aplomb. Yet there are also all the common traits of the Doctor present. He is always against the evil plans of his foe, and he is always protective of his companions.

Bonnie Langford seems to be a person few people remember from the series. Her character of Melanie Bush certainly could have been written far more respectfully, but with the material she was given Bonnie always does well.  But the fact that she is supposed to be a keen computer programmer never really is shown within her stories she shared either with Colin Baker or Sylvester McCoy. Melanie does have the tendency to quick panic as well, which can be just a tad wearing with her very severe high-pitched screaming.

To be joined by Kate O'Mara as the Rani is also much to the story's benefit. Time and the Rani can be said to possess a high amount of rather implausible science inherent in the scripting. But if you can give the main adversary's character to a sublime and respected actress like Kate, then you know that despite some of the plotting silliness along the way, you will get a professional and highly watchable performance. Kate O'Mara deals incredibly well with the Rani. She has a certain charm that makes one feel beneath all this mad, self-centred scientist, beats the hearts of a proper three-dimensional character. So many evil baddies in shows such as Doctor Who can become run of the mill and stilted and dull so easily, but Kate never falls into this trap. She is one actress who does deserve the mantle of scene stealer. She catches the eye. Kate deserved to come back to the show, a whole lot more could have been made of the Rani.

Also helping things no end are the other castings within this story too. Donald Pickering turns in a very understated and respectable performance as the tortured leader of the Lakertyan race. Wanda Ventham also directs a superb amount of emotion into the role of Faroon, the mother of Sarn who is callously murdered by the Rani. The scenes of her discussing the prospects of life without their daughter with Beyus are moving and charged.

The Tetraps are not the most well realised monsters to have appeared in the show. But they are utilised better than many alien races have been in the show before this story. That they are able to turn the tables on the Rani at the story's final hurdle does make for an amusing ending. Hanging upside down had to have been extremely uncomfortable for the men who had to act in this manner for the story.

Script wise solely, it may never be a good idea to pick apart this story. It’s got some very very strange science that will not hold up to any kind of scrutiny. It’s sometimes convoluted, sometimes wacky. Yet the sense of joyous introduction to the new Doctor overrides the shortcomings in the science in every minute of this narrative.

So, Time and The Rani does suffer from its fair share of problems, some of them unavoidable. With the weight of Doctor Who's very insecure future hanging over this story it is good that any decent kind of story emerged at all. Inspite of these problems though, the story has many very good sections. Kate O'Mara as the Rani is one, with her zany dressing up as Mel to achieve her own devious ends. Any actress who can plausibly deliver a line like "I have the Loyhargill, nothing can stop me now" without inducing fits of giggles has to be applauded. The characterisation of the Lakertyans is another decent aspect to the story too. Despite the flimsy regeneration, there are also some rather impressive effects. Particularly the Rani's spherical death traps look credible and work extremely well on screen.

The cliff hangers in this story too are definitely dramatic and well done. Mel's falling into one of the Rani's traps is a very diverting and certainly perilous moment. The Doctor being surrounded by the Tetraps in their dank under cave in Part two is suitably claustrophobic. Sylvester McCoy deals well being surrounded by so many ugly tongues flicking towards his face. Part Three with the Doctor subdued and plugged in to add to the superbrain in the Rani's centre of operations too seems very cinematic and superbly driven.

Time and the Rani will never once win Doctor Who's most wonderful story award. But it is still worthy of revisiting if only for its sense of mischievous fun and for watching Sylvester McCoy just step into the role of the Doctor like it is the easiest thing in the universe. The Seventh Doctor would go on to have more memorable and epic adventures, but as a base one story, Pip and Jane Baker managed to make an effective yarn that is simply full of wonderfully bonkers theories and concepts. Amidst the good fun though there are some effecting and very well played scenes indeed. Time and the Rani will also never deserve the mantle of Doctor Who's worst story ever transmitted. It has far too much rich performance in it for it to be labelled thus so. If you can accept that this is Doctor Who done primarily for light relief and good humour, then you should love this story.