When people (by which I mean Doctor Who fans) think of 'lost stories' and Colin Baker, they generally think of those stories from the original season 23, such as The Nightmare Fair and Mission Magnus, that got replaced with Trial of a Timelord thanks to Michael Grade and his 'hiatus'.

However, those stories weren't the only Colin Baker stories that fell by the wayside. Here we have Leviathan, a story written by the late veteran TV writer Brian Finch for season 22. Despite getting as far as a rehearsal script, the story never got made, probably because it would have been too damn expensive to make.

In the story, the Doctor and Peri land in a medieval forest near a castle. They come across some villagers who are being pursued by Herne the Hunter.

Cue the Celtic charms of Clannad and the theme to Robin of Sherwood? No, because this Herne is mean and he's out for blood…

Continue reading "Review: Doctor Who - The Lost Stories - 03 - Leviathan"

Read other posts about: Big Finish

You know, when Steven Moffat sat down to work out how the next series of Doctor Who was going to work, I'm sure he had many, many things to consider. Not least of these was the kind of companion who was going to accompany the Doctor.

Now Big Finish can be a little off the wall sometimes, but usually they're quite conventional. However, this time – for three plays only – they've done something that I bet Steven Moffat never, ever considered: they've given him a racist, fascist, time-travelling Nazi scientist as an assistant. Yeah, beat that Stevie, you no-talent hack.

For those of you who haven't been listening to the Big Finish plays for the last decade or so, Colditz has probably slipped under your radar, especially since it's a Seventh Doctor/Ace play, so likely to be languishing at the bottom of any collection/bargain bin. Just to jog your memory, it's the one with David Tennant doing the bad German accent.

You probably won't recall the actual plot, however, so let me remind you: the Doctor and Ace land in/near Colditz; they do lots of dumb things; the Nazis capture them and the TARDIS; a Nazi scientist called Klein takes the TARDIS into the future where the Third Reich have won the Second World War; through timey-wimey machinations the alternative future gets undone, Herr David Tennant gets killed off, and Klein is left lurking around somewhere in the world, possessing knowledge of science and the alternative future that she shouldn't have.

A Thousand Tiny Wings picks up where Colditz left off by plopping the companionless Seventh Doctor down into 1950s Kenya at the time of the Mau Mau uprising. Here he comes across a bunch of posh English people stuck in a house and slowly being killed off by a mysterious poison. And Dr Elizabeth Klein.

Sounding good yet? No? Thought not.

Yet, despite sounding extremely bad on paper, it's actually a pretty decent play in practice.

Continue reading "Review: Doctor Who - 130 - A Thousand Tiny Wings"

Read other posts about: Big Finish

Typically, the Big Finish Companion Chronicles try to fit in with the writing style of the Doctor Who era in which they're set. So the Hartnell stories tend to be (waves hands a bit, since it's a bit more complicated than this) a bit hardcore sci-fi or historical, the Troughton ones have veered towards daft sci-fi and historicals, the Pertwee ones to monster stories and so on.

Set during the reign of the Fifth Doctor, Ringpullworld in no way attempts to fit in. It doesn't feel like Doctor Who at all, at times. However, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, because if you squint a bit, you could actually imagine this was written by Douglas Adams, since it's probably the cleverest and most entertaining of all the Companion Chronicles so far. It really is that good.

Funny that it's about Turlough, mind.

Continue reading "Review: The Companion Chronicles 4x5 - Ringpullworld"

Read other posts about: Big Finish

As promised last review, I'm going to neatly step over the third in the latest series of Big Finish's Companion Chronicles, The Prisoner of Peladon, on the general grounds that there are no companions in it, which is clearly taking the piss.

Instead, let's talk aboutThe Pyralis Effect, starring Lalla Ward as Romana II. Now, despite the fact almost everyone loves the Fourth Doctor, most of the Companion Chronicles featuring him and his various assistants have been terrible, whether they feature Leela, Romana I or Romana II.

But, as you might have noticed, over series three of The Companion Chronicles and as we've gone through series four, the whole range began to get much, much better. So should it surprise you much to hear that, in contrast to those previous Fourth Doctor Chronicles, The Pyralis Effect is actually pretty good?

Continue reading "Review: The Companion Chronicles 4x4 - The Pyralis Effect"

Read other posts about: Big Finish

When first we met James Robert McCrimmon, he was fighting the Battle of Culloden in one of Doctor Who's last few purely historical stories, The Highlanders. He left at the end of The War Games, his memories of his time with the Doctor wiped by the Time Lords - who then ended up using him and the Second Doctor as time agents during the mythical "season 6a" that the Sixth Doctor story The Two Doctors appears to reveal.

When we last met him in the Big Finish plays, it was for a Companion Chronicle, Helicon Prime, which - to put it bluntly - was absolute rubbish. To be fair, until recently, all the second Doctor Companion Chronicles were rubbish, so Helicon Prime wasn't on its own for this quality shortfall. But it was rubbish.

Nevertheless, despite this inauspicious return, Jamie's back in a big way - Big Finish intend to have him in a two-handed Companion Chronicle with Deborah Watling as Victoria in March, and as a companion of the Sixth Doctor in a forthcoming trilogy of plays (one of which will also feature Wendy Padbury as Zoe) and a Companion Chronicle.

So you might have been expecting this play, in which an agent of the Time Lord's Celestial Intervention Agency gives Jamie back his memories of his time with the Doctor, to be the launch of this Jamie range.

Wrong.

Instead, we have a pretty good historical story - with just a hint of sci-fi - set during England's Glorious Revolution.

Continue reading "Review: The Companion Chronicles 4x2 - The Glorious Revolution"

Read other posts about: Big Finish

Yes, yes, I know. It's been out for over half a year now. But what the hell, I might as well play catch-up with the Companion Chronicles. I'l be steering clear of obviously "taking the piss" releases, such as Prisoner of Peladon, which stars precisely no companions at all, only David Troughton as a King of Peladon who appeared in a previous Big Finish play. But I'm going to be looking at most of them, I reckon.

First up is The Drowned World, which is a follow-up to surprise hit Home Truths, starring Jean Marsh as Sara Kingdom. Home Truths is probably the best Companion Chronicle of the last three seasons, which, given it was about a character that might not even be a companion, was something of a surprise.

The question is: will the follow-up be as good?

Continue reading "Review: The Companion Chronicles 4x1 - The Drowned World"

Read other posts about: Big Finish

Big Finish are in something of a quandary when it comes to these Lost Stories. The idea behind them is to do a "full cast" production of a script or story that for one reason or another never got made, so that fans can finally have something like what was supposed to be on screen (but wasn't).  

But as I've said before, sometimes there have been good reasons for stories not getting made. For example, apart from production difficulties, the script not getting handed in on time, etc, how about because it's just rubbish?

What do you do if you're Big Finish and the story is an absolute heap of sh*te? I mean terrifyingly, Timelash/Twin Dilemma bad. On TV, there are these people called script editors who take the scripts writers produce and, if necessary, make them palatable. But if Big Finish edits a really bad script that never got passed by a script editor, is it the authentic production fans wanted? If they don't, aren't they going to be making an absolute heap of Timelash sh*te?

The route Big Finish chose with Mission To Magnus, Philip Martin's lost script from Colin Baker's aborted second season, was not to edit the script. Oh dear.

Now Mission To Magnus has everything: it has the Doctor's school bully; it has a planet ruled by women facing war with a planet ruled by men; it has Sil from Vengeance on Varos, who has a consignment of winter woolies (his words, not mine) to sell; it has child actors.

In short, it's an absolute heap of sh*te. Normally, I don't endorse Third Reich policies, but if you can, please burn any copies of this play that you come across. Please.

Continue reading "Review: Doctor Who - The Lost Stories - 02 - Mission To Magnus"

Read other posts about: Big Finish

And so it is that we come to the end of the Stockbridge trilogy, in which the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa travel to the past, present and future of Stockbridge because Big Finish love continuity and it was in the comics in the 80s or something.

We've had the past, which tried to be Monty Python and failed, but wasn't bad when it was serious; then we had the present, which was pretty good apart from a few dodgy performances and odd directorial choices.

Now we have the future. The story carries straight on from the previous one again, except the Doctor and Nyssa appear to have ended up in some futuristic tourist park populated by Northerners and aliens, including Lisa Tarbuck and Keith Barron.

Except, as the title of the story and the cover should tell you, things aren't what they appear to be.

Continue reading "Review: Doctor Who - 129 - Plague of the Daleks"

Read other posts about: Big Finish

Big Finish occasionally come up with some nice ideas for subscriber bonuses. Okay, Return of the Krotons wasn't one of them but Company of Friends was at least a good idea, even if it was poorly executed. However, every time they do it, they say it's going to be exclusive to subscribers, don't manage to get many people to subscribe on the strength of it (what? I get three Sylvester McCoy plays and the Key2Time season? Whoopee), so end up releasing them anyway.

So it is with An Earthly Child, a potentially very good idea, which is already available to pre-order, having been sent to subscribers in December. In it, Paul McGann journeys to the now defunct future in which the Daleks mined out the Earth's core to turn it into a spaceship, so he can visit Susan, his granddaughter.

Yes, the Doctor not only has kids, a wife and probably a mum, he also had a granddaughter – the very first companion to the very first Doctor, William Hartnell, in the very first story, An Unearthly Child (which you can watch all of on YouTube). Played by Carole Anne Ford, she stayed behind on Earth to help rebuild the planet and married a man called David Campbell.

Ford is back as Susan for this story, set 30 years after the invasion, and she's accompanied by Paul McGann's son, Jake McGann, who appropriately enough plays Susan's son, Alex – the Doctor's great-grandson.

Continue reading "Review: Doctor Who - An Earthly Child"

Read other posts about: Big Finish

Time for part two of the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa Stockbridge trilogy that Big Finish has been running. As you may recall from the 1980s (chances are – probably not), Stockbridge featured heavily in the DWM comic strip and – surprise, surprise, given the company's motto is "No piece of continuity knowingly left unmined" – Big Finish has decided to set three Fifth Doctor stories in Stockbridge of the past, present and future.

Episode one, The Castle of Fear, ended on a cliffhanger and episode two, The Eternal Summer, more or less carries right on – except it doesn't.

The Doctor wakes up in a boarding house in Stockbridge, all things right with the world, except he's not sure how he got there or where Nyssa is. How did he escape that cliffhanger? And who will be the bad guy this time?

Continue reading "Review: Doctor Who - 128 - The Eternal Summer"