Audio and radio play reviews

An archive of the blog’s reviews of audio and radio plays.

Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Sapphire and Steel – Water Like A Stone

13 December 2006 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Water Like A StoneNigel Fairs has a lot to answer for. The producer of the Big Finish range of Sapphire and Steel audio plays, it was his decision to make the stories more ’emotional’. The result, so far, has been something other than the Sapphire and Steel we came to know and love when we were growing up/bought the videos in the early 90s/bought the DVDs a couple of years ago. Instead of weird, alien logic, and morals that make no sense or are completely counter to conventional morality, we’ve had standard dramatic clichés (eg homophobia is bad) and plots that have drifted between comedic and uninteresting.

Now we have one of Fairs’ own stories, Water Like A Stone. It has good points, but for the most part, it has all the things wrong with it we’ve come to expect from the range.

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Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Doctor Who – No Man’s Land

30 November 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

No Man's LandIf there’s one thing to thank Big Finish for, it’s their revival of the pure historical story. The on-screen adventures of Doctor Who might have abandoned sci-fi free tales circa the second Doctor (bar the fifth Doctor’s Black Orchid), but the Doctor’s Big Finish audio adventures have had trips to Roman times, the Great Exhibition and 17th century Paris, to name but a few, all with minimal involvement of wibbly wobbly space things.

No Man’s Land is a First World War story that has no War Lord or War Chief, no timorous beasties creeping around in the trenches, no Rani sucking off brain chemicals. But there’s a murder about to happen in the next day or so – the British army has orders to expect someone called The Doctor and his two companions, who are coming to investigate it before it happens. Unfortunately for them, rather than the Seventh Doctor’s Big Finish “A-Team” (Mel), he’s brought his B-Team in tow: Ace and Hex.

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Audio and radio play reviews

Review: I, Davros – Purity

16 November 2006 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

I, Davros - PurityAnother month, another Davros play from Big Finish: I, Davros – Purity. Okay, fair dos: it’s part two in a four-part mini-series that started last month with I, Davros – Innocence. We’ve moved on a bit now.

Ostensibly, the narrative link between the various plays in the series is that Davros has been captured by the Daleks to help them out of a hole. Apparently, Davros thinks talking about his personal life is the best way to do this. I like to think he’s sitting in front of an open fire, with the Black Dalek next to him, sucking up mulled wine through a special attachment. I’m not sure why the Daleks are humouring him so far, but they are.

While Innocence saw Davros eulogising about his childhood and how it taught him to be a man (ie sociopath), Purity takes us to Davros, aged 30, stuck in weapons testing, wishing he could be something big in the science corps.

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Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Doctor Who – Memory Lane

10 November 2006 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

The front cover to Memory LaneIf there’s a Doctor synonymous with Big Finish’s range of Doctor Who audio plays, it’s Paul McGann. Doctor number eight has appeared in books, comics and countless other media since his appearance in the TV movie of 1996. But it wasn’t until 2001 that McGann was to appear again as the Doctor and show us how he would have portrayed that wanderer in time and space if he’d been given the chance.

It was Big Finish who gave him that chance. Together with the producers, he’s crafted a fun-loving, slightly comedic, sports-worshipping, Peter Pan of a Time Lord that anticipated the lonelier, romantic and pop culture-friendly tendencies of David Tennant’s tenth Doctor – he does, perhaps, encapsulate best the various themes of Big Finish’s disparate writing styles.

Now several ‘seasons’ in, with 1930s adventuress Charley Pollard by his side, he’s encountered Daleks, Cybermen, the Brigadier, the Time Lords and dozens of new enemies, forever dispelling the “George Lazenby” jibe that he’s endured over the years. He’s not had the best of stories, with a few notable exceptions, but he’s had some of the best of the Big Finish ‘atmosphere’ in his time.

Now, we have Memory Lane, perhaps the most Eighth Doctor-ish story of his adventures so far.

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Review: I, Davros – Innocence

25 October 2006 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

I, Davros - InnocenceOnce Big Finish get an idea into their collective noggin, they really like to mine it for all it’s worth. A while back (2003), Big Finish put out a few plays that delved into the motivations of famous Doctor Who villains: Omega, The Master and Davros. Davros proved popular enough that Big Finish went a bit deeper in Terror Firma and The Juggernauts.

Apparently, though, that wasn’t enough, because now we have a series of four plays, released under the monicker I, Davros, that will delve into Davros’ early life. Again.

The first, Innocence, is out now. Is it worth your hard-earned cash?

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