An archive of the blog’s reviews of audio and radio plays.
Audio and radio play reviews
Review: Doctor Who – 131 – Survival of the Fittest
When last we left the seventh Doctor in Big Finish land, he’d decided it was a cracking good idea to take a time-travelling Nazi scientist on a grand tour of the universe with him.
As you do. Can’t see anything going wrong there, can you?
Nevertheless, said scientist, Dr Elizabeth Klein – who is from an alternative universe in which the Nazis won World War 2 – is now the Seventh Doctor’s companion in his travels through time and space.
Of course, with the great big ‘Nazi’ thing hovering over her, do you think the Big Finish writers could resist writing a story about the struggles of a ‘master race’ trying to obtain lebensraum? Of course not, which is what we have with Survival of the Fittest.
Nevertheless, despite its occasional ladelling on of the sub-text, Survival of the Fittest is actually a very decent, intelligent hard SF story. It’s also preceded by an equally interesting episode-long flashforward to Klein’s future which sees a guest visit by the eighth Doctor.
Unfortunately, there’s also the concluding part of The Three Companions tacked on the end. Couldn’t go five for five, could we?
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Dearie me. It’s getting harder and harder to find the time to listen to these things, what with the main range and the Lost Stories to listen to as well. Even with the judicious skipping of the obvious ringers (4×6 – Bernice Summerfield and the Criminal Code – being an obvious one, since SHE HAS HER OWN RANGE. SHE DOESN’T NEED A COMPANION CHRONICLE AND SHE’S NOT EVEN A PROPER COMPANION ANYWAY SINCE SHE’S ONLY IN THE BOOKS), I’ve had to skip 4×7 (The Suffering) as well, even though it looks quite interesting, since it’s a double CD so takes twice as long. I’m sure I’ll get back to it in due course, but until then, here’s 4×8 The Emperor of Eternity.
Season 18 of Doctor Who is one of my favourites. It’s the first season run by producer John Nathan Turner (aka JNT) and he brought with him script editor Christopher H Bidmead. Bidmead comes up with this crazy idea – let’s treat Doctor Who like proper sci-fi, that adults can enjoy and that’s full of proper science.
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 
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.