Audio and radio play reviews

After 10 years (or whatever), it’s time for Charley Pollard to leave the Big Finish range. The premier eighth Doctor companion (and possibly best companion of all, depending on who you talk to), with The Condemned she became the premier audio sixth Doctor companion as well.

So, there was obviously some anticipation as to how the final stories of the Charley/Sixth Doctor arc would play out and how she’d be written out of the series again. With the Sixth Doctor not knowing she would travel with him in the future, what would the cunning denouement be, we all wondered? Would she go without the issue being addressed? Would there be some clever bit of temporal mechanics? Would there be soul-baring and a frantic attempt to save the day?

We were all agog, since the Sixth Doctor/Charley pairing was actually very good. Ah, Charley: how we’ll miss you, you were more or less the one thing that kept me listening to these, although given the groundswell of support for these reviews – thanks guys – I won’t be quitting after this one and will be sticking with the main Whο range at Big Finish for the foreseeable future at least.

But after Patient Zero by Nick Briggs proved to be such a dud, hopes weren’t high that there would be a great conclusion to the arc, particularly when Paper Cuts proved essentially to be Charley-free. Twats.

Now we’re here, and Charley’s off. How did they write her out, I hear you ask?

Bollocks. The exact same way they did in The Girl Who Never Was except not as well. Spoilers ahoy.

Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – 126 – Blue Forgotten Planet”

Can I ask a quick question? How valuable are these reviews of Big Finish plays to people?

The reason I’m asking is that I’m rapidly running out of patience with them. There are far more misses than hits – which are only really relative hits – and they’re actually quite painful to listen to.

I might stick around for the Missing Stories, purely to listen to Nicola Bryant (ah, Peri, etc, etc), but if no one’s desperate to know whether these things are any good or not, I think I might give up on them once I’ve dispensed with the final Charley story (play number 126).

But on with Paper Cuts, a Sixth Doctor story by Marc “I never knowingly under-write” Platt set in (or rather near) the planet Draconia. If you cast your minds back to the years of Jon Pertwee, you may recall the Draconians, a reptilian race reminiscent of feudal Japan who appeared for all of one story.

Well, now they’re back, Colin Baker’s here to help them. Unfortunately, the Emperor is dead, and Charley isn’t quite herself.

Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – 125 – Paper Cuts”

Look at that. Look at that cover. The best cliffhanger in the whole bloody thing and it’s on the front bloody cover.

Sigh.

Anyway, moving on, this play marks the return of lots of things. It marks the return of the Sixth Doctor and Charley after months of Sylvester McCoy. It’s important to note this is the beginning of the end for Charley since she’ll be off soon which is a bit of a shame.

It’s also the return of the Viyrans. What do you mean you don’t remember the Viyrans? But Big Finish has been promising for simply ages that they were going to be a big series and they were going to tack Viyran stories on the end of all the plays in the run up to the release of this story. Don’t you remember? Well, no, because they didn’t and all we got was that one-parter tacked on the end of Mind’s Eye about two years ago.

It’s also the return of Nick Briggs as the voice of the Daleks, something that again is so important it deserves to be a “with NICHOLAS BRIGGS as THE DALEKS” on the front cover.

More than that, it’s also the return of Nick Briggs as a writer and as a director. So writer/director and voice artiste on this one – anyone want to guess whether it’s going to be a rigorously edited story that’s been revised multiple times to make it the best play possible?

To take a leaf from Big Finish’s book, I’m going to ruin the guessing for you and stick the answer on the front cover: no, it’s rubbish.

Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – 124 – Patient Zero”

As we all know, Paul McGann is technically the longest serving official Doctor Who. Although only having done one TV story, he graced the pages of books and comics and, of course, starred in the Big Finish audio plays for the best part of a decade.

During this time, the Eighth Doctor racked up a number of companions, including Bernice Summerfield and Fitz Kreiner in the books and Izzy Sinclair in the comics. He even, apparently, travelled with Mary Shelley for a while, if you believe an off-hand comment he made once. However, until now, we’ve never had actors playing these companions in any of the audio plays (okay, Benny I’ll give you, but she never appeared with the Eighth Doctor).

With a 4×25 minute play featuring the Eighth Doctor to write, it occurred to Big Finish that they could finally give these old companions voices, and flesh out the Eighth Doctor’s range of audio companions. So here comes The Company of Friends, featuring (as always) Lisa Bowerman as Benny, Matt di Angelo (off EastEnders) as Fitz, Jemima Rooper (Hex, Lost in Austen) as Izzy and Julie Cox (Dune, Children of Dune) as Mary Shelley.

What a fantastic opportunity. What a pity it’s mostly been wasted.

Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – 123 – The Company of Friends”