Big Finish

News about and reviews of plays produced by production company Big Finish

Review: Doctor Who – Absolution

27 November 2007 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Doctor Who - Absolution

And so the chopping begins. C’rizz, all round irritant and obstacle to proper character development, is no more. He is an ex-companion. Woo hoo!

A holdover from the weirdy “Divergent Universe” era of eighth Doctor stories, it’s slightly fitting that his final story should be another weirdy alternate universe piece that explains at last the slightly uninteresting secret he’s been carrying with him ever since his exodus.

Trouble is it’s also a fittingly uninvolving story, full of interesting ideas that somehow fail to lift off thanks to the usual infusion of gobbledygook, poorly explained concepts and a resolution that’s somewhat incomprehensible.

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Review: Doctor Who – 100

26 November 2007 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Doctor Who: 100

Big Finish has been producing Doctor Who audio plays for quite some time now. In fact, it shouldn’t surprise too many people that 100 is in fact the 100th Big Finish release.

It’s an odd choice for such a numerically momentous occasion. Unlike the first play, The Sirens of Time, or the 40th anniversary play, Zagreus, this is no great gathering of Doctors, no massive continuity-wrangling extravaganza of story-telling.

In fact, it’s more of an internal congratulation, a gathering together of Big Finish writers from over the years, including Robert Shearman and Paul Cornell. Consisting of four short stories, it improbably stars just Colin Baker as the sixth Doctor and Maggie Stables as his Big Finish-only companion, Evelyn – seriously, that’s their A-team for their 100th release? Colin Baker maybe, but Maggie Stables?

As a bit of back-slapping, it’s fine. But as something you’d pay money for, it leaves a lot to be desired.

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Review: Doctor Who – Son of the Dragon

26 November 2007 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Doctor Who - Son of the Dragon

With the companion “Night of the Long Knives” just around the corner at Big Finish productions, I imagine there must have been some trepidation on Caroline Morris’ part when approaching this play.

The Big Finish companions are being wiped out in favour of their on-screen counterparts – and she gets to be the Bride of Dracula.

Not the vampire Dracula, mind, but Vlad the Impaler, that lovely East European warlord and “son of the dragon” from whom Bram Stoker got his original inspiration.

Never going to last, is it?

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Review: Sapphire and Steel – The Mystery of the Missing Hour

8 November 2007 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

The Mystery of the Missing HourThere’s something about the Big Finish Sapphire and Steel plays. They make you acutely aware of time.

Tick tock. Tick tock. Your life is ebbing away. Tick tock. That’s two hours you could have been using for something else. Instead, you’re now two hours closer to being dead.

Certainly, for the first half of The Mystery of the Missing Hour, that’s how I was feeling (hence the somewhat tardy nature of this review – I wasn’t exactly desperate to get through this one). I even reached the point where I was considering pretending to have listened to the whole thing and reviewing it all the same.

It really was that bad. I’d even consider using a word beginning with s.

But I’m glad I’m conscientious enough to have stuck through it. Because disk two is a cracker.

Big Finish (and the writer Joseph Lidster) have essentially taken a huge gamble: that because you’ve ponied up the cash for the play, you’re going to listen to something that is deliberately complete crap and stick through to the end.

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Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Doctor Who – Frozen Time

7 September 2007 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Frozen TimeNicholas “I’m the voice of both the Daleks and the Cybermen, suckers” Briggs has been doing Doctor Who audio adventures for a very long time. A very long time indeed.

So it shouldn’t be absolutely surprising that despite the presence of Sylvester McCoy, the lack of any onscreen companion and the presence of former Bond girl Maryam D’Abo doing a really bad French accent, his latest writing project, Frozen Time, is actually a bit of corker.

I guess you could write a receipe of sorts about it: take one nifty sci-fi idea (Antarctica explorers unearth/un-ice a Police Box that’s been buried for millions of years and a mysterious man who starts to wake up), an old Doctor Who monster (not telling, so as not to spoil) and a healthy (not unhealthy) wodge of continuity, a relatively pacey plot, flashbacks and a tried and tested case of amnesia and you have a rather enjoyable way of spending your time.

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