Big Finish

Here we are again in the middle of another Big Finish trilogy. In City of Spires, the sixth Doctor returns to 18th century Scotland where he bumps into former travelling companion James Robert McCrimmon (aka Jamie), who has no recollection of the second Doctor, the TARDIS or anything else. More than that, Scottish history’s gone a bit weird: Edinburgh and Glasgow have been destroyed and replaced with what seems like an oil refinery. What could be happening?

Well, we never found out at the end of City of Spires. With The Wreck of the Titan, though, we’re starting to get a few clues.

Here, the Doctor and Jamie land on board the RMS Titanic, which is heading for an iceberg. Or should be. Except the moon’s all wrong, the crew aren’t the ones recorded by history, and most of the doors just lead to blank bulkheads.

More mysteries to solve. But will there be answers this time?

Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – 134 – The Wreck of the Titan”

As has become something of a tradition round here, I’m reviewing yet another of the Companion Chronicles out of sequence. But I have a good reason. You see this Companion Chronicle follows on directly from City of Spires and precedes Wreck of the Titan, so if I’m to avoid falling horribly behind again (and I already have a Lost Story, two more Companion Chronicles and Wreck of the Titan to get through, so I’m probably already there), I have to do it now.

Anyway, when last we left James Robert McCrimmon, he was heading off to a castle with the Sixth Doctor to find the TARDIS. And in this story, he finds it, together with a really ugly bloke and his pretty wife.

Brace yourself: it’s a dull one.

Continue reading “Review: The Companion Chronicles 4×11 – Night’s Black Agents”

“Hello, bottom of the barrel. Big Finish here. We’ve come to scrape you.”

There was an almost a point to the Lost Stories range. Adapt the Doctor Who TV scripts that for one reason never got made into shows and turn them into audio plays with as much of the original cast as possible.

That’s fair enough.

Yet here we are on just the sixth entry in the range and what do we have? A script written by Marc Platt based on a one-page A5 story outline created by Barbara Clegg (Enlightenment) for a season or other that Big Finish can’t quite determine, for a Doctor and companion equally undetermined.

At this point, surely we have to say, is this truly a lost story if it never even got beyond the pitching stage?

Quibbling aside, do you really want to hear Christopher Marlowe getting inspiration for Doctor Faustus from some Aztec gods?

Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – The Lost Stories – 06 – Point of Entry”

James Robert McCrimmon (aka Jamie) was a second Doctor companion with a certain form for mucking up the timelines. A Highlander fighting during the Battle of Culloden, originally, he left the second Doctor, his memories wiped by the Time Lords, at the end of The War Games, the sixth season story that also saw the end of the Patrick Troughton era of Doctor Who. But, thanks to a sixth Doctor story, The Two Doctors, which gave us a post-season six pairing of the second Doctor and Jamie, it’s apparent that all is not what it seemed.

Back in the Companion Chronicle, The Glorious Revolution, there were hints that certain other timeline messing has been going on around our Jamie. This appeared to be resolved, but now we have City of Spires, in which Scottish history is all messed up. The Doctor arrives in Scotland decades after Culloden. The Highland clearances and Rob Roy are 40 years late. Edinburgh and Glasgow have been destroyed in favour of a ‘City of Spires’. And the old Jamie has no recollection of meeting the second Doctor at all…

Cue another one of Big Finish’s trilogies. Oh, did I mention David Tennant’s girlfriend is in this?

Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – 133 – City of Spires”