Big Finish

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”