Audio and radio plays

An archive of entries about audio and radio plays, including reviews

Audio and radio play reviews

Review: The Companion Chronicles 3×6 – The Darkening Eye

17 December 2008 Rob Buckley Post a comment

The-Darkening-Eye.jpgWe’re now entering the fifth Doctor’s era for the first time in Big Finish’s Companion Chronicles range. To a certain extent, I can’t help but wonder why.  

Peter Davison’s willing to do just about any old muck Big Finish throws at him; all the actors who want to recreate their roles as companions (Sarah Sutton as Nyssa, Nicola Bryant as Peri, Mark Strickson as Turlough) and even some of those who don’t (Janet Fielding as Tegan) have had a go, too.

So this really feels like “we couldn’t get the budget to do a proper production of this” rather than a justifiable entity in its own right.

On the other hand, it does enable a “full companion” story featuring Nyssa, Tegan and Adric, which they probably couldn’t get to happen otherwise. So I’ll give them the benefit this time.

However, there’s a couple of things I won’t give them the benefit over:

  1. Bringing back the cocking Dar traders from The Death Collectors
  2. Picking, of all the fifth Doctor stories to write “in the style of”, the most goddamn boring one of them all Terminus

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Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Doctor Who – Forty Five

5 December 2008 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Doctor Who - 45Sometimes Big Finish have a good idea and they run with it: make lots of audio plays featuring the original actors from Doctor Who. Sometimes they have a bad idea and they still run with it: make lots of audio plays featuring none of the original actors from Sapphire and Steel.  

But sometimes they just have an entirely mundane idea that no one would really consider re-using – and they run with it. Case in point: 100 was a series of four, one-episode plays gathered together to celebrate the 100th Big Finish Doctor Who audio release. So far so good. What you might not then have expected is for Big Finish to release four more one-episode plays under a numerical umbrella for no really good reason whatsoever.

Which is why Forty Five would have surprised you. It’s just four plays, all featuring the number 45.

That’s silly.

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Audio and radio play reviews

Review: The Companion Chronicles 3×5 – Home Truths

26 November 2008 Rob Buckley 5 Comments


Doctor Who Companion Chronicles: Home Truths

How disconcerting. I thought they were going in Doctor order with these, but now we’ve skipped back to William Hartnell again. Wait a sec while I get my bearings.

Right. Whenever there’s a Doctor Who list-writing competition/meme (and these do happen very, very, very often), one of the lists is invariably "shortest-lasting companion", with the challenge being to identify who counts as a companion: anyone who travels in the TARDIS? Anyone in two or more consecutive stories who travels in the TARDIS? It all starts to become a bit tricky, when you consider that Liz Shaw, for example, never actually travelled in the TARDIS yet is undoubtedly a companion.

Fellow competitors in the ‘tricky’ stakes are first Doctor companions Katarina (Trojan priestess) and Sara Kingdom (future secret agent), both of whom pop up around the time of The Dalek Masterplan then promptly cark it after a minimal number of episodes in said story.

Which makes a Sara Kingdom Companion Chronicle an even trickier prospect for Big Finish. How exactly can you get Sara Kingdom to start recounting a tale of her life with the Doctor when she meets him and dies in the same adventure?

Sounds like a bit of a ghost story. Gather round, everyone…

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Friday’s cancel, cancel, cancel news

21 November 2008 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Doctor Who

Film

British TV

  • BBC One and BBC Two to stream live from next week

US TV

Children in Need Doctor Who

15 November 2008 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

So what were we all thinking about the clip from the Doctor Who Christmas Special on Children in Need yesterday?

Me?

  1. Two minutes? That was a bit short, particularly since Rusty had already described everything in it in numerous interviews.
  2. Doesn’t it suggest that The Next Doctor, as Mark and I hinted, might turn out to be just a little bit like Big Finish’s The One Doctor?

I’ve embedded the clip below in case you missed it.