Audio and radio plays

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

Review: Doctor Who – The Death Collectors

1 August 2008 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

The Death Collectors

Casting’s a funny old game, isn’t it? You can ruin a production with it, or make it a triumph. You can make thousands flock to it, or send them running for the hills.

Take The Death Collectors for instance. It’s been sitting on my metaphorical shelf for the best path of a month now, glowering at me sinisterly. I say sinisterly purely because it’s a Sylvester McCoy story and I find them about as appealing as an emergency tracheotomy performed with a Pizza Hut knife and coke straw. This one doesn’t even have Hex (or, shudder, Ace) to make it slightly more appealing.

Oh, but what’s this? Katherine Parkinson is the guest star? The sort of red-headed one with the nice voice off The IT Crowd?

Ah. Now, I really think you should have made more of that Big Finish. Maybe written it in giant letters across the cover and relegated Sylvester McCoy to the small print perhaps?

Pass me my iPod…

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Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Sapphire and Steel – Zero

29 July 2008 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Sapphire and Steel - ZeroIf you’ve spent enough time reviewing the Big Finish plays as I have, sooner or later you begin to ask yourself the question "What’s the point?" To put it bluntly, there’s more than a few that have been complete rubbish. There are entire ranges that are almost pure rubbish, such as the Eighth Doctor/Lucie Miller plays and the Sapphire and Steel range. So what’s the point in spending time listening to them and reviewing them if all you’re going to end up doing is variants on "Oh my God, why?" There are more constructive things to do with your life.

The answer is simple. As well as regularly turning up plays that can be described as not bad, sooner or later, you hit upon ones that can only be described as excellent. And then I get to tell you about them.

It’s been a long time coming, but it’s finally here: it’s the first excellent Big Finish Sapphire and Steel play, Zero. Except it’s Gold and Silver who have been assigned this time.

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Review: Doctor Who – Sisters of the Flame

17 July 2008 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

Sisters of the Flame

You always know you’re in safe hands with Nicholas Briggs. He’s been doing Doctor Who audio plays for 20 years or more – writing them, directing them, acting in them – so he’s pretty much got them down pat.

If he has an area of expertise, it’s the Doctor Who continuity piece. Above all other Big Finish writers, he’s the one most inclined to use an old enemy and reference continuity, all within the realms of a reasonably traditional story, albeit one unrestricted by special effects and design budget.

Guess whether Sisters of the Flame is a continuity fest (older fans may already spot the reference).

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Review: Sapphire and Steel – Remember Me

4 July 2008 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

Remember Me (Sapphire and Steel)

What is it about Big Finish and piers? Every time they want to do somewhere creepy, they send the cast off to a pier to get tormented by comedians and Punch and Judy. Piers are the sandpits of the modern audio horror age, apparently.

This time, though, it’s Sapphire and Steel who have been assigned to the sea-front, rather than the usual Doctor Who crowd. In the company of Sam Kelly from ‘Allo, ‘Allo and plenty of other Big Finish plays (The Holy Terror, Return to the Web Planet), Joannah Tincey and David Horovitch, our heroes, David Warner and Susannah Harker, manage to wend their way through an above-average S&S tale that for once, contains an interesting idea or two.

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Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Doctor Who – The Zygon Who Fell to Earth

2 July 2008 Rob Buckley 2 Comments


The Zygon Who Fell To Earth

The Zygons are one of those Doctor Who monsters that are a firm fan favourite yet only ever appeared on-screen once.

Stars of the Tom Baker story The Terror of the Zygons, they scared, mainly thanks to the superb direction of blog god Douglas Camfield but also because of their shape-changing abilities, biological technology and weird lifestyle – they need to feed off the milk of the Loch Ness monster to survive.

They also amused, mainly because it was really hard to do convincing blue-screen work back in 1975. Still, who knows? Maybe the Loch Ness monster really does look like it’s made of rubber and has a very stiff jaw.

Since then, they’ve popped up in all manner of unofficial and official tie-ins: Tenth Doctor novels, comic strips, New Adventures and videos.

So it seems appropriate that Big Finish have brought them back for an Eighth Doctor and Lucie adventure that is both silly and creepy.

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