Audio and radio plays

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

Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Doctor Who – Renaissance of the Daleks

19 April 2007 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Renaissance of the DaleksBased on a story by former Doctor Who script editor Christopher Bidmead, Renaissance of the Daleks is a sci-fi extravaganza that starts with the Doctor being drugged, abducted and strip-searched by nasty futuristic Americans who want to prevent the Daleks from invading Earth.

Trouble is, it’s 2158 and the Daleks were supposed to have invaded the previous year so that William Hartnell/Peter Cushing can stop them. What’s going on? Why is Nyssa back with Knights Templar in the 14th century, armed only with a prototype of Rose’s mobile phone plug-in that’s named after something from This Island Earth? Why are toy Daleks appearing on the market when no one’s seen one yet and BBC Worldwide is probably long gone?

And more to the point, did we really need a story that has continuity not just with Logopolis and The Krotons, but also with the effing Space Museum?

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Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Sapphire and Steel – Cruel Immortality

9 April 2007 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Cruel Immortality Try and imagine you or your lifetime as approximately one inch in length. Then compare it to the first CD of Cruel Immortality, which is a thousand million miles long. One inch, you. CD one of Cruel Immortality a thousand million miles. Just compare them. It’s very, very long. And it’s very, very boring.

Those were more or less the thoughts that passed through my mind as I tried to get through the first half of Cruel Immortality. Each track was like having teeth drilled. Every single thing that was wrong with the Big Finish series of Sapphire and Steel audio plays was here and taken to the Max. Trite characterisation, poor acting, a Sapphire and a Steel completely unrecognisable and way too human in comparison to their on-screen selves. Listening to David Caruso sing the works of Marilyn Manson would have been preferable.

But, suddenly, come the end of CD one, it all changes. It becomes interesting. All the pain, all the hurt dissolves away and suddenly, you don’t want to use the second CD as a hat, garden ornament or eccentric clothing decoration. Instead, you want to listen to it.

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Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Doctor Who – Nocturne

13 March 2007 Rob Buckley 10 Comments

Drwho Main Graphics Bf092 Nocturne Big“Dear Valued Big Finish customer,

Congratulations on your purchase of our latest audio play, Nocturne, starring Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred and Philip Olivier. To help us improve our customer service and future output, could you complete this brief survey and return it to us as soon as possible?

1 From the following list, please pick the thing you’d rather do most than have to listen to Nocturne again

a) Receive a pick axe to the base of your skull

b) Be tethered to an anthill while slathered in honey

c) Be fed one of your own limbs after having it removed by a chainsaw-wielding serial killer

2 Please suggest further uses for your Nocturne CDs

a) Turning them into throwing disks for Raston Warrior Robots

b) Coasters

c) Pimping our rides”

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Audio and radio play reviews

Review: The Companion Chronicles – The Beautiful People

7 March 2007 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

The Companion Chronicles - The Beautiful PeopleWe’re now at the last and least explicable of The Companion Chronicles range, with Lalla Ward (aka Romana II) the final companion to fill the dimensionally transcendental Jackanory armchair. With the previous entries, there’s been a semi-reasonable excuse for the story’s existence – the actor who played the companion’s Doctor being dead and therefore no tasteful or faithful way to have a play featuring the companion alongside her Doctor. Here, we have a simple disagreement between the actor (Tom Baker) and Big Finish that’s resulted in Tombo not appearing in any Big Finish plays, leaving the companions to fend for themselves.

This would still be a good enough reason for the play if Tombo’s companions had had no other opportunities to appear in stories. But of the surviving fourth Doctor companions, Sarah Jane has had two series of Sarah Jane Smith adventures and now has her own TV show; Leela, Romanas I & II and K9 have had three series of Gallifrey to mess about with; Tegan and Nyssa have both had fifth Doctor stories; and the less said about Adric the better. They’ve all been well-mined for dramatic nuggets.

So I think it’s pretty clear that the Big Finish luvvies really just wanted another excuse to work with lovely, lovely Lalla again.

Putting that to one side though, in the form of The Beautiful People, we do have a perfectly acceptable piece of season 17 hokum to while the hour away, and a reasonable enough conclusion to the series.

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Audio and radio play reviews

Review: The Companion Chronicles – The Blue Tooth

5 March 2007 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

The Blue ToothAs a notorious Liz Shaw fan, I was looking forward to this entry in the Companion Chronicles range. One of the more adult companions (in a good way), she was one of the main elements of a short-lived strategy to make Doctor Who less childish, way back in season seven. However, she never got so much as a leaving scene when she was replaced by Jo Grant and hasn’t yet appeared in any of the Big Finish range. So it was good to hear she would be featuring in this brief set of audio books.

The Blue Tooth sees Liz returning to Cambridge to meet an old friend. In true Who style, it all goes very wrong when an outer space monster intrudes – no less a beastie than the Cybermen, in fact. And it opens with a promise: to reveal why Liz decided to leave the Doctor.

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