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The second set of adventures with Christopher Eccleston returning as The Doctor takes us firmly toward the Doctor 9 we saw on television. This second box set featuring three stories of Doctor 9, recorded under difficult lockdown circumstances, takes us back season 1 of Nuwho in style and tone. The stories themselves are all set before The Doctor meets Rose. This is a Doctor on his own. Unlike the mood set with Doctor 10, that The Doctor on his own would run out of control, we see here a Doctor "on call," saving lives on a case by case basis. The stories are all very personal, local emergencies involving historical nobodies, the ordinary people finding it hard just to get by. Yes, in two of the stories the Universe seems to be at risk, but these are more metaphorical dilemmas than actual dilemmas, large-scale interpretations of the difficulties people often have when their personal universes are falling apart. Eccleston is clearly having fun as The Doctor, reminding us just how energetic and enthusiastic his Doctor was. To get the Russell T. Davies vibe, Big Finish went to new, younger writers for these scripts, and used a Present - Past - Future pattern for the stories. The first story is "Girl, Deconstructed." This is the story of the Present, early 2000s. Teenagers are going missing in Scotland and it has something to do with the Doctor's efforts to track down what has gone wrong with the Serafim (I'm not sure of the spelling). The story is a sci-fi, haunted house depiction of teen angst, centering on Marnie, a teen girl struggling to connect with her single father, wishing simply that she could be anywhere other than home. Having a teen girl be both absent and present is a great metaphor for what teens often go through. Some of the explanations of events are a bit dodgy, and The Doctor is a bit too precise in his TARDIS control, a convenience to make the plot run smoothly that is out of sync with Doctor Who lore. The second story, the Past story, called Fright Motif, takes us to Paris, around 1949, recovering from the war. An American musician working in a hotel finds he can no longer play music. He's being pursued by an other-dimensional sound monster, as well. While the first story symbolized teen angst and family disconnection, this one symbolizes grief. In trying to save the situation, The Doctor brings together three very different people all dealing with grief in different ways. The sound monster is the symbol of that grief, destructive, drawn to the sounds that remind people of what they have lost. For me, this is the weakest of the three stories. There is quite a bit of running around to no end, and the resolution seems stretched out. Last is the Future story, Planet of the End, by playwright Timothy X. Atack. This one, in my opinion, is by far the best of the three. That is, in part, because Atack has more cleverly hidden the personal problem that is the real center of the story. The Doctor has responded to a distress signal that takes him to the far future when most intelligent races have come and gone. The planet is a giant cemetary-memorial to these lost races, but one on which no one is actually allowed to visit or memorialize anyone lest their presence "disturbs" the memorials. Apart from wildlife, the only intelligent presence on the planet is an AI robot, managed from afar by an officious oaf. The signal The Doctor has followed is a lure for a trap, so that The Incorporation, ancient beings from the dawn of the Universe, can resurrect themselves and begin again their business operations of destruction for profit. Atack does not even try to hide his contempt for modern corporate greed, or his disdain for corporate executives. This would seem to be the focus of the story, but in fact the actual focus of the story is the robot AI, whom The Doctor names Fred. The AI is symbol of the ordinary employee, whom the executive class "employ" in the sense of use. Allowed no identity outside of function, expected to follow directives without question, no matter how foolish those directives are, and not allowed to display will or personality, Fred is in some sense every-employee. By treating the AI as a person, giving it a name, talking to it as an equal, asking for its help rather than ordering it, The Doctor helps Fred to liberate itself, to realize its own desires, and to resolve its crisis of being. Thus, what appears to be a big, universe-threatening, all-hands-on-deck Doctor Who story, is, at heart, about The Doctor helping one person toward self-realization, an identity separate from the job. The set is enjoyable, especially given Eccleston's mix of fun, enthusiasm, and seriousness. The set makes one realize how much audiences missed by having Eccleston for only one season on TV.
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 | Perplexing Mix of Good and Bad |
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| What: | Cat's Cradle: Warhead (New Adventures novels) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Thursday 13 October 2022 |
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| Rating: |   7 |
The second of the Cat's Cradle trilogy is written to be a taught thriller, James Bond style. It conforms to Cartmel's view of The Doctor from the time Cartmel was script editor. The Doctor here is a kind of criminal mastermind working on the side of good. Thus, there is a running conflict between the questionable morality of The Doctor's methods for putting together a "team" and the supposed larger morality of the cause he uses the team to bring about. As with Doctor Who 1988-9, it appears in this novel that Cartmel has not thoroughly thought through the ethics, nor has he thought through what this portrayal does to perceptions of The Doctor's character. Basically, I really don't like this Doctor as a person. He's superficially charming while being mostly callous and insensitive. I also have some troubles with how Cartmel characterizes Ace. In this novel, Ace is basically the James Bond character. Thus, she acts as commando, spy, streetfighter, and wisecracking badass throughout the novel. She gets beat up, knocked down, bruised and abused. Cartmel seems to forget that she is a small, teenaged girl from Perivale without any of the formal training necessary to do what she does in this novel. And then, there's the cat. Or rather, there isn't. As a middle novel in a trilogy, the book should move along the arcing plot. The cat from book 1 appears briefly in the first few chapters of Warhead, to no discernible purpose, and then vanishes without any more mention. What Warhead has to do Time's Crucible is anyone's guess.
The plot of the novel itself has some interesting features that would work better if Cartmel had not force-fit Doctor Who into it. Basically, in the near future (2020s or 2030s), the world is a burning mess. Nature is in collapse, pollution covers everything, humans are dying in the millions because of diseases caused by environmental toxins, national governments are useless, and corporations run everything. In the background of all this is the corporation Butler Institute, run by a cold, humorless man named Mathew O'Hara. The Butler Institute has been buying out virtually every tech company, sending agents to collect bodies and even living specimens from among the homeless and imprisoned, and has been carving some giant project into the side of the Catskill Mountains. O'Hara is a kind of Ray Kurzweil as Bond villain, a man who believes that the only salvation for humanity is for the rich people to all upload themselves into computers, thus "live" virtually forever and never have to suffer from the problems of the body. O'Hara is willing to sacrifice anybody to achieve this end, even his wife and young son. The Doctor's project is O'Hara, stopping him from achieving his goal of computer utopia for the rich. Apart from O'Hara's methods, there does not seem to me to be reason enough to bring down O'Hara, or for The Doctor to go to such elaborate lengths to do it. Yes, O'Hara is a murderer, and a murderer with power, but in the world that Cartmel depicts, that does not make him all that much worse than thousands of others. The plan for computer utopia itself is riddled with difficulties that make it unlikely ever to succeed, and on the face of it is dubious practically rather than morally. Again, O'Hara's methods are the problem, and the "evil" plan really is not all that evil. So, in the end, it is not clear just exactly what The Doctor has accomplished.
To give credit where it is due, Cartmel handles the pace of the novel very well. He writes action scenes so that a reader is not confused by all that is going on. He knows how to keep relevant details hidden in plain sight, so that a reader is unaware of their relevance until they become relevant. Apart from the cat there are no loose ends. On the whole, Cat's Cradle: Warhead is a decent action-adventure spy thriller, but it is problematic Doctor Who.
Just about any reviewer of this book is going to say how weird it is. There is no doubt about the weirdness, but then weirdness is Marc Platt's schtick. The plot, and it is very thin, seems to be that some kind of space data leech has invaded the TARDIS and caused it to go into an emergency collapse. This collapse throws The Doctor into total discombobulation. Just as the TARDIS is falling to bits, it crashes with a primitive, experimental time vessel from Ancient Gallifrey, when Rassilon is just coming into power (and a right little Napoleon he is, too, down to being short in a society in which men are short and women tall). The resulting time crash plops Ace into a gray world in which the twisted remains of buildings form a kind of surrealistic empty city. The only living creatures there are the crew of the Gallifreyan Time Vessel, herself, and the information leech, now calling itself Process, turned gigantic, and using the time crew to find the Future, which has somehow gotten lost. Oh, and there is a silver pussy cat roaming around that seems inordinately interested in Ace. The city is divided into time zones in which the characters keep meeting earlier or later versions of themselves in what seems to be an endless loop. It is all extremely clever, and reasonably well described. However, the whole thing seems to be that Platt likes taking widely disparate elements, throwing them together, stirring vigorously, and seeing what comes out. What is missing from all this is the Why. This is very important for making the story cohere and giving the reader some kind of payout. The book is very light on explanations. Why are these specific elements thrown together? What is the relationship between them? Why does the leech thing invade the TARDIS in the first place? What is it, exactly? Why does the TARDIS react this way? One can go on for many more questions and be begging for many more answers. It is this lack of explanation that drags down my valuation of the novel. Had Platt been more forthcoming with the reasons and less determined to show off how well he can describe weird, this could have been a quite excellent novel.
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| Weird Just for the Sake of It |
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| What: | Timewyrm: Revelation (New Adventures novels) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Wednesday 3 August 2022 |
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| Rating: | 5 |
Paul Cornell's first novel is, to put it bluntly, a bit of a mess. At least this is the first of the four Timewyrm novels in which the Timewyrm actually has significance to the plot. So, Cornell got the brief to write the Grande Finale of the Timewyrm series. He decided on what amounts to a pitched battle in fantasy space, just as in "The Deadly Assassin" and "The Ultimate Foe," except that in this novel fantasy space is not the Matrix, but the Doctor's subconscious. The change in source really makes no difference because the way the story moves is mostly the same. The villain has control of fantasy space and throws all kinds of guilt trip scenarios at The Doctor to break him down. Problem #1 for me emerges when Cornell decides that outer reality should be almost as weird as fantasy space. Thus, we get a psychic church, the powers of which are very poorly explained. Yes, a psychic church, a building that talks. What is the point of that? How does the fact of a talking church contribute to the plot in any way that a talking person could not do? These questions never get answered. Cornell does not realize that uncanny nature of fantasy space works only if there is a solid reality space, a normal that is very normal, to work as contrast. If there is no functional difference between fantasy and reality, then any dichotomy the writer tries to make fails. Problem #2 is what turns out to be typical in Cornell's Doctor Who writing: the villain is super-powerful, godlike, able to take over people and manipulate their behavior at will, to change reality on a whim, to destroy worlds without any real effort. If the villain is that powerful, why does it bother with all this nonsense of creating fantasy space and elaborate plots, and debating with companions, and so on? Problem #3 is the HUGE amount of fan-candy flung about in the novel, references to all sorts of Doctor Who esoterica without much need for any of it to be there. To give Cornell some credit, he knows how to build to cliff hangers. He also does well in laying out the pieces of the plot early in places where he can pick them up again as needed, thus giving the story a general thread the holds all the wild elements and keeps them from flying off entirely. Additionally, Cornell describes all the weird and surprise elements in clear and concrete detail, so that the reader is not confused about picturing the scene. My final assessment is that Cornell in this novel is trying too hard to impress.
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| An episode that keeps you guessing! |
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| What: | Torchwood: Zone 10 (Torchwood audio dramas) |
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| By: | Jared Star, Portsmouth, United States |
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| Date: | Monday 11 July 2022 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
This one is a lot more plot-focused than the previously reviewed “Gooseberry,” but David Llewellyn does take a decent chunk of time to explore the main characters. It's at times a little clunky (given that this is an early release for the range) but ultimately did its job at making audiences feel for the characters. Overall they’re well-written and there's a nice balance of exploration between them.
The only real criticisms lie in the plotting, and to an extent the marketing. Everything from the cover art to the trailer build this episode up as a classic atmospheric horror piece set in the Arctic circle. But as the story unravels, it turns into more of an action piece involving covert spies and shootouts. The setup of the story is quite slow, moody, and atmospheric, but by the halfway point, the story turns into half action, half Committee exposition. It was surprising just how much this story connected to the Committee Arc, providing further mysteries I desperately wanted answered.
On the one hand, it was nice to have a story throw so many curve balls, but the end result wasn’t as enticing as it could’ve been. Plus, Maxim Ivanov wasn’t utilized well. He changes sides way too quickly and elements of his backstory that could’ve been played with ended up being useless on the whole.
All in all, this is a slightly waffly adventure, but certainly a memorable one. The characters are nice and the string of events leads to an ending that's as solid as the rest of the piece!
| What: | Afterlife (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Saturday 9 July 2022 |
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| Rating: | 8 |
It is rare for Doctor Who stories to focus intensely on interpersonal matters and be successful at it. After all, Doctor Who is about the big stuff, the adventure, the universe. "Afterlife" is that rare exception. Convinced that Hex is dead, Ace confronts The Doctor and his seeming nonchalance regarding that fact. She cannot accept that The Doctor will not allow himself to take the human perspective on losing a loved one. Ace forces The Doctor to act like a person, for once, and treat Hex's death the way a human would. The end of Part 2, however, returns us to more familiar Doctor Who territory, with more than a hint that Doctor Who is not done with Hex just yet. His doppelganger, a Liverpool gangster night-club owner named Hector Thomas, is running around town, a man who seemingly appeared from nowhere just one year ago. This forces Ace's subconscious emotion to the surface - she just cannot let go of Hex. Part 1 is an excellent two-hander between Ace and The Doctor, played very well by Sophie Aldred and Sylvester McCoy. Aldred holds back on much of the emotionality that she usually gives to Ace. Underneath is a churning anger she dare not release. McCoy is brilliant in conveying The Doctor's perplexity, his inability to understand human emotions and even to understand his own. In this circumstance, The Doctor is truly out of his depth. This interaction is wisely kept to one episode, and in episode 2 the story broadens out to shift seamlessly into the Doctor Who way of things. Monsters are on the loose, something's not right with reality, and The Doctor must return to the world he belongs to. Philip Olivier really shines in his Liverpool gangster mode. The main thing that takes away from this story a bit for me is that we are still tied to the whole "Elder Gods" line. I also get a feeling that things in this story are just a little too Liverpool, that Big Finish is trying too hard to be regional. Those small matters aside, this one is well worth a listen.
| What: | Timewyrm: Apocalypse (New Adventures novels) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Thursday 30 June 2022 |
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| Rating: | 6 |
The third installment of the Timewyrm tetralogy has a few things going for it. Foremost is that Robinson makes the Timewyrm more fully essential to the story than did the writers of the previous two books. Robinson manages to keep this as a surprise until late, thus a reader goes through the novel wondering "Where is the Timewyrm" and then finds out how important it actually was to the plot. Robinson does pretty well with the Doctor 7 and Ace pairing, with Doctor 7 genuinely caring for Ace but unable to show it, while Ace is uncertain about The Doctor's motivations but still trusts him when times get difficult. Most the other characters have believable, though simple, motivations. For me, the main problem with the book is that Robinson feels he constantly has to spring surprises on the both the readers and the characters. Most of these surprises are monsters that spring up from nowhere to delay our heroes. These scenes come across as devices to make a short story longer, but they really do not add anything of importance to the final product. Robinson also has Ace start a rebellion that ends up getting several natives killed, but never has her face that fact, thus trivializing the rebellion and the deaths. There are other aspects to the novel that give the whole thing an aura of having been quickly written.
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| The Red Queen's Off With Her Head |
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| What: | The Contingency Club (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Monday 27 June 2022 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
"The Contingency Club" would have fit snugly in 1981 Doctor Who. The story has the TARDIS taken out of action, landing the crew of Doctor 5, Adric, Nyssa, and Tegan, in London 1864 and the world of the Pall Mall gentleman's club. There's a new club in town, snapping up members, and run behind the scenes by a slightly insane woman calling herself The Red Queen. The story has the mix of science-fiction and historical elements that was common in the 1980s. Guest performers Philip Jackson and Clive Merrison are excellent. Ultimately, the story is too snug to be brilliant. There are no real challenges to what one would expect for 1980s Doctor Who.
| What: | Colony of Fear (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Friday 10 June 2022 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
"Colony of Fear" starts well enough. Part 1 is like the hard-science Doctor Who that some of us have been wanting. A space colony is barely making it, and it is being attacked by giant wasps. There is a clear problem amenable to a clear technical solution. Unfortunately, the story goes a bit sideways by burdensome secondary plot lines that intrude to become the main ones. Thus, but the end of Part Two, the story has become standard stuff: Bugs with the power to transform people into bugs are virtually unstoppable in their assault on the humans, who have little power against them. But wait, there's more. Added to this is a bizarre idea of The Doctor meeting a companion that he cannot remember ever having travelled with. While this idea had already been used in "Terror Firma," this time his memory loss seems to have something to do with the Time Lords. The mystery never gets uncovered. Perhaps, it is a clever ploy for the author to get a commission for a sequel.
"Genetics of the Daleks" is basically a rehash of "Power of the Daleks" with a little "Revelation of the Daleks" thrown in, plus some borrowing from "Ark in Space." In this story, a colonizing space ship with the colonists in cryogenic suspension has two forms of trouble. One is that a gang of criminals has somehow managed to sneak on board and replace key members of the crew. The other is that the space ship picked up the remains of a Dalek that they believe to be empty. The Dalek creature has managed to persuade the scientist on board the space ship to rebuild the Dalek, promising the scientist the advanced secrets of Dalek technology. The Dalek has used the scientist to concoct a secret formula of Dalek DNA that instantly turns humans into Dalek mutants. The Time Lords have hijacked Doctor 4's TARDIS and sent him to the ship with no instructions about the problem or how to deal with it. The story has pace, but lacks originality. Performances are good given that the characters are more caricature than character.
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| An attempt at a critical darling which, |
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| What: | Torchwood: Gooseberry (Torchwood audio dramas) |
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| By: | Jared Star, Portsmouth, United States |
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| Date: | Tuesday 24 May 2022 |
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| Rating: | 5 |
What was initially envisioned as a deeply-moving character drama ended up faltering by not having its characters grow. Owen is just as one-note at the beginning of the story as he is in the end. Even though, everything is his fault. Without spoilers, "Gooseberry" revolves around Owen discovering Andy's new girlfriend, Caite, isn't all that she seems. And in his probing, causes something catastrophic. There is a good build-up to the event itself and Owen is characterized well enough (in this story and in previous ones), to make his cock-up believable. The second half of the story focuses on Owen trying to hide his involvement from Andy when he is sent to investigate the incident Owen caused. The rest of the episode is comprised of antics between both Owen and Andy trying to cover, or uncover, the truth from each other. This led to some amazing interactions between the pair that are so unique to this audio specifically. And having a plot where the two have to clash, while still being friends is a brilliant idea. But, it's all in the execution.
One of the first negatives about the story is that the elements felt rehashed. Torchwood is all about experimentation. Yet, throughout the runtime, it's hard not to think this is just recycled material from the range's high point "The Hope," and the TV episode, "Adam." The unique ideas from each of those episodes get Frankensteined together, making the whole thing feel cheap. Almost like this was a cut draft of either episode stapled to the central idea from the other. It's not something that totally ruins the audio, but makes the disappointment of the ending hurt that much more.
The theme of responsibility is very pervasive throughout the audio, but by the end, it's completely redundant. The last five minutes pull the rug out from under your feet with a complete cop-out that Owen hangs onto hard. The twist undoes a lot of the excellent character work which the audio entirely hinged on. Leaving the entire hour-long story to end in an unnecessarily sad way, which makes me worry about the future of the range.
All in all, this isn't a terrible episode, but baffling creative decisions at points make it quite a divisive listen. The heart-to-heart segments between all the characters are expertly acted, and the general antics of the episode feel believable. But, in the end, none of the characters grew or changed. Which, is kinda the point of stories. Especially short ones like this. The episode is an unnecessarily sad potential ending for one of the best Doctor Who parings. I genuinely hope it doesn’t stay that way. Not many stories have showcased how amazing Andy and Owen are when working together, but the moments we've had are so cherished. I hope this is not actually going to be the last Andy & Owen audio.
| What: | The Seeds of War (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Tuesday 17 May 2022 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
"The Seeds of War" gives us an introduction to / return of The Eminence, the most boring of the Big Finish original villains. It's another villain bent on taking over the universe, but this time they are never given a plausible motivation for doing so. In this adventure, The Eminence is mostly just a low, whispering voice in The Doctor's head, making all kinds of grandiose threats. Fortunately, there is no demonic laugh, so they don't tick off all the boxes for cliché villain. The story itself is an interesting departure for Big Finish in that, as they point out on the cd extras, each episode is a change of location from the previous episode. Each location change makes the episode a slightly different kind of story from the other episodes. Apart from that, the plot is a by-the-numbers story in which the heroes get separated from TARDIS, desperately try to get back to the TARDIS, but inevitably get drawn into the local conflict becoming the only ones who can solve the problem. The best part of this particular story is the Doctor 6 and Mel relationship, which gets developed far more than we got to see in 1986. Big Finish continue with their characterization of Mel as highly intelligent and highly moral (in a good way), a far better character than the TV series portrayed her.
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| Better Than Its Predecessor |
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| What: | Timewyrm: Exodus (New Adventures novels) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Wednesday 27 April 2022 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
Timewyrm: Genesys got the new novel series off to a rocky start. Timewyrm: Exodus, by expert hand Terrance Dicks, steadies the ship nicely. It is not that this is a spectacular novel. As with all of Dicks' novels, the word that comes to mind is competent. That's enough. Dicks does not dazzle the reader with his prose. He does, however, manage to pack the most information in the least number of words, a trick that keeps the plot moving swiftly, and the pages turning. Doctor 7 and Ace are trying to track the Timewyrm using her connection to the TARDIS. They arrive in 1951 England, but an England in an alternate time line in which the Nazis won World War II. Ace thinks this has something to do with the Timewyrm, but The Doctor is not so sure. After a few scrapes, and some research, the TARDIS team take off to trace the political history of Adolf Hitler. The novel is interesting in several ways. First, though it does contain some violence and Dicks does not flinch in acknowledging the pain of violence, this novel is nothing like the many gore fests that will follow in Doctor Who original novels. The violence is not gratuitous and he does not let the ending get away from him in a free-for-all of violent mayhem. Indeed, as Doctor Who adventures go, this one is leisurely. The Doctor very cleverly insinuates himself and Ace into Nazi upper echelons, which allows the plot some breathing space. There are the occasional capture and dungeon scenes, but these do not last long and are not too many. Dicks also is very careful to get the history mostly right, to explore little-known aspects of history, and to deviate from history only when necessary. Had he wanted to, Dicks could have been a very good novelist of historical fiction. The plot still, in the end, comes down to The Doctor versus the Bad Guy. Also, the Timewyrm is pretty much out of action for most the novel, which advances the story arc of the series very little. All in all, this novel is a pleasant way to pass an afternoon.
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| As Expected, but not Quite |
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| What: | Shadow of the Daleks 2 (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Wednesday 20 April 2022 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
Part 2 of Shadow of the Daleks is another anthology series with a single story arc. The Doctor continues to follow the time anomaly he found in Part 1, continues to meet the same people who are not the same people, and continues to be confounded about what it all means. The first adventure is Echo Chamber, the most surreal of all the stories in both Shadow series. The Doctor finds himself becoming the substitute host for a political provocateur radio show. Through most of this, he is utterly confused about why he is there and what he is supposed to do, but again finds the faces and voices he keeps remeeting through time. The same themes of interspecial war, of aggression, of memory loss, appear as well. The next story is Toward Zero, an old style murder mystery in which The Doctor has to discover who murdered him. This one is the least attached to the story arc, and seems to be mostly to lighten the mood. At this point, The Doctor seems no nearer to discovering what this time anomaly is all about. Story three is Castle Hydra, another peculiar and somewhat surreal adventure that partly solves the mystery of why The Doctor keeps meeting different people with the same faces as each other. Last is Effect and Cause, which brings back the Daleks in a proper Dalek type story, but one bent by what we have learned from the previous 7 adventures. Nothing and no one are quite what they seem, not even the Daleks. I cannot say that I found the solution totally satisfying. Given how long it took to get there, I guess I expected a bit more. In total, Shadow of the Daleks 1 & 2 are well acted in an ensemble cast fashion, like repertory theater with each actor playing a different each night. I was left with wanting more out of each episode than what we got. There were too many interesting ideas hurried to the end, leaving not much room to contemplate their significance. Peter Davison does well performing as a Doctor without companions, and that aspect works well. Companions would have gotten in the way and cluttered the narrative.
| What: | Shadow of the Daleks 1 (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Wednesday 20 April 2022 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
This is part 1 of 2, and is itself a 4-part story, done anthology style, with each episode mostly independent of the others. By the end, the listener is left with more questions than answers, which would come only from Shadow part 2. An interesting aspect of this adventure is that even though Daleks are in the title, they are not all that present in the story. They are, really, mostly a shadow, a presence in the background. Story 1, Aimed at the Body, sets the main sequence of events. The Doctor lands in Australia in the 1920s, where he meets a famous cricketer and his two female companions, who seem to be lost. Something is playing havoc with the landscape and with time, and the three lost travellers keep temporarily getting Dalek voices. This sets the Doctor on the trail of the time anomaly that he will chase through the rest of the series. Next is Lightspeed, taking place on a far future space ship on which The Doctor meets the same people as in Australia, except they are not those people. The space ship is a trap for The Doctor from a criminal he has yet to meet. Next is The Bookshop at the End of the World, which is my favorite of this first series. The Doctor finds himself in a mysterious book shop cafe where the same faces as before adorn different people. In this case, the bookshop is a haven from a war, probably against the Daleks, yet all the people in the bookshop, including The Doctor, are not acting quite like themselves. The pattern is being set - the same people in different guises, linked by war, aggression, or violence, plus distortions of time and memory. The final episode for this collection is Interlude, the one that most features The Daleks, in a alternate Renaissance setting. The Doctor becomes part of a travelling troupe of actors set to play for the new lord. But just who is this lord? The various stories are interesting in their own right, but there is some rushing due to the 25 minute limit. I would really liked to have had all but the first extended for at least one more episode. After all of these stories, The Doctor seems not much nearer to solving the mystery set in episode 1. Now, only four more episodes in part 2 before we get all the answers.
It's a shame it feels rushed and not the best style that Terrance Dicks could write. It's clear by having only 2 Junior titles that this might have been a project thrust upon him and didn't sell very well. One rumor suggests that Tandem dumped remaining stock making these books very hard to find. They were not included in the US distribution.
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| The First, Not Nearly the Best |
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| What: | Timewyrm: Genesys (New Adventures novels) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Wednesday 13 April 2022 |
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| Rating: | 6 |
The first official original novel for Doctor Who, supposedly to make up for the lack of DW on TV following the 1989 cancellation, amounts to a decent fan novel. John Peel, the DW fan writer, not the famous DJ, has a bit of a tough job. He has to write the novel, at least the beginning, both as if the reader knows little or nothing about DW, and as if the reader is a fully paid member of the DW Superfan Club. He also has to get a four-book story arc going, plus make DW more "adult" and "up to modern standards." Given what is required, I do not understand why Peel was chosen as the writer to do this. He simply does not have chops. For instance, to get the uninitiated in, he conjures a routine in which The Doctor has used the TARDIS telepathic circuits to erase some useless memories of his, but this action has accidentally wiped out almost all of Ace's memories. It is a throwaway routine that has almost nothing to do with rest of the novel except for setting up the telepathic circuits for use at the end. The main story is rather standard DW fare, with The Doctor and Ace following up a trail to find the Timewyrm and landing in ancient Mesopotamia, where they meet Gilgamesh and go through the sci-fi version of events that will become part of the epic of Gilgamesh. The story is fast-paced, with the usual twists and turns that make for light reading. Problems, however, arise with the brief for what the new novels are supposed to be. To make the story "adult," Peel has multiple references to bare breasts, Gilgamesh's insatiable libido, and the job of the priestesses of Ishtar, which is mainly to have sex with whoever makes an offering to the goddess. It makes Peel seem lecherous rather than realistic, and this reader at least would have liked fewer such references. Peel is also very much a fan writer, so drops in too many cute references to previous DW eras, some of which he gets wrong, such as saying that Ace visited Paradise Towers (it was Mel). Peel, in my estimation at least, also gets wrong the relationship between The Doctor and Ace. In this novel, The Doctor is constantly annoyed by Ace and she is constantly angry at him. That is not at all the relationship as it existed in the TV series, and it made me wonder, as one is wont to do when looking at a bad marriage, why the two even stay together. So, the novel has its entertaining moments and basically serviceable plot, but many deficiencies in execution.
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| Excellent Pure Historical for Doctor 5 |
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| What: | The Peterloo Massacre (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Monday 4 April 2022 |
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| Rating: | 8 |
Paul Magrs seems to have found what he is good at when writing for Doctor Who, and surprisingly, it's the historical. His "Lady of Mercia" worked quite well in mixing the science fiction with the history. This time around, once the TARDIS crash lands in 1819, it's pure historical along the lines of the 1964 historicals. Doctor 5, Tegan, and Nyssa get caught up in the events of the Peterloo Massacre, when local Manchester authorities overreacted to a labor protest march, essentially treating the protesters as if they were an enemy army. The TARDIS team first get involved with the family of a local factory owner, a self-made man who overcompensates by bullying his workers in the names of money and progress. Magrs splits up the TARDIS team so that the listener can learn about three sides to the event - the rich and powerful side, the workers' side, and the militia's side. By making the story in essence a family drama, Magrs can keep the three perspectives strongly intertwined. Also, with the requirements of a Doctor Who historical, he avoids his usual indulgences in kitsch and whimsy that so mar much of his other writing for Doctor Who. The one problem, if it is a problem, is the grim inevitability of these stories. The Doctor knows, and thus we know, just how horrible the events will be. We also know that there is no way to stop them. And, in a rare moment, we get to hear Doctor 5 become angry and outraged, a turn that Davison handles very well. It's a good listen.
This story is a 4th Doctor tie-in to the cross-series sequence "Dalek Universe." In itself, it is an enjoyable Dalek story, though not terribly original as they go. In this one, we return to Exxilon a few decades after The Doctor left it in "Death to the Daleks." Only one character returns from the previous story - the native Belal, this time voiced by Nicholas Briggs. True to "Return to ..." stories, writer Nicholas Briggs has resurrected much from the previous story. The humans are still on Exxilon, still mining Perinium to cure a space plague, still at odds with the natives, and someone has partly restored the energy-draining beacon. Nicholas Briggs does quite a bit of work in this one, voicing multiple main characters, including the testy human space captain. Briggs' take on the captain sounds uncannily like Kevin Whately. The main feature of this is to establish the characters of Anya Kingdom and Mark Seven, who feature significantly in other "Dalek Universe" stories. Typically for Big Finish, there is much fiddling with time, so that Anya is meeting a Doctor after her travels with him (Doctor 10), but before The Doctor (4 in this case) has met her. There are other bits of information linking to various other stories. In the end, there are not many surprises given the "Return to..." nostalgia in play with a Dalek story that runs like a Dalek story.
| What: | The Sentinels of the New Dawn (The Companion Chronicles audiobooks) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Monday 21 March 2022 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
"The Sentinels of the New Dawn" is a bit different for a Companion Chronicles story, being almost a full audio drama. The story itself is written as a kind of cross-over between Third Doctor series 1 and series 2, which were quite different in tone and style. Thus, we have Liz about a year after she left UNIT connect with The Doctor in a story that would generally fit more in the Jo series than the Liz series. As is usual with Companion Chronicles adventures, we start with a much older companion reminiscing to someone else about an adventure she/he had with The Doctor long ago. In this case, the other character is a Captain from UNIT, though the listener gets some clues that his status may not be what he says, and that perhaps Liz knows this, but tells him about her adventure anyway. The story itself involves Liz now back at Cambridge University. She's a bit worried about some time experiments that her mentor is conducting, and so calls in the expert, i.e. The Doctor, for a second opinion. The time experiment goes a bit wonky and Liz and the Doctor get catapulted to the early 21st century, in which someone has recreated the time experiment. This somebody runs a kind of ultra-conservative cult cum political party using the time window to enrich a few like-minded people and establish the conditions whereby they can step into power and return England to a feudal society. Carolyn John is an excellent narrator and the story moves along at a nice pace.
