Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Written By: David Llewellyn

RRP: £10.99 (CD) / £8.99 (Download)

Release Date: June 2021

Reviewed by: Robert Emlyn Slater for Doctor Who Online

"Paris, 1809. The Fifth Doctor takes a tour of the Catacombs and meets a sassy Time Agent doing the same...

Paris, 1944. The Tenth Doctor misses his target and lands in occupied France. He hides from the Nazis – in the Catacombs.

A collision of two Doctors' timelines triggers a temporal catastrophe, granting the Cybermen dominion over the Earth.

The Doctors must travel back in time to find the source of the Cyber-invasion and close the Gates of Hell..."

WARNING: The following review contains spoilers. You have been warned!

Fourteen years after Time Crash, the Tenth and Fifth Doctors reunite in Paris, as they battle Cybermen and try and close the Gates of Hell in this second volume from the Out of Time mini-series. 

Out of Time 2: The Gates of Hell was arguably one of my most anticipated Big Finish releases for 2021, so I definitely went into it with high hopes. I think it’s pretty safe to say that it didn’t let me down.

David Llewellyn’s script wastes no time in getting down to business. Not as soon as the opening theme is over are we thrown into the adventure, with the Fifth Doctor encountering the Cybermen and meeting the Tenth Doctor in twentieth-century Paris. 

The story doesn’t really pause for breath once the Doctors unite, and we’re taken on a timey-wimey adventure featuring Cybermen, explosions, yet another Time Agent with an American accent, and a mysterious golden orb.

I’m cutting to the chase a bit here, but it was so much fun hearing David Tennant and Peter Davison bouncing off each other once again. Ten and Five sound like they really enjoy each other’s company, and almost seem to be reluctant to part ways at the end. I know I was hoping that they’d stay together and have a couple more adventures before sailing back off into the time vortex to go their separate ways. 

I’ve said before in a previous review that I find that multi-doctor stories can be a bit tedious at times, but that wasn’t the case at all in this story. There wasn’t really much of your typical multi-doctor ‘shenanigans’ and insult matches at play here, really. The Doctors just bumped into each other, teamed up, and got on with the job. Usually, multi-doctor adventures feel like big epic events, but I don’t feel like that was the case here, and that’s not a bad thing in the slightest. 

Also, the references to the past were a hell of a lot of fun too, and I loved the catty comments the pair made about the Fourth Doctor and Tegan. 

The guest cast in this adventure is minimal but strong. Shelley Conn plays a time agent called Tina Drake, who pretty much calls the shots and saves the day here, whilst Mark Gatiss was unrecognisable as Joseph Delon, the man who the Cybermen corrupted and turned into their slave. I had no clue Gatiss was even in this play, so I was particularly impressed to find out it had been him who’d been playing the evil Frenchman all along! It also goes without saying that Nicholas Briggs was great as the Cybermen too, as he always is, and he sounded really menacing going up against the two Doctors as they battled against them and attempted to foil their plans. Glen McCready also appears as both Marcel (Joseph’s father) and King Charles VI, and though I didn’t feel as if he had too much to do, he still gives a strong performance all the same.

If I had any criticisms of The Gates of Hell at all, it’s that a very interesting setting wasn’t explored nearly enough, which I was left a little disappointed by. Paris under Cyber-rule sounds like such an interesting, cool concept, and yet I feel like we hardly experienced any of it during this adventure. But with the audio only lasting an hour or so, things like that can’t really be helped. 

The pace of the story was definitely a big plus and made for a very entertaining hour on an otherwise boring Friday evening.

Overall, this is a great little adventure that will definitely keep you entertained for an hour, and will leave you wishing you had more time with Doctors Five, Ten, and the Cybermen. David Llewellyn’s script is tightly paced, and I really enjoyed how quickly he threw us into the adventure, and really appreciated all of his little nods to days gone by. The guest cast was very strong, and it’s always a good time when the Cybermen turn up and try and take over planet Earth. I could have quite easily listened to another hour of this story, as it was such a fun time! 

Out of Time has been a really entertaining mini-series so far, and long may it continue. I know we’re getting an adventure with Six, Ten, and the Weeping Angels next year, but here’s hoping that Doctor number ten get adventures with Doctors Seven, Eight, Nine, and hopefully even Five and Four again! Fingers crossed!

+ Out Of Time 2: The Gates Of Hell is OUT NOW, priced £10.99 (CD) / £8.99 (Download).

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Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Written By: James Kettle

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: February 2021

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

"The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Turlough to a high-tech scientific installation on the planet Testament in the distant future. The human race have become intergalactic buccaneers, thanks to their ability to generate vast amounts of power for long-distance travel. Testament is the source of that power – and the Doctor has never quite understood how it works.

But experiments are underway on Testament - experiments with potentially explosive and devastating consequences. And even the Doctor may be too late to stop it.

With politicians and bureaucrats getting in the way, the race is on. Not to stop a disaster - but to save as many people as possible.."

WARNING: The following review contains spoilers. You have been warned!

There’s a line in The Blazing Hour delivered in an off-the-cuff manner: “Trust is for children and acrobats.”  I heard the line, smiled a little, and did that silent laugh you do when hearing something amusing.

Days later I’m reflecting upon it. Why? Because that line is the single best line of dialogue in any Big Finish play for a while now. (The last to stick in my mind before this is the Fifth Doctor talking about The Great British Bake Off in Time Apart: perhaps it’s a Davison thing?)

This line here isn’t trying to pay tribute to a past victory or imitate another writer, or flat-out copy something previously said on screen, all three of which crop up time and again nowadays in these plays. It’s just an original, and memorable line of dialogue.

The rest of James Kettle’s script likewise has an air of freshness to it. Maybe it’s because it’s his first full story for the monthly range, or maybe it’s because Kettle is a relatively new writer to the Big Finish fold, not yet ground to exhaustion by writing dozens of scripts across dozens of ranges. Whatever the case, there’s a sense across The Blazing Hour that Kettle is relishing the opportunity to write for the Doctor and Turlough.

The plot for this one is simple; the Doctor and Turlough land on a scientific installation and are mistaken for tourists, which is good fortune as the Doctor is suspicious of Testament, an incredible source of power in operation here, and sets out to investigate. Before too long, Turlough is in a gift shop, managers are forcing their staff into dangerous and regrettable actions, and politicians are desperate to keep their hands clean and their profits high. The guest cast is very good, with Raj Ghatak and Rakie Ayola putting in memorable performances. You’ll hate them both, their greed and selfishness almost tangible and perfectly thematically suited to the story unfolding. There’s some especially nice, cringey political spin about economic downturns and the adverse productivity of grief from Ayola’s character Violet Hardaker that works really well and makes you root for our heroes.

Speaking of, Turlough in particular gets a meaty role in this one. Mark Strickson is up for the challenge, reminding us once again just how good an actor he really is. People can level whatever pot shots they wish against Doctor Who in the 1980s, but they cast the regulars really well, with the much-maligned Adric shining nowadays on audio and Mel getting a serious reappraisal, too.

The 1980s cast a long shadow over this play as a whole. Corporations running their workers into the ground, greed over sense and underhand political maneuvering feel very much in that era’s wheelhouse. The Fifth Doctor doesn’t ever quite feel true to the TV iteration of him, but that’s true of his plays as a whole, ditto the Fourth and perhaps even Tenth Doctors, too. It’s a wider Big Finish thing than any fault of the script here. Less successful is the self-sacrifice of Violet near the end, which doesn’t quite ring true despite the script trying to explain it away (always a sign that something’s not entirely working, when the script goes out of its way to defend it), and I’m never comfortable about rendering regular cast members disabled only to magically restore it later on (see Turlough here. Much like the Twelfth Doctor’s temporary blindness on screen, it never sits right with me).

Whatever quibbles I may have though are put to rest elsewhere. Whether intentional or not, the first three Big Finish releases in the monthly range of plays were a multi-Doctor story, one featuring the Fifth Doctor, and then one featuring the Sixth. We’ve gone in reverse order here, with the Sixth Doctor last month, the Fifth Doctor this month, and a multi-Doctor story to finish things off.

I’ve said it before, but right now there is a sense of effort and a willingness to shake formulas up in these monthly plays that’s worked well. It is perhaps too little too late for a range at its end that’s been gasping for air for ages now, but it’s welcome all the same, and this play, aptly, is testament to that.

+ The Blazing Hour is OUT NOW, priced £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download).

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Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Written By: Lizzie Hopley, John Dorney, Roland Moore & Jonathan Barnes

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: November 2020

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

"Something is very wrong. The Fifth Doctor is lost in the Time War, heading for an encounter with his oldest and deadliest enemies... the Daleks!"

Echo Chamber by Jonathan Barnes

"It’s the radio talk show where everyone’s free to call in with their opinions. Time to welcome its host – the Doctor!"

Towards Zero by Roland Moore

"The Doctor finds himself in an old country house where he has to solve a very unusual murder – his own!"

Castle Hydra by Lizzie Hopley

"Nearing the end of his journey, the Doctor enters a jail filled with familiar faces. But who are the prisoners and who are the wardens?"

Effect and Cause by John Dorney

"A crash in the vortex leads the Doctor to the source of all his troubles, and to the Daleks. The answers are here. If he can live long enough to find them."

WARNING: The following review contains spoilers. You have been warned!

After the first part of the Shadow of the Daleks anthology wowed me, I was eager for the second half. Would it hold up: could it hold up? For the most part, the answer is yes. Overall, this is another strong release in a range that has been desperate for one for a long time now.

We start with Echo Chamber by Jonathan Barnes, which is a lot of fun. Big Finish have leaned into commentary on the downsides of social media and whipped-up public hate lately, notably in the sorely underrated and sharp Like by Jacqueline Rayner, and now again here. The Doctor finds himself unexpectedly hosting a radio show where he is encouraged to fuel people’s anger and polemic views, a scenario entirely unsuited to the Fifth Doctor and therefore all the more amusing and uncomfortable: long silences feel like they last forever and the exasperation of the staff is tangible. It’s a good opener and Barnes is clearly having fun taking his swipes as this sort of manufactured outrage.

This is followed by Towards Zero by Roland Moore, the sort of story you can only really tell with a formula like Doctor Who’s, in which the Doctor finds himself trying to solve his own death. It’s a fun premise bolstered by the ensemble cast once again showing their versatility and willingness to really get stuck into the humour and horror of these scripts. It doesn’t feel right to single any of the cast out really as everyone across this set puts in a tremendous performance, but I’d be lying if I said that Dervla Kirwan and Anjli Mohindra weren’t the ones who were still in my mind days later.

Castle Hydra by Lizzie Hopley is next and shows how the single-episode running time can work to a story’s advantage. The Doctor finds himself in a suspicious prison where there is far more to the prisoners than meets the eye, and it’s not just one set of familiar faces which greets him. This is a story with a fairly simple premise, and a faintly familiar one, but at half an hour it doesn’t outstay its welcome as would be the case otherwise. Again, the performances are tight and the writing likewise, Hopley elevating what could be fairly run-of-the-mill characters to higher plains.  It’s the first play to really go hard on the ‘everybody looks and sounds the same’ angle and it deals with it well, leading into the finale without sounding forced.

Speaking of, we wrap things up with John Dorney’s Effect and Cause. It was always going to be tricky to end this run, as what would usually be the two main hooks (the Time War/Daleks and the fact the Doctor keeps meeting the same people time and again) have in fact been background noise for the most part, much to the anthology’s advantage. The fact they’re in focus here makes this the least exciting episode in the run for me, though I suppose it was inevitable.

Really though, what gets me most about using the Time War is that it was completely unnecessary. You could have the Daleks menacing the Time Lords without it being anything to do with the Time War; it’s not like they don’t have previous in everything from Resurrection of the Daleks to The Apocalypse Element. Worse, by making the Fifth Doctor even vaguely aware of the Time War, it makes his (canonical) lack of further investigation into it all the stranger: this is the Doctor who remarked that curiosity had always been his downfall after all.

It’s a habit Big Finish fall into all too often: see also Missy all but being told her entire redemption arc in The Lumiat but ignoring it for the sake of continuity. It’s meant to be a wink to the audience, but it just makes the characters look dumb and when you’re robbing your central characters of intelligence and initiative, albeit retroactively, you have a problem.

So, a poor ending but not enough to drag things down elsewhere. You can see the strain around the edges sometimes in Shadow of the Daleks 2 (having a story set in a radio studio with accompanying studio-bound microphone effects followed by one supposedly set outside but with the same sound levels betrays the recorded-at-home nature of things all too readily) but what they’ve achieved overall is nothing short of impressive and worthy of praise and the ensemble cast have been universally excellent.

The end is here for the main range as we know it, the final curtain dropping, but for two months running, they’ve shown that there is life in the old dog yet.

+ Shadow Of The Daleks 2 is OUT NOW, priced £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download).

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Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Written By: James Kettle, Jonathan Morris, Simon Guerrier & Dan Starkey

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: October 2020

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

Something is very wrong. The Fifth Doctor is lost in the Time War, heading for an encounter with his oldest and deadliest enemies... the Daleks!

Aimed at the Body by James Kettle

"An encounter with a notorious cricketing legend should be right up the Doctor’s street. But the unexpected appearance of an old enemy is about to send the Doctor on a quest."

Lightspeed by Jonathan Morris

"The trail has led the Doctor to a spaceship in the far future - where he finds himself trapped in the middle of a terrifying revenge plot."

The Bookshop at the End of the World by Simon Guerrier

"It’s very easy to forget yourself and get lost in a bookshop. But in some bookshops more than most..."

Interlude by Dan Starkey

"The play’s the thing! Or is it? The Doctor is roped into a theatrical spectacular - but who is he really performing to?"

WARNING: The following review contains spoilers. You have been warned!

I’m going to level with you: when I first heard the idea behind this story, I groaned a little. “Classic Doctor + the Time War” sounded like the same tired sandbox thinking that has plagued Doctor Who for a long time now on audio, in print, in comics, and thanks to the Series 12 finale, on screen as well. There was a time when a surprise Kroton in a book or a shock Nimon in a play really were surprising and shocking, whereas nowadays it feels all-too-predictable and, bizarrely, dull: less really is more.

How pleased I was, then, when Shadow of the Daleks 1 turned out to be the best Main Range play Big Finish has released for years now.

It starts off on an odd note, mind. Aimed at the Body was released as a freebie to entice listeners in, but I’m not sure half an hour of walking and vague talk about cricketing etiquette was the best way to go. It’s by no means a bad episode, and author James Kettle has proven himself tenfold with the phenomenal Barrister to the Stars earlier this year in the seventh series of The Diary of River Song, but really not all that much happens. It sets up a few threads for later on and all of the cast are great (more on them later) but it’s a bit of a strange opener.

Things really step up a gear with Lightspeed by Jonathan Morris, which combines intrigue, humour and thrills with a practised ease. A hijacked ship, a countdown, and a cheeky but intelligent conclusion? Count me in. It’s here that you really notice just how brilliant the cast are, too. I want to draw special attention to Dervia Kirwan (who was also exceptional in the recent Class box sets, both of which are well worth your time: more Blair Mowat scripts please?) and Anjli Mohindra, who is continually proving herself to be a versatile actor deserving of great acclaim. But it feels remiss of me to then not note how good Glen McCready and Jamie Parker are, too, not to mention Peter Davison and Nicholas Briggs. Everyone is at the very top of their game here.

This is evident in Simon Guerrier’s The Bookshop at the End of the World. It leans heavily on the amnesia gimmick (which is such a Doctor Who cliché now that when the recent Eighth Doctor Time War series used it twice across its four box sets, I hardly batted an eyelid) but uses poetry, effective performances, atmospheric sound design and well-paced writing to generate tension and heartache that has stayed with me in the days since I listened to it. Would that all stories were this good.  Would that all bookshops were this cosy, too.

We wrap things up with Interlude, Dan Starkey’s best script yet. Much like Mohindra, Starkey has proven himself to be a real gem who is flourishing under Big Finish’s eye (not that either of them wilted on screen). The play-within-a-play trope may be familiar but again, the script gets around this by letting the actors have a lot of fun, with some genuinely clever twists in there and winning performances by everyone.

I finished this release excited for what comes next, and that has not happened for a long, long time. The trailer for the next release is sadly the usual mix of noise and unrelated scenes which Big Finish often put out (do they really entice anyone?) but the promise shown here in this release has whet my appetite.

What an impressive finished result this is. Shadow of the Daleks 1 is a fantastic showcase for Big Finish in Lockdown. A limited cast used in an inventive way, solid sound design, and lots of proper, weighty drama. Sure, you can nitpick if you like: Mohindra’s microphone isn’t quite as good as everyone else’s, and there is a line in Aimed at the Body where the Doctor remarks upon the design of the Daleks which sticks out like a sore thumb. Is it just very bad sound mixing to make that line scream out at you as being dropped in later, or perhaps it’s that the Time War angle was only hit upon later on? Hard to tell. These are small niggles though.

Speaking of smalls things, let’s quickly mention the Daleks. Though present, they hardly feature: shadows indeed and all the better for it. The Time War does not really rear its head either, and again this is to the story’s success.  Perhaps it’ll fall apart a little and fully dive into this in the second half, but I hope not, or if it does embrace this angle, I hope it doesn’t falter. Prove me wrong again, just as you’ve proven me wrong here.

Honestly, this is the most energised I’ve been with a release for ages now. How wonderful to have this treat, just as the range nears its end. I cannot recommend it enough.

+ Shadow Of The Daleks 1 is OUT NOW, priced £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download).

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Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Written By: Steve Lyons, Jacqueline Rayner, Tommy Donbavand & Kate Thorman

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: July 2020

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

"Separated from his companions, the Doctor attempts to find solace in the history of his favourite planet – Earth – but instead discovers new threats lying in wait.

Travelling from twentieth-century East Berlin to sixteenth-century Strasbourg, the Doctor encounters creatures from other realities: monsters beneath the waves, and human beings determined to exploit their fellow man.

But how long can he survive without a friend?"

WARNING: The following review contains spoilers. You have been warned!

It’s that time of the year again: Big Finish’s “4x4 release”. Paradoxically, this annual affair arguably shows off the varying beast that is Big Finish best of all. On the one hand, it shows how quick they are to fall back and repeat themselves at the first whiff of success. Circular Time was released to critical acclaim in 2007 and so Big Finish have repeated the trick every year since rather than try anything new. On the other hand, by and large these releases have proven themselves to be some of the best they do all year, and 1001 Nights for the Fifth Doctor was especially strong. I guess sometimes you swing and hit.

Back last year (November 2019 to be precise) I reviewed Conversion, a two-part story for the Fifth Doctor which ended with him leaving his companions for a bit to mull over traumatic events. I commented then that it doesn’t really fit in with TV continuity at all, and while that’s not something that is necessarily an issue (after all, the Fourth Doctor in Big Finish isn’t a thing like the Fourth Doctor on TV, and most of the actors don’t sound like they used to, including David Tennant), it is something that jarred.

Skip forward to 2020 and we follow up the ending to that story. Sort of. We get four stories here with the Fifth Doctor on his own, but quite why he’s riding solo is never addressed. I feel this is probably the best way forward as it makes this release far more of a standalone affair, a welcome thing in the muddy waters of Big Finish internal continuity.

We kick things off with Ghost Station by Steve Lyons. Set in Berlin, it sees the Doctor encounter a lone soldier and try to solve a murder mystery. I can pretty much guarantee you’ll know the ending a few minutes in but it’s well acted and directed with some nice sound design to tie it all together.  Just don’t expect any surprises along the way.

The Bridge Master by Jacqueline Rayner is next, and it’s a lot of fun with a great central premise: the Doctor has his shadow sacrificed to appease evil, but it turns out that perhaps there is more to this than simple ritual and superstition when the Doctor finds himself falling ill after the operation. Rayner writes her supporting cast with a lot of character depth and the sound design again works well. This is all rather lovely. (Oh, and for all I’ve said Conversion last year doesn’t fit in with TV continuity, the references to The Great British Bake-Off here are at once more of a continuity breaker but also far less of an issue as they’re fun lines and not ones which give us incompatible character traits and stories.)

Third up is What Lurks Down Under by Tommy Donbavand, to whom this release is dedicated in a genuinely touching gesture. His story is a strange one: a celebrity historical in which you are never told much about the celebrity or why they’re important. If you don’t know who Mary Wade is, or why she is so important in Australia's history, you’re not going to come away any wiser and instead you’ll be wondering why the story is a companion introductory tale without the new companion staying at the end. Indeed, you’d be very easily forgiven for not knowing she was a real person in the first place (and seeing as Mary Shelley has travelled with the Eighth Doctor, there isn’t really any great reason that Wade couldn’t, too). It’s definitely a different approach and Wade comes across well, but it feels a little empty and lacking finality because of the lack of historical context we are given. Still, if it encourages people to research her story, that’s surely a good thing, and the inclusion of a play by Donbavand is really nice. The interviews included state how he always wanted to write a story for Big Finish, but sadly died before it was made and released. It’s a touching and glowing testimony to the company that we have it here.

We wrap things up with The Dancing Plague by Kate Thorman, which proves to be every bit as good as Rayner’s play: they’re by far the highlights of this release. Set in the midst of the infamous Dancing Plague, a strange historical occurrence where people started dancing for no readily apparent reason and then just… stopped, the Doctor is on hand to try and solve the puzzle, aided by the rather brilliant Margareta. Everything here just works: great choice of historical location, brilliant dialogue, fantastic cast acting their socks off, and a satisfying ending.

And so we come to an end. Some things muddled, some things you’ve heard many times before, and some things utterly brilliant: how very Big Finish overall. With the monthly plays soon changing format entirely, this may be the last time this particular structure has an outing for a while. All told, this is a strong release and a fine farewell to it.

+ Time Apart is OUT NOW, priced £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download).

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Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Written By: Carl Rowens & Martyn Waites

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: October 2019

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

Interstitial by Carl Rowens

"When the TARDIS is drawn off-course by temporal disruption, the Doctor and his companions discover a research facility conducting dangerous experiments. But how do you fight the future when time itself is being used as a weapon?"

Feast of Fear by Martyn Waites

"At the height of the Irish famine, a carnival travels the country bringing cheer to all they encounter. But it also brings something else along with them… and it already has the Doctor."

Doctor Who has not been shy of (at times) cribbing from its own past; be it with cast members (here's looking at you, Michael Wisher), titles (The Mutants does have a nice ring about it) or plots (Planet of the Daleks feels very familiar for a reason, after all).

Likewise, Big Finish have certainly never been shy about plundering the past. We've recently had an entire trilogy featuring one-shot character Mags, two outings across two ranges for the same trio of Masters and a Missy, giant maggots pestering Torchwood, and more besides. This trilogy is bookended by a guest star from Big Finish's own original series, and a story with the 1980s Cybermen. Here in the middle, we've two stories with rather familiar beats.

We begin with Interstitial by new writer Carl Rowens. The title conjures up memories of The Time Monster, experiments with time doing likewise, but what we get instead is a fairly generic sci-fi story of differing timelines and the responsibility one has if one can alter events. (That's not a criticism, just an observation.)

The story justifies its two-episode length, not outstaying its welcome and using a small cast well, even if the guest cast are largely familiar tropes with dialogue.

Having joined the TARDIS team in the previous adventure, with hints of a sad ending, Marc is all wide-eyed innocence, a traveller from the past flung into the future, and Rowens gets to toy with his fate at times. I'm not sure how Marc is going to play out yet: confusion and enthusiasm with a dash of bravery are all well and good, but I feel we've seen this before and he will need something more to really grab our affection.

The ending of Interstitial feels rather quick after the gentle pace across the rest of the tale, but all in all this one is not bad. It even manages to take one of my pet hates (people on screen or in audio reading aloud letters whilst writing them) and give it an amusing pay-off when Nyssa signs it off. Hats off to it.

* * * * *

Next up is Feast of Fear by Martyn Waites, another new author. It's always good to see new names in this range, so having two in this release is something to be praised.

Feast of Fear is an odd one though. We sadly begin things with two characters spouting exposition at one another as they run, which made my heart sink and attention wander: there are ways of filling in characters' backgrounds organically and this isn't it.

As for the play itself, you'll be forgiven for thinking you've heard this one before. A circus taken over by a malevolent evil from outer space? I guess any story set around a circus or carnival was going to invoke comparison with The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, but the way around this is surely to do something radically different? As it stands, it just makes it feel like the well is running dry.

Elsewhere, things feel very in tune with Doctor Who in its post-2005 guise. Love saving the day and people able to break conditioning through memories and friendship? Closing Time and The Rings of Akhaten spring to mind.

This makes the play feel derivative. Heck, even a plot thread about the Doctor unable to stop talking has strong echoes of Tell Me You Love Me from Big Finish's (underrated) Class plays.

In some ways, Feast of Fear feels like the most Chibnall-era play we've had so far, with a (very) lengthy justification by the Doctor before taking any action against the monster and an emphasis time and again on friendships and relationships. Even plundering stories from the past is in keeping, seeing as Chibnall has riffed on Doctor Who and the Silurians and The Green Death on screen rather heavily in two of his tales.

It doesn't make for a wholly successful play here, though, if you know the show's past, and let's be honest, most people listening to these plays do. Big Finish are even doing a prequel to Greatest Show in this very range, so I am left scratching my head at the approach taken here.

This release is a story of two halves in more than one respect, then. It boasts one of the best covers Big Finish have given us for years, throws two new authorial voices into the fray, and stumbles as often as it succeeds.

I think on balance that I am okay with this. This release is not going to get a huge score from me, but at least it's attempting to do something vaguely different, albeit by treading a well-beaten path. Perhaps the future will see more success down this route.

+ Interstitial / Feast of Fear is OUT NOW, priced £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download).

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Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Written By: David Llewellyn

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: September 2019

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

"63BC. Following the overthrow of Catiline, Cicero and his wife retire to the coastal town of Cumae, safe from the threats of Rome.

But when a stranger and his companions arrive at Cicero’s villa, new dangers lie in wait and Cicero finds himself plunged into a realm of gods and monsters.

His only hope of returning home lies with a man known as the Doctor. But can Cicero trust him?"

Every year, there is one month where Big Finish give us two main range releases at once instead of the usual solo effort. 2019 throws two historical pairings at our feet at the same time: the Doctor and Houdini in Harry Houdini’s War, and the Doctor and Cicero here in Tartarus.

I heard a few cynical rumblings when this play was announced along the lines of it being less a good idea for a Doctor Who play and more a good excuse for an extended advert for Cicero, Big Finish’s original series from 2018.

There is a decent enough Doctor Who story in here to silence the critics, in part because the series has taken elements of mythology and created a story from them before, as is the case here. It doesn’t necessarily feel overfamiliar though, partly because they’ve decided to buck this incarnation’s norms (Resurrection of the Daleks aside) and give Tartarus two episodes over 40 minutes in length each. It benefits this script, giving room for moments to really breathe and lending the tale a pace that’s gentle without being lazy.

I am not saying there isn’t an element of cynicism here, mind, and crossed fingers hoping people will jump from Tartarus to Cicero. Certain plot points clearly take their lead not just from history but from the series, and having the Doctor enthuse about how amazing Cicero is, while not out of character perhaps comes across as a bit too forced, ditto his arguments with him about who should be in charge and early scenes where the Doctor explains concepts from the future to him at a party. It’s the same with Nyssa and Tegan’s reactions to everything, and an observation and plot point about Adric’s death. It feels a tad like someone is trying really hard, and too self-consciously, to write ‘this is how they would react’ rather than creating something truly organic and true to the characters.

The ending of Tartarus points to more to come in, one presumes, a future trilogy. I’m not sure how keen or excited I am for this development, especially as it rather gives away the ending already. That said, I’m guessing the ending, as painted here, isn’t quite what it appears to be: and if it is, it’s almost identical to that which they’ve done before with post-Terminus Nyssa, which will seem a little lazy. Perhaps it will surprise me further down the line. Perhaps.

I do have to wonder. As of late, much of Big Finish’s output across its various ranges feels rather like we’ve seen this before, often riffing on something we have already had or filling blanks no-one really cared about and making a poor job of it. From Emissary of the Daleks to the sixth series of adventures for River Song to the fan fic slog that was Battle Scars, it feels utterly tried. Those are perhaps extreme examples of bad releases, but that weariness seeps in elsewhere more often than not nowadays, and that’s upsetting.

I genuinely hate writing reviews like these; so down and lacking in real joy or spark; I know people pour their heart and soul into writing words. But I also am not about to lie and pretend it’s all sunshine and roses, as it’s not. Every so often, we’ll be blown away by something really special or brilliant from Big Finish; The Master of Callous here, the genuinely touching Still Life there, the fun and atmospheric Krampus two-parter from Ravenous in the centre. It proves that there is life in the old dog yet, and exciting life it is, too. But with such releases few and far between, I do wonder how long it is before the well is truly dry.

Prove me wrong, Big Finish. I reckon, or at least I hope, that you can, because I know you’re brilliant when you really put your mind to it: you have been dozens upon dozens upon dozens of times before. It’s why I’m still going with you, all these years on. But perhaps I’m just tired of the increasing ‘that’ll do’ releases? And if I am, I’m sure I am not alone.

Prove me wrong. Please.

+ Tartarus is OUT NOW, priced £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download).

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Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Written By: Jonathan Morris

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: March 2019

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

"Once upon a time, a people of great artistry and great knowledge ruled the planet Mekalion: the Kamille. For a thousand years, they prospered peacefully.

Then came disaster, when their sun set forever. Facing extinction, the Kamille made the Locus, a device to sustain their minds; and fashioned shape-changing machines, to act out their wishes on the physical plane…

Servants they called the Kamelion."

Three releases and four stories in, the latest trilogy from Big Finish ends here with The Kamelion Empire by Jonathan Morris. The play answers questions about just who Kamelion was, explains why no-one mentioned him after The King's Demons on-screen, throws in casual references to The Sensorites and less casual ones to The Invasion Of Time, and takes us straight up to the redecoration of the TARDIS in The Five Doctors. All this with a cast of only five actors.

It's a lot to pack in, which only makes it sadder that this play is curiously lacking. In fact, at times it's almost a bit dull.

I think it was when a cast of Kamelion robots deliver exposition in the form of a Jackanory-style tale that I found myself wondering when something big was going to happen. There are primitive grunts who want to overthrow the Kamelion robots, rival factions of a parliament of sorts vying for control of the titular Kamelion Empire, trips into a dreamlike realm, and a lot of backstory, but despite all this it feels like very little really happens. You could trim an episode off and retain the meat and bones of the story.

It doesn't help that The Kamelion Empire feels isolated from the rest of the trilogy. Tegan has defaulted to disliking Kamelion again, for example, despite the opening play in this trilogy of releases (Devil In The Mist) being entirely about her coming to an understanding with him.  Turlough seems to veer between his feelings on Kamelion depending on the scene. There's also some especially clunky writing where Tegan recalls some family history, by a battlefield, despite Kamelion continually interrupting her and warning her to stop. It all feels rather slapdash. The fact the regular TARDIS crew cast sound utterly unenthused in the play's extras only adds fuel to the fire.

Its biggest failing though is with Kamelion himself. It'll surprise no-one who has heard the other stories in this trilogy, but the play deals yet again with Kamelion being possessed and fighting for some sort of control with an antagonist. That makes all four stories in a row to have this as a central theme. In the end, I think it's this more than anything else which turned me off.

Why should I care when the plays have covered this ground before? Worse still, Morris has to actively change bits of Kamelion's backstory to try and do something new. It shows a proper problem with the character and, once again, its limitations.

The opening story in this trilogy got a carbon copy with its themes regarding Kamelion in the second story. This was followed by a lovely play about 1980s television, but one where you could remove Kamelion entirely and not really change a thing. This final story tries to alter what we do know of the character from his on-screen appearances, but winds up retreading old ground.

There have been good things about this trilogy. Black Thursday / Power Game was a lot of fun. Jon Culshaw was fantastic. The CD cover for this play is lovely and the music apes the 1980s soundtracks well. I've little else to really cheer about though.

In the end, this trilogy is more of an argument in favour of the character being dropped than one in favour of more outings.

What a terrible shame.

+ The Kamelion Empire is OUT NOW, priced £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download).

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Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Written By: Jamie Anderson & Eddie Robson

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: February 2019

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

Black Thursday - By Jamie Anderson

"1902. Deep beneath the Welsh village of Abertysswg, men have worked the black seam for generations. Until the day of the disaster. The day that a blue box from the future materialised inside the mine.... and things would never be the same again."

Power Game - By Eddie Robson

"Welcome to the Incredible Power Game, in which three brave Earthlings enter the Void Pit in search of strange gems to help return the alien Hostess to her home dimension. Today's contestants include Graham, Sadia... and Tegan, an air stewardess from Brisbane!"

It's funny how history can impact upon the present in unexpected ways. Despite an audibly older cast, stories which deal with concepts the 1980s run of TV episodes would never have done, and episode running times that often far outrun the original format’s restrictions, give me a Big Finish Peter Davison story which is but two episodes in length and I find myself nodding: “Yes. This feels right.”

The presence of two-episode-long stories in this era's original run lend the format here an air of authenticity that would be absent for, say, Patrick Troughton’s Doctor. Here though, it fits well and whilst I think the ‘pure historical’ label sometimes ascribed to Black Orchid is wildly misleading, its existence lends the opening story in this release, Black Thursday, extra weight.

Written by semi-regular Big Finish director and sometimes-writer Jamie Anderson, Black Thursday takes us to Wales in the early 20th Century where a mining disaster strikes and the TARDIS crew soon find themselves in the middle of it all, helping save lives where they can, comfort the grieving where they cannot, and, naturally, winding up in trouble.

Kamelion and human emotion are the main focus points in this story, leading to a masterclass performance by Jon Culshaw. This is a script which gives us a man having to perform as a robot speaking in a slightly-off Welsh accent that's still recognisably robotic. It's incredibly impressive: to make his accent here authentically Welsh enough while holding back a little but in a way that doesn't distract is one hell of a task but he pulls it off superbly.

Much of the rest of the cast bring a similar level of depth and skill to their performances, too, with Tim Treloar turning in his strongest outing for Big Finish yet and Lizzie Roper giving an equally impressive showing. Add to this the best script Anderson has written so far and you've a recipe for success.

Oddly enough, its weakest element is also its strongest: Kamelion. His plight is heartfelt and understandable and Anderson writes it well with sympathetic strokes, but it undoubtedly feels rather familiar, being yet another case of ‘Kamelion is overwhelmed by another's emotions / mind and changes as a result’. Coming so soon after the exact same plot point being a fairly big hunk of Devil In The Mist, it really does show up limitations with the robot's plot potential, even if it's executed well as is the case here.

That it pops up again in the very next story only further this sense of familiarity, though writer Eddie Robson keeps it on the back burner and lets the rest of his story do the talking.

If Black Thursday was an intelligent and weighty slice of education that effectively grabbed the heartstrings, then Power Game is an intelligent and light slice of adventure that effectively tickles the funnybone.

Set in York in the 1980s, Power Game tells of a television series that mysteriously appears in the middle of scheduled transmissions, much to the bemusement and confusion of the TV schedulers but the joy of a local Science Fiction and Fantasy group. Anyone who has watched television shows such as The Adventure Game or, to a certain extent, Knightmare will recognise this story's use of early computerised effects, contestant interaction and gameplay, and come away smiling. It uses nostalgia well, but better still it doesn't just rely on that to woo the audience but has a strong script with well-realised characters to back it up: Ready Player One this (thank god) is not.

As before, the cast are more than up to matching the high quality with Janet Fielding and Mark Strickson in particular turning in fantastic performances. Match this with a delightfully amusing script (Robson writes for the regular cast brilliantly) and you've one of the most enjoyable hours Big Finish have given us for a while now.

Kamelion may be at once the weak link and focal point / highlight of a good portion of this release (a contradiction I'm still wrapping my head around) but this release of two halves does not waiver in quality.

A story featuring the prominent use of early BBC Micro computer graphics? One about miners? This release has “The Eighties” tattooed upon its chest and it's only a surprise that Big Finish have not gone down this road before.

How utterly delightful that they have done now with such a strong release.

+ Black Thursday / Power Game is OUT NOW, priced £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download).

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Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Written By: Cavan Scott

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: January 2019

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

"The TARDIS deposits the Doctor, Tegan, Turlough and their android ally Kamelion aboard a prison ship. A ship with just one prisoner: Nustanu, last warlord of the Zamglitti – monstrous, mind-bending mimics able to turn themselves into mist.

A ship that's in trouble, and about to make a crash-landing...

On a planet of mists."

With Doctor Who having as many stories under its belt as it does, it’s unsurprising that at times the show wishes to celebrate this. Done well, a brief nod or wink to the past can be amusing and encourage people new to the show to dip into the past. Done badly, it can be off-putting, make the series feel like it is tailor-made for a small audience, and give characters the strange habit of not being able to walk five metres without referencing a former adventure.

Big Finish have historically veered between the two, sometimes in the same scene, and their reputation at times can be of pandering too much to the sort of fan who thinks simply name-checking Vardans makes for a good story, no plot required. The trouble with this attitude is that it means genuinely good nods to the past can perhaps be overshadowed: cue Kamelion.

Kamelion is oft-forgotten, not least by the TV series itself. Almost impossible to operate, superfluous to requirements and absent for months on end, the poor android was pretty much done and dusted as soon as he had set foot upon the good ship TARDIS (I’m using the male pronoun here: if it’s good enough for the character’s new voice artist, Jon Culshaw, then it’s good enough for me). There was potential there though: a shape-shifting companion with the ability to have its mind controlled by outside influences!

The trouble is, the two stories in which he appeared (no, I’m not counting Androzani) show this potential off and so one if left to wonder what else there is to be done with the android. Devil In The Mist by Cavan Scott does not really put those fears to rest, but it does show that there is some exploration to be had with the relationship between bot and human, even if it is largely resolved by the end of things. (It also has a lovely cover, which shows off how gorgeous the android’s design was if nothing else.)

The story starts with a very wary Tegan. Kamelion has links far too close to the Master in her eyes and when he is apparently caught tampering with the ship, her fears appear to be confirmed and she sees red. It’s this fractious relationship between the pair (Tegan angry, Kamelion unable to solve this problem) that forms the crux of the emotional heart of this four-part adventure, and adventure is very much the right word. We’ve crashing spaceships, rivers to cross, a jungle to explore, and secrets to happen upon and the running time does tick on nicely enough. Throw in some space hippos (Scott’s own creations, the Harrigain, who have popped up across media now) and ne’er-do-wells and you’ve something that feels like it’s taken a shot of adrenaline before breakfast.

The regular cast are more than up to the game. Mark Strickson remains thoroughly underrated as Turlough and Janet Fielding is as brilliant as ever. Culshaw, meanwhile, fits into Kamelion’s shoes with utter ease. If anyone has been dipping into the Target audiobook range, they’ll know already how soothing and gorgeous his voice can be on the ears and there’s no change here. He could read the phone book and I’d be content.

I mentioned earlier that not much new is really done with Kamelion though, and I stand by that. There is a nice exploration of companion dynamics (Tegan’s slipped confession that she still feels uneasy around Turlough is beautifully done) but does this story really show the need for Kamelion’s return? I’m not sure it does. (I’m also not sure having one of the story’s cliffhangers revolving around a boat accident is in especially great taste given the tragic death of the android’s original operator. I am 100% sure it’s just a nasty co-incidence but even so, I did wince a little.)

Adventure aside, the script itself passes the time nicely but I can’t say it made much of an impression. Think of this as a blockbuster popcorn movie: the sort you watch with half a mind elsewhere whilst grazing and forget much of the plot hours down the line. That’s not a criticism of the genre at all: sometimes that sort of entertainment is necessary and I’d take it over being bored. I definitely wasn’t clock-watching during this outing, but give me a few months and I am not sure I will be able to regale you with many specifics about it.

Kamelion is now due for a further two stories, and I am more curious than anything else. Will we see the potential hitherto untapped? I do not know, but I am confident that they’ll give it a good go. As a starting block Devil In The Mist is not bad, even if it is not an especially convincing argument for a need for more outings for the character. Perhaps with some of the dramatic tension now eased we’ll see what could have been, with a happier Tegan, a busier TARDIS and a calmer Kamelion.

And if you can’t end a review on a terrible Culture Club joke when talking about a creation from the 1980s, when can you?

+ Devil In The Mist is OUT NOW, priced £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download).

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Subscribers to Doctor Who Magazine, who have received their copies of Issue 529 early (due out this Thursday), have reported confirmation of the planned release of Season 19 on Blu-ray.

The release follows the recent success of the Season 12 blu-ray box-set, which featured Tom Baker's (The 4th Doctor) first 5 adventures. As with the Season 12 release, Season 19 will feature Peter Davison's (The 5th Doctor) first 7 adventures, remastered together with special features, all presented in special, limited edition packaging, in an 8-disc box-set.

The set will be released on 19th November 2018, priced £54.99, although we expect the date could be pushed back if there are any technical issues.

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[Source: Doctor Who Magazine]

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Written By: David Llewellyn

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: March 2018

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

"You are cordially invited to Argentia, the galaxy’s most exclusive tax haven, to attend the funeral of mining magnate Carlo Mazzini. The memorial service will be followed by music, light refreshments, and murder!

Carlo’s heirs have come to say their final goodbyes (and find out how much they’ve inherited) but when a masked killer begins picking them off one by one, Argentia goes into lock-down, closed off behind its own temporal displacement field.

Can the Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan and Adric apprehend the murderer before Argentia – and everyone on board - is forever cut off from the rest of the Universe?"

Back in the dim and distant country that was September 2014, I reviewed the play Mask of Tragedy for DWO and sung the praises of Samuel West’s turn as Aristophanes in it. He nailed the comedy perfectly, and the extras showed him to be genuinely passionate about Doctor Who and infectiously enthusiastic.

Flash forward to March 2018 (present day at the time of writing) and Big Finish have just released Serpent In The Silver Mask. Who is that actor putting in a genuinely excellent comic turn with multiple characters, all of whom have a degree of humour and gravity where required injected into them? Take another bow, Samuel West! In the extras for this play, director Barnaby Edwards rightly sings West’s praises and I think it’s worth just stressing again how good he is here. Truly, you’ll not find a better guest performance in a Big Finish play across the board; this equals the very best of them, perhaps even besting his turn in I Went To A Marvellous Party.

(I’ll get a grumble out of the way now: the extras. Long-time readers of these reviews will know it’s a bugbear of mine that the extended extras for subscribers do not surface for weeks after the plays’ releases, and that’s especially irksome here when the extras we get on the CD/original download feel heavily edited. You can tell they’re curtailed, with some edits coming in almost mid-sentence, and that’s a real shame.)

What of Serpent In The Silver Mask elsewhere though?

The play starts with our heroes landing on Argentia where the Doctor is on the hunt for the materials to build a new sonic screwdriver. Before too long, they’ve had their tongues swabbed and they’ve gatecrashed a funeral, but it appears that there’s a murderer on the loose... cue a Sherlock / Christie-style romp with robots and prisons and dolls, oh my!

David Llewellyn is in the writing seat this time around and he’s clearly had the same memo as the other writers in this latest trilogy of Fifth Doctor / Adric / Nyssa / Tegan plays: listen to the DVD commentary for Earthshock and write them like that and not how the characters were on screen. It does mean you’re not going to come away from this play, or indeed any of the others in this trilogy, feeling you’ve experienced an ‘authentic’ era-accurate story. This sort of thing really bugs some fans and kills the mood for them, but for me personally it does not factor in at all when the scripts themselves are as strong as the past three have been. Are these the companions we used to watch on screen or the Fifth Doctor who saved the world in the early 1980s? Not even close at times but, crucially, does it matter at all? Mileage will vary.

For my money though, I’d say Llewellyn has crafted an exemplary script with a central mystery that genuinely surprised me. I was so sure I had worked out “whodunnit” but, pleasingly, I was wrong. I had the means but not the right antagonist: and what better treat for a fan of the genre to be close but outfoxed? I think I had as much fun trying to work it all out as the Doctor does. Indeed, the Doctor is having a lot of fun here, whether conversing with a robot or playing detective, and it’s a joy.

I’ve already celebrated West and the script, so it’s time again to heap praise on Edwards’s direction and the regulars’ performances. I want to highlight Janet Fielding here as this play gives Tegan a lot to do, but frankly Matthew Waterhouse is brilliant, Peter Davison hilarious, and Sarah Sutton making every scene count. This is an exciting time to be a fan of the Davison era. We had Jenny Colgan give us an incredibly good outing for Turlough in Gardens Of The Dead. Time In Office was my favourite main range release in 2017 by some distance, and this original trio of companions just goes from strength to strength in the main range.

Does all this praise feel repetitive to you? It would be understandable if so as I’ve done that time and again this trilogy, because this trilogy is by a leap - a bound - and a mile, the very best succession of releases in the main range we, as fans, have had the pleasure to receive for years, now.

Guy Adams’s stint as script editor for these plays has injected verve and spark in what was increasingly becoming a range of average releases, and his role in teasing out the best we’ve had for ages cannot be understated.

Three high hitters worthy of full marks? Yes, I really think these plays deserve that accolade, and that gives me more pleasure to write and share online than I can readily articulate. As the Doctor herself put it: “Oh, brilliant!"

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Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Written By: James Goss

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: February 2018

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

"This is a city of ghosts and no-one knows them better than Leanne. Twice a night she leads tourists to visit the most haunted sites - the Hanging Yard, the Witch Pool, the Screaming House, and, of course, the Catacombs.

Leanne’s realised the ghosts of the city are real. Something’s lurking in the Catacombs - an ancient force that has been growing in the darkness for centuries. Sabaoth is returning and they must be stopped before they devour the world. Leanne knows this, because a ghost told her."

I don't know who it was that made everyone decide the Fifth Doctor should be funny and find himself in comedies, but I suspect it was Steven Moffat. When Time Crash aired, that mix of old and new Who felt utterly new and alien. In many ways, so did the Fifth Doctor. He cracks gags here and seems a bit peeved off. He has far more in common with the Sixth Doctor than the Fifth Doctor we originally saw on our screens, but that's okay. It's not as if the Sixth Doctor we've had from Big Finish is much like the one on screen at times.

It cemented the Fifth Doctor's fate though, and his comedy efforts in audio have been on the up ever since. It feels especially ironic given John Nathan-Turrner's firm stamping out of humour during his era, but it's a welcome shift as Peter Davison has taken to it like a duck to water.

Ghost Walk is written by James Goss. Goss and Doctor Who are two things which compliment each other perfectly. His list of successes with Who and its assorted spin-offs is quite frankly alarming: City of Death and The Pirate Planet; The Art of Death and Dead Air; The Scorchies and Asking for a Friend; World Enough and Time and Mask of Tragedy. All this, and no mention of The Blood Cell or What She Does Next Will Astound You or The Sky Man. And there’s far more on top of all this. That's one hell of a hit rate!

Ghost Walk is the latest triumph for Goss: because I'm not going to play it coy and keep you in suspense until the end. This is another brilliant story by a brilliant writer.

As alluded to earlier, it's a funny play. It's also far more than just funny though; it's a play about ghosts and ordinary people being put in extraordinary circumstances, and it's one that tries to scare you.

Horror and the Fifth Doctor? Other unfamiliar bedfellows. Just as the Fifth Doctor of new is unlike the Fifth Doctor of old, so this story feels pretty alien to the original series, something remarked upon in the extras. This is completely true. Ghost Walk, with its talk of fixed points and e-mails, its time travel-heavy twists and turns, its humour, and its pre-credits teaser is straight out of the series post-2005, but you know what? That's no bad thing. This is the play that proves that so.

Last month, Kingdom of Lies kickstarted this new trilogy of Fifth Doctor plays and I mentioned there that Adric and Matthew Waterhouse were especially well suited to comedy, and that's the case here again. His comments on quantum states and Australia had me snorting, and the Fifth Doctor patiently waiting for the end of the world is beautifully observed, too. Tegan and her, at times, fractious relationship with everyone else is written for with deft skill, too, but when the drama really needs it, Janet Fielding gives us one hell of a performance. The same is true for Sarah Sutton as Nyssa. Nyssa has a far straighter role in this play than the other TARDIS companions, but it works well. It has echoes of The Curse of Peladon and Jo and the King about it, something cemented by Sacha Dhawan sounding eerily like David Troughton at times. It works though, despite the brevity of time in which to develop any relationship.

I've got this far and not mentioned Fenella Woolgar as Leanne yet, which is remarkable as she is front and centre of much of the play and carries a lot of the plot with seeming effortlessness. The support from John Banks as rival ghost walk host Louie is great as well, Goss once again showing a great ear for comedy and naturalistic relationships and patter with his dialogue.

Another thing to note is the sound design, which feels pleasingly ambitious with wide stereo swoops as people move from left to right, and some nice effects as time goes all awry later on. Barnaby Edwards' direction is perfect throughout, too. I noted last month that he really gets comedy and that assertion is only strengthened here.

I honestly don't think a foot is put wrong in Ghost Walk. I have often observed that Big Finish continually use the same writers over and over and over and over again with predictably diminishing returns, even when they're great writers. Goss seems to be immune to this though. I suspect it's because he is so busy elsewhere, too.  That palate cleansing works wonders.

Whatever the case may be, Ghost Walk is as good as they're saying and these two plays mark the most astonishing highs which the main range has reached in years, and that's not an exaggeration. For a range which felt deflated and tired, this is no small achievement. Long may it continue.

When I scored Kingdom of Lies, I was unsure whether to award it full points or not. The more you score things at the very top, the more it lessens that score, and the same with the lows. There is no hesitance here at all though. This is one of the easiest 10 out of 10s I've ever given. Sublime!

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Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Written By: Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: January 2018

Reviewed by: Nick Mellish for Doctor Who Online

"On the planet Cicero Prime, the kingdom of Cardenas is divided, with the whole population forced to swear allegiance to either the effete Duke or the fiery, hard-edged Duchess. This is a situation both parties have grown tired of. What use is half a kingdom when, thanks to a carefully engineered murder, you could have it all?

Surely, neither of them would be rash enough to summon the deadly off-world assassin The Scorpion to help with their problem? And surely, this terrifying figure wouldn’t arrive wearing a long cream coat and striped trousers…?"

The 2018 main range of Doctor Who plays kicks off the year with Kingdom of Lies; an outing for the Fifth Doctor, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan. 2017 started the year running with this team with The Star Men, but will lightning strike twice? Frankly, yes.

Set in the pseudo-medieval kingdom of Cardenas, the Doctor and his friends land after a timely intervention in the TARDIS from Tegan (when it doubt, whack it and see what happens) and soon find themselves embroiled in a tangled web of assassination, marital troubles, and assumed identities.

It doesn't take long for this story to set out its credentials as a comedy and Nyssa in particular benefits well here. One minute she's simply Nyssa of Traken, the next she's the apparent assistant to the Scorpion, feared assassin and mercenary for hire. Sarah Sutton has a lot of fun with the material, and Barnaby Edwards milks it for every drop of comic potential, giving us a masterclass in how to handle this sort of material.

Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky's first Big Finish outing, The Ravelli Conspiracy, was a bit hit-and-miss, with the actors seemingly uncertain at times in their faith in the material, as evidenced in the extras where Peter Purves and Maureen O'Brien confessed they were not too sure about the script before recording it. You get the impression that wasn't the case this time around as everyone commits to the comedy with full gusto. Matthew Waterhouse is an especial revelation in this case, and I wish we'd had a bit more of Adric in here. Janet Fielding, meanwhile, observes that Tegan takes a bit of a backseat here this time. It's a pity for certain, as the relatively recent Time in Office (my favourite main range release in 2017 by far) shows just how compatible Fielding and Tegan are with comedy.

The test of any comedy really is twofold: will it stand up to repeated plays (untested, but I suspect there's enough going on here to let that be the case) and does it remain entertaining for the duration? Thankfully, Khan and Salinsky realize that having four episodes of comedy on the trot may well test listeners' patience and wear the story's premise thin, so the final episode shifts gears to become a chase of sorts where death is a very real possibility and things feel a lot more dangerous than the lighter tone before then would have you necessarily expect. It's a smart move.

I've mentioned the regular cast, but praise must also go to the guest cast here. Patsy Kensit is clearly enjoying herself, for example. I'd quite forgotten she was in it, but the second she started speaking I found myself unable to shift the song I'm Not Scared from my head: I swear her voice hasn't aged a day since she sang that. Elsewhere, Charlotte Lucas is superb as Miranda. Selfish, rude and egotistical, she is that rare hated character where you boo her not because she is inherently evil, but because she is thoroughly dislikable. She's the sort of person you'd go out of your way to avoid in the workplace, knowing she would find fault in everyone else's attitudes bar her own.

Humour is subjective of course and your mileage will vary, but for my money this is a very bold and genuinely amusing start to the year's Big Finish offerings and all praise must go to the writers, the cast (both regular and guest) and Edwards' direction. I'm fairly hesitant to give anything full marks, especially when the impact of something like this is very much weighted on the first listen. Comedies are rarely as fun the second time around; horror films lack the initial impact; thrillers are devoid of some of their thrill once the twists are there. I'm going to make an exception here though. This one's very fun indeed.

+  ORDER this CD via Amazon.co.uk!

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Writer: Matthew J. Elliott

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: March 2017

Reviewed by: Steve Bartle for Doctor Who Online

"In the Vortex, the TARDIS comes under a form of psychic attack – resulting in the abductions of first Adric, then Tegan. Following their trail, the Doctor and Nyssa arrive under the lurid skies of the planet Zaltys, whose entire population has vanished in strange circumstances. Soon, they discover that Zaltys is now the target of treasure seekers, come to scavenge this so-called Planet of the Dead…

Meanwhile, deep below the planet’s surface, Adric learns the earth-shattering reason why the people of Zaltys disappeared... and why they were wise to do so. And Tegan is, quite literally, in the dark – enduring interrogation by the mysterious Clarimonde. Any friend of the Doctor’s is Clarimonde’s enemy... because theirs is a blood feud!"

It wasn’t until reading Peter Davison's recently released autobiography that I realised he has now been doing Big Finish for over fifteen years. It puts into perspective the challenges faced by the writers of Big Finish to continually come up with new ideas while also staying true to the time the stories are set within the series original run.

Although Davison's tenure with Big Finish is lengthy it wasn’t until 2014 when the original ‘Crowded Tardis’ team of the Doctor, Adric, Tegan and Nyssa were reunited once more. In 2017 they are now well into their stride and Zaltys writer Matthew J. Elliott has managed to recapture the sense of relationships that instantly transports you right back to that weekday tea time slot from the early eighties.

All the tropes of that particular era are here and affectionately conveyed. The story opens with a protracted Tardis scene with our four protagonists. Big sister Tegan and little brother Adric are bickering away just as they always did. Tegan is still incessantly going on about getting back to Heathrow and actually goads Adric into showing off his so called superior maths skills and putting them into practice when programming a flight course to her desired destination. The chance to impress naturally appeals to Adrics constant desire to prove his worth to The Doctor, but needles s to say  this goes disastrously wrong leading to the TARDIS crew disappearing one by one. And with that we are off into the heart of the story!

This might be one of the most jam-packed stories Big Finish has ever produced, with so many disparate elements. We have fish people, a wolfman with psychic abilities, and grave robbers - to name a few. And all the while our TARDIS team are encountering these colourful characters, there's the threat of a huge space meteorite heading towards Zaltys that will mean the ultimate destruction of everyone.

Of course Elliot’s real challenge is to serve all the main characters well, a feat the TV series failed at with regularity during this period. As well as getting all their characteristics spot on, Elliott manages to give them all a decent narrative strand too. Nyssa is paired with The Doctor as she frequently was in the original run; Adric forms an uneasy alliance with the custodians of Zaltys in a very similar vein to his questionable allegiances in Four To Doomsday and State Of Decay. Additionally Tegan gets plenty of time in a ventilation shaft. What could be more appropriate than that!!

Special mention should go to Rebecca Roots' portrayal of Sable who brings a deadpan style of delivery that makes you really warm to the character and want to see her on more adventures. Phillip Franks and Niamh Cusack are also effective as the questionable villains of the story.

Elliott also writes Davison's Fifth incarnation extremely well too. I always enjoy the breathless energy that he injects into every story but here we also get the acerbic wit that we know his portrayal was capable of but never truly had the opportunity to show consistently on TV. Perhaps only in Time Crash, so many years later, did we see what his potential for humour truly was.

At certain points in the story you wonder how Elliott is going to tie all these storylines together, as it seems all the strands are running parallel and yet so separate, but manage it he does, and with aplomb. It is almost a shame we don’t get to spend more time with all the fascinating characters that he has created for our enjoyment.

However the real gem of this story for me is some of the interaction between the regulars. There are a couple of standout scenes for me; at one point Tegan questions whether Adric was happier when it was just The Doctor and him onboard the TARDIS and when one thinks back to the opening scenes of The Keeper Of Traken and Logopolis it would be hard to argue that wasn’t the case. Additionally a scene towards the end between The Doctor and Adric which, knowing Adrics ultimate fate, is extremely emotive.

Overall a great showcase for one of my favourite TARDIS teams; once again and a very ambitious story that revels in seemingly pulling together various storyline strands into a satisfying conclusion.

+  ORDER this CD via Amazon.co.uk!

Manufacturer: Big Finish Productions

Writer: Phil Mulryne

RRP: £14.99 (CD) / £12.99 (Download)

Release Date: February 2017

Reviewed by: Steve Bartle for Doctor Who Online

"London, 1864 - where any gentleman befitting the title ‘gentleman’ belongs to a gentlemen’s club: The Reform, The Athenaeum, The Carlton, The Garrick… and, of course, The Contingency. Newly established in St James’, The Contingency has quickly become the most exclusive enclave in town. A refuge for men of politics, men of science, men of letters. A place to escape. A place to think. A place to be free.

The first rule of the Contingency is to behave like a gentleman. The second is to pay no heed to its oddly identical servants. Or to the horror in its cellars. Or to the existence of the secret gallery on its upper floor… Rules that the Doctor, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan are all about to break."

I grew up during the era of the crowded Tardis. Admittedly I was only age 5 but I have distinctly clear memories of a beleaguered Doctor trying to keep relative peace in his time machine with an ever growing bunch of stowaways and orphans joining him for adventures...with the added factor this eclectic bunch weren’t always necessarily happy to be there! Viewing the DVD range more recently you really appreciate what a job he had on his hands at times and one wonders why he continued to journey with them all, on occasions. At times the Fifth Doctor almost adopted the role of headmaster - something which he outright claims in this story!

However, despite the family style friction, this era of the show always gives me a warm fuzzy glow and saw a return to the episodic nature of the black and white days where stories sometimes bled into each other and references were made to previous adventures. Looking back through much more mature and critical eyes you can see where stories were creaking under the pressure of trying to cater for all these different principal characters, and there was an over-reliance on somewhat one-dimensional specific character tropes.

You might be concerned from the opening scenes that this tale veers between paying homage to this era or possibly regurgitating old material. The key protagonists are easily identifiable with their TV portrayals. Adric is somewhat annoying and antagonistic of Tegan, in this case regarding the primitive nature of a cassette player (which is a crucial item in the denouement). Check. Tegan is irascible and talks about Heathrow nonstop, as well as making generic references to flying. Check. Nyssa is...well Nyssa. Pragmatic and pleasant. Check. And of course Peter Davison effortlessly injects his usual breathless energy that always made his incarnation a hero in the truest form. Check. (Thank goodness!)

All four tend to bring out the argumentative side in each other, through constant chiding and witty barbs which too often on TV appeared somewhat childish at times. However, here writer Phil Mulryne has captured the flavour of the interaction of Season 19, but is more effective with the playful banter. This interplay immediately aids in casting the listener back to that time where Doctor Who was arguably more like a soap opera until its 2005 return, but without grating on your nerves.

What of the story itself? Well it’s a bit of a curio. Centred on the titular Contingency Club; an exclusive club in Victorian London where the gentlemen of the upper social strata gather to think, talk and, of course, drink. The clubs' popularity is such that membership is swelling and their restrictive policy for new members make it more appealingly exclusive. This club is the place to be.

The Tardis team, via unorthodox means, visit the club and, very early on, it becomes patently evident that something VERY strange is going on. The members of the club refuse to acknowledge that Tegan and Nyssa are women! The valets are all called Edward and are identical! Plus absolutely no one comments on the foursomes’ strange garments or their presence there at all.

And if all that wasn’t bizarre enough we have the mysterious club owner Mr Peabody and his even more mysterious benefactor, The Red Queen, who has an insidious reason for the club existing in the first place - all centred around a seemingly futile game.

There is some good comedy to be had in this one especially around the plurality of the ‘Edwards’! And surely “we’ll break our necks on the pavements of Pall Mall” might be one of the strangest cliff hanger statements ever! Ultimately this boils down to a gothic mystery in a Victorian Steampunk environment. Matthew Waterhouse, Sarah Sutton and Janet Fielding all effortlessly slip back into their roles and, unlike on TV, they are all served pretty well without any of them really being side-lined. But it’s Peter Davison whose star shines the brightest as he drives the narrative and perfectly recaptures every trait that made him a success. Sardonic wit, bravery, vulnerability and going full tilt in every scene. It’s all here!

Arguably the story is a little light weight in places but is a genuine attempt at something different, captures the TARDIS crew perfectly from the early eighties, and is a fun romp from start to finish.  Highly recommended. Want to listen? Join the club. 

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The fifth instalment in a sensational series of stories celebrating the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who is written by Patrick Ness, multi-award winning author of the Chaos Walking trilogy and the Carnegie winning A Monster Calls.

Speaking to DWO, Patrick had the following to say on his upcoming title:

"I was delighted to be asked! And the Fifth Doctor is so interesting, too. I've been saying he's the one of all of them who would most likely be a novelist. Always watching, observing, before leaping into action.

Tip of the Tongue is about a fad that's swept through the teens of a small Maine town during WWII. And of course, nothing is what it seems.  Maybe I shouldn't say anymore.

But I did think, as this Doctor is the most observant of all the Doctors, why not make this story one of those where he doesn't actually take centre-stage?  One of those where a non-canon character is the lead and we see the Doctor through their eyes. I always like those episodes. They really remind you of the wonderful strangeness of the Doctor"

Synopsis:

In 1945, a strange new craze for Truth Tellers is sweeping the kids of small-town America. The Fifth Doctor and Nyssa soon arrive to investigate the phenomenon, only to discover that the actual truth behind the Truth Tellers is far more sinister than anyone could have imagined…

Eleven Doctors, eleven months, eleven stories: a year-long celebration of Doctor Who! The most exciting names in children's fiction each create their own unique adventure about the time-travelling Time Lord.

About the author:

Born in Virginia, USA Patrick Ness spent his upbringing in the states of Hawaii, Washington and California before moving permanently to the UK.

He is the author of the Chaos Walking trilogy which established him as one of the most original and exciting writers of today. The trilogy has won many awards including the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, the Costa Children’s Book Award, the Booktrust Teenage Prize and the CILIP Carnegie Medal.

Patrick’s sixth book A Monster Calls received high critical acclaim and is the winner of the Children’s Book of the Year Award at the Galaxy National Book Awards, the Red House Children’s Book Award and the UKLA Children’s Book Prize.

In June 2012, A Monster Calls became the first book ever to win both prestigious CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals. His highly anticipated new novel for adults, The Crane Wife, was inspired by a Japanese folk tale and just published by Canongate in April 2013.

A daring new YA novel More Than This is forthcoming later this year from Walker (Candlewick in the US).

+  Tip Of The Tongue is released on 23rd May 2013, Priced £1.99.

+  Preorder this eBook on Amazon for £1.99.
+  Preorder this eBook from iTunes for £1.99.

+  Check Out Patrick Ness's Website.

[Source: Puffin Books]

BBC Consumer Products have sent DWO the cover and details for the Doctor Who DVD release of The Visitation: Special Edition.

The Visitation: Special Edition
Featuring: The 5th Doctor

It’s 1666, and medieval England is in the grip of the Great Plague. But when the Doctor and his companions arrive, they discover an even greater threat: the entire planet is in danger.

As the Grim Reaper stalks the countryside, the Doctor uncovers an alien menace intent on wiping out humanity and claiming our planet for themselves.

The Terileptils have arrived – and only the Doctor can stop them…

Special Features:

Disc One: 

•  Commentary with Peter Davison (the Fifth Doctor), Janet Fielding (Tegan), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), Matthew Waterhouse (Adric) and director Peter Moffatt.
•  Grim Tales - Brand-new 45-minute documentary. Former companion Mark Strickson takes Peter Davison, Janet Fielding and Sarah Sutton back to the original filming locations while other cast and crew discuss their memories of the story.
•  The Television Centre of the Universe: Part One - Peter Davison, Mark Strickson and Janet Fielding return to BBC Television Centre and meet up with old friends and colleagues to reminisce on their time in the iconic building.
•  Doctor Forever: The Apocalypse Element - Examining the world of Doctor Who on audio. Including interviews with Colin Baker, Russell T Davies, Mark Gatiss and many others.
•  Film Trims Shots and sequences cut from the finished programme.
•  Directing Who: Peter Moffatt.
•  Writing A Final Visitation.
•  Scoring The Visitation - Interview with composer Paddy Kingsland.
•  Subtitle Production Notes.
•  Radio Times listings and BBC Sales Sheet.
•  Photo Gallery.
•  Coming soon trailer.
•  Isolated Music Score.
•  Easter Egg.
•  Digitally remastered picture and sound quality

+  The Visitstion: Special Edition is released on 6th May 2013, priced £20.42.

+  Compare Prices for this product on CompareTheDalek.com.

+  Check Out the DWO Release Guide entry for this product.

[Source: BBC Consumer Products]

It is with deepest regret that DWO announces the passing of Classic Series Doctor Who Costume Designer, Colin Lavers.

Colin was the credited costumer for four Doctor Who serials, most in the Peter Davison era. As the designer of costumes for Four to Doomsday — the first adventure that Davison recorded — he was responsible for helping to realise The Fifth Doctor's iconic "look".

One part of The Fifth Doctor's costume that was not his idea was the retention of the question mark-lapeled shirt from Tom Baker's season 18 look. He was specifically asked to keep them in, via a 10 February 1981 memo from John Nathan-Turner to Lavers. "I do feel that the Doctor Who shirt with the '?' mark on the lapels is worth hanging on to," wrote Nathan-Turner.

A couple of years later, Lavers' duties on The Five Doctors gave him the opportunity to clothe a wide range of Doctors and companions, some of whom had never been seen on colour television before. Combined with his turns on his other two serials, The Power of Kroll and The King's Demons, he provided outfits for more recurring characters in "classic" Doctor Who than any other costumer.

He provided new or significantly modified outfits for the Fifth Doctor, The Master, Susan, Sarah Jane, Liz, Zoe, Jamie, the Brigadier, Romana I and Tegan. He recreated costumes for Mike Yates and The First, Second and Third Doctors. Although he didn't actually design this last group's costumes, their Five Doctors costumes were at least subtly different from those they had worn in any other serial. In his stories, Lavers failed to provide costumes for only two main characters: Turlough and the Fourth Doctor

DWO would like to extend our sympathies to Colin's family and friends.

[Sources: Richard Kewing; TARDIS Index File]

It is with deepest regret that DWO announces the passing of Classic Series Doctor Who VFX Desginer, Peter Wragg.

Peter was perhaps best known to Doctor Who fans for his work on the 5th Doctor adventures; The Visitation & Resurrection of the Daleks and the 6th Doctor adventure; Minwarp, which formed part of the Trial of a Time Lord season.

DWO would like to extend our sympathies to Peter's family and friends.

[Source: Steve Freestone]