Big Finish have not yet got Matt Smith or Peter Capaldi (or Ncuti Gatwa) to reprise their incarnations of the Doctor on audio, but they got a significant score with Jody Whittaker and Mandeep Gill reprising their roles as the Doctor and Yasmin Khan, and launched their Thirteenth Doctor range with this set of three stories, released late last year. Spoiler: I liked all three of them, and have a special reason for loving the third.
Vampire Weekend by safe pair of hands Tim Foley (see here, here and here) kicks off with the Doctor tagging along with Yaz to a hen weekend in the Peak District, where unfortunately (as you might expect from the title) one of the other guests is a vampire. The plot is straightforward but the chemistry between the two leads is palpable, and makes the whole thing a lot of fun. You can get Vampire Weekend here.
The Return of the Doctor, by newcomer Rory Thomas-Howes, is perhaps the least surefooted of the three. Yasmin asks the Doctor to look at what has happened to a planet where they have already saved the day. The cover illustration is a bit misleading because it shows a character who looks like Sutekh, but is actually one of the armadillo-like inhabitants of the planet, where of course the Doctor’s benevolent intervention turns out to have completely misfired. The script takes Yaz to a place of questioning what the Doctor is actually for, and what indeed companions like her are for, which is slightly tricky territory, questioning the entire format of the Whoniverse, and I thought the script didn’t navigate that territory with full confidence. You can get The Return of the Doctor here.
I cheered when I realised that Lionesses in Winter, by Lisa McMullen, another safe pair of hands especially in historical territory, is in fact a riff on The Lion in Winter, the play famously filmed with Peter O’Toole and Katherine Hepburn in 1968, and less famously with Patrick Stewart and Glenn Close in 2003. Like the original, it is set at Christmas 1183, a brief moment of reconciliation between Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II. But we start to diverge from recorded history, and the cause of the divergence and What Is Really Going On is well done in sfnal terms and rooted in the historical facts. But basically I will always lap up anything about Eleanor of Aquitaine. Debra Baker, playing Eleanor here, is probably the biggest name of the guest actors for any of these three.
The extra track of commentary by cast and crew has some thoughtful reflection by Mandip Gill and the producer of this series, Noga Flaishon, about the meaning of Christmas and the Christmas holidays for non-Christians operating in a traditionally Christian country. (Although Mandip Gill portrays a Muslim character in Doctor Who, she is actually Sikh by background. Noga Flaishon is Israeli.)
You can get Lionesses in Winter here.
