Tag Archives: audio

Recent Big Finish: Tenth Doctor, Fourth Doctor, Martha Jones

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So, I’m rather far behind with writing up my recent Big Finish listening – last time I mentioned it was in July. Three boxed sets of audio plays to cover quickly in summary here.

My favourite of these is a set of three stories with the Tenth Doctor and Classic Companions. All three bring David Tennant together with John Leeson as K9. The first, Splinters by John Dorney, features Louise Jameson as Leela; the second, The Stuntman by Lizzie Hopley, has Sarah Sutton as Nyssa, and the third, Quantum of Axos by Roy Gill, has Sophie Aldred as Ace. All three stories have fantastic chemistry between Tennant and the others – the arrivals of Leela and K9 are the first changes to the regular cast he remembers as a young fan, and clearly everyone is thrilled to bits to be performing with each other. It was also interesting that all three stories play with themes of identity, memory and nostalgia, which always appeal to me too. Dorney, Hopley and Gill are among Big Finish’s more reliable writers, and they have delivered here. Strongly recommended. Here’s a trailer to whet your appetite.

Another New Who spinoff comes in the form of The Year of Martha Jones, set during the year that Martha travels the world while the aged-up Doctor is the Master’s prisoner. We’ve already had a print anthology set in this period; this however is better, getting off to an excellent start in The Last Diner by the always reliable James Goss, a more Western-y The Silver Medal by Tim Foley, and a well-executed climax in Deceived by Matt Fitton. Martha is joined by Adjoa Andoh playing her mother Francine, who has apparently escaped the Master, and Serin Ibrahim as old friend Holly. (Also Clare Louise Connolly plays the Toclafance in all three stories.) Guest stars include Marina Sirtis, best known as Deanna Troi in Star Trek, in the first episode.

The fifth set of Ninth Doctor adventures, Back to Earth, sees Christopher Ecclestone’s time as the Doctor on audio overtaking his record on TV. To be honest I was less wowed by this trilogy than by some of the others, but these are all decent enough stories. Station to Station by Robert Valentine has the Doctor helping a young woman (Indigo Griffiths) out of a strange predicament in a deserted railway station. The False Dimitry by Sarah Grochala brings a Whovian spin to a corner of Russian history, the title character playedby Alexander Arnold. And Auld Lang Syne, another one by Time Foley, has a spooky New Year’s Eve party where all is not what it seems; veteran Wendy Craig makes an appearance as the great-aunt. I got the sense that Big Finish is trying out younger writers and actors in this range, which is fine. Here, again is a trailer.

I’m also way behind on noting the Fourth Doctor box sets that I have been listening to, but I think I’ll save those for another post – the above three are all worth getting anyway.

Ninth Doctor Adventures: Old Friends

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Trailer:

As previously noted, I’ve been increasingly enjoying the Big Finish audio adventures with Christopher Eccleston reprising his role as the Ninth Doctor, and this was another good set installment. Unusually the three stories are a singleton and a two-parter, so you’ll need to plan your listening accordingly.

The first story, Fond Farewell, is set in an intergalactic funeral parlour where the decedents are resurrected in replica to preside over their own memorial ceremonies. Roger Zelazny had a similar idea in his short story “Walpurgisnacht” (collected in the original and better Unicorn Variations). All is not what is seems, as the deceased archæologist who the Doctor wishes to honour has left a complex situation of romance and memory.

Heavy star power in the form of Juliet Stevenson as the grieving widow, though Emily Taaffe (a rare Irish voice) is more dominant as one-off companion Sasha. It’s by David K. Barnes, who also wrote the First Doctor/Second Doctor mashup Daughter of the Gods and one of the episodes of Doctor Who: Redacted. Good enough.

The two-parter Way of the Burrymen / The Forth Generation brings together Eccleston, Cybermen and the Brigadier (this is not a spoiler as they all feature on the cover). It is by Roy Gill who wrote the first of the Class spinoff audios and a Tenth Doctor story. The Tardis lands in Edinburgh in the present day where there is anthropology, the Forth bridge, and tragic doomed romance.

Jon Culshaw does a very good and respectful job of evoking Nicholas Courtney in his later years (and of course the very first UNIT adventure also featured the Cybermen). But there is a lovely dynamic between the two lovers at the centre of the story, played by Warren Brown and Elinor Lawless. A good cap to the first dozen Eccleston audios.

You can get the set here.

Blake’s 7: The Way Forward, and The Classic Adventures Series 01

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Housekeeping point: I spent the last two weeks mainly commuting to work by car rather than by train, so my blogging has caught up with my reading backlog. This week I’m going to write up my recent audio listening instead of bookblogging. Normal service will resume at some point.

Absolutely ages back I listened to a few of the Big Finish Blake’s 7 audios (here, here and here). Around the start of this year I got a couple of full cast stories: the 40th anniversary The Way Forward, from 2018, and the first series in BF’s sequence of Classic Adventures of B7, released in 2014.

I probably listened to them in the wrong order: the absence of Gareth Thomas, who died in 2016, from the first half of the 2018 The Way Ahead is palpable. It’s a two parter centring around the character Avalon (from the episode Project: Avalon), the first part set during Series A and the second during Series C. Avalon herself and Dayna have been recast (Olivia Poulet and Yasmin Bannerman), and Glynis Barber plays Soolin’s daughter rather than Soolin for rights-related reasons, but everyone else is there – Paul Darrow as Avon, Michael Keating as Vila Restal, Sally Knyvette as Jenna, Jan Chappell as Cally, Steven Pacey as Tarrant, Jacqueline Pearce as Servalan and Stephen Greif as Travis. It’s a cracking script by Mark Wright and a great nostalgia fest. You can get it here.

Series One of the Classic Adventures certainly gave me the appetite for more. It starts with an excellent psychodrama, Fractures by the ever reliable Justin Richards (who has written more Doctor Who books and stories than anyone else alive, I think); and then goes into a sequence of five tightly linked stories by different writers, Andres Smith, Mark Platt, Peter Anghelides and the last two by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright. Gareth Thomas was still alive in 2014 and gives his best here, along with the aforementioned Paul Darrow, Michael Keating (who gets a particularly good Vila plotline), Jan Chappell and Sally Knyvette, with Brian Croucher as Travis this time, and Hugh Fraser coming in at the end as the tremendously nasty President of the Federation. This is six hours of top-notch drama for (in my country) €25, incredible value. You can get it here.