Tag Archives: doctor who: audio spinoffs

Beyond the Doctor: Bessie Come Home, London 1965, Sleeper Agents, The Penumbra Affair, all by Paul Magrs

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The BBC released a series of short audiobooks in 2021-22, each taking a companion or companions from the classic series and imagining what happened after their time with the Doctor ended. The first of these is The Kairos Ring, by Stephen Gallagher, bringing Romana and the Tharils to the American Civil War, and I had read it as part of the expanded Warrior’s Gate novelisation, though you can get it separately here. The next four are a connected set of stories by Paul Magrs, and I listened to them several weeks ago with the intention of writing them up in time for Gallifrey (but did not have time).

We start with Bessie Come Home, narrated by Stephanie Cole as Bessie. She is best known (by me anyway) as co-star with Graham Crowden in the sit-com Waiting for God. (Playing a pensioner, she turned 50 while that series was being made.) It’s a nice idea to give a voice to Bessie, the yellow Edwardian car acquired by the Third Doctor and driven also by the Fourth and Seventh Doctors, and the story is an amusing recapitulation of the adventures that Bessie participated in, a real nostalgia fest. The ending has a twist that I was not really sure about; the majority of reviewers felt that it capped the story nicely, but I found it a bit contrived. (I know, I know, an odd complaint to make of a story about a sentient car…)

You can get Bessie Come Home here.

I felt the sequence getting a little more into its stride with London, 1965, which tells the story of Ian and Barbara returning to London after two years away. It is read by Jamie Glover, who has been playing Ian Chesterton in recent Big Finish plays (and played William Russell in An Adventure in Space and Time). Rather than floating into a fairytale ending, the two former time travellers find it very difficult to readjust to life in London and become distant from each other; Ian is sucked into writing a science fiction show by the mysterious Mr Harman, while Barbara becomes a subject of the psychic researches of the enigmatic Angela Leaman. There are lots of knowing nods to Who continuity and to Sixties culture. I felt that this was the best of the four, and the story is sufficiently independent that you could enjoy it on its own.

You can get London, 1965 here.

Sleeper Agents takes us to and beyond the other end of the First Doctor’s era, with Ben and Polly returning to London on the day that they left. This time the narrator is Anneke Wills, the only one of the four to have actually been on TV Who, reprising her role as Polly. Again we have Mr Harman and Miss Leaman, and a good role for Polly’s pet cat, and a mysterious Arctic Island; but it’s a bit of a middle story in the arc, with the ending leaving some plot strands to be resolved.

You can get Sleeper Agents here.

Finally, The Penumbra Affair brings back Susan Jameson as Mrs Wibbsey, the Fourth Doctor’s housekeeper in the Nest Cottage series of BBC audios written a decade earlier by Paul Magrs, featuring Tom Baker before he decided to work with Big Finish. Mrs Wibbsey receives a letter warning that all of the Doctor’s former companions are in danger, and falls into correspondence with Polly Wright, now retired, who ends up on her doorstep for Christmas. The Nest Cottage setting is beautifully realised, and there’s a good twist on exactly how Angela Leamann fits into the story. It wouldn’t make much sense to listeners who are not familiar with both the previous three stories, and the Nest Cottage series, but in that context it works perfectly well. It’s a shame that Susan Jameson has never been in TV Who.

You can get The Penumbra Affair here.

There is technically a sixth audiobook in the series, but it’s a reading of Ian Marter’s novel Harry Sullivan’s War, the narrator being Christopher Naylor who also plays Harry Sullivan for Big Finish, Ian Marter being sadly unavailable. I didn’t feel compelled to revisit it. You can get the audio version of Harry Sullivan’s War here.

In conclusion: give London, 1965 a go, and if you like it, try the others as well.

Beyond The Sun, by Matthew Jones

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

I ran a finger down the side of his face and he shuddered and wrinkled his nose as if trying to discourage an insect. And then he turned on to his back and began to snore loudly.

When I first read this in 2009, I wrote:

I only realised after reading this that I had already heard the excellent audio adaptation which includes Sophie Aldred and Anneke Wills. The original book is very good too, and I think would be reasonably penetrable for someone who hadn’t previously followed the Bernice Summerfield stories. Nicely observed emotional politics between and among Benny and her students, and the various aliens with whom Benny’s ex gets them involved. To a certain extent I felt it was the story that Colony In Space should have been. A good one (only the second Benny novel I have read, the first being the equally enjoyable Walking to Babylon).

I reread it in 2015, but in the midst of Clarke and other obligations didn’t write it up that time. My original plan was only to revisit the Bernice Summerfield novels that I have never written up at all, but then I thought, I actually enjoyed this and I wonder if a return visit will work? And it did; as well as the nicely judged emotional and physical perils of Benny and her students, there’s a particularly wacky alien reproduction process which often results in hot-looking humanoids, and a deceptive Ancient Weapon. One of the good ones. You can (probably) get it here.

I had written of the audio in 2007:

Beyond the Sun is another archaeological dig-goes-wrong story but introduces the character of Jason, Benny’s ex-husband, and lots of emotional angst as well as the actual plot. I was completely absorbed in it, and yet failed to spot the voices of Sophie Aldred and Anneke Wills until I read the sleeve notes afterwards.

I spotted Anneke Wills this time, but failed to spot Sophie Aldred, who is actually a very versatile actor. But the star is Lisa Bowerman, really getting into her stride here as Bernice, with sarcasm and emotion, helping us through what’s actually a rather convoluted plot. The only one of the first season audios not adapted by Jac Rayner but by Matt Jones, the original author. You can get it here.

The Peladon audio plays

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For reasons that I may or may not divulge, I have been listening to the Big Finish plays set on the planet Peladon. There are six of these: The Bride of Peladon, a main sequence Fifth Doctor story from 2008; The Prisoner of Peladon, a 2009 Companion Chronicles story starring David Troughton as King Peladon again; and a four-story box-set from 2022, set at different points in Peladon’s history and with a largely different cast for each play.

The first of these is more than two hours long, and all the rest are over an hour, for a total listening time of the guts of nine hours. I found them very rewarding, especially (shout-out in advance) The Death of Peladon by Mark Wright, the third of the four-fold sequence. Robert Valentine, as script editor for the 2022 stories, drew up a timeline for Peladon’s history, so you can experience the stories in historical order if you like (though I’m writing them up here in release order):

Valentine explained on Twitter/X that the events of the Gary Russell novel Legacy got eaten in the Time War, so the audio sequence should not be understood to be in the same continuity as the book.

In 2009, I wrote:

I loved The Bride of Peladon: OK, a substantial amount of it is a retread of The Curse of Peladon, but that is probably my favourite Third Doctor story so it’s not a bad start; and then we have the Osirans as in Pyramids of Mars, as well as Ice Warriors, Alpha Centauri, Aggedor, Arcturans and all. Erimem’s departure is as you would expect (though we have some good misdirection) and Peri promises that she will not leave the Doctor to marry an alien king. I laughed so loud at that line that passers-by were very startled. But you also have Phyllida Law as the royal grandmother, and Jenny Agutter as the baddie, and it’s generally excellent.

Sixteen years later, I agree with myself. It’s a tremendous ensemble piece, one of my favourite Big Finishes. I should have said that Caroline Morris as Erimem, the Egyptian princess who is a companion for the Fifth Doctor in a dozen Big Finish plays, and Nicola Bryant as Peri, both put in great performances and have very sparkly chemistry in their last appearance together. It’s a bit odd that the dodgy McGuffin can tell who has royal descent by sniffing their blood though. You can get it here.

Also in 2009, I wrote:

The Prisoner of Peladon, by Mark Wright and Cavan Scott, is the latest in the Big Finish series of Companion Chronicles, although this time the story is told by a non-companion who appeared in only one story in 1972, King Peladon of the eponymous planet (played by David Troughton, son of Patrick, who has also of course appeared in other Who stories both Old and New and recently took on the cloak and dead bird of the Black Guardian for Big Finish). Troughton is, as ever, great, and Nicholas Briggs is, as ever, good as the monsters (Ice Warriors this time, of course). The concept is very interesting – Peladon has taken in large numbers of Ice Warrior refugees after an internal conflict, with the result that Ice Warrior politics spills catastrophically over to the host planet; the Third Doctor arrives to sort things out, of course, but – and this is the bit I really liked – the King gets a brilliant rant about how badly Three behaves to people, to which the Doctor has no answer. Scott and Wright would not have got away with it if Pertwee was still alive, but it gladdened my heart. (This was directed by Nicola Bryant who herself visited Peladon as Peri in a Fifth Doctor audio last year.)

I should make it clear that this was a format of Big Finish plays where there were only two actors, Troughton (jr) and Briggs with Troughton doing the narration and most of the voices. Listening to it again, I stand by all of the above, and it is really remarkable how prescient the refugees plotline turned out to be – this was in 2009 when the flows from Iraq and Afghanistan had slowed to a trickle, the Syria war had not yet begun, and the wave of economic migrants from sub-Saharan Africa was also yet to become a thing. You can get it here.

The four-volume box set from 2022 features Jane Goddard as Alpha Centauri in three of the four episodes, but different rulers of Peladon in each. (And unseen growling Aggedors throughout.) This brief promotional video name-checks the other big stars, but also showcases Howard Carter’s tremendous moody interpretation of “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” (aka “Klokkleda, Partha Mennin Klatch”) which is a unifying theme tune for all four plays.

The first of the four stories is The Ordeal of Peladon, by Jonathan Barnes and series script editor Robert Valentine. This brings back David Troughton as King Peladon in old age, dealing with a wandering prophet and a cosmic inspection by the Federation. The plot takes us on a journey across Peladon for the first time – up to now we have only seen the citadel itself and the Ice Warrior refugee camps – and gives a strong sense of a world with gross inequality and structural stress, setting the scene for the next three plays. Both the prophet and his acolyte are played by Black actors (Ashley Zhangazha and Moyo Akandé), which of course has further resonances. There is a well-judged cameo from Qnivq Graanag nf gur Sbhegrragu Qbpgbe at the end.

The Poison of Peladon, by the normally reliable Lizzie Hopley, was probably the one of the four that worked least well for me. River Song is posing as a high priestess at the court of Queen Thalira (played here by Deborah Findley); Ribble the Arcturan (Justin Salinger) is posing as a friend but actually fomenting revolution; Chancellor Gobran (Aaron Neil) is spreading literal poison; there is a villainous Earth priest played by Ariyon Bakare (recently the evil Barber in The Story and the Engine). A lot of moving plot parts that didn’t gel as much as I’d have liked. (Also, for me there is only one Ribble.)

On the other hand, the Death of Peladon by Mark Wright is a taut and well-structured political drama, with an all-female guest cast. A hundred years on from The Poison of Peladon and fifty years on from The Bride of Peladon, Queen Minaris (Sara Powell) and her disaffected daughter Isabelda (Remmie Milner) face both a dissatisfied population led by insurgent Helais (Liz White) and environmental disaster from the (now exhausted) trisilicate mines. The Sixth Doctor and Mel tumble into this but it’s mainly up to the Pels to sort themselves out.

Finally, The Truth of Peladon is more or less a two-hander between Paul McGann and Meera Syal, the latter playing expert seamstress Arla Decanto, who the Doctor persuades to become a rebel by showing her the dark side of Peladon’s society, rather like the Three Ghosts and Scrooge. Jason Watkins gets a look in as evil Chancellor Barok, and Nicholas Briggs turns up again too. Syal is always great, but I did not quite understand why the Royal Seamstress in particular needed to have her eyes opened.

I thought this was a very decent box set. As I said, the third episode was exceptional, and even the second is far from dreadful. You can get it here.

Dragon’s Wrath, by Justin Richards

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

‘So, what do you think?’ Benny asked for about the fifth time in as many minutes.

Justin Richards is the most prolific of living Doctor Who authors – I am not completely sure if he has overtaken Terrance Dicks by now, but if not, I am sure that he will. Usually his writing is accessible and enjoyable, so I’m sorry to report that I somewhat bounced off this, the second of the independent Bernice Summerfield novels. It’s a story about a historical artefact which appears to exist in several duplicate forms, but the format kept shifting from strange dig to heist to detective novel to courtroom drama, and I felt too much was being put in without enough explanation of what was going on. A rare miss for me, for both author and series. You can get it here, at a price.

When I listened to the audio version first time round, in 2007, I wrote:

Dragon’s Wrath, like Oh, No It Isn’t!, is detached from the narrative of the other four stories. It is, frankly, not as good; plot too obvious, guest star (Richard Franklin) not sufficiently engaged, sound recording rather poor in places, basically rather skippable.

Re-listening confirmed my impressions from the first time around, and I will add that the end is very rushed. It’s interesting the Big Finish slipped it in at the end of their first Bernice Summerfield season, getting the other (and in my view better) stories out the door first. You can get it here.

Jenny and Susan: The Doctor’s daughter and the Doctor’s granddaughter

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Two more Big Finish audios to report on in my week of BF write-ups: these concern the only canonical descendants of the Doctor in TV Who (though there is an adopted daughter as well in spinoff fiction). Carole Ann Ford returns after fifty-something years to play Susan in the aftermath of the Daleks’ Invasion of Earth, and Georgia Tennant comes back for a second series of adventures as Jenny, the Doctor’s daughter. In both cases they are backed up by Sean Biggerstaff as the male lead.

I hugely enjoyed the first series of audios featuring Georgia Tennant as Jenny, and hugely enjoyed the second, Jenny: Still Running, as well. (In the meantime we’ve also had an excellent double header-with Peter Davison and another with Michelle Ryan as Christina de Souza.) In all cases she is backed up by Sean Biggerstaff as the naive but enigmatic Noah, who does not know his own origins.

The first of these, Inside the Moldovarium by Adrian Poynton, brings back Simon Fisher-Becker as Dorium Maldovar from the TV stories A Good Man Goes to War and The Wedding of River Song. Jenny and Noah discover that he is trying to sell a TARDIS to the highest bidder, and attempt to intervene; but the situation turns out to be more complex than they thought. Everyone is clearly enjoying themselves.

In the second, Altered Status by Christian Brassington and Matt Fitton, a closed society is gradually being taken over by Suits who strongly resemble the Mondasian Cybermen of The Tenth Planet and Spare Parts; I have always found the Cybermen the least interesting of the classic Who monsters, but a good effort is made here.

The highlight of the set is the third play, Calamity Jenny by John Dorney. As you will surmise from the title, it’s a Western story with narration by Michael Brandon (Mr Glynis Barber) and only two other named actors, Jana Carpenter (killed by the Dalek in Dalek) and veteran voice actor James Goode. There are a couple of lovely key concepts here – an unlucky crystal that causes the owner to achieve the opposite of what they want, and a neatly done time paradox. Dorney is one of Big Finish’s best writers, and that is high praise.

But I also really liked the final installment, Her Own Worst Enemy by Lisa McMullin. The first Jenny series featured Jenny and Noah being pursued by a killer cyborg played by Siân Phillips, who you may remember from I CLAVDIVS and who turns 90 next year. In this story Jenny and Noah go back along the cyborg’s timeline to try and prevent it from becoming a killer, making interesting discoveries about the future society from which it came. A core plot element, of social engineering and weeding out the unfit, is reprised from Altered Status but I think done a bit better, and there is a brutal twist ending setting up the next Jenny series. Anyway, recommended and you can get it here.

I think Siân Phillips is not quite the oldest actor to appear in a Big Finish audio; that honour must belong to William Russell, who was born in 1924 and reprised Ian Chesterton in a 2020 story starring Carole Ann Ford as Susan. I listened to that and enjoyed it during the pandemic, but failed to write it up at the time (I may get back to it).

In After the Daleks, Roland Moore (who I think is a new writer for me) tells the story of Susan and her boyfriend David (played by Sean Biggerstaff, as noted above, rather than Peter Fraser who has not been seen since 1981) in the immediate aftermath of the repulsion of the Daleks and the departure of the TARDIS without Susan on it. We have another character called Jenny, retained from the original 1964-5 story but this time played by Lucy Briers, daughter of Ann Davies who originated the role (but sadly died earlier this year) and also of Richard Briers. It’s a good complex drama suggesting that the worst monsters sometimes come in human form. You can get it here.

The Eighth of March 2: Protectors of Time

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A set of three plays from Big Finish all starring women from the Whoniverse – in fact, all bringing women characters together from the TV shows who did not meet on screen, or only met once – produced for International Women’s Day this year (they did the same in 2020, but I don’t seem to have reviewed that box set, though I enjoyed it too).

The first of these, Stolen Futures by Lizbeth Myles, is a sequel to the enigmatic Fourth Doctor story Warrior’s Gate, directed by Louise Jameson, following Lalla Ward’s Romana and John Leeson’s K9 as they start to liberate the Tharils from oppression, with Big Finish stalwart John Dorney and Louise Jameson’s ex David Warwick in the cast. It may not make much sense to you if you don’t remember Warrior’s Gate, but I do remember Warrior’s Gate and I really loved it; a strong concept and a strong script.

I’m apparently in a minority in not loving the middle play, Prism by Abigail Burdess. It brings together Georgia Tennant as Jenny, the Doctor’s Daughter, and Michelle Ryan as Lady Christina de Souza, in an adventure with a large, possibly very large diamond. I had some difficulty following the plot and the two leads are very similar to each other in character and voice.

But I felt we were cooking on gas again with the last of the three, The Turn of the Tides by Nina Millns (like Abigail Burdess a new writer for the Whoniverse). Here we have Katy Manning’s Jo Jones (nee Grant) and Anjli Mohindra’s Rani Chandra reunited, in the Amazon, with a UNIT character who I confess I had forgotten about, facing global catastrophe. It’s very much in tune with the times and also a nice nostalgia moment for Jo and (vicariously) Sarah Jane Smith.

Anwyay, all three are recommended, and you can get them here.