Another in my sequence of First Doctor audios which I got back in January, this one dating from September 2018. This is really rather good. It’s a look at a society which has done a deal with the Daleks – or rather whose rulers have done a deal, at the expense of the ordinary citizens. The narrative of the Doctor and friends (here Vicki and Stephen) leading a rebellion against oppression is an old one (indeed at one point Vicki notes that she’s done this before), but the contrasting performances of Robert Daws as the evil collaborator Majorian, and Sara Powell (ex-War of the Sontarans), Shvorne Marks and Matthew Jacobs Morgan as the exploited populace is just tremendous; plus of course Nick Briggs as the Daleks, and Peter Purves and Maureen O’Brien doing both their own characters and Hartnell’s Doctor when necessary. I generally enjoy Big Finish audios (and I whine like anything when I don’t) but this is a particular high point.
The author is David K. Barnes, who also wrote the brilliant First Doctor / Second Doctor mashup Daughter of the Gods and one of the creepier Ninth Doctor audios. That’s three hits out of three for me, and I’ll look out for his work in future. Directed by the excellent Lisa Bowerman who rarely misses the mark.
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.
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.
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.
I like Simon Guerrier; up to now I have generally liked his writing; I love Peter Purves both as Stephen and playing the Doctor; in the week when we got the sad news of Jean Marsh’s death, it was lovely to hear her resuming the role of Sara Kingdom; and the story of the Doctor’s first encounter with Sontarans – proper bloodthirsty Lynx and Styre type Sontarans – is well structured and well told.
But I am afraid I don’t like torture scenes, and although of course it’s perfectly consistent with Styre in The Sontaran Experiment, I didn’t like that much either. So it’s a rare thumbs down for me for this particular combination of creators.
Next in the sequence of First Doctor audios, this gives Peter Purves licence to do his famous and excellent William Hartnell impression, along with Maureen O’Brien as Vicki, in a pure historical story which takes place in Florence in 1514. Main characters are Giuliano de’ Medici, ruler of Florence; his brother Pope Leo X; and Niccolo Macchiavelli. There’s also a comic guard and a token Renaissance woman. It’s actually great fun, and my only complaint is that they all pronounce ‘Giuliano’ with a hard ‘g’ – it’s Julie-anno, folks, not Gully-anno. You can get it here.
I slightly regretted my decision to get into the Big Finish First Doctor stories when the last one I tried turned out to be rather a dud. But this is much better, a story of the Doctor, Ian, Barbara, Vicki and Jospa landing on a very alien planet with vividly realised aliens, and also the question of just how many people are in the Tardis crew. It’s a concept that was also visited in the Buffy episode Superstarand the Torchwood episode Adam(and the Torchwood novel Border Princes), but I think we have a new twist here – rather than having a strange new character intruding on our heroes’ regular setup, we have both a strange new character and a strange new world, and this being a Big Finish audio which was released more than fifty years after the TV stories with which it is in continuity sequence, we listeners don’t quite know what to make of it at first. On top of that, as I said, the aliens are very alien and well depicted; and it’s William Russell’s second last audio performance, as both Ian and the Doctor, recorded shortly before his 90th birthday. James Joyce (no relation) is suitably suave as the extra companion Jospa, and Kate Byers as the lead alien. You can get it here.
A two-hour Big Finish audio from 2013, featuring William Russell as Ian (and also playing the Doctor) and Carole Ann Ford as Susan, set during the original first season of Who. Also brings in Jemma Powell as Barbara, but doesn’t give her much to do. Unfortunately it’s not all that good; a helping-the-rebellion plot which is spread too thin, no particularly memorable lines or unusual soundscapes. Big Finish usually much better than this, alas. You can get it here.
Big Finish had a First Doctor sale last month, and I took advantage of it to get hold of some of the audios I would have liked to have caught at the time. This is the first of three quartets of First Doctor Companion Chronicles, each featuring an original series actor and a guest performer, in this case released in October 2015 (so I am some way behind).
The Sleeping Blood, by Martin Day, has Carole Ann Ford as Susan travelling with her grandfather before they arrive on Earth, and looking for medical treatment when the Doctor is struck down by a mysterious infection. She ends up at a medical facility where the local security team are fighting off a mysterious terrorist (both the terrorist and the head of security are played by Darren Strange). It’s a smart Doctor-lite script, exploring truth and trust and the use of violence, and giving Ford a bit more space to perform than she really got on screen.
The Unwinding World, by Ian Potter, has Vicki telling the story of how she, together with the Doctor, Ian and Barbara, are stuck doing grunt work on a boring but repressive planet. This is framed as a conversation between Maureen O’Sullivan and Alix Dunmore, who plays the all-powerful computer and a couple of other female parts. I started off wondering exactly what was going on, but then realised that a nicely constructed plot – expressed basically as a dialogue – was coming to a clever and satisfactory conclusion.
The Founding Fathers is one of two stories in this set by Simon Guerrier, sequels to The War to End All Wars, with a framing narrative where Steven Taylor, having retired as king of the planet of the Elders/Savages, is engaged in long conversations with the copy of the Doctor’s brain made by Jano long ago. The main plot element is a flashback to a Doctor-and-Steven trip to Paris in 1762, where they encounter Benjamin Franklin and give him pointers on the future governance of the American colonies and also electricity. But there’s a subsidiary plot set on Steven’s planet, where his granddaughter Sida (played by Alice Haig, now Alice Tate, who does all the female characters) is listening and learning.
Finally, in Simon Guerrier’s The Locked Room, we get not only the First Doctor returning in the flesh, but also the Vardans, of all monsters, to trouble Steven and Sida on their home world, which is of course itself in the middle of a huge political crisis involving them both in different ways. The soundscape of all of these is vey good, but I felt this was particularly impressive, where two actors in adjacent sound booths summon up an entire planet under threat. Peter Purves’ version of Hartnell is uncanny as ever.
So, basically my mini-project of catching up with Big Finish’s First Doctor stories is off to a good start. You can get this set here.
More Ninth Doctor audio plays from Big Finish, this time a trilogy with a very good beginning and end and a weaker middle. Here is a promotional video, not so much a trailer as a teaser with Frank Skinner doing a voiceover.
The Colour of Terror by Lizzie Hopley
This has the Ninth Doctor meeting Frank Skinner and Susan Penhaligon in a charity shop somewhere in England, where the colour red is taking on sinister and awful characteristics. It’s very well done, with a top guest cast, including also Laura Rollins and Dinita Gohil as a couple who get caught up in the situation. Coming back to Frank Skinner though – he’s obviously loving every minute of it, and it’s a joy to hear.
The Blooming Menace, by James Kettle, is the one that doesn’t quite hit the mark; it’s set around a young fogeys’ club out of P.G. Wodehouse, with carnivorous plants. The star guest here for me was Milanka Brooks, playing a chap who isn’t actually a chap.
But we’re back on track again with the finale, Red Darkness by Roy Gill. To get to the best bit first: it brings back the Vashta Nerada from Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead. You might have thought that such a visual monster might not work well on audio, but with good scripting and acting it is a real hit. The Doctor comes to the rescue of a doomed colony with the help of partially sighted Callen (played by Adam Martyn) and his talking dog (played by Karki Bhambra).
The strengths of the first and third of these more than make up for the weakness in the middle, and I recommend the set. You can get it here.
I’ve been really bad at tracking my Big Finish listening here, and one of my minor New Year’s resolutions is to do that a bit better. I actually listened to this trilogy mainly while doing Christmas shopping, and perhaps I was in a good mood, but I notice that I liked it more than a few of the other reviews I have glanced at. They all feature Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor, with no common companion across the three plays (though two Eighth Doctor companions pop up in the third). Here’s a trailer:
The first of these The Seas of Titan by Liz Myles, is a Sea Devils story with a difference in that it’s set on Titan, not Earth. It hits much the same beats as most other Silurian / Sea Devils stories, with the wrinkle that both humans and Sea Devils have been abandoned by the rest of their race who have moved on (or stayeed put). I really liked the change of setting and the consequent difference of pace.
BF tend to include a historical story in every trilogy, and this time it’s Lay Down Your Arms, by Lisa McMullin, set in a late Habsburg spa resort where aliens are infiltrating the convalescents. Some of the virtual architecture was a bit unbelievable (“bonkers”, as another reviewer put it), but Kate Sissons as Betha Kinzky, the companion of the hour, is tremendous with Eccleston, and there is a great sting in the tail as we discover what she did with the rest of her life. (I at least had heard of her, under her married name.)
But my breath was taken away by Flatpack, by John Dorney, the third of the trilogy. The Doctor arrives in a mysterious self-assembly furniture superstore, and encounters Liv Chenka (Nicola Walker) and Tania Bell (Rebecca Root), who featured as companions of the Eighth Doctor in the extensive (perhaps overextended) saga Stranded which I listened to last year (and never got around to writing up). It becomes clear, as the entertaining script develops, that the secret controllers of the furniture store are up to no good – but I totally missed the clues as to who they actually turn out to be, a tremendous plot twist which I don’t think I’ve seen before in any Doctor Who story.
The first Big Finish stories with the Ninth Doctor were a little uneasy, as if the star and the production team were still sizing each other up. But now they seem to have properly got into their stride, and I highly recommend getting this here.
In Belfast in April, I spotted that Waterstone’s was selling a CD copy of the Big Finish audio drama “The Battle of Giant’s Causeway”, by Lizzie Hopley, which came out earlier this year. The story reunites the Eighth Doctor, played by Paul McGann, with his audio companions Charlie Pollard and the alien C’Rizz, played by India Fisher and Conrad Westmaas respectively, to a conflict between Sontarans and Rutans playing out at the Giant’s Causeway in 55 BC. I didn’t buy it in Belfast, but I got it from the Big Finish website as soon as I got home.
It’s charming to have the old gang back together again, fifteen years after C’Rizz was written out of the Big Finish continuity, but a lot of plot is left unexplained, presumably because it’s the first story in a series. I bounced off it, I’m afraid, because I was less than impressed by the throwaway remarks in the script about Celts and Ireland.
At 7:30, we have this exchange:
Doctor: “Humans are one of the deadliest life forms I know. No offence, Charlie.” Charlie: “Oh, none taken.” Doctor: “This is 55 BC. The reign of the warrior race. The Celts are definitely vying for most barbaric.”
Nobody’s perfect, but it’s news to me that the Celts were particularly barbaric by the standards of 55 BC, and it grates to have the Doctor declare this as a fact without supporting evidence. Indeed, Charlie Pollard clearly thinks differently at 9:40 when the travellers discover a pile of corpses on the Giant’s Causeway:
C’Rizz: They’re soldiers! Judging by their armour. Doctor: Not just soldiers. They’re legionnaires. Except… Charlie: Roman legionnaires? Goodness. C’Rizz: Are legionnaires not Celts then? Charlie: Oh, Romans are far more deadly.
This however is not endorsed by the Doctor. We progress a bit further when the Doctor and Charlie confront the Sontaran commander for a bit of exposition at 21:45.
General: We plan a revenge raid against the Celtish devils at dawn. Charlie: The Celts did not kill your Sonturions. tell them, Doctor. General: Sonturians? Doctor: It’s a long story. But. It appears you lot are a battalion from Sontar that somehow travelled back in time to Earth in the distant past, met some Romans, lost all sense of identity and purpose, and now think you’re part of the first Roman invasion of Britain. Doctor (thinking): Actually that means – that this isn’t where you landed. Why target Ireland? Even the Romans weren’t that stupid.
The whole scenario is weird anyway; at the time of Julius Caesar’s raid into Britain in 55 BC, it would have been impossible for Roman troops to seriously mount a similar exercise in Ireland. Even with that in mind, perhaps my hackles were up, but the line that invading Ireland is in itself a particularly stupid idea landed rather badly with me; along with the explicit assumption that Ireland is part of Britain.
And a third line from the Doctor at 40:15, where he refers to “Rutans and Sontarans in Celtic Britain”, also landed badly with me.
The Giant’s Causeway is not in Britain. Ireland is not in Britain. Celts were frankly about as barbaric as Romans. It’s a shame that the script for this play says otherwise, and it’s a real shame that these words are put into the mouth of the Doctor. Big Finish normally does better than this.
I am hugely enjoying the Big Finish audios starring Christopher Eccleston. This is already the fifth three-play collection, released last summer, and it includes one really standout story which I must admit I listened to three times: Salvation Nine by Timothy X Atack.
Salvation Nine is about an abandoned tribe of crashed space travellers who have developed their own culture, and moved far away from their origins to the point of oblivion; they live a happy life but their singing is absolutely terrible. They are Sontarans, and the rest of the galaxy wants to destroy them. It’s really well done by everyone – Dan Starkey in particular, demonstrating that he’s so much more than just a funny voice, and Eccleston switching register from tragic to comic effortlessly. I listen to a lot of Big Finish audios (I have been very slack about recording them here), but this was one of the freshest takes on a well-established feature of the Whoniverse that I can remember for a while. Atack also wrote the earlier Ninth Doctor audio Planet of the End, which I also enjoyed.
The middle story, Last of the Zetacene by James Kettle, was less to my taste and has the same theme of unpleasant people engaged in hunting as his previous Ninth Doctor audio, Hunting Season. But there is a superb bit of stunt casting with Maureen O’Brien, who turns 80 next week, as one of the nastier characters.
The third story, Break the Ice by Tim Foley, is back up to Big Finish’s usual standards with a story of elemental peril from a deity of frost. Again, it’s closely linked to the writer’s previous Ninth Doctor story, Auld Lang Syne, but has some good twists and good performances from the two lead guest stars, Thalissa Teixeira and Amy Manson.
But anyway, the first story almost justifies the three on its own. You can get them here.
The end of a week of Doctor Who audio-blogging – book-blogging will return shortly, but I also will try and keep more up to date with the other media I have been consuming here.
Lost Warriors is the third volume of plays featuring Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor, following from the welcome first set and the excellent second set. Two are OK and one that is excellent.
The first of these is The Hunting Season by James Kettle, a new writer for me, bringing the Ninth Doctor to a posh country house in the early twentieth century, which he naturally dislikes, with aliens infesting the estate. Not all is as it seems of course. Annette Badland is great as the cook, but it doesn’t quite seem to find its soul. One reviewer comments that it is the only one of these three not rooted in historical events, which may be part of it.
We’re on an upward curve with the next one, The Curse of Lady Macbeth by Lizzie Hopley. This is largely a two-hander between Eccleston and the lovely Neve McIntosh as Gruach, the historical Lady Macbeth, with an optimistic reading of her role in Scottish history which surely nods to Dorothy Dunnett’s King Hereafter, bothered by aliens again of course but also fulfilling a progressive government role.
And it peaks with Monsters in Metropolis by John Dorney, where a lone Cyberman gets involved with Fritz Lang’s movie-making in 1920s Berlin. It has a similar plot to the TV story Dalek, with Nicholas Briggs playing the monster which is changed by its survival in a human world, but the historical setting and intersection with early sf make it very different. Helen Goldwyn, a Big Finish veteran actor, director and writer, shines here as one-off companion Anna Dreyfus, Fritz Lang’s assistant.
Dorney throws in a lovely and not completely gratuitous reference to Norman Hartnell, the fashion designer whose career was just getting started at the time that Lang was making Metropolis. His cousin William, seven years younger, is also known to Doctor Who fans.
And finally, I finish this write-up of recent Doctor Who audios with one that didn’t come from Big Finish.
Doctor Who: Redacted is a ten-part audio story featuring Jodie Whittaker’s Thirteenth Doctor, released by the BBC between April and June 2022, mostly by Juno Dawson. Although Whittaker makes frequent appearances, along with Anjli Mohindra as Rani, Jemma Redgrave and Ingrid Oliver as Kate Stewart and Osgood, and a recast Doon McKichan as Madam Vastra, the protagonist is Charlie Craggs starring as Cleo Proctor, supported by Lois Chimimba as Abby and Holly Quin-Ankrah as Shawna, three podcasters who are trying to get to the bottom of the mystery of the Doctor and her blue box – especially when people associated with the mysterious traveller start to disappear. It’s all very well done.
The whole thing is very different from a Big Finish production – much more podcasty, much less TV-on-the-radio. It’s something of a hymn to fandom, but given Dawson’s authorship and Craggs’ leading role, it’s not surprising that it’s also a salute to Who as a safe space for inclusivity. And it’s the BBC showing the way yet again: it’s difficult to imagine Big Finish running a story with a trans lead and the two most important supporting roles played by actors of colour, or at least it was until the BBC showed it could be done.
Even outside the UK I was able to download all 10 episodes (none longer than half an hour) for free from here.
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.
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.
Back in February at Gallifrey One, Big Finish of course did their best to encourage us to take an interest in their latest output; I had a couple of encounters during the convention with Lauren Cornelius, who has been hired as the new Dodo. She was born after Old Who ended, a generation after Jackie Lane appeared as the first incarnation of Dodo on the screen, but conveyed immense enthusiasm for the role and successfully charmed me into buying her first two audios.
The Secrets of Det-Sen, released two months after the death of Jackie Lane last year, features Peter Purves playing both Stephen and the First Doctor, and is the prequel to The Abominable Snowmen, where if you remember the Second Doctor has somehow ended up with the holy ghanta, a sacred bell from Det-Sen monastery, which he brings back after 300 years. It’s by Andy Frankham-Allen, whose Lethbridge-Stewart spinoff books feature a lot of Yeti. To be honest, while I loved the performances, especially Cornelius throwing herself into Dodo, I felt the plot was a bit thin, but I enjoyed it anyway. You can get it here.
The two-story boxed set The Outlaws is better in a lot of respects. Both stories are by women – Lizbeth Myles and Lizzie Hopley; the first is set around the historical siege of Lincoln in 1216, though has a strong flavour of Robin Hood and reminded me a bit of the excellent Jonathan Morris story, “The Thief of Sherwood“, not least because both feature the Meddling Monk. Myles puts in some excellent twists and gives Cornelius as Dodo some good lines, with Glynis Barber as the (entirely historical) chatelaine of Lincoln Castle and Rufus Hound as the Monk.
The second story, The Miniaturist, is a really interesting experiment – I don’t recall another First Doctor story set in or near our present day, in this case 2019. Here we have scientific investigations in a salt mine that intersect with the titular alien entity (who is played by Annette Badland), and cause both the Doctor and Dodo to take a long look into themselves as well as trying to save the day. A thoughtful piece. You can get both stories here.
I’m sorry to say that I am not yet convinced by Stephen Noonan’s First Doctor. I have perhaps been spoiled by the different interpretations of Peter Purves and David Bradley, both of whom came to it via William Hartnell (Purves knew him personally of course, Bradley played him before playing the First Doctor). Noonan felt to me a bit unmoored, giggling and chortling more than necessary. You can judge for yourself from the behind-the-scenes video:
