We begin with the "Lost Doctors", Doctors One, Two, and Three, whose original actors are unfortunately no longer with us, and live on through such ranges as The Companion Chronicles and The Early Adventures via recountings and recastings. While not as plentiful as the other Doctors' outings, these ones tend to put out a much stronger quality of release, on average.
The First Doctor - (as portrayed by Peter Purves)
Just Companion Chronicles for One this year, as his rotation in the Early Adventures doesn't come around again until September. And it's all Peter Purves, as he took center stage for The First Doctor this year, as Russell was curiously absent from the role, despite typically getting more work out of it than Purves, at least for the "full cast" stuff.
Over in the Companion Chronicles we got what was essentially a solo Susan story,
The Sleeping Blood, which was quite beautiful and tense while exploring the pre-Unearthly Child period of the show and how the pair's flight from home has affected them. Then a Vicki story,
The Unwinding World, where One was present but unvoiced. It also, like many Steven CC's before, gave us a good view that, yes, she's from the future and, while still young, has a better grip on technology and stuff than we might expect. Both were good character pieces that developed the narrators nicely while also telling a good story.
We then got the latter two thirds of the Steven & Sida trilogy,
The Founding Fathers and
The Locked Room, in which Purves voices One in flashback, the brain-in-a-jar copy of The Doctor's mind in the present, and finally The Doctor himself (!) as he's pulled through time and space
during episode three of The Tenth Planet, explaining away Hartnell's absence while simultaneously allowing Big Finish to somehow do a rather brilliant "final" adventure for The First Doctor. These two, combined with the first part of the trilogy, The War to End All Wars, make for a brilliant look at how Steven has been changed by his travels as well as what he's got up to since, plus introduces us to his granddaughter Sida, who's a strong character in her own right, and gets an adventure with the 'proper' Doctor by the end of it. Good stuff.
All in all, a bit of a sparse year, but what we got was a strong showing for The First Doctor.
The Second Doctor - (as portrayed by Frazer Hines)
Slightly less sparse than One, Two got (most of) his first set of Early Adventures, though the final release was delayed until next year.
Firstly,
The Yes Men introduces to the new actor for Ben, rather brilliantly, plus does a lot more. It's a sequel to an unseen First Doctor and Dodo story, it touches on civil rights and personhood, and the road to hell being paved with good intentions. It has running and intrigue and murder and revolutionary robots mimicking Jamie's signature battle cry with monotone indifference as they riot in the streets. It's a excellent, is what I'm saying.
Next up was
The Forsaken, which was well enough acted, but didn't really do much of anything. The sound design and actors all did splendid jobs, really, there just wasn't much there. Elliot Chapman continues to do a great job as Ben, evoking Craze's original wonderfully, but what could have been a great meaty script for him, meeting Ben's father before Ben was even born, just sort of fell short in that regard. In the end, just a Second Doctor monster-of-the-week runaround. Not bad, but no stand-out.
Finally, we were treated to
The Black Hole. I want to just get this out of the way, I didn't really care that Deborah Watling didn't really sound like she used to. She nailed the
character, which was the important part. This one's still fresh, so I'll try to avoid spoiling much of anything. Watling and Hines slipped back into form like they'd never been away. And, speaking of Hines, he got some real great scenes to develop his Second Doctor with in this one. Hes been steadily getting a wider range at it, and this one took it up another level. There's a scene in particular, when The Doctor has the opportunity to just flee and leave it all, where Hines really commands the scene and you can just
see Troughton's weary expression as he makes the hard decision to stay and help, despite the fact that it might cost him his freedom. Brilliant stuff. The rest of the story's cracking too, as we get a Time Lord constable, creatures from the other side of the titular Black Hole, as well as some other interesting shenanigans. All that and graphology to boot!
Again, a bit sparse, but it's been a good year for Two.
The Third Doctor - (as portrayed by Tim Treloar)
Ah, the triumphant return of The Third Doctor to our ears.
Presenting for the (not quite) first time, Tim Treloar as The Third Doctor! And make no mistake, he
is the Third Doctor, not doing an
impression of Pertwee, but rather a
performance as The Doctor, while taking his cues from the great actor that came before him. And he does a magnificent job of it.
First in the set was
Prisoners of the Lake. Paraphrasing another poster, it was the Pertweeist Pertwee that ever did Pert. It's Third Doctor by the numbers, so stereotypically mid-Seventies Who without
actually being quite like anything that actually made it to screen. It's got a mysterious crashed spaceship in the countryside (this time at the bottom of a lake). It's got The Brig passing it off to The Doctor, who ignores it initially before swanning off fin Bessie, acting like he was going to investigate the whole time. It's got him scoffing at shouty authority figures, playing with new gadgets (diving machines and diving gear this time), a grotesque alien menace that is actually the good guy, and a horrible force that threatens to destroy the entire planet just an hour's drive from UNIT HQ. All that and the soundtrack was outstanding!
Next up was
The Havoc of Empires. Whereas the prior entry was The Doctor In Exile By Numbers, very Season Nine, this release is very Season Ten. Set post-The Three Doctors, he's got the ability to travel around again, and this is very much in the mold of the Peladon stories (and even namedrops a few races from said), full of space politics and people in rubber masks. Mike joins The Doctor and Jo in The TARDIS, and feels like he was there all along. I actually really like him as a third member to the away team, and hope that future releases keep him there. Like the previous story, Treloar evokes The Third Doctor stupendously (let's see how many more adjectives I can come up with before I begin to repeat myself), and the story doesn't feel at all out of place next to the other stalwarts of Season Ten.
While we only got these two serials after a noticeable lack of our Venusian Karate-Chopping hero of late, they were simply amazing, and left me wanting for more. Hopefully they get around to announcing the next batch shortly.
*** *** ***
Next up are the "Classic Doctors", Doctors Four, Five, Six, and Seven (Eight falls firmly into the "New Doctors" category these days, in terms of output). These are the bread and butter of Big Finish, and tend to dominate the release schedules.
The Fourth Doctor - (as portrayed by Tom Baker)
This last year saw Tom Baker take to the role in a full series of eight Fourth Doctor Adventures, as well as set of three full-sized Novel Adaptions. The Novel Adaptions were top form. The Fourth Doctor Adventures were a bit hit and miss.
We started out with
The Romance of Crime over in the Novel Adaptions range. What can I say, it's Gareth Roberts' penned Fourth Doctor, adapted by John Dorney, with Tom and Lalla and Leeson. It's great, really. So too was the other Fourth Doctor Novel Adaption to come out that month,
The English Way of Death, and the one that came out in April,
The Well-Mannered War, both with the same TARDIS crew. I don't really have a whole lot to say about these that hasn't already been said of the original novels. They're great. Go listen to them. Glad to see that this TARDIS Team will be back next year for the Fourth Doctor Adventures, but a little apprehensive, just because of the hit and (more often) miss nature of that range.
Onward, to said Fourth Doctor Adventures, but of 2015, instead of the upcoming 2016 season. These feature Leela and K-9 in the TARDIS, and are a fairly even mix of good and bad.
First, the good.
The Darkness of Glass is actually a pretty decent story, featuring a haunted house on a flood-locked island during a memorial Magic Lantern show. It's an exciting enough concept, and is well-written to boot! The pacing is good and the characters (and monster) suitably intriguing and fleshed out. It really makes use of the format and doesn't suffer from the shortened time-span like others do.
Requiem for the Rocket Men starts rather intriguingly, from The Master's point of view, where it turns out he's stumbled into one of The Doctor's plots, and must figure out what's going on before the whole Rocket Men base comes crashing down around him! How's
that for a twist on the format? Followed up by it's linked semi-second half,
Death Match, the pair of these provide some nice insight and character to the often pantomime Beevers incarnation of The Master. You get some really nice back and forth between him and Tom, and setting the first bit of the story from his point of view was a brilliant turn of play that helps set this one apart, beyond it's good writing and excellent characterization.
Finally,
Cloisters of Terror features the return of Liz Shaw's Mother, the estimable Dame Emily, from the lovely Companion Chronicle The Last Post. I'd love to see (or rather, hear) her with Tim Treloar's Third Doctor in a future audio, but for now she plays of Old Tom well enough. This doesn't have the deepest of plots or the strongest of writing, but the story goes down well enough and the main cast gel together great. The good mesh the regulars have with the guest cast help elevate this from merely decent to quite fun.
And now, regretfully, the bad.
The Exxilons was just... boring, really. It retreads Death to the Daleks in a lot of places and is rather forgettable in others. I haven't listened to it again since it first came out and I'm actually struggling to remember what happened.
Suburban Hell is, I'm told, a delightful comedy which capitalizes on The Doctor being in Suburbia and thus so far out of his depth it's hilarious. I, personally, had a hard time getting through it at all, and rather felt Tom was phoning it in on this one. There's also some timey-wimey alien plot macguffin involved, but I honestly can't recall what was actually going on, so hard did I find it to sit through this one.
Finally, we come to the finale of the season, the two part release
The Fate of Krelos and it's immediate follow-up
Return to Telos. The basic premise of this is that The Fourth Doctor stumbles into a Cyberman invasion of the planet Krelos, and is somehow, during events, brought back in time into the middle of the events of Tomb of the Cybermen, taking place on the nearby planet of Telos. One could reasonably assume from this description that Leela and Jamie will get at least one grand team-up scene while The Fourth Doctor races to save The Second Doctor while somehow not rewriting history and accidentally wiping himself from existence, right? Yeah, none of that happens. The plot literally boils down to: Jamie got some cyberman germs on his kilt back in the day, so we need to go back in time and send a robot out to vacuum it off of him. It was attrocious. A real let down. To even the actors. The extras reveal that even Hines and Jameson were wondering when the Jamie / Leela team-up scene was going to happen. I mean, talk about wasted potential. Perhaps the only notable thing about the entire release was that it features Hines' Second Doctor outside of the Companion Chronicles/Lost Stories/Early Adventures ranges the recast Lost Doctors are usually confined to.
Really, when it comes to The Fourth Doctor at Big Finish, the best stuff has really been the full-length productions. The Lost Stories, Hinchcliff Presents, and now these Novel Adaptions; These all feel like the "real" Fourth Doctor Adventures, whereas the audios over in the range actually named that feel a bit lacking, most likely due to the fact that most of the stories are only two episodes long and don't really have time to develop. Which is odd, because the Companion Chronicles worked well within that format and hardly ever wasted a word. The best Fourth Doctor Adventures are, perhaps unsurprisingly, the multi-release stories that span four (or more) episodes.
The Fifth Doctor - (as portrayed by Peter Davison)
Not a whole lot of Fifth Doctor this year, when compared to Big Finishes main Classic Doctors (Four through Seven (Eight is firmly in the "New Doctors" camp, as far as output goes). Equal time as far as the Main Range is concerned, just not a whole lot outside of it, unlike his contemporaries.
The bulk of it this year was the final (one hopes) trilogy of the Older Nyssa cycle, known as the "Return to E-Space" trilogy, our crew of Nyssa, Tegan, Turlough, and Five get sucked through a spatial anomoly into the old home of the dearly departed Adric.
To start things off,
Mistfall is set on Adrix's birthplace of Alzarius, generations upon generations after The Doctor's prior visit. The plot isn't horribly original, but it's well acted and I liked it. It's got Marshmen and non-natives, a Starliner, etc etc etc. Pretty by the numbers, but by no means bad.
Equilibrium, the second of the trilogy, is actually
really good. It was a bit of a slow burn through the first episode, but after things got going I was hooked. Interestingly, there's no actual
villain, per se, and is more The Doctor and company battling against the environment and the situation itself, trying to survive events which are triggered by them landing in the first place. One of the better Fifth Doctor audios I've listened to in years.
The Entropy Plague rounds things out and sees Nyssa electing to stay and battle the ravages of entropy, allowing her to gracefully part company with The Doctor (again (
again)). It's about as good as Mistfall, in that it's fairly decent but not overly standout.
Overall, a trilogy worth a listen, comprised of releases I'd probably not skip on a marathon of relistens.
Finally, in exactly the wrong order for it,
The Secret History. This is the final part of a trilogy that we'll be revisiting in reverse order as I go through the Doctors, as it started with Seven and went down to Five for its climax, but in such a way as to not prepare The Doctor for the earlier events in his later lives! This release is actually really good, in my opinion. The basic premise of the trilogy was the older Doctors get thrown into the middle of earlier Doctors' adventures, subbing in for them, hence the "Locum Doctors" trilogy name. This one sees Five in the midst of a First Doctor adventure alongside Vicki and Steven, cought up in ancient Constantinople while someone else tries to play chess master from behind the scenes. I highly recommend it.
Not a bad year for Five. It's not often I can say I enjoyed everything of his in a given year, as I find his Big Finish output just sort of average-to-okay more often than not.
The Sixth Doctor - (as portrayed by Colin Baker)
Almost as sparse a year for Six as it was for Five, which is odd, because he's typically poking around in other characters' spin-off series. Ah well.
Last of the Cybermen is the second entry in that Locum Doctors trilogy that Secret History was the last of. It sees The Sixth Doctor in place of Two, with Jamie and Zoe exploring an old Cyber Tomb in a bridge story that transitions us from the Torughton Cybermen to how they were in Revenge. There's a lot of good in this, but there's also a lot that just sort of baffles me, decision-wise, like comedy voice repair bloke Cybermen and the gratuitous continuity roll-call the Doctor and Jamie go on as they try to determine exactly where they are in the Season Six timeline. Overall, I liked it, but it had its issues.
Next up we get to a new trilogy with new companion Constance Clarke, a wren from WWII. The first release,
Criss-Cross, introduces her, and deals with double and triple agents and alien radio signals (and by that I mean radio signals that are, in fact, aliens) during the war. I like Constance but the story itself was just sort of okay. And it was a real waste to not have the aliens be Vardans, rather than making up a
new radio-wave alien race, especially after the vardans had been put to such good use in the Companion Chronicles range as a credible recurring foe for the First Doctor.
Planet of the Rani sees the return of the lovely Siobhan Redmond as The Rani, following up her premier last December in The Rani Elite. The Doctor and Constance go to visit her in prison and end up on her homegrown planet mentioned way back in Mark of the Rani. The inhabitants have been getting along without her, and the new ruler isn't very happy that she's back. I quite liked this one. I though Raj Kahnu was an intersting character, flawed and real, with an interesting sense of beauty. Constance also shows how she stands out from other companions as she rolls up her sleeves and gets on with the heavy lifting and some actual combat. It's not often there's a military person in the TARDIS, much less a female one, but even then she manages to stand out from run of the mill soldiers like Sally Armstrong was alongside Seven in trilogies past.
wrapping up Constance's introductory trilogy is
Shield of the Jötunn, which sees Norse Frost Giants in Arizona, of all places. The setting alone was enough to intrigue me. Constance shows more of the same sort of character she did in the other releases, and I think she's a good companion all in all. Glad to see she's getting another trilogy in 2016. I hope she sticks around for a while, as it's been a bit since we've had a good long term companion for Old Sixie.
And on that note, while we're not
quite finished with Colin for the year, I figured this was a good enough segue into...
The Vieillard - (as portrayed by Michael Jayston)
...because
The Last Adventure really is, in much the same way that Dominion is a Master set co-starring The Seventh Doctor, a Vieillard (sorry,
Valeyard, pardon my French (look it up!)) set co-starring The Sixth. The set is a bit interesting in that it's in proper chronological order, for The Valeyard, while not neceserily so for The Sixth Doctor. We follow along as The Valeyard refuels after the events of The Trial and sets about enacting a newer, more long-term, plan to change his own past, supposedly for the better. As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions...
We kick things off with
The End of the Line. This starts off as a very atmospheric piece, and is really evocative of Sapphire & Steel. Strange fog, abandonded trains, mysterious deaths, and smack dab in the middle of all of it is The Doctor and Constance. The double reveals, of first The Master and then The Valeyard are double fist-pump moments, especially as it's essentially The Valeyard that saves the day and defeats The Master, unbeknownst to Sixie (of course), even if it
is because The Master is interfering with his own plans for the dimensional rift. A good solid start.
We rejoin Sixie, with miss Charlotte Pollard in tow, as they stumble across
The Red House. But everything is not as it seems. As is evident whent he werewolves ride up on motorcycles and chase The Doctor into the forest, while Charlie is promptly captured and bungled off to see Doctor Pain and her mysterious assistant. Who turns out to be one mysterious Time Lord, erstwhile known as The Valeyard. He seems genuinely touched to see Charlie (and never tells her who he is) and explains to her that she needs to help him save the natives from the missiles that the mainlanders are just about ready to fire at them. The Doctor fails to stop the missiles and it is once again up to The Valeyard to halt the missiles in their own time tracks and save the day (while nicking a bunch of mind-altering technology in the process, as well as nipping into the TARDIS and making some adjustments of his own, natch.)
As
Stage Fright gets underway, we join one "Mister Timothy Yardvale" (really?) as he pals around with the estimable Henry Gordon Jago and noted pathologist George Litefoot! Man they just get on with any given incarnation of The Doctor, don't they? Unfortunately, he's apparently killing of local thespians, by way of having them relive the circumstances of his own regenerations. It's only when The Doctor and Flip show up that investigations start to get under way. By the by, this is probably the only story I've actually liked Flip in. I didn't really get on with her trilogies, but in this she's great. Just goes to show you the power of good writing.
All good things must come to an end. And so too does this mean The Sixth Doctor and The Valeyard.
The Brink of Death sees the two of them trying to outmaneuver each other again and again, in a cosmic game of chess. The Doctor's dying before the play even begins, and The Valeyard keeps popping in where he's not expected, several steps ahead of the game, right from the start. In the end, The Doctor makes a rather heroic sacrifice to undo The Valeyard from succeeding in his plots, in the process causing his own regeneration and leading right in to Time and The Rani. Oh, and Mel's in this, but not so you'd notice.
A kick-ass performance from Micahel Jayston, Colin Baker, and all those others involved.
The Seventh Doctor - (as portrayed by Sylvester McCoy)
It was rather a bumper year for The Seventh Doctor. I daresay he has even more episodes out than Four this year, but if not it's a close thing. (I checked, he does. 36 to 28. Not even close. Seven wins by a large margin.)
The Defectors is the final, er,
first entry in the Locum Doctors trilogy, seeing Seven alongside Jo and Mike on a jolly adventure with the chaps at UNIT. Unfortunately, the story itself doesn't have a lot of meat on its bones. And again with the comedy alien voices. Normally I'm not terribly bothered by such things, but with so many releases out you begin to notice the tricks the production crew pull more. It's not a bad tale by any means, but it's not the greatest thing in the world either. This was definitely a trilogy that got better as it went.
Getting into The Seventh Doctor's Novel Adventures for the year,
Damaged Goods sees new (to audio) companions, as well as a new theme tune for The Seventh Doctor! The novel was pretty good, but the powers that be over at Big Finish Towers have made some adjustments to bring it more in line with the times. The overt drug references have been turned into fictional narcotics, some of the more gruesome stuff has been toned down or happen off-screen, and the mysterious psy-powers organization has been replaced with (wait for it) bloomin
TORCHWOOD!!! And there's some more new series references on top of that! It's basically, as it stands in the audio adaption, Seven landing in the middle of a New Series adventure: Torchwood, psychic drugs, and forgotten weapons from The Time War and all. This was great. I loved it.
The next couple Novel Adaptions,
Theatre of War and
All-Consuming Fire, came out as a pair, somewhat recently, and I've only had the chance to give them a cursory listen-through on plane flights so I my thoughts on them are brief. Overall, I don't really have any complaints with them, beyond my complaints with the novels they're based on in the first place. Good productions, good acting, decent scripts. Of the pair, I favor Theatre of War more, just because I think All-Consuming Fire tramples too much over Holmes' character in addition to not liking it when authors use Lovecraft stuff outside of the Mythos. Objectively, it's a decent enough story, but those are just my opinions on the matter.
A year or so back, we got The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield, guest starring The Seventh Doctor and Ace. The first episode in that set was a bit poor, but the rest of the thing was bloody marvelous. Based on the strength of it alone, I pre-ordered Volume 2. Subtitled
The Triumph of Sutekh, this set sees Woolfe back with that deliciously velvet voice of his as the Osirian death god, out to wreak havoc and death upon the universe. I actually found it somewhat sub-par on first listen. The whole thing is a bit timey-wimey, and the reason I'm only giving it a single paragraph instead of splitting it out like I do for other box sets like The Last Adventure is because the whole thing is so interwoven and interlinked that it's really parts one through four of one story instead of four standalone episodes that have a linking plot thread. It's all acted well enough, but it definitely requires multiple listens and a flow-chart to get a handle on what's actually going on and who's experience which scenes in what order.
The Seventh Doctor's main range trilogy this year was a "Season 24" Doctor and Mel run, and I think it's some of the best we've heard form this TARDIS Team, actually.
We Are The Daleks begins things off by taking us to the game industry in the late eighties, seeing Mel's computer programmer background put to good use. We get into labor strikes, scabs, the upper class, mega corporations, and of course foreign investors (in the form of some delightful little alien pepper pots, natch). All in all a good outing and a promising start to the trilogy.
The Warehouse was more run of the mill than the prior release. Mel once again gets to show off her programmer skills, the Doctor gets to help some struggling warehouse workers and take down a wrongly-aimed corporate system of stocktake and supply, etc etc. Very late eighties Who, not that that's a bad thing, mind.
Rounding out the trilogy was
Terror of the Sontarans. I really liked this release. We got to see Sontarans in a different setting and situation than we normally do, along with some delightful alien supporting cast and a strange and interesting new creature to menace all of the above, Doctor and Mel included. The trilogy felt really "of" Season 24, and would have felt right at home next to any of the airings of the season. A good showing for Mel as well, though I feel they may have pushed the "hey did you know she's a programmer?" angle a bit far.
Last, but certainly not least,
You Are The Doctor, and Other Stories rounds out the year as this season's anthology release. I really loved this one.
You Are The Doctor is the most wonderful of things, a bloomin choose your own adventure game, in audio form! What
will they think of next? Good stuff.
Come Die With Me is a haunted house mystery by invitation, the owner of said house trying to see if anyone can make it out alive, by design. Also good fun. And with it, we begin to sense a pattern.
The Grand Betelgeuse Hotel sees The Doctor and Ace palling around an opulent casino in the middle of a robbery! Can't the Doctor go anywhere more sedate? There's always something going on. And, finally,
Dead to the World sees The Doctor facing the dilemma of saving some surviving astronauts or risk letting loose their infection upon the planet Earth below. All in all good stuff, a quality anthology of half hour stories. And there
is a through-thread going on throughout them, which seems to be leading in to next year's trilogy featuring The Doctor and Ace running into Mel, later on in her life.
*** *** ***
Finally, the "New Doctors", which for this year is just Eight and War. These are the Doctors of the New Series, whose releases are in much the same mold, often released in box sets but with season arcs and recurring regulars.
The Eighth Doctor - (as portrayed by Paul McGann)
Out of the entirety of the Dark Eyes saga,
Dark Eyes 4 is surely the best of the lot. the writing is fresh, the characters seem so full of life, and, I don't know, the set just feels really good. It still contains some technobabbly explanations, and, of course, tries to wrap things up for the arc. Whether you're satisfied with how it ends is up to personal taste, but I thought it went down well enough.
The set begins with
A Life in the Day, which is, I must say,
superb. Liv trying to get the Doctor's honest opinion on whether she looks good in this dress or not is an amazing open, and it just gets better from there. It's poignant, and funny, and touching, and well written, and the ending leaves me happy and sad and excited at the same time.
Following on is
The Monster of Montmartre, which sees The Doctor and Liv tackling what
should be the Mulan Rouge, but is instead a giant Dalek Mecha in the middle of period France. Yes, you read that right. Crazy Daleks, sinister night clubs, antiquities dealers, and naive artists. What more could you wish for in a Doctor Who script? It often comes across as difficult to do new things with The Daleks, but then stories like this pop along and show that no, maybe it isn't. More good stuff.
Just let me say, I think
Master of the Daleks is possibly MacQueen's best stab at the part yet. He's just spectacular in this. Witty, petulant, conniving, suave, hilarious, and
just this side of breaking the fourth wall. I think he and The Doctor are in maybe one scene together, for all of four minutes or so, but it's probably the best bit of back and forth these incarnations have ever had betwixt them (and I
really liked Masterplan, so that's saying something). Plus, it's got Sontarans versus Daleks on top of all that, to boot!
Wrapping things up is
Eye of Darkness. Perhaps the weakest of the set, this one has the unenviable task of wrapping everything up into a coherent end. Which it does well enough, I suppose. Schriver's back, as is The Eminence, with Molly and The Time Controller center stage. I noticed that this one contains references to most of the major beats from sets prior. Molly and the Retrogenitor Particle thingies are back in focus with The Time Controller from Dark Eyes 1. Schriver makes a return from Dark Eyes 3, as does his work creating the Eminence, itself back from sets 3 & 32. And the main guest companion for the play hails from the Nixyce System Liv is from in Dark Eyes 2. In the end, the Dark Eyes series went out on its highest note, I think.
...And what followed was
Doom Coalition 1. And hot
damn was this a good set.
We kick things off in
The Eleven with
Sylvester McCoy as The Seventh Doctor, giving his incarceration speech to the Time Lord criminal known as The Eleven (with a cheeky reference to the TV Movie closing out the scene) before cutting back to 'the present' where said criminal finally escapes and The Eighth Doctor is pulled in to help with the chase. Liv and Eight are superb in this, and really make a great pair. Special props to Mark Bonnar for bringing the titular villain to life.
The Red Lady was described by another poster as "The Eighth Doctor tripped and fell into an episode of The Confessions of Dorian Gray". It's apt enough, and by god it's brilliant! Genuinely scary in places, the titular monster evokes The Weeping Angels, and gives me high hopes for their appearance in the upcoming New Monsters set in July. This release also serves to introduce us to new companion Helen Sinclaire, who is actually pretty great. She's a professional woman in 1963, and is trying to make a name for herself despite prejudices of the era. By the end she's a bit fed up with it all (and wanted by the police) and decides to go roaming about in space and time when The Doctor and Liv jointly decide that she'd be a good addition to the crew.
Next up,
The Galileo Trap is basically filler, but it's
fun filler, which is the best kind. It's got what threatens to be some comedy alien criminals which actually end up being rather chilling and poignant at the same time. It's decent enough stuff, and perhaps suffers the most simply by having to follow the preceding two episodes of the set. As a standalone release in am monthly lineup I'm sure people really wouldn't have much, if any, complaints about it. Good fluff.
Rounding out the set, we come to
The Satanic Mill. It's actually a really interesting setting, and Mark Bonnar once again gives a good performance as The Eleven. Helen and Liv make a good pair, better than Liv and Molly (though, to be fair, we really didn't get to hear much of Liv and Molly together (or at all, come to think of it)). Again, this suffers a bit from the strength of what came before, and it actually poses more questions than it answers, setting up the rest of the series rather than providing a conclusive end. Instead, it rounds out the mini-arc of the codex The Eleven stole back in episode 1, rather than the story of the villain himself. Good enough, though I wish we didn't have to wait so long to hear the next episode.
They mention in the extras that while Dark Eyes was plotted on a set by set basis (and it shows), Doom Coalition was plotted out as a sixteen episode series and then divided into four four episode chunks, each with their own little mini-arcs. This means everything is a bit more tightly plotted. They also mention that they didn't really tell the writers the major beats, allowing them to write more or less standalone stories that editorial then went and wove arc stuff into to tie it all together. It's a wonderful approach and I think it shows that they've learned from their experiences on Dark Eyes. It really makes me look forward to hearing more of the series, especially knowing The Alien Voord (Yuss!) and
River Song are appearing in the next release in a couple months!
...Speaking of which,
The Diary of River Song, Series 1 was released early to coincide with her appearance in this year's Christmas Special over on television, and The Eighth Doctor actually features in the final installment of the set,
The Rulers of the Universe. This is our first glimpse (on audio), of Eight in The Time War, wearing his outfit from The Night of the Doctor. He and River Song really have a nice interplay in this one, and it makes excited to hear them together in Dark Eyes 2 in a few months (though I'm curious how they're going to tackle the obvious continuity issues).
All together, a strong year for Eight. My only complaint is (as ever) that I have to wait for more of him!
And, finally (and what a bloody coup this was):
The War Doctor - (as portrayed by John Hurt)
Set one of the aptly named The War Doctor range is titled
Only the Monstrous. Of note, these sets contain only three episodes a piece, perhaps to accommodate John Hurts age and/or medical conditions (though I hear he's doing much better). This means that, at the end of the whole run, we'll have twelve episodes, which, if you take Day of the Doctor as his finale/regeneration story, gives you a full thirteen episode season with Hurt as The Doctor which you can slot in between Name and Time. Good stuff.
We begin with
The Innocent, in which The Doctor attempts to commit suicide, survives, and is plagued with nightmares of tough decisions he's made in The War, before taking a much needed break from it all on a relaxing little planet before an inevitable alien invasion comes along (as one does), forcing him to once again spark wearily into the thick of it. He is an wry old man, whose compassion can blink into anger and fury at the drop of a hat, who just frankly wants to be done with it all, but knows that he will, eventually, return to the battle field, to fight another day. Oh my god they got John Bloody Hurt and it. is. amazing!
Middle of the set is
The Thousand Worlds, which sees The War Doctor return, albeit unknowingly, to the planet he was just on, except now the Daleks have stepped in and are running the show, mining out the planet core for some nefarious plot. Boy, they really seem to like doing that for some reason, don't they? This one is very much just setup for the next episode, and could very reasonably be called part one to its part two.
The Heart of the Battle finishes up the set with some interesting stuff and nice character moments for The Doctor. We get to see a Time Lord who is so disillusioned with The War that he's trying to sue the Daleks for peace, giving them this little pocket of space in the hopes that they'll be content to just torture everyone within and let the rest of the universe alone. We also get to see The Doctor completely laugh at the idea of peace, and claim that he will never rest until the Daleks are dead. We also get to see him step up and press the button himself, taking on the burden of sacrificing innocent lives to defeat the Daleks, whereas prior incarnations might have tried and failed to find another way, this one steps up and does what he feels needs doing.
I thought this was a nice little set to kick things off,f to kind of "introduce" us to this face of The Doctor, as it were, as we only really met him at the end of his rope in Day, tired and worn out, ready to just kill
everyone to end it all. It'll be interesting to see him on his journey as he slowly gets to that point. Looking forward to more in February!
*** *** ***
And... I think that's it.
...God, I've listened to a lot of Who this year.
Looking forward a bit, we've got The First Doctor up again in the rotation for the next set of Early Adventures late in the year. Two's final Early Adventure of the current set and his Companion Chronicles box are out later. They've as good as confirmed the next set of Third Doctor Adventures and just haven't announced them yet, trying to nail down a few things first. The Fourth Doctor will be off on more adventures with Romana II and K-9 in the next series of Fourth Doctor Adventures starting next month. Next month also sees the start of a Fifth Doctor, Nyssa, and Tegan trilogy, and I
love me some Tegan, so that should be fun. Late in the year we'll be getting more of The Sixth Doctor and Constance in that companion's second trilogy. And in between those we'll be getting The Seventh Doctor, Ace, and older Mel, following up this year's anthology release, which sounds like it'll be good. The Eighth Doctor gets two more sets in his Doom Coalition series, seeing more and more New Series elements creep into his audios. Speaking of which, we'll be getting another two sets in The War Doctor range, providing more amazing work from John Hurt. And to round things outs, we'll be getting the Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Doctors in next month's Churchill Years volume, as well as Ten proper in The Tenth Doctor Adventures Volume 1 later in the year.
About the only Doctors they haven't announced audios for next year are Capaldi and Jayston, which is just damn impressive.
What a time to be a fan.
Anyway, this took me like three days to type up, so, peace, I'm out.
It's a definite favourite from the range. It's great to hear Matthew's enthusiasm for the series - and wonderful to hear that there's more Dark Shadows next year (and if the blurb is to be believed, for the next five years at least!). And yes, the meeting of Dark Shadows with Simon Guerrier must be allowed to continue!
