Main Range 3: Whispers of Terror

This is the one! This release convinced me that maybe, just maybe, Doctor Who had a future on audio - nearly twenty years ago. As Omega says, this story could never have been told in any other medium. And audio monster - brilliant! A blind character (the late Peter Miles) who occasionally has to have visuals explained to him - brilliant! And The Sixth Doctor and Peri just as they were on television, except not quite: they argue, they bicker, but this also makes way for scenes when they both show compassion and love for each other - brilliant!

After a handful of disappointing forays in to audio for Doctor Who (and I don't mean the previous Big Finish stories because I hadn't listened to them), this got me hooked, and I've been hooked ever since. And the cliffhangers are wonderful! I sometimes think that Justin Richards doesn't get quite the acclaim he deserves for his Doctor Who stories. He's written some belters.

This is why I love the early Main Range adventures. The pure experimentation that went on

Big Finish's first real classic, in my opinion! It's a fantastically experimental and inventive piece, much like ...Ish later on (another favorite of mine). The performances are very well done, and the music very evocative of the era.

And I would very much agree with you

This was the first Sixth Doctor audio I heard and was the beginning of a shift in how I perceived ol' Sixie. On TV he was a Doctor that I wanted to like, I felt that Colin Baker was a strong performer, but I struggled with the writing. This is the adventure when things began to slot into place for me and Six's potential began to be tapped in a way that started clicking for me. I also loved hearing Peri again and I still think it's eerie how ageless Nicola Bryant sounds even to this day.

Much agreed, Justin Richards, Terrance Dicks and Steve Cole are what I like to call "meat-and-potatoes" writers. You're not necessarily blown away, but their entries are always solid and leave a nice feeling of Who-ish fulfilment when they're done. They have the whole ethos downpat. And as a baseline, it's really fascinating to see how everything's developed between here and something like Recorded Time and Other Stories.

Whispers is a great showcase of Big Finish's early talent. There's the kisses to the past with our leads' two more fractious characterisations and an incidental score that could've been done by Jonathan Gibbs (nee Varos or Rani) at the Radiophonic Workshop. However, they demonstrate a lovely self-awareness for the material from that era as well. It lulls you into thinking that it might be something akin to Slipback, before shunting forward with a totally original story. One that's happy to extoll the virtues of the past, having learnt from the missteps of its forebears. Rather than spending twenty minutes in the TARDIS, the Doctor and Peri are put in the thick of it from the get-go (with some genuinely nice banter rather than bickering), alongside a new set of antagonists in an engaging environment we, nor the Doctor, have ever seen before. It's firing on all cylinders, delivering on greater things and promising even more yet to come.

They got it right straight out of the gate. No mean feat that.

I read and agreed with practically the whole thread, so I could just have posted 'I agree with DU' but here goes anyway...
If some of this echoes what others have posted, well, this is a story about sounds, isn't it?

I guess that for many DUers this story is a well-loved classic from almost two decades past, when BF was just setting out. But for me 'Whispers of Terror' was as new and fresh as 'Ghost Walk', listening for the first time, after finding this thread started after the sad news of Peter Miles' passing. One of the great villains of 70s 'Who' as Nyder, as well as his other, memorable and more-or-less unhinged or villainous characters in the show, it was a pleasure to hear him playing one of 'the good guys' and a great character for audio: Curator Gantman, a master of sounds, unable to see but an expert in his own audio world.

Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant land in the story on top form and keep going at full speed, two first-rate performances. He's my favourite audio Doctor and judging by this I'm sure he always would have been from the start. Here the transformation into BF Sixie is already underway. He's more sympathetic generally, and jokey with Peri rather than pointlessly arguing. And I loved the 'trick' played on us early in the audio where the Doctor starts to rant in full 'TV Sixie' mode - and then says, there - that's what I would have sounded like if I was shouting!

It's a very clever audio story by Justin Richards which would always work best as an audio story, with the sound 'creature' - an actor-politician who becomes the sound of his own voice after death, an ingenious idea. The guest cast are all excellent, and as I knew almost nothing about the story in advance, it was a very pleasant surprise to suddenly hear Lisa Bowerman - and then to discover she was playing the villain for once. And a properly nasty piece of political scheming ambition Beth Pernell is too!

I agree with Mark about the BF technical skill shown here - in a story which depends on the sound design even more than usual, this and the music work extremely well (and by Nick Briggs, as I later discovered.) Very impressive especially for such an early release.

I did have one regret after listening - that I wasn't along for the ride from 1999 to enjoy these stories from the start. On the other hand, coming to the MR party late is like discovering an audio gold mine - and then finding they're practically giving the gold away as downloads!

Essential archive material for every audio curator's collection.

Thank you!

Interesting that he never wrote a Companion Chronicle. The focus on character suits his style a lot better.