In another busy month for the Doctor Who audio wizards, the Torchwood range featured the return of technical specialist Tosh for an adventure in ‘Zone 10’.
April also provided the much awaited New Adventures adaptation, this time bringing the Seventh Doctor and Ace to the 1960s for Mark Gatiss’ atmospheric novel ‘Nightshade’.
While The Fourth Doctor Adventures concluded last month’s temporal two-parter and the Main Range kicked off a fresh trilogy of Master stories, the big news of the month was the return of popular companion Lucie Miller to the Short Trips.
Hold on to your hats for May though, as it will be all about the arrival of the Tenth Doctor. While David Tennant is no stranger to Big Finish, having starred in Dalek Empire, UNIT and more, we can look forward to three adventures which pair his Doctor with the irrepressible Donna Noble.
Main Range #211 ‘And You Will Obey Me’
April saw the launch of a new Big Finish Main Range trilogy, and this is a firm fan pleaser. It’s the multi-Master trilogy – three Doctors, two Masters and plenty else to enjoy.
The first part is the Alan Barnes story ‘And You Will Obey Me’. This is a Fifth Doctor story with Geoffrey Beevers’s Master decidedly the worse for wear, and in desperate need of a new body…
Alan Barnes neatly cleaves the Fifth Doctor away from his companions in 1984 and pops him up in time to look into what seems to be the final resting place for the Master, in rural Hexford.
Of course it isn’t as simple as turning up and poking around as there are multiple sets of people each with their own interest in proceedings, including a gang of teenagers, a woman named Annie (Sheena Bhattessa), the mysterious Jade Nymph (Peta Cornish) and more besides.
As Peter Davison’s Doctor makes his way to the heart of the mystery, and the inevitable encounter with the Master, many secrets will be revealed as we learn just what the Master has been doing in his all-consuming quest to recreate his damaged body.
After three months of the Fifth Doctor already, it is easy to compare this story to the brilliant recent successes; instead it is fairer to see this as the opener to a set of stories peaking in June.
This means it has certain constraints it needs to obey. Within this framework, Alan Barnes finds plenty of opportunity to let the Beevers play his version of the Master at its most diabolic. There are, perhaps, too many other characters in this to let them all develop, and that’s a pity. Anyone who lived through the early 1980s can’t fail but be drawn into the back story of one of the teenagers and the piece as a whole sets us up for the next two instalments.
Fourth Doctor Adventures 5.04 ‘Legacy of Death’
In the Fourth Doctor Adventure ‘Legacy of Death’, writer Jonathan Morris concludes his own local time war, as started in last month’s ‘Paradox Planet’. The Doctor (Tom Baker), Romana (Lalla Ward) and K9 (John Leeson) were shuttling backwards and forwards in the history of the plane Aoris, as inhabitants a thousand years apart wage war on each other. Neither side is winning, but there is one definite loser – the planet itself.
Under a fairly complex tale of time twists, betrayals, new religions and prophecies, Jonathan Morris brings home some all too real and contemporary concerns about the damage we are doing to this planet and the legacy we are leaving our own descendants. As Jonathan points out in the extras, Doctor Who has explored this territory before in several stories in the 1970s and with his pair of stories Jonathan has created a worthy addition to the canon.
At two discs long, the story is perhaps padded out to allow the nuances of the past fighting the future to be well-explored and for plenty of superb dialogue. This is at the expense of some character development for the two leaders waging a war separated by a thousand years.
By the end of the story it is the more minor characters who evolve, and find the ability to make new choices. This is something their leaders (the excellent Tom Chadbon as Embery being the main example) do not.
For the most part the story has a happy ending, something we should be wishing, nay striving for ourselves.
Short Trips 6.04 ‘The Curse of the Fugue’
In 2007, when the Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor took to the airwaves of BBC Radio 7, he did so with a fresh companion called Lucie Miller. Gloriously brought to life by Sheridan Smith, Lucie was bold and brave, and certainly not afraid to give the Doctor what for over four series of adventures.
Returning to the character for the first time in five years, having gone on to great success on both stage and television, Smith voices a tale which finds Lucie working undercover in a nursing home.
Set in the “rubbish” 1970s, amid industrial action, buzzy phone lines and the three day week, she becomes involved ghostly apparitions that plague one of the residents when the power goes off. Meanwhile, the Doctor is on the trail of a mysterious transmission.
Writer Alice Cavander spins us a tale full of nostalgia, both for the 70’s and also back further to the wartime exploits of one of Lucie’s charges, Cecile Chalmers, who operated under the amusing moniker of the Karate Kitten! She also grants Smith plenty of opportunity to have fun with a range of elderly voices and accents, and there are some great characterful moments as Lucie entertains the residents with her colourful future predictions.
Much missed, this is a fine return for Lucie ‘bleeding’ Miller and, though we know there is one more Short Trip in the can for 2017, we hope she can be coaxed back for even more!
What was your favourite Doctor Who release from Big Finish this month? Let us know below…