Occasionally a Doctor Who story comes along with such a great premise that you cannot believe it has not been tackled before. ‘The Abandoned’, despite its somewhat generic title, has just that. While it has been repeatedly established over the years that the Doctor stole his TARDIS from Gallifrey, or it stole him, we have … >
This month, the Doctor Who main range presents one of its occasional anthology releases, with four short stories starring Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor and Nicola Bryant’s Peri. The first, ‘Breaking Bubbles’, finds the time travellers in a set of formal gardens much to the surprise of its sole resident. Safira Valtris is a deposed royal … >
Some Doctor Who stories have characters so well written and cast that they leave you wanting more. Like Jago and Litefoot before them, the team from 1988’s Remembrance of the Daleks cried out for their further exploits to be chronicled. Now three series in, Group Captain Ian ‘Chunky’ Gilmore (Simon Williams), Professor Rachel Jensen (Pamela … >
The last in the latest trilogy of stories begins in surprising circumstances with the arrival of a famed English Doctor, his ward Miss Nyssa and her governess, who come by invitation for an audience with the Marquise De Rimdelle. The year is 1770 and we are asked to imagine the Doctor in a powdered wig! … >
For the final edition of The Companion Chronicles, the range returns to the story of Zoe long after her travels in the TARDIS. Conscious of her missing memories, courtesy of the Time Lords, she recalls only her first encounter with the Doctor and Jamie although intensive memory probing has revealed other adventures that we have … >
With a temporal twist worthy of the Doctor himself, the story which was planned to introduce Nicholas Briggs’ new villain to the Big Finish canon has actually turned out to be the third to employ them. ‘The Eminence’, a malevolent gaseous entity with which humanity has endured a lengthy conflict, troubled both the Sixth Doctor … >
The latest boxset from Big Finish might at first seem somewhat of a departure from their regular sci-fi staples of Doctor Who and Blake’s 7. Based on the post-apocalyptic television show from the mid-1970s, Survivors actually has plenty of connections to both, coming from the pen of Dalek creator Terry Nation and sharing plenty of … >
When Paul McGann joined Big Finish in 2000, their first task was to devise him a companion. Charlotte Espleth Pollard, Charley to her friends, joined the TARDIS as a self-styled Edwardian adventuress with a joie de vivre to match the Doctor’s own. Played by India Fisher, familiar to many for her voice over work on … >
Doctor Who has a proud tradition of taking classic monster stories and doing its own spin on them. This was especially prevalent in the early gothic influenced Tom Baker era and ‘Last of the Colophon’ is a tale consciously cut from that cloth. Continuing his adventures with Leela, the story begins with the Doctor looking … >
For the penultimate Companion Chronicles story, we return to an old favourite. Continuing from where 2010’s ‘Find and Replace’ left off, Jo Jones (née Grant) is off on an adventure with the irrepressible Iris Wildthyme. For those not acquainted with Ms Wildthyme, the trans-temporal adventuress, suffice to say that she is a sometime ally, sometime … >