Once in a blue moon, we’ll get a story with Suzie Costello. And every time this I immediately become very interested. I’ve always thought Suzie had the potential to be one of the most interesting Torchwood agents, she’s far more morally warped than your typical agent and she often revels in the brutality she uses to get what she wants. This was used to great effect in Sync and They Keep Killing Suzie, she’s a very selfish character at heart so doing an emotionally charged character piece like what we have here could go a good way to humanise her. Marcus gets that aspect down perfectly, however there is a bit of a problem with the general narrative flow.
It’s always really cool when an actor gets to write for the character they’ve spent so long embodying and studying; Tom Baker of course gave us one of the best Fourth Doctor stories in Scratchman, Colin Baker has given us numerous short stories, Matthew Waterhouse has given us a pair of novels and Gareth David-Llyod has perfected the Ianto story. So now its time for Tom Price to pen a story for PC Andy; a comedy story making fun of modern dating practices. And you know what, it really is quite good.
The three episode format is one that Big Finish Productions has often neglected as a possibility for storytelling.The Monthly Range in the late 2000s experimented with splitting stories into 1 three part story and a single part story in releases like Exotron, The Wishing Beast, and The Death Collectors, but by the time Season 27’s scripts were adapted for audio, they were all presented as four episode stories.Now that Big Finish have moved to the box set model of three discs it was quite surprising that it took over a year to reinstate the three part stories with the Fifth Doctor Adventures taking the leap in Conflicts of Interest, still having three discs, but adjusting to this format addresses a major issue the Big Finish box set format has been suffering from.Three episodes essentially means two 90 minute stories, the episodes reaching approximately 30 minutes apiece, allowing both stories to have the breathing room to really explore the ideas John Dorney and Jonathan Barnes bring to the proceedings.These are technically both stories that could be told in the 1 hour format, but that extra 30 minutes allows the chance to slow down and broaden the focus in the best way.
Not to sound hyperbolic, but in recent years I have realised the Third Doctor Adventures are my favourite of the solo Classic Doctor ranges, actually of all the solo Doctor ranges now that I think about it. There’s always been an appreciation for interesting slow burn stories, especially more recently with a pair of excellent serials spanning over six and seven episodes respectively. So when this was announced, I was initially very optimistic; who doesn’t want to see Jo get one last bit of reconciliation with her Doctor? But then it was revealed we are getting three hour stories, and my face suddenly looked like I had a dinner plate lodged in my mouth. The hour long stories work fine enough for the New Who Doctors, they were designed to work in that format and thus end up suiting them better. Hell a lot of the Classic Doctor kind of work here, but I think the Third Doctor is by far the least suited overall. If he is the suave spy that he is often characterised as thanks to his frequent conspiracy and mystery based narratives, then surely we need something bigger than hour to get the most out of him. And that is was really hold this boxset back from getting anything higher than a 7/10 for me, I just don’t feel like I get enough out of the concepts presented by the writers here. The scripts are good, but are damaged by having those missing episodes. Which is a shame because this reunion should have felt bigger than it ended up being.
The second installment in The Eleventh Doctor Chronicles final hurrah for Jacob Dudman’s time portraying the character, All of Time and Space, continues the generic titling while the sets themselves are anything but generic.This marks the halfway point for the series, with the final two sets coming in late 2023 and early 2024 respectively, and if you’re going in expecting some big revelation as to where the arc is going you may be disappointed.All of Time and Spaceinstead focuses on exploring the character dynamics between the Eleventh Doctor and Valarie as they continue their travels and come across something that will break that relationship down to an interesting point.While I will be avoiding larger plot spoilers for this review, as much of the set works if you go in knowing little of the big character defining moments, All of Time and Space is a set that will work at its best if you are listening to it without preconceptions and having heard Geronimo! recently.If you’ve come to this review to know if it is worth it, it is definitely worth it, it is one of the few recent releases from Big Finish to genuinely return to experimental storytelling with its heaviest focus on character development.
Indie Mac User 