Audio Drama

Review: Torchwood – Odyssey

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Cavan Gilbey

The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit are amongst my favourite episodes of Doctor Who; they bring a much needed sense of cosmic and occult horror to the Tennant era and the show in general with a return of the classic base under siege formula. Those episodes are always ones I tend to rewatch when I want to dip back into Tennant’s stint on the show, which I’ve been doing quite a bit in the run up to The Star Beast. So when Big Finish announced a trilogy of stories featuring survivors from those episodes I was naturally intrigued, and this first story certainly made me far more excited to hear the next two chapters of this Ood trilogy. Here we are reunited with Ida Scott and we finally get to see what exactly the Beast meant when he teased about her relationship with her father, which isn’t exactly the best.

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Review: Doctor Who – Once And Future – Time Lord Immemorial

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Cavan Gilbey

The penultimate episode of Big Finish’s 60th anniversary celebrations bring us our first true multi-Doctor story of the bunch, just not with the Doctors you may have been expecting. I’m surprised it took the miniseries this long to finally get round to properly pairing up a pair of Doctors for an hour, but the choice of Nine and the Unbound Doctor does make a good bit of sense since we can celebrate Big Finish’s main bespoke incarnation alongside the man who helped revitalise the program; the reason we can really have a Diamond anniversary in the way we do. However, the excitement I felt going in to this story did feel quite misplaced as this is not the story it could have been.

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Review: Doctor Who – Once and Future – The Union

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Cavan Gilbey

Spoiler Warning!!! Review contains spoilers of The Union!!!

Big Finish’s diamond anniversary has finally come to an end, except for the coda story next year but I don’t think anyone is going to count that as a true end to the narrative. It has been a bumpy ride across these seven episodes, with wildly varying quality on show with some scripts such as The Martian Invasion of Planetoid 50 or Genius For War being quite good hour long excursions and other’s (looking at you Two’s Company) being the exact opposite. The plot threads, well those that have been half built up anyway, finally come to their conclusion here in The Union and Matt Fitton has done a brilliant job. Possibly bringing us the strongest story of the run so far, although that might because it is one of the few that feels like a full story with a beginning, middle and end as opposed to just a beginning and middle.

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Review: Rose Tyler – The Dimension Cannon 3 -Trapped

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Cavan Gilbey

When I reviewed the previous set in this series, I’m fairly sure I called it my favourite release from Big Finish of 2022. It was a fantastic set of really well explored ethical dilemmas in increasingly creative settings, with some of the best character work the company has put out in recent years. Naturally I was very excited to hear this third, and I assume final, set from the series. There’s been a bit of a departure from the episodic formula of the previous two sets, now choosing to tell a serialised story with Rose and new companion Danni (played by Em Thane) trying to find a way to get Rose back home and escape the Anti-life that is ravaging Danni’s universe. Now was this as good as that second set? Yes, and it might even be better in quite a few regards.

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Review: Doom’s Day – Dying Hours

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Cavan Gilbey

 

The Doom’s Day event is a weird one. The last time we have a multimedia event like this was Time Lord Victorious, a story which didn’t do much to separate itself a lot of the Time War media which had come out around the event. But some of the stories stood out as being pretty good on their own, namely those two Master starring Short Trips and Genetics of the Daleks which worked because of how standalone they were. Dying Hours feels like it really needs the prior hours of the story to fully appreciate what was going one, especially in the final story. The problem is most people will do what I do and listen to this in isolation because these multimedia events always have a high buy in price. It’s a lot easier to just buy this one boxset than all the linking comics, DWM strips, novels and BBC Audio releases. So I want you to keep that in mind, I haven’t heard anything else from Doom’s Day. It might shock you to hear that this boxset is actually quite good.

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Review: Doctor Who – In The Night

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Jacob Licklider

In the Night is the second of the Fifth Doctor sets with 2023 being the first year that the Fifth Doctor Adventures have decided to avoid doing a year-long story arc, meaning that this set is another standalone without prerequisites, released in the same month as the very prerequisite heavy Purity Unbound.  In the Night has an interesting premise, both stories essentially take place over the course of one night, though the first plays around with the time scale in general, and have themes of discovery of historical pasts in some very different ways.  This is balanced with the first story, the four-part Pursuit of the Nightjar being an example of “future” history concerning itself with a myth the Doctor is familiar with from their childhood, while Resistor is more concerned with the past of the Earth, though a past that would have been contemporary had it been a televised story.  It’s a set that like Conflicts of Interest before it, despite eschewing perhaps the better format, creates two incredibly complementary stories that allow some very interesting introspection and exploration.

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Review: The Sixth Doctor Adventures – Purity Unbound

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Jacob Licklider

The general thoughts going through the Big Finish side of the Doctor Who fandom when it was announced Ruth Madeley would be included as a new character in the 60th Anniversary Specials, is that Hebe Harrison would be written out of the audio series.  This has happened before with audio companions’ arcs being altered due to what was going on on television, C’rizz being the foremost example.  The expectation going into Purity Unbound was that Hebe would have to leave, but surprisingly that doesn’t happen in the final story, there are still more adventures to tel with this TARDIS Team and honestly the set is all the better for it.  The four box set story arc has been something in my eyes with its ups and downs, the second installment being the rockiest and the wait between sets not often helping matters.  Purity Unbound is the high point of the arc, mainly because the writers have found their way to a consistent theme and conclusion to this saga, using each story as a way to explore the aberrations to the timeline (and further aberrations) in different and interesting ways.  Jacqueline Rayner and Robert Valentine are joined by Mark Wright in scripting this final installment, all three writers keying in on the character journeys in particular, especially when concluding this story.  It should be noted that this is a story arc about a dictator heavily enforcing a eugenics program based on disability which is most explicit in this set so this review may be discussing themes that could be triggering for some.  For context, I am coming to this review from the perspective of someone who is physically disabled. Continue reading →

Review: Torchwood – Doghop

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Cavan Gilbey

*contains spoilers*

I’ve slowly come to realise why I like the PC Andy focused Torchwood episodes, its all down to how human and borderline slice-of-life they feel. Sure you could argue that the Ianto episodes are equally full of humanity due to how emotionally driven that character is, but the emotional stakes are always relatively high in a Ianto centric story. Whereas with Andy there’s the sense that nothing feels too dangerous, with the exception of his double-act stories with Owen that it is. This brings us to Dog Hop by Stewart Pringle, the latest outing for the beloved Cardiff copper. This time he’s on the case following a string of missing persons and rapidly appearing dogs, with some help the regulars of the Red Lion pub it is up-to Andy to solve this strange canine case. 

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Review: Doctor Who – Once And Future – Two’s Company

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Cavan Gilbey

Once and Future continues, or rather plods along, with Two’s Company and return to a Sixth Doctor driven story, the second in this very series. However even Colin Baker can’t save this one as Two’s Company strikes out as the weakest of the stories we’ve had so far, which is saying something given the overall response to Once and Future so far can be summed up with the phrase ‘meh.’ The phrase ‘Dartboard Plotting’ has been coined recently to describe elements of Big Finish’s current output, and I feel it was this story which catalysed the recent surge of that phrase’s use. When looking at this story, which contains two companions from the modern era paired with the Sixth Doctor and an older Harry who team up to fight a fan favourite Big Finish original baddie, it is hard to not simply say this is epitome of randomised idea generation.

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Review: The Diary of River Song – The Orphan Quartet

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Cavan Gilbey

I think we all knew that this series couldn’t last forever but seeing it come to an end still feels a bit surreal. The Diary of River Song has been one of my favourite Big Finish spin-off series, actually doing the impossible job of getting me to really like River Song; a character I ended up loathing on television by the time she was playing a prominent role in the Matt Smith era. But the The Orphan Quartet feels like an appropriate end, especially with how each writer uses the theme of grief and acceptance to explore River finally coming to terms with losing her husband and parents. I don’t think this is by any means the most consistent, or even best boxset in the series, but it certainly feels like the most appropriate way to send of River Song’s solo series. I expect we’ll see her again in the future, but for now this is the end.

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