Doctor Who has had a great history of short fiction, this particular range is a testament to that and quite a few of my favourite stories in the franchise have come from Big Finish’s output on the Short Trip front. It’s nice to have these shorter stories which deal with smaller scale sci-fi concepts, often putting character and theme above all else to give us more intimate narratives. In recent years they’ve even been willing to experiment with the format with stories like How To Win Planets and Influence People and Regeneration Impossible essentially being more like mini audio dramas rather simply a prose story. On a side note I would really recommend giving both of those stories a go since they are pretty cheap and help ease you into the style of story seen in this particular boxset. We’ve got six stories here so I’m not going to bore you with any more details, just know now that this boxset is going to be hard to recommend despite my overall positive response to this set.
Let’s take a moment to discuss integrating a theme into a story and how an author’s intent may perhaps become muddled by a production. Once and Future is the overarching name given to Big Finish Productions’ 60th Anniversary miniseries, planning to release monthly installments until the anniversary month and a coda in 2024. Like all anniversary specials the announcement came with a slew of guest stars and returning characters, with the premise being some incarnation of the Doctor has been attacked and is degenerating into previous incarnations of themself. This is the overarching plot of the miniseries, established at the start of Past Lives, Robert Valentine’s introductory story.
With the title and behind the scenes interviews, Valentine lays out this idea about anti-nostalgia and the pain of nostalgia, which is a laudable idea to inject into an anniversary story, especially one for a franchise that has been going for 60 years and shows no signs of stopping. It is especially prescient for an audio drama which is supplemental to the main show and whose company has had criticisms for an over reliance on nostalgia in recent years to stay in business.
This could have been an interesting examination of the need to keep referencing things and drawing people in as Valentine clearly intended, however, Past Lives just doesn’t do anything to explore those themes in its hour-long runtime. There are hints, Sarah Jane, played by Sadie Miller, is brought in right at the end of The Hand of Fear and the UNIT characters of Kate Stewart and Petronella Osgood, played by Jemma Redgrave and Ingrid Oliver respectively, right before The Day of the Doctor, is a clear choice to parallel characters from after and before their involvement with the Doctor proper (though Kate had appeared in The Power of Three). The Meddling Monk being the antagonist of the story, played by Rufus Hound, also could have been a larger presence of preserving some sense of nostalgia but the script never crystalizes any of its ideas. As it stands, the plot of Past Lives is actually quite condensed, the opening and conclusion being dedicated to introducing the central idea and mystery box of Once and Future’s arc which means that Valentine only gets about 40 minutes to actually tell his story from front to back. A lot of the introduction feels incredibly rushed, with points where it feels as if Helen Goldwyn in the director’s seat has realized how tight the script needs to be to fit in the CD time limit and has some scenes just move quick. The recreation of the end of The Hand of Fear is perhaps the biggest example of this, Sadie Miller almost rushing through her lines before she is brought into the story. The conclusion is also just a lead in to the fact that the Doctor, played by Tom Baker here, is changing his appearance again and going off to find his daughter.
When the story is actually dealing with the Meddling Monk and the Hyreth invaders, crocodilian invaders whose leader is voiced by Ewan Bailey with aplomb, there’s a pretty fun story to be had there. Okay so it’s a bit standard but it genuinely feels like Valentine had a much bigger scope story to tell, but having only an hour means that a of the five major players of the Doctor, Sarah Jane, the Monk, Kate, and Osgood are competing for time in the spotlight while also exploring a new species of alien invaders and setting up a mystery box. The resolution of the story is great, with the Hyreth turning themselves into UNIT which indicates maybe there’s hope for peaceful existence with aliens which is nice. The downfall of the Hyreth feels like the point where Valentine meant to explore the idea of holding onto the past, but it just doesn’t get enough time to shine. Past Lives as a story is a perfectly fine story on its own, but as the beginning of a story arc it strays far too much into just setting up a basic premise, when more time should have been given to Valentine to actually tell the story he wanted to tell and expand on the themes that suffer from only being a small thread in the corner of the story. 5/10.
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.
It feels like only yesterday when Eccleston joined the team at Big Finish to star in a batch of new adventures, 8 boxsets later and we have reached the end of what we know the company had planned for the Ninth Doctor Adventure range. It’s been a range with some genuinely spectacular stories, reuniting this Doctor with old friends and old enemies in ways that feel new and fresh. There have been some rough patches on the journey to Shades of Fearbut with 24 new stories in this series that is only to be expected. This new boxset I think is the most emblematic of the ranges strongest and weakest elements, it has the characteristic inconsistent quality that has been a bit of a blight on the range but the spirit of the era is captured so vividly with the right themes hitting home and the atmosphere fitting really nicely into what RTD helped create back in 2005. Its not the best one we’ve had from the range, but still manages to keep the momentum from previous sets rolling and delivers an all around good experience with Eccleston at the helm.
Alright, it’s February and Big Finish have released their first Classic Doctor set of the new year after January’s pre-1989 Doctor Who releases were limited to the Audio Novel and the Short Trips release earlier this month.Okay so The First Doctor Adventures: The Demon Song was initially solicited for release in January, but it was pushed back to February probably due to production delays or time for editing.If you can’t help, I’m stalling.The Demon Song and The Incherton Incident make up this set are sadly stories that don’t actually have much connection, just being a two-part story and four-part story that have the same TARDIS team which is thee First Doctor and Dodo, played by Stephen Noonan and Lauren Cornelius, so as such it’s going to be a bit difficult to give the set an overall score, especially since both stories are vastly in terms of what they are attempting to do.The first feels very modern while the second is one that takes more lengths to imitate the style of a story you would have seen in the 1960s, which makes the lack of connection between the stories feel even more stark as each story serves a very different purpose.
River Song has had a bit of a fandom redemption I feel thanks to Big Finish, sure she had a ton of fans thanks to her TV outings (myself included) but the Classic Who fans and those who weren’t massively enamoured with Moffatt’s writing style would probably need a lot of convincing to like Doctor Song. That’s where the Diary of River Song range seems to come in, offering a fun bridging of the worlds of Classic and New Who along with plenty of original stories. I’d heard the second, fifth, and sixth volumes before coming into series 11. I had really positive experiences with the former two but was hugely disappointed by what felt like fanservice for the sake of fanservice in volume 6. But Friend of the Familyoffers a new avenue for the series; a distinct absence of Doctor Who elements. Previously we’d either have had a prior Doctor, companion or foe but here we have a completely original and stand-alone story which gives River the time to shine she deserves.
Every so often Big Finish will give us the chance to explore new characters within the Torchwood universe, offering us a look at branches and agents we may never would have seen onscreen. We’ve been to a Third Reich occupied Paris in The Dying Room, a Charlie’s Angels inspired LA in The Dollhouseand most famously we’ve had a glimpse into Norton Folgate’s Soho based branch. Doublefollows suit and takes back to a world where the Autons are slowly plotting their global take-over through corporate subterfuge and how a 70s British Torchwood may go around dealing with this hostile threat. Double’s strength lies in its longer format as we get to feel more involved with the world we see in Guy Adams’ script, everything is given the room it needs to breathe and we are offered an Auton story that feels genuinely fresh and expectedly bleak. Although there are some issues with how long it takes Adams to breathe, which ultimately does leave us with a big cluster of brilliant ideas and characters trapped within a narrative which ends up being somewhat confusing for the listener.
Indie Mac User 