Big Finish Productions

Review: The Fifth Doctor Adventures – Forty 2

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Review by Jacob Licklider

*Spoilers ahead*

There is something interesting about having the Fifth Doctor taken after Four to Doomsday slid down his timeline going back and forth to each of his TARDIS teams in mysterious circumstances, meaning that authors have to be aware of the Fifth Doctor being a very young Doctor put in circumstances at different points of his arc. Forty 1 included the Fifth Doctor learning of Adric’s death and having to then have an adventure with Adric before being flung forward to the point where he is traveling with Tegan and Turlough, specifically after the events of Frontios which is where Forty 2 picks things up.

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Big Finish Audio Review: Jekyll & Hyde

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Review by Cavan Gilbey

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson is a corner stone of the gothic
horror genre. A compelling novella telling the tale of one man’s struggles to fight human nature’s
violent impulses as well as being a great study on the psychology behind public and private
personas. Of course there have been dozens of interpretations across all the major mediums; tv,
film, stage and even a small handful of video game adaptations. I’ve always been partial to John
Barrymore’s silent film adaption from 1920 and I was introduced to the story by seeing a local drama
society perform a stage adaptation, but I only read the novel relatively recently. Dr Jekyll and Mr
Hyde is one of those stories we are just born knowing due to its wide-spread integration into
cultures across the globe.

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Review: Gallifrey War Room – Allegiance

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Review by Jacob Licklider

With the release of Gallifrey: Time War: Volume Four the general consensus was that the series was over. Romana was punished to chronicle the Time War, Gallifrey was in the throws of a fascist dictatorship under Rassilon’s thumb, Leela was captured, and Narvin was essentially sent off to his suspected death. And then the Gallifrey One convention for 2022 happened and Big Finish Productions announced not one, but four new Gallifrey box sets under the series name War Room with the first set releasing this August, over a week ago at the time of writing. Yes, I am a bit late because this released while I was sick, so here we are finally taking a look at Gallifrey: War Room: Allegiance.

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Review: Torchwood – Suckers

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Cavan Gilbey

Tosh is often placed at the centre of some of Torchwood’s more experimental audio stories. The perfect piracy commentary Cascade, the anger management focused story Instant Karma and Dinner and a Show explored her little seen friendship with Ianto. Of all of the main team, Tosh has the most consistent catalogue of good stories; a catalogue Suckers happily fits in. New writer Alexander Stewart gives a fresh take on the often overused amnesia narrative and mental ward setting by giving us a story with far more human stakes that are more terrifying than any alien could ever be.

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Review: The Ninth Doctor Adventures – Into The Stars

Posted on by indiemacuser

Written by Cavan Gilbey

It’s that time of the year again where Eccleston and Big Finish bring us a fresh batch of adventures with the Ninth Doctor, a fact which still feels miraculous to this day. In previous sets we’ve had the Ninth Doctor face off against familiar foes, namely the Cybermen in a Dalek to Parting of the Ways style of progression, so here we have the Sontarans who feel like a natural fit for this Doctor given his Time War guilt. However where we deviate from those previous sets is in theming; in the first series of four sets in this range we saw thematic boxsets with three stories that represented the primary settings for RTD era narratives. But with series two we get boxsets, that while still thematically linked in their stories, focus on just story setting and explore as many avenues with it as possible. Back To Earth gave us three story set across Earth’s history so to contrast that Into The Stars sends beyond Earth to see life beyond the stars.

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Review: The Sixth Doctor Adventures – Purity Undreamed

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Review by Jacob Licklider

*** Warning: Spoilers Ahead ****

 

Let’s cut to the chase, Purity Undreamed is a set with a very weird starting point as an audio drama. Following on from Water Worlds and continuing on the development of Hebe Harrison it sets out to introduce several side characters who are attempting to recur, a new villain for the series, and end by setting up next year’s box sets for the Sixth Doctor and Mel (or at least that’s the assumption since they have not been formally announced yet to feature Mel). It’s a three-hour box set that is almost entirely setup from three different writers: Paul Magrs, Jonathan Morris, and Robert Valentine. Valentine is also serving as script editor with producer Jacqueline Rayner, both contributing as guides for the overarching story arcs. The biggest issue with Purity Undreamed comes from something that happens in the third story, setting up the villain which will be spoiled in this review, if you want non-spoiler thoughts then listen to this if you enjoyed Water Worlds as it maintains a lot of what went really well with that set although is a bit inconsistent. The behind the scenes for the second story, Reverse Engineering, reveals that Jonathan Morris had less time to complete the story, implying that another story may have fallen through. Because of this there is a disconnect between how the character of Patricia McBride, played by Imogen Stubbs, is characterised. This is not an issue of action, but of the character’s beliefs as the third story, Robert Valentine’s Chronomancer is a character piece meant to reveal that Patricia McBride is a woman harbouring bigotry going so far as to advocating for eugenics so the future is “better” and without disability. Continue reading →

Review: The Diary of River Song – Two Rivers And A Firewall

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Review by Jacob Licklider

If there has been a Doctor Who spin-off range from Big Finish Productions that consistently managed good stories while still being very reliant on past pieces of Doctor Who lore, it is The Diary of River Song. Ten series have gone by and only now we have an announcement of a box set with absolutely no returning elements coming out in January 2023. Now luckily the previous nine box sets have had some through line, a story arc or just a simple theme linking all of the stories together, but Two Rivers and a Firewall, the tenth series has a problem, and it’s a big one.

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Review: Classic Doctors New Monsters 3: The Stuff of Nightmares

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Written by Cavan Gilbey

‘Classic Doctors, New Monsters’ has been a novel concept for a range, both previous boxsets have been inventive with their match ups and often taken their chosen monsters into new and exciting territories; Judoon in Chains being the easy stand-out from those first sets with how it creatively uses it’s monster of choice. Weeping Angels, Sycorax, Racnoss and Carrionites are all obvious choices for the range but this third volume does plumb the depths a little bit; I mean who is really asking for Balhoon or Tivolian stories? Although I must admit a two parter involving the Dream Crabs is pretty inspired as you have the potential to create some truly surreal audio landscapes. But that aside, the four stories we get are all great fun thus making this a set that really is more the ‘Stuff of Dreams’ rather than Nightmares.

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Review: Doctor Who – Emancipation Of The Daleks

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Review by Jacob Licklider

The Audio Novels have released their third installment and instead of continuing to stay in the classic series it adds to the rather low number of Twelfth Doctor novels with Emancipation of the Daleks by Jonathan Morris, a book set in the middle of Series 10. Jonathan Morris was brought on to write the novel and depart from the previous two instalment’s format of six, one-hour episodes. The length is the same with approximately six hours of an audiobook, but it is shifted to three, two-hour episodes roughly the same word count as a televised episode according to the behind the scenes interviews. I’m bringing this up so early since the format of this novel is one of the releases biggest issues, the length of the episodes make it so that a lot of it drags and doesn’t feel like a book. This has been a slight problem with the previous two releases but as Scourge of the Cybermen and Watchers have double the chapters and double the points where the narrative stops and listeners can take a break. And with Jonathan Morris treating each part of Emancipation of the Daleks as it’s own episode, it’s paced as if it is supposed to be a full-cast episode and not an audiobook which makes everything throughout drag. Morris structures the book as three distinct ideas each following a distinct version of Bill Potts, with the inciting incident of the story being Bill Potts from 20 years in the future showing up on her own doorstep in the present before a Dalek spaceship crashes into St. Luke’s University.

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Review: Torchwood – Restricted Items Archive Entries 031-049

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Written by Cavan Gilbey

Ianto Jones, on one of his many routine cataloguing trips to the basement, finds himself stalked by a ghostly presence while he lets out some demons of his own.
The premise of Maddie Wilson’s debut story is shockingly simple; she takes one of our beloved Hub crew members and sends them off to deal with a spook on their lonesome. We’ve seen this quite a lot with Ianto specifically in this range, and they always come out as being exemplars of what the range can do with character development. James Goss’ Fall To Earth and The Office of Never Was are both excellent delves into the man Ianto truly is; just a guy who wants to be liked and seen as one of the team. But Wilson goes above and beyond the call of duty and gives possibly the best solo Ianto story the Torchwood Monthly Range has ever received. Equal parts tragic and unsettling, the story is a fresh exploration of the secret hero of Torchwood Three.
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