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.
Tom Baker‘s fourth season as the Fourth Doctor is the next release to come to Blu-ray when The Collection – Season 15 releases later this year.
Doctor Who fans can continue to build their own home archive on Blu-ray with a SEVEN DISC box set of the 15th Season from 1977, starring Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor. Containing six classic stories, this limited-edition set is packed with hours of new and exclusive material.
New Frontiers began the twelfth series of the Fourth Doctor Adventures wonderfully with two four-part adventures that introduced the character of Margaret Hopwood, played by Nerys Hughes, to the Doctor’s world as second companion with Louise Jameson’s Leela.Angels and Demonsis the second half of the series, once again with a fifth bonus story CD, concluding the series and Margaret Hopwood’s travels, making another Big Finish Companion to have a limited run of only six stories.Angels and Demons is also the return of two-part stories to the Fourth Doctor Adventures in a significant way with three of the four stories in that format, something we hadn’t seen since 2019 with The Syndicate Master Plan, and something Series 13 will be continuing in 2024.Bringing the travels of Margaret Hopwood to a close so soon is a bit of a double-edged sword, since it’s a shorter run the stories have to be exceptionally good if the character is to be remembered unlike other Big Finish original companions with short runs (Hannah Bartholomew comes to mind as one that has fallen into obscurity while Raine Creevey is quite well remembered among Seventh Doctor fans).It does give the character the opportunity for a definitive beginning, middle, and an end which means Margaret won’t become a character like Flip or Constance who have had their travels extended indefinitely due to actor availability and illness.
Genesis of the Daleks might just be the most beloved Classic Era story, it’s the one that has topped opinion polls and fan rankings. A classic tale of the origins of sci-fi’s most iconic villains, of nuclear holocausts and the persistence of fascism. Its nihilism is matched by a strong script from Nation and fully realised by Hinchcliffe and Holmes, some powerful performances from a central cast who clearly understand the gravity of the script. With a successful Target Novel and cutdown record version, this story has clearly stuck with fans for good reason. From a production side of things there wasn’t actually many changes, just a couple of aesthetic differences that don’t change the product we ended up with. So considering all this, considering the production history and the accessibility of Genesis, why even bother releasing this?
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.
‘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.
The Fourth Doctor Adventures: The Nine has a weird title. Originally announced years back as simply The Fourth Doctor Adventures: Series 11: Volume 2 following the naming scheme of Series 7-10, but with the transition of the greater Big Finish output going to box set releases with their own individual subtitles is given the title The Nine because the character of the Nine appears in the first story, The Dreams of Avarice, alone. The other two stories, Shellshock and Peake Season, are completely unrelated adventures for the Fourth Doctor, Peake Season not even meant to be released in this series as it was added later and recorded in 2020 and not in 2017-2018. A more fitting subtitle would have been Solo Volume 2 since this is a set which contains three stories where the Fourth Doctor is travelling alone after The Deadly Assassin and a friend of mine suggested on Twitter that this series was similar to the run of Virgin New Adventures which in the span of four books would pitch a potential companion, with Bernice Summerfield being the companion chosen. For this series it would be Margaret in the winning role but The Dreams of Avarice, Shellshock, and Peake Season have characters who feel as if they are meant to be companion candidates which would have enhanced the set had this been called Solo Volume 2.
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