Jamie Parker

Review: Tenth Doctor – Classic Companions

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Cavan Gilbey

Companions become just as much of a friend to the audience as they do to the Doctor, so seeing them return by having them reunited with Doctor after ages can be really refreshing and rewarding. However this concept is only going to really work if we have actually spent some time away from those characters, which with Big Finish is nigh on impossible because every companion is omnipresent there and you can find a new Peri audio just as much as you can a new Jamie story. Tegan and Ace returning to TV feels significant since they’ve not been seen for ages, but we have heard so many extended adventures with them so having them meet a later Doctor on audio doesn’t hit that spot. This is where we come to the main issue with Tenth Doctor, Classic Companions; it’s too much of a gimmick. Sure Classic Doctors, New Monsters is a gimmick but you can understand it more with the monsters than you can with the companions. This set feels like it exists solely to give Ten some stories with older companions as opposed to crafting interesting stories based around the way their relationships have changed, which doesn’t exactly make this an enticing listen.
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Review: The Ninth Doctor Adventures – Ravagers

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Jacob Licklider

Raise your hand if you weren’t expecting Christopher Eccleston to come back to Doctor Who? Okay, whoever doesn’t have your hand up is clearly lying, because it was one of those things that nobody ever thought would happen, and even more so, would happen so soon, but here we are, May 2021, and the first of four Ninth Doctor Box sets from Big Finish Productions are out in the world. Ravagers was written and directed by Nicholas Briggs showing just how much enthusiasm he had for the first Doctor he worked with on television when Doctor Who came back, and structured like a three part miniseries. This format is actually really good for Doctor Who, as single hour long stories which aren’t connected in any way becomes incredibly difficult to properly develop a new setting and new characters all in a single episode. While each episode has its own title (Sphere of Freedom, Cataclysm, and Food Fight) as this is a miniseries, this review will be looking as Ravagers as one continuous story, which is the best way to look at this box set anyway as each episode ends in a cliffhanger before the final episode opens up the series of box sets to what is clearly going to become a new era of Ninth Doctor adventures.

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Review: Doctor Who – Plight of the Pimpernel

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Michael Goleniewski

The first of two Big Finish Main releases for December 2020, ‘Plight of the Pimpernel’ sees the Sixth Doctor and Peri caught in the middle of one of the most infamous events in European history. France 1793; the French Revolution and the bloody Reign of Terror are in full swing with heads rolling from the blade of the ‘National Razor’ on a daily basis. It’s a radical and deadly time for the population of the country but a few small lights of hope are working to make a difference, including a mysterious masked hero saving lives in the country and calling himself the Scarlet Pimpernel. But as to who the Pimpernel actually is and who is hiding under the mask, that’s where things get a little strange as the Pimpernel is supposed to be a fictional character and not an actual force for good. With the Doctor and Peri in extended undercover in England and several forces human and inhuman working to put the Pimpernel out of commission, the situation is about to get even more complicated than even the TARDIS team is anticipating to the point where an understudy of sorts may be required to figure things out and save the day…..


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Review: Doctor Who – Shadow of the Daleks 2

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Jacob Licklider

“Shadow of the Daleks is an interesting idea for a Doctor Who Big Finish release, at least for the Main Range. Instead of a single release, this is a story arc crossing two releases made up of eight individual episodes from different writers, all with the conceit of the Time War breaking into the life of the Fifth Doctor and a collection of people.”

This is how I opened my review of Shadow of the Daleks 1 last month here at IndieMacUser, and sitting here about a month later having finished Shadow of the Daleks 2, I realised just how apt that description is of these two releases.

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Review: Doctor Who – Shadow of the Daleks 1

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Jacob Licklider

Shadow of the Daleks is an interesting idea for a Doctor Who Big Finish release, at least for the Main Range. Instead of a single release, this is a story arc crossing two releases made up of eight individual episodes from different writers, all with the conceit of the Time War breaking into the life of the Fifth Doctor and a collection of people. This review is of only the first release, as it serves as the October Main Range release, Shadow of the Daleks 1, as the second installment has not been released and the story has not been concluded. As a series of four individual stories that have an overarching narrative, I will be foregoing any sort of format and just talking about what strikes me as this is a very different type of story. Listeners going in should expect that the title Shadow of the Daleks is apt as while the Daleks appear, and Nicholas Briggs is always excellent, they are not the focal point, staying in the literal shadows of each of the four episodes. The implication is that they are fighting the Time War, and possibly dragging earlier Doctors into events in a gambit to win, but as it stands there isn’t much to know of what they are. They are even referred to only as the Enemy in one of the stories which brings back images of the Eighth Doctor Adventures and Virgin New Adventures where the Terry Nation estate did not allow their use in the novels.

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