Jonathan Barnes

Review: Torchwood – The Empire Man

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Review by Cavan Gilbey

If Chimes of Midnight has taught us anything it’s that Big Finish fans love a good ghost story over the Christmas period. Nothing quite gets you in the festive spirit that a good fright, and Torchwood audios over the past couple of years have treated us to sci-fi scare for tide us over until the next holiday season. This year’s entry into that collection is from veteran of the Sherlock Holmes audio stories Jonathan Barnes, slipping into his comfort zone of the Victorian period to give us a series of short horror vignettes with Queen Victoria. But this story ultimately ended up leaving me more frustrated than frightened. 

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Review: Doctor Who – Silver & Ice

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Review by Jacob Licklider

18 months. It has been 18 months since Big Finish Productions has released a solo Seventh Doctor audio with Sylvester McCoy in the role. The Grey Man of the Mountain was released in December 2020. It is now June 2022 and in between we had one small cameo in The End of the Beginning and a Short Trip read by Sophie Aldred, but that has finally changed. Silver and Ice has been released after a long time coming and it’s honestly not entirely what I expected. While every other Doctor’s set has been tied around some theme with Forty, Water Worlds, and Beyond War Games all work around a theme with The Annihilators and The Outlaws featuring central stories. Silver and Ice is odd as the two stories it contains, Bad Day in Tinseltown and The Ribos Inheritance really have no connection outside of being two stories featuring the Seventh Doctor and Mel. They almost feel as if there was an intention for them to make up a Main Range trilogy, especially if the second set, announced to be Sullivan and Cross – AWOL, continues the format. This disconnect makes me feel a bit odd about giving the set as a whole a rating as these are essentially two stand alone stories and perhaps would have been more effective had they been released as two single releases.

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Audio Review: Sherlock Holmes – The Fiends of New York City

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Review by Ian McArdell

The latest outing for Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, The Fiends of New York City, takes place in the stifling summer of 1901. Surprisingly, despite its title, it has very little to do with New York and instead, rather more to do with the new power behind London’s criminal underclass; The Seamstress of Peckham Rye.

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Review: Doctor Who – Peladon

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Review by Jacob Licklider

The 1963-1989 run of Doctor Who is fascinating in the fact that in the 160 serials (including The TV Movie in 1996), there are few stories that are direct sequels to previous stories, much less sequels within the same production team. Generally the closest you would get are stories like Attack of the Cybermen doing a sequel to The Tenth Planet and Attack of the Cybermen over a decade after the prequel’s release or Snakedance to Kinda and Mindwarp to Vengeance on Varos essentially being extensions of the themes of the previous story, but doing its own thing. The Curse of Peladon and The Monster of Peladon are an oddity as they both share the same setting, several of the characters, and feel like a natural extension of the same story. Peladon being the setting of both is a big factor in why the two stories feel so connected, the sets are the same and it feels like the planet is evolving and changing. The Curse of Peladon aired as the second story from Season 9 beginning at the end of January 1972, so as it is the 50th anniversary of Episode One while I am writing this, Big Finish Productions are celebrating with Peladon, a four story box set revisiting the planet throughout its history as well as continue the spirit of Peladon stories in reflecting the politics of the real world using allegory for a stark contrast of the good and bad of today’s world.

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Audio Review: Sherlock Holmes- The Seamstress of Peckham Rye

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Review by Ian McArdell

The Seamstress of Peckham Rye is the second installment in Big Finish’s latest trilogy of stories, chronicling the adventures of the famous Consulting Detective and his loyal associate Dr Watson.

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Review – Jago & Litefoot: Series 14

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Review by Jacob Licklider

This review (a week late….) is going to be a bit different from the other reviews I’ve written for this site. Other reviews often go into the performances and a bit of the plot and makes a judgment based on that, however, Jago & Litefoot: Series 14 is a release that shouldn’t necessarily be looked at like a standard release, being presented as four audiobooks adapted from the scripts of an unrecorded Jago & Litefoot written before the tragic passing of Trevor Baxter. It is Baxter to whom this release is dedicated, giving the series one last hurrah and allowing four of the remaining stars one final chance to shine telling a story. Paul Morris and Julian Richards were put in charge of adapting the scripts into audiobook format for one narrator, originally with the idea being only one long audiobook, but due to the second episode being told in the first person while the other three are in third person limited. This format shift in one long audiobook would have been jarring. It also allowed Morris the chance to adapt the scripts which he had a hand in writing so the adaptation could be a bit smoother as Simon Barnard, Jonathan Barnes, and Justin Richards had no hand in changing their scripts for the project.

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Review: Torchwood – The Crown

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Review by Jacob Licklider

When Torchwood was first conceived as an arc for Series 2 of Doctor Who it was established in universe by Queen Victoria, so having Big Finish Productions producing a series of audio dramas based on Torchwood, doing releases with Queen Victoria as a prominent character is a given.  Big Finish Productions cast Rowena Cooper in the role; and several monthly range releases, and an appearance in The Torchwood Archive established her as the definitive Queen Victoria.  The final Torchwood monthly range release for 2020 is The Crown which is promoted with a striking image of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria in a straitjacket and padded cell with a skeleton looming.  This image, combined with a vague product description, can only lead a potential listener to buy this on intrigue.

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Review: Doctor Who – Shadow of the Daleks 2

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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- The Third Doctor Adventures (Vol 6)

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Review by Michael Goleniewski

Poison of the Daleks by Guy Adams –

UNIT has been employed to handle security concerns at a new air filtration center that promises to help rid the planet of atmospheric pollution forever. The Third Doctor, Jo Grant, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, and Sergeant Benton arrive to lend their expertise (and hopefully their endorsement) as necessary despite the Doctor’s personal suspicions and the somewhat rude comments of the leading professor on the project. But something strange is going on behind the scenes hinted at when a strange battered man suddenly appears out of nowhere asking for help before dying right in front of them. It’s not long before the UNIT family discover a dark connection to a whole other planet filled with killer plants, oddly familiar robot men, and occupied by an old foe lurking in the shadows waiting to strike…..

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Review: Doctor Who – The Fourth Doctor Adventures Series 8 (Volume 2)

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Review by Doctor Squee (Host of Gallifrey Stands Podcast)

Without missing a beat the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker), K9 (John Leeson) and new companion WPC Anne Kelso (Jane Slavin) are back for the second part of Series 8 and the drama only gets greater.
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