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| What: | Heart of TARDIS (BBC Past Doctor novels) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Sunday 5 March 2017 |
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| Rating: |   6 |
Because Dave Stone has a distinctive style and voice for narrating a story, his works can be offputting to those who like a plot delivered straight. Stone's style is of a certain kind of narrator in modern British fiction, one who maintains a long distance between the narrator and the story, commenting ironically on events, stepping in with whimsical observations and seeming non-sequiturs. It's the style of Douglas Adams, Gwyneth Jones, Ford Maddox Ford, and others. A reader looking for some style in the narrative, however, finds this approach rewarding and probably, in the case of Heart of TARDIS, the best thing in the book. The main problem dragging this novel down, though, is the plot. It's as though Stone paid so much attention to the style that he ignored the fact that a novel in a popular genre needs a plot.
The premise is promising enough. Doctor 2, Jamie, and Victoria are having one adventure while Doctor 4 and Romana (K-9 gets only briefly mentioned) are having another, but even though these are at different times and different places they are in some way happening simultaneously and each is affecting the other. The concept is daring, but it requires a writer skilled in maintaining the connections, one who knows at each point what the link is. This is where Heart of TARDIS falls to pieces. We learn that the connection has something to do with a prototype TARDIS gone haywire, and that the proximity of Doctor 2's TARDIS accidentally landing near the anomaly created by the prototype TARDIS sets off a kind of chain reaction. Had the story been left at the level of just this problem, it would have been fine. However, Stone heaps on top of it some extra-dimensional demons acting like Cthulu mythos monsters, a possessed Aleister Crowly with extended life, a secret US military base in England, and a secret government agency infiltrating UNIT. Early parts of the novel work well, keeping the reader guessing as to what is causing events and how they are connected. However, about 3/4 of the way through, Stone loses control of the plot. It becomes "and then reality went all crazy" and "look, an elephant in pyjamas, isn't that weird?" and a giant human pyramid of 250,000 people creating a human analog thing of some kind. Adding to the catastrophe are dozens of off-hand references to popular television scattered throughout the novel - The Simpsons, The X-Files, Queer as Folk, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and on and on. Finishing with an ending that isn't an ending, just "and then it was all over" more or less, the last 1/4 of the book is one of biggest disappointments for a Doctor Who novel. It's sad because given the premise, Heart of TARDIS could have been one of the best Doctor Novels.
| What: | The Lost Stories: Paradise 5 (The Lost Stories audio dramas) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Sunday 5 March 2017 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
Paradise 5 is another of those should be a satire but isn't quite one stories. The Doctor and Peri go to visit an old friend of the Doctor's, but he's disappeared. The Doctor then springs into action, volunteering Peri on an investigation of the luxury holiday space station Paradise 5. Peri makes her way on as an employee, while the Doctor works behind the scenes. Something is definitely wrong here as tourists go in, but never come out. The script is both interesting and infuriating. The story has many holes in it. The elaborate plot to steal people's essence as fodder in a war in the "higher dimensions" does not make much sense. On the other hand, the performances are excellent. Particular standouts are Alex Macqueen as Gabriel and James D'Arcy as Michael, one of the best double acts in all Big Finish productions.
| What: | Fear of the Dark (BBC Past Doctor novels) |
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| By: | Trevor Smith, Nottingham, United Kingdom |
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| Date: | Saturday 4 March 2017 |
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| Rating: | 9 |
I really, really enjoyed this. A cracking tale, told at a terrific pace. It has a real sense of dread all the way through with echoes of Alien/Aliens films. Loved the way Nyssa and Tegan are used in thus book, so much better than in a lot of the TV stories and the fifth Doctor feels very vulnerable. All in all a superb novel.
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 | Don't Know Quite What to Make of It |
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Christopher H. Bidmead's strength as a writer was in really interesting ideas from the edges of science regarding warping reality. This is probably the best element of The Hollows of Time. The worst element is the boy Simon (Susan Sheridan), one of those annoying brilliant, lonely kids who seemingly end up in every family-oriented program. One of the repeated elements of the lost season seems to be "get Peri to be a babysitter," as we see in The Nightmare Fair (Kevin's not a child, but certainly acts like a young teen who needs to reigned in by the more level-headed Peri), Mission to Magnus, and now this. Leviathan even had a child part. Simon in this story is mostly a needless distraction. The story itself is curiously structured, told in flashback with the Doctor and Peri after the events trying to remember what happened and telling each other bits of the story. It is not quite clear why the story should have been told in this way apart from Prof. Stream's apparently magical ability to mess with people's memories. Another curious aspect of the story is that for long stretches there is not much action. Part 1 is mostly in the form of a slow investigation of a mystery. The action picks up in Part 2, but then slows down again as the story reaches its climax. Also, curiously, all the conversations between the Doctor and the Gravis happen off stage. The only reason I can think of for this was that Big Finish did not want to replace the voice of the original actor for the Gravis. The choice is another element slowing down the action, so that we get characters fretting, "what did he say?," and the Doctor reporting on the conversation. Apparently, in the original TV version, Prof. Stream was to have been revealed as the Ainley Master. With Ainley unavailable, Big Finish got David Garfield (from The War Games and The Face of Evil) to play the role very Master like, while the Doctor keeps saying "He reminds me of someone." The takeaway: interesting villain, intriguing bent reality concepts, but clumsy plotting and strange writing choices.
| What: | The Lost Stories: Leviathan (The Lost Stories audio dramas) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Wednesday 1 March 2017 |
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| Rating: | 8 |
Leviathan works a clever variation on some old SF tropes. It starts as sort of classic Doctor Who historical, with a medieval setting. Things really aren't what they seem, however. The story works a nice slow reveal as the Doctor and Peri gradually find the clues leading to what is really going on. Peri works well in this story and the way she is written shows how the character may have developed before Trial of a Timelord scuttled things. It's difficult to write about this story without giving away too much of the plot. Suffice to say that the Doctor gets some really choice lines, while Peri shows her brave heart and sensibility. Some elements do not work wholly well. The large cast of characters requires that some actors perform several different characters, leading to some one-note acting with some characters. Eada (Beth Chalmers) and the Baron (John Banks) particularly suffer from this. The medieval accents are bit overly Mummerset. Once again, in trying to recreate the 1985 television experience the soundtrack composer goes a bit overboard on the simplicity. These are minor compared to all that works well in this story.
| What: | The Wrong Doctors (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Saturday 25 February 2017 |
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| Rating: | 8 |
The Wrong Doctors takes the troubling tack of trying to work two of the same Doctor and two of the same companion into the same story. In this case, Doctor 6 saddened from saying goodbye to Evelyn decides to "meet" Mel and thus sync the timeline with the end of Trial of a Timelord. However, he gets the date wrong and arrives at the same time as another version of himself is dropping Mel back home right after the events of Trial of a Timelord. As if this wouldn't cause enough trouble, something is decidedly wrong in Pease Pottage. Anachronisms pop up all over the place, young Mel has no tech skills at all, and a strange man named Petherbridge seems to be running everything happening in the village. This supplies many chances for combinations, Doctor talking to Doctor and each Mel talking to each Doctor, and even Mel talking to Mel. Both Colin Baker and Bonnie Langford bring this off rather well, making clear, yet subtle distinctions between the two versions of their characters. The villain at the center of all this, Petherbridge, is, however, not all that interesting and what he is seems to be contrived for convenience and simplicity. There could have been much more regarding him. It's an enjoyable story with some pathos and some humor.
One of the unproduced scripts from 1985, one could be thankful that this was not actually done for television. It's a bizarre concoction of half-baked ideas, some truly dreadful science, and much sexism. It also seems a precursor to the style of 1987, when the producers could not seemingly decide whether to be serious or silly and opted for half of each. Magnus is a planet run by women because the men all die in their early 20s from a strange virus that affects them only in sunlight. The Rana of Magnus has contacted the Time Lords for permission to wage war retrospectively against the neighboring planet of men, or at least male-ruled, before they wage war on Magnus. The Time Lord sent to negotiate is a bullying oaf of whom the Doctor is scared because of what happened between them in their school days. The simpering Sil is there, too, trying to make some kind of deal to restore himself in the company's good graces. As this situation does not really provide much for a full 90 minutes, the plot includes some Ice Warriors who have no interest at all in what is going on with Magnus, but instead simply want to use nuclear weapons to shift the orbit of Magnus and thus make it their new home. There are some dreadful child actors as well, playing the oppressed boys of Magnus. It all just does not hang together, and much of it is overtly sexist in a way that would have seemed old-fashioned even for 1985.
| What: | Technophobia (Tenth Doctor Adventures audios) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Saturday 25 February 2017 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
Doctor 10 is back in audio form, and it's as if he never left. The Doctor and Donna travel to a tech museum in the near future only to find that people are becoming afraid of their technology. Of course, there is an alien race bent on conquest behind it. Tennant slips right back into 10, quirky, charming, running around promising to save everyone when he really can't, and offering the bad guys an option out. Donna is the more confident woman of the later episodes with her. The story itself gives us nothing new with regard to the characters, and it plays out as a typical Doctor 10 one-off.
| What: | Rat Trap (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Monday 20 February 2017 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
The plot of Rat Trap involves Doctor 5, Nyssa, Tegan, and Turlough heading for a medieval joust and arriving in the right place, wrong time. It's 1983, election day, and deep under a medieval castle are the remains of WWII safety tunnels for the PM. Ah, but something is down there with them. The tunnels were taken over for use in secret experiments to augment rat intelligence, to make rats into weapons. Now, our heroes, some amateur investigators, and two pen pushers, are trapped down there with telepathic, oversized rats who just hate what humans have done to their kind, and who are planning sweet revenge against all of humanity. The story follows 1983 Doctor Who very well, with the TARDIS crew swiftly split up and following multiple trails to the same location. The small central location and tight plotting makes the atmosphere claustrophobic and tense. This story, however, never would have been done in 1983 given the sensitivities of many viewers about rats, one of the more common phobias. Each of the companions comes out strong in this one. Tegan uses sarcasm to deflect fear, Nyssa is determined to do what she believes to be right, and Turlough is clever rather than cowardly. The electronically processed rat voices get kind of annoying, though. Also, there is a cliched Doctor Who ending in which ignoble people decide to do the noble thing.
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| Is It The Doctor's Fault Again? |
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| What: | Maker of Demons (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Monday 20 February 2017 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
Maker of Demons follows the pattern of the last few years that involves taking every species of animal on the planet and one by one turning them into monsters. This time, it's the moles' turn. This of course leads to much funny-voice acting. The story itself is interesting enough, a variation on Shakespeare's Tempest, though the BBV Time Travellers drama Prosperity Island was a much better variation on the same thing. In this case, Doctor 7 and Mel managed to save some future throwbacks to Renaissance Milan from an unidentified disaster without losing a single life. Now, Doctor 7, Ace, and returned Mel go back 100 years later expecting peace and prosperity, but finding war and deprivation. Everyone but everyone is blaming The Doctor for this situation, and The Doctor takes it all to heart, blaming himself the most. That's fine as it goes. On the negative side, non-TARDIS characters are rather one-dimensional. We get some cartoon bad-guy acting. Several deaths and surprises are clumsily telegraphed. On the positive side, the chemistry between Doctor, Ace, and Mel is surprisingly good. The companions act as two sides of The Doctor's conscience, Ace the "do something" side, and Mel the "let's think about this" side. Though they have few scenes together, Ace and Mel manage a real connection, a mutual understanding and respect for each other that makes them a refreshing combination for traveling companions. Ace gets some excellent lines. So, though a little predictable at times, Maker of Demons is still entertaining.
| What: | You Are The Doctor (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Tuesday 14 February 2017 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
Another entry in the 4 short stories sequence for Big Finish, You Are The Doctor goes for entertainment over substance. The linking element of the stories is that The Doctor is now letting Ace pilot the TARDIS and she keeps getting it wrong. The first story, You Are The Doctor, has our heroes running around in what appears to be a computer game version of "choose your adventure." The villains are comic relief pig aliens. Next is Come Die With Me, a traditional one-house murder mystery. Third is The Grand Betelgeuse Hotel, about a heist gone wrong. It has an interesting flashback narrative technique. Last is Dead to the World, in which our heroes end up on board a seemingly doomed spaceship with only three people left alive. As is usual with these collections of shorts, the action moves apace and things happen quickly. All are played in a half-silly half-serious manner except for the first, which is just silly.
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| More Time Twisting from Jonathan Morris |
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| What: | Prisoners of Fate (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Sunday 12 February 2017 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
Prisoners of Fate is going to impress those who like tidbits thrown to the fans. It has these in abundance. The brief for this was to tie up the loose ends that have been hanging about Nyssa's story as Big Finish has developed it. This means much emotionality and hand-wringing. It means that Turlough's part in the story is much smaller, though to be fair he got his spotlight in Eldrad Must Die and Kiss of Death. The story itself revolves around a time paradox set in motion by Nyssa crossing her own history, but a part of it she knew nothing about. Now, having learned that she left behind her children for 25 years, she cannot go back to her old life as she thought. But, there is a villain just waiting to capitalize on the energies of the paradox from her doing just that. Much of this story has similarities to Morris's earlier time twister, Flip-Flop, in that we have a depressing society run by corrupt leadership, setting the stage for much "it did happen/it didn't happen" plotting. The corrupt leader, Sibor, is too much of a cartoon baddy to be of much interest. The story does present some challenge for the listener regarding the various directions of the possibilities. It also does tie up most of those loose ends.
| What: | The Power of the Daleks (BBC classic series DVDs/Blu-rays) |
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| By: | justin barnes, st.louis/mo, United States |
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| Date: | Saturday 11 February 2017 |
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| Rating: | 10 |
This has always been a BBC favorite, so for them to totally do this was not a
surprise for me.It's looks Fantastic, Mark Ayres has done a wonderful job with the
audio, plenty of extras, and the plus is the original BBC Website Recon of the story with audio and telesnaps.
DVD's were done write.
SPOILER
There a humors animated error in episode 1 if anyone can spot it and the scene
actually adds to it.
| What: | Tomb Ship (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Friday 10 February 2017 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
Tomb Ship is one of those claustrophobic tales that pop up every now and again. The Doctor and Nyssa arrive on a giant tomb in space for the god-king of a lost race. Unfortunately, this tomb is full of deadly traps requiring intelligence and a little more to escape. To make matters worse, there is a tomb-robbing family trying to break in to steal the treasure supposedly hidden in the tomb. Basically, we have something like a 19th-century lost world adventure story set in space. Being set entirely inside the tomb places a limitation on what can happen in the story. It's the City of the Exilons or the Pyramid on Mars episode stretched thin to four episodes. A real problem for me is the mother, the ruthless matriarch of this robber family. As the actress says in her interview on the bonus track, the character is two dimensional. She's all greed and self-interest, a two-note part that really does not provide much of an antagonist for the Doctor. The story is entertaining enough, and there are no major blunders. It just runs a bit longer than it ought to.
| What: | Aquitaine (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Friday 10 February 2017 |
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| Rating: | 8 |
Aquitaine presents Doctor Who in a format that almost always works for the show and is all too seldom done. It is science fiction in a pure form. Doctor 5 with Nyssa and Tegan answer a distress call leading them to the spaceship Aquitaine. Things are not quite right. The place is overgrown with weeds, dusty and deserted apart from the ship's robot intelligence, known as Hargreaves, and what appear to be ghosts. Our crew get split up, not just in space, but also in time. Something is up with the black hole around which the good ship Aquitaine is in orbit. Impending disaster is looming faster and faster and the options for survival are rapidly reducing. The premise is marvelous, giving the audience much to think about. The character of Hargreaves draws admiration as the kind of artificial personality one would actually like to have in a robot. The plot moves apace, and tension builds well. There is only one thing preventing me from giving this full marks, and that is the addition of a Russian mad scientist of the Professor Zaroff variety. The stock villain is the weakest character in the piece, providing an artificial and awkward plot twist in what is otherwise a quite logical story.
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| Definitely Graham Williams |
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The first of the unproduced episodes from the 1985-6 season of Doctor Who would have had the return of the Celestial Toymaker, probably with Michael Gough reprising his role. This story would have brought the matter up to date with the Toymaker now working on video games, the newest vogue in entertainment of the mid 1980s. When Big Finish decided to produce audio versions of the missing episodes, Michael Gough had already passed away. In his stead, David Baille does a marvelous job of recreating the mixture of menace and bored ennui that Gough brought to create a memorable villain. In this story, the Toymaker has taken up residence in the funfair at Blackpool. He is now working on producing the ultimate video game, a game that would ensnare millions of users.
Big Finish has worked very hard to recreate the 1985 Doctor Who feel. This includes having a much tetchier Doctor 6 than in the regular Big Finish dramas. Also, the background music is set to sound like 1980s analogue synthesizers. I think that the arrangement of music is a little too simple, more 1978 than 1985 if synthesizers were used.
The story itself is entertaining, if a bit disjointed. Scenes switch back and forth, often with returning to a scene skipped ahead a bit in time so that it is difficult to gather what happened there between scenes. Characters appear that seemingly have importance, but turn out to be irrelevant, such as the police detective in the early section of part 1 and Kevin's missing friend at the end of part 2. Other characters appear only because they are needed, and then get simply forgotten once their use is done. Typical of Graham Williams' approach to Doctor Who, menace gets undercut with light satire, so nothing feels quite as urgent as it ought to. In the end, kudos go to Big Finish for a faithful rendition of the story.
| What: | Robophobia (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Tuesday 24 January 2017 |
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| Rating: | 8 |
Nick Briggs has done well with his sequel to The Robots of Death. He has kept some basic elements and added an interesting twist. Doctor 7, sans companion, has decided to take a look at what, if any, lessons have been learned from the events on the sand miner. It's a few months later and the Doctor has made contact with a Kaldor City agent working undercover on a space freighter shipping thousands of robots. The government hushed up the sand miner affair, but the agent has uncovered some of the details and believes that something related to it will happen on this freighter. He is killed before this knowledge gets passed on and it seems like deja-vu all over again, but the Doctor is not at all convinced that this is what is happening.
The story is typical late-period Doctor 7, with the Doctor plotting and scheming, pushing people around through suggestive questions and comments and revealing very little of what he knows. The story is pacey, and the acting is effective.
I reserve full marks mostly because of some dodgy psychology near the end of the story. In total, though, this is quite an entertaining adventure.
| What: | The Return of Doctor Mysterio (BBC new series DVDs/Blu-rays) |
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| By: | Earle DL Foster, Invercargill, New Zealand |
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| Date: | Monday 23 January 2017 |
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| Rating: | 8 |
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster apparently didn't conceive the pop-cultural character admiringly known as Superman.
The real genesis was made responsible by the Twelfth Doctor misplacing an alien gemstone.
Well, that's the initial premise for Steven Moffat's latest Christmas special, a genuine tongue-in-cheek parody cum homage to the equally wayward Kryptonian (he makes a cameo appearance, via the print medium!), now a masked vigilante recognized as "The Ghost".
Throw in a British version of Lois Lane, some evil brain-swapping alien invaders with a Lex Luthor-like spokesperson, the surprise reappearance of Nardole (having regained his headpiece, virtually!), and you have a decidedly different but nonetheless culturally and humorously appropriate homage to the Metropolis scene. There is even a festive mention with the Doctor being mistaken for Santa Claus and being rewarded with milk and cookies!
The 2016 television event was topped off with an upcoming Season Ten preview, complete with the eventual introduction of newest female companion Bill Potts, and more of the bumblingly likeable Nardole (possibly a subtle reference to the animated Shalka instalment?). Actual judging of the content material aside, it looks like Steven Moffat's last official season will certainly commence with all creative paradoxical guns blazing.
| What: | Time Reaver (Tenth Doctor Adventures audios) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Sunday 22 January 2017 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
Time Reaver is another example of the effort Big Finish puts into reproducing the era of a particular Doctor. Time Reaver would have sat very comfortably in the Tennant canon of televised Doctor Who and could very easily have been filmed. It is on a par with stories like Planet of the Dead and New Earth. The Doctor and companion arrive on a planet for mundane reasons (needing a spare available only from a scrap yard) and behind the scenes on the planet something nasty is cooking away. The Doctor steps in, takes charge, defeats a blobby baddy, and the powers that be have to change their ways. In between there are some funny bits, with Donna really winding up the Doctor's know-it-all pomposity, and some emotional bits, with more of Donna's growing maturity. There are no surprises, but it is quite a bit of fun.
| What: | Warlock (New Adventures novels) |
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| By: | David Turner, Buckinghamshire, UK , United Kingdom |
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| Date: | Sunday 22 January 2017 |
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| Rating: | 6 |
Warlock has lots of good in it, but also lots of bad. It has quick ending and doesn't feel like a dw book however there are some good.
