WHO REVIEW: Once and Future 1 & 2

 There's something a little underwhelming about Big Finish's latest multi-instalment extravaganza, put together to mark Doctor Who's sixtieth anniversary. A story involving the Doctor in multiple incarnations, meeting friends and enemies in unexpected combinations sonds like the very thing to mark the occasion, but it's also exactly what Big Finish has been churning out in quantity for the last few years. With the company now given over to almost pure nostalgia, this is business as usual. I bought the first two releases almost out of a sense of obligation, rather than expecting anything new.

Admittedly, the idea of having the Doctor pushed back through his lives in a catastrophic "degeneration" is a fun one, and a good way of having multiple Doctors involved without just having them taken out of time or just bump into each other as they usually do. For real impact, though, this should be the current Doctor - indeed, setting this right after "The Power of the Doctor," with the Doctor regenerating back into David Tennant and then through all their past lives would tie in beautifully - but BF aren't allowed to do that. Instead, this is during the Time War, and we're not even clear on which Doctor has been injured. (It seems that it's probably the Eighth, going by the TARDIS sound effects and McGann's notable absence, but this isn't certain.)

It's also one of those conceits that would work better on screen than, in which case it would look essentially the same as the mysterious guardians of the Doctor's subconscious in the aforementioned "Power." On audio, there's just about enough variation between the different actors' voices for the incarnations to differentiate, with only Tom Baker and McCoy really distinctive enough from a single line to truly stand out. I also can't help but wonder: what's he wearing? Are his clothes changing too, or is he repeatedly regenerating while wearing the same, now doubt rather careworn, outfit?

PAST LIVES

First up is this episode from Robert Valentine, which does precisely what you'd expect it to. The Doctor settles on the form of Tom Baker, arriving back on Earth on the trail of the Monk, who he's sure has something to do with all this. (What the Doctor can and cannot remember seems to change per scene in this series.) For his own benefit, the Monk has abducted Sarah Jane, straight from her mistaken drop-off point in Glasgow, mere moments after The Hand of Fear. This is a nice touch, albeit one that plays merry hell with established contintuity, but that doesn't seem to be much of a priority with this series, and rightly so.

Rufus Hound is entertaining as always as the Monk, and Sadie Miller continues to do a good job of filling her mother's shoes as Sarah Jane. UNIT get involved, with both Jenna Redgrave and Ingrid Oliver returning as Kate Stewart and Osgood. While it's fun to hear this collection of characters together, there's really nothing else to it. A group of the most generic aliens you could hope to avoid turn up and cause complications, and the entire thing unfolds predictably. "Past Lives" just about works as the launch to a series, leaving us with more questions than answers, but barely works as an adventure in its own right,

THE ARTIST AT THE END OF TIME

The second episode, written by the reliable James Goss, is far better, giving us an original concept as the basis for the story. In the twilight days of the universe, a high-end art gallery displays works cribbed from civilisations in their final moments. Only it seems to be that, quite impossibly, they're all by the same artist. The Doctor, settling on his cricketiest form, arrives looking for a Time Lord so he can sample some DNA (buy them a drink first), and his clone-ish daughter Jenny arrives on the trail of the mystery of the artworks.

There are two big draws for this release. One is having real-life father and daughter Peter Davison and Georgia Tennant playing fictitious father and daughter together. Unfortunately, Big Finish already did that, ten years ago, for their fiftieth anniversary release. As you might expect, the two of them have wonderful chemistry together, and Davison's perfected older, grumpier version of his Doctor works well with the fast-witted, enthusiastic Jenny. Yet it again feels so predictable, bringing them together on the basis that, well, that's what we do for the anniversary, right?

The other draw is the inclusion of the Curator, played here by Colin Baker, giving us not one, but two, classic Who actors in the role. Given that the whole point of this series is that the Doctor is jumpig between faces, having Baker the Second in here as well seems a bit superfluous. Fortunately, the story makes it worthwhile, giving us a truly intriguing and affecting tale of the Doctor's far, far off future. This is seemingly a long way beyond the days when he was even calling himself Curator, now retired at the end of time and painting planets as they are about to bite the dust. Baker gives a lovely, melancholy performance that's similar to, but distinct from, the Sixth Doctor.

Again, there are oddities to ponder. I'm fine with the idea that the Curator varies his appearance over time, either by regenerating again or simply picking a face for the week, but shouldn't the Doctor recognise that face? Given that this is seemingly the Eighth (or later) Doctor, just wearing the face of the Fifth, isn't he surprised to meet someone wearing the face of the Sixth? Also befuddling is that the Doctor is now fully aware of his daughter's existence, again bringing into question when this takes place for him, or just how memory is supposed to work in these stories.

Quibbles aside, though, "The Artist at the End of Time" is a strong story, giving apocalyptic stakes in the most genteel, personal way. On this basis, I think I'll give the third episode a try, but whether I can be persuaded to stay for the whole story is another question.

WHO REVIEW: The Power of the Doctor

 

SPOILERS throughout!

WHO REVIEW: Wink (Out of Time 3)

The third, and officially final, release in Big Finish's Out of Time series (although I'd be astonished if Tennant doesn't return with McCoy, McGann or Even Eccleston in the future), is "Wink," a clever response to the 2007 classic "Blink" and subsequent stories featuring the Weeping Angels.

Having faced the Daleks with his fourth incarnation and the Cybermen with his fifth, you might expect that the Tenth Doctor would face another classic Who monster alongside his sixth self. However BF instead pit them against the Angels, further  cementing their status as the top monster created for the revived series. It's not the first time BF have used the Angels, and they still seem a difficult and strange choice for audio.  Lisa McMullin's "Wink," though, utilises them in a genuinely inventive and effective way. 

The story sees both Doctors arrive on Lucidus Silvara, a planet that is bathed in all-encompassing white light that blots out everything else, rendering anyone who arrives there essentially blind. The colonists on the planet have therefore developed into a civilisation that doesn't even have a concept of sight. McMullin puts real thought into how such a society might function, including a fascinating art gallery based entirely on immersive soundscapes. The people's use of a vague, undefined sense called "intuit" is a bit of a handwave though. Props, though, for crafting a script in which the dialogue is as natural as it is here, without any of the "point and describe" style that Big Finish so often falls victim to.

Such a place would seem like a perfect hinting ground for the Angels, but it's more complex than that, and the beings are fleshed out in some interesting ways. The Angels have been drastically overpowered in return appearances, but "Wink" makes some of the these abilities a strength, notably including their use of a dead victim's voice in a far more dynamic and effective fashion than originally managed in "Flesh and Stone." We're also given a fascinating insight into the Angel's reproduction, a cleverly high-concept development from their previously seen abilities. 

Putting the Sixth and Tenth Doctors together was bound to result in something of a stand-off. Pitting the Sixth Doctor against the only incarnation who's more full of himself than he is could have been explosive, but Six behaves with remarkable restraint. Baker gives a strong performance, while Tennant occasionally veers into the self-parody he was guilty of in his alter episodes. It does lead to some fun sniping between the two incarnations, who are more similar than they might like to admit. 

Together with fine support from Joanna van Kampen and Ayesha Antoine as one-off companions Estra and Padilla, and Clive Hayward as the Angel Dax, "Wink" works very well and is ultimately the strongest of the Out of Time line. 

Placement: The Tenth Doctor appears to be on his runaway side-trip between The Waters of Mars and The End of Time, but isn't spouting on about Time Lord Victorious stuff so probably nearer the latter. For the Sixth Doctor, more uncertain, although Ten gives him the idea of dressing in blue so before he first does so in Real Time. Given that he's travelling alone, perhaps just before he meets Evelyn in The Marian Conspiracy.

WHO REVIEW: Mind of the Hodiac

Mind of the Hodiac - a classically old school Doctor Who title if ever there was one - is a hotly awaited title from Big Finish. The latest in the Lost Stories range, Hodiac has its origins in a script that Russell T. Davies wrote in 1986 or '87, which he happened upon when ferretting through his old materials looking for things for the lockdown events. 

One of the best regarded writers in the history of Doctor Who, and much beyond, he's certainly one of the most important. He brought the programme back sixteen years after its cancellation, and it's now been back for longer than that. This isn't the first time he's resurrected a script he'd submitted to the production team in the eighties. "The Long Game," back in series one starring Christopher Eccleston, was also a reworking of a script submitted to the latter years' production office..

But in these cases, remember, "submitted" means "rejected." Neither of these scripts were taken forward by the production team, who sent back positive-sounding notes to the young Davies. While "The Long Game" was substantially reworked for the modern series, it still felt the most old-fashioned episode of the series. Mind of the Hodiac doesn't even have that update going for it. Even though RTD's script was forward-thinking for the time, it's still very much Doctor Who of the eighties (and it's only forward-thinking in relation to the strange, idiosyncratic world of Doctor Who). 

Big Finish have a long history now of bringing Lost Stories to life. Some are really rather excellent, others make it very clear why they were dropped in the first place, but the production team always goes out of their way to make the audios sound like they're recovered soundtracks from the era they were first submitted. This is both a good and a bad thing. I love eighties Doctor Who, in all its weirdness, but there's no way you'd make television like that anymore. Creating an audioplay that invokes the era runs the risk of recreating the worst of it, from dodgy music choices to some, shall we say, "heightened" acting.

Hodiac sits in the odd position of being very clearly written by Davies, but also very evidently a bit of late eighties Who. Colin Baker and Bonnie Langford are present and correct, this script presumably having been submitted for season twenty-four, before Baker had been pushed out of the programme. It's a glimpse, then, of an alternative twenty-fourth season, in which the Sixth Doctor travelled with Mel, and their easy chemistry in Big Finish shows that they're a team that could have worked very well. Here, though, although both actors give it their all, they're characterised oddly. Mel seems to be in a particularly bad mood, sounding more like Peri for much of the first episode, while the Doctor has developed an obsession with The Wind in the Willows and keeps relentlessly quoting it. The behind-the-scenes interviews reveal that Davies had just scripted a stage version of the book and had become rather obsessed with it himself, but while it fits with the verbose Sixth Doctor it quickly becomes irritating. 

Potentially more interesting is the, unusually large, supporting cast. This is where the script is most obviously like RTD's other Doctor Who work. Hodiac features a strange juxtaposition of mind-bending sci-fi and mundane ordinary life, with a strong theme of family. T'Nia Miller (recognisable to Who fans as the regenerated General in "Heaven Sent" but better served by Davies's own Years and Years) is very good as Mrs Maitland, struggling to hold her family together after her husband abandoned her with her two daughters in an apparently haunted house. Sutara Gayle has hidden depths as her mum, while Loreece Harrison is brilliant as her forthright teenaged daughter Lisa. The pesky poltergeist activity drives them to the untrustworthy psychic investigator Mrs Chin. Another RTD favourite, Annette Badland, who of course played Margaret Slitheen in Doctor Who series one, brings Mrs Chin to brilliant life. A religious nutjob who thinks that somehow her work with the family will bring her closer to God, Chin provides an earthly villain and is pure Davies anti-religious theatre through-and-through.

All this works. Where things don't work so well is in the depths of space, in the hard sci-fi regions of the galaxy, where we meet a financial conglomerate that's willing to start devastating wars and recessions so long as it helps line their pockets. The anger at corporate greed is again very Davies, but none of this is very interesting. I work in finance, and frankly, hearing old men in space talk about it isn't any more exciting than hearing old men on Earth talk about it. Some middling performances by the many cast members in these scenes don't help. The Tungsten Warriors, while they sound cool, are faceless brutes, and while that's kind of the point of them, it's again pretty dull.

Sadly, the worst element of this is the eponymous Hodiac. From the same school of meaningless names as the Borad and the Lukoser, the Hodiac is one half of a being, separated in time and space. One soul in two bodies, reincarnated over and over, with nothing actually in common or to do with each other and, therefore, ultimately meaning nothing. Laurie Kynaston is giving it his best, I'm sure, but he isn't good enough to make the portentous sci-fi dialogue sound anything but risible. I do like the idea of a powerful space villain obsessed with the Doctor's coat, though.

A big failing with the production is clearly that only the first half is actually by Davies. There never was a script of the second episode, since it never got commissioned, although there were copious notes from which Scott Handcock wrote a new script. But with Handcock, one of BF's jobbing writers, creating the whole second half and adapting the first, it all becomes pretty standard Big Finish filler. That the Hodiac plot collides with an takes over the Maitlands' plot for much of the second half doesn't help either, since it sees the more interesting material reduced to make way for dull sci-fi nonsense.

Even though Davies's material is clearly better than Handcock's, it's still very obviously the early work of a promising young writer who hadn't quite found his voice or polished his skills. At the end of the day, for all the work the cast are putting into it, Hodiac is simply rather lifeless, and is more interesting as a historical document than an entertaining adventure. 

WHO REVIEW CATCH-UP: Emperor of the Daleks

The Seventh Doctor comics aren't the greatest era of Doctor Who Magazine's strips, but they definitely improved during the New Adventures period, when Benny Summerfield joined the TARDIS crew in the strips as well as the novel line. The strips collected in this volume appeared in issues 193 from late 1992 to 211 in early '94, plus one special and one strip cribbed from issue 227.

It must have been a bit of a surprise for readers when Benny suddenly popped up in the strip without introduction, but then, the DWM strips always reflected developments in the TV series even when it made little to no sense within the confines of the comic itself. The strip was often at its strongest when there was no series to line up with and it was able to go in its own direction, but the decision to stick with the template of the NAs meant there was a clear direction for Doctor Who at the time (compare to the Eighth Doctor era, when there were three competing media with their own continuities, causing no end of debate but also resulting in easily the best run of strips in the magazine's history). 

The first story in the collection is "Pureblood," by the now prolific Dan Abnett, who's written prose and comics for everything from Star Trek to Warhammer. Although completely at odds with The First Sontarans (proposed earlier but produced much later), "Pureblood" proposes a fascinating origin for the Sontarans, showing that their early warrior culture developed into the Sontarans we see today through a reductive process of genetic engineering. Abnett puts this across in an action-packed interstellar war serial, ably realised by Colin Andrew. Abnett''s script makes the Sontarans far more three-dimensional than they'd see in mainstream Doctor Who for decades. I also agree with Abentt's commentary - the Pureblood Sontarans do look like they're related to the Ogrons...

Next up is the one-shot from the 1992 Winter Special, from the normally reliable Scott Gray. It's not great, but to be fair, it was speed-written to fill a gap in the scheduling. A flimsy story that sees the Seventh Doctor and Ace run a holo-program of the First Doctor's time on Gallifrey - back when he was going by "Thete," as per Drax's stylings - there's not much to it. The main talking point is wondering whether the mustachio'd Magnus is really the Master, or the War Chief, or both, but really, it's such a throwaway story it seems hard to care.

Next up is the big title story, "Emperor of the Daleks!" itself. It's a co-op between the magazine's editor John Freeman and much lauded writer Paul Cornell. Cornell is one of the best writers in the franchise, and at this point had made his name as basically the bet writer on the New Adventures. Plus he created Benny, so you'd expect he'd give us something special with this strip. However, the story is hamstrung by trying to do way to much at once. It's a follow-up and retcon of the previous Dalek strip, "Nemesis of the Daleks," plus a linking story between the last two Dalek TV serials, Revelation and Remembrance of the Daleks. It also provides an unexpected sequel to Planet of the Daleks and introduces Cornell's pet project of setting up a weird semi-antagonistic relationship between the Sixth and Seventh Doctors. As such, it opens with a Sixth Doctor strip that sees him rescue Davros from the Daleks at the end of Revelation, and ends with a follow-up, the rather good "Up Above the Gods!" which sees them conversing in the TARDIS (this one from #227, almost two years later).

The rest of the six-part story is a rollicking adventure yarn with more Daleks than you can shake a stick at, but the insistence of doing yet another Abslom Daak story is really a problem. Frankly I don't think Daak become a usable character until Titan Comics brought him back in 2015, when they were able to appropriately take the piss out of him. For all that he's a pastiche, he's still taken far too seriously in "Emperor" and the dickish machismo of the character drags everyone else down, resulting in some of the worst character dialogue Cornell ever put to paper. It's still better than half of what was in the strips in this period but it's a pity to see Cornell put out something so shallow.

Warwick (later Scott) Gray gives us "Final Genesis," a solid four-parter that sees the Doctor take Benny and "New" Ace to a parallel Earth where the events of Doctor Who and the Silurians turned out rather differently. As Gray points out in his commentary, this clashed with the NA Blood Heat, but since they both involve parallel universes they could both be valid. As such Gray posits the events of The Silurians are a nexus point branching into many realities. This one is the one where the Doctor actually won the day and ushered in a new era of peace between humanity and the reptile people, but it's now in jeopardy. Anyone expecting a two Doctors team-up will be disappointed, as both the alt-Doctor and alt-Brigadier have recently been killed.

It's a decent story, let down by some scruffy artwork by Colin Andrew that doesn't suit the tone at all. The monsters of the story, hybrids of human and Silurian, don't look remotely like either and look pretty rubbish. The writing's solid though, raising interesting questions about the Doctor's motivation in visiting a parallel world.

"Time & Time Again" is a silly but fun one-off. Like the third part of "Emperor," which landed in the 200th issue, this one is in colour to celebrate the series' 30th anniversary, and like the earlier one, it's looks like it's by someone who's not used to working in colour. It's a daft story which sees the Doctor and co. assigned by the White Guardian to undo the Black's interference in time, which has left the universe in peril due to the Doctor staying on Gallifrey and becoming president. Now that everyone in the universe has invaded Earth, they've got to put reality right by collecting the six segments of the Key to Time again. The first time round this required a 26-episode season, but this time they manage it in ten pages. It's really just an excuse for a whistle-stop tour of classic stories with cameos by all the previous Doctors. Cornell manages to include a tense Sixth-Seventh Doctor scene, which is the highlight of the strip.

"Cuckoo" is of a highlight of the collection. Another one by Abnett, this three-parter sees the Doctor and his two no-nonsense female companions go back to the 19th century and face that sexist society head-on. Subtle as a brick but really not bad at all, it also features some lovely palaeontology at the hands of a transparent Mary Anning-pastiche. Quite why Abnett bottled it at the last minute and decided not to use real figures and instead use fictionalised versions I'm not sure. When James Quick and I wrote a similar story we used Anning herself and focused on details of her remarkable life. Big Finish are now going to feature her in a story as well. Given how much Abnett is clearly into this in his commentary, I wonder why he didn't just go all the way with it. (He talks about the Mantell's finding the first Iguanodon fossil - that was in my town of birth, Cuckfield, but unlike his native Maidstone, they don't have one on their coat of arms. I have suggested it.)

"Cuckoo" features an excellently realised monster by Jo Ridgway, and a clever contrast between the Doctor's priorities in this story and those of Benny and Ace. It's easily the best story in the collection for me. Finally there's Gray's one-shot, "Uninvited Guest," which sees the Doctor crash a party of Eternals and mete out his own brand of inhuman justice. It's here that I feel we see the real Doctor of the New Adventures, the one who worked to his own morality and was echoed in the television adaptation of perhaps the greatest NA, Cornell's Human Nature. We're reminded that this silly little man is someone you never want to be on the wrong side of. And with that, just when they seemed to get the hang of him, DWM dropped the Seventh Doctor and the NA links and went with a rotating series of past Doctor adventures.

Placement: The strips begin shortly after Love and War and continue up to around the time of Legacy. The Sixth Doctor strips take place at some point not long after Revelation of the Daleks.

The Sixth Doctor regenerates

This is absolutely excellent. YouTube user The Confession Dial has incorporated the last moments of the Big Finish audio The Last Adventure (very much worth listening to) to footage from The Trial of a Time Lord, Time and the Rani and more to create a new regeneration scene for Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor. It's almost a shame that the lunacy of Time and the Rani has to follow it.

Spoilers for said audio adventure, of course, but there's far more to it than just the regeneration. I’d recommend listening to The Last Adventure if you haven’t. Although I imagined the Sixth Doctor looking closer to how Colin Baker looks now (after all, we saw in The Time of the Doctor that a Time Lord can revert to a youthful state just before regeneration completes).

Apropos of nothing, I now have a Tumblr. I tumbl.

Who Novelisation Quest 6: "Revelation of the Daleks"" by Eric Saward

Revelation of the Daleks is the last of the original Doctor Who serials to be novelised. It only took fifty-five years. There seems to have been some ongoing disagreement between Eric Saward, the Nation estate, and various publishers, but eventually it was worked out, and Saward returned to novelise his two 1980s Dalek stories. Resurrection of the Daleks remains one of my least favourite Doctor Who serials, and by all accounts the novelisation is terrible, but Revelation is something else. I've long thought it one of the strangest, most unique and disturbing Doctor Who serials, with Saward dumping his usual action-adventure approach for something deeply seedy and weird.

It's no secret that Revelation of the Daleks was based heavily on Evelyn Waugh's 1948 novel The Loved One, his satirical work based in a funeral parlour. He called it his "humiliating success in the USA," annoyed that it was popular with the sorts of people he was mocking. god only knows what he'd made of it being twisted into a Doctor Who story.

It was always an oddity of Doctor Who. Saward seems to have little interest in writing for the Doctor, instead spending time on the various grotesques who populate Tranquil Repose on the planet Necros. This actually works very well for the story, with the Doctor and Peri only slowly making their way into the main plot, where they are present for the final climax. The Doctor has little to do with Davros's eventual defeat, but the story doesn't suffer for it. Not every Doctor Who story could work like this, but as an oddity it's rather special.

Saward takes the opportunity, as most writers would, to expand the background and settings of the characters and story.Most of the characters get full names and some background, and Saward is clearly having fun inventing a storied future full of peculiar lives. Takis and Lilt, the two heavies who patrol Tranquil Repose's dank corridors, met in battle in the Peninsular Wars on Planet JJ33, where they entertained the troops impersonating Laurel and Hardy. The DJ is really called Derek Johnson, and was dumped on a isolated planet when the space pirates who kidnapped him got sick of his music. The Doctor and Peri get more exploration, too - apparently Peri's accent marks her out as a New Yorker, which is at odds with her usual background as a Marylander and whatever Nicola Bryant was aiming for with that accent - but Saward is clearly interested most in his own characters.

The prose version of the story is, somehow, even more violent and gruesome than the TV serial, and it was already one of the most outlandishly unpleasant stories in the whole of Doctor Who. It's a unique Doctor Who story that benefits from Saward's rather purple prose. Along with Resurrection of the Daleks, it will be reprinted as part of the revived Target Books line this year.

Data: 
First published by BBC Books in 2019
Based on Revelation of the Daleks, first broadcast in 1985
Audiobook read by Terry Molloy, with Dalek voices by Nicholas Briggs

WHO REVIEW: The Legacy of Time

While Big Finish Productions started producing audioplays in 1998 (with the adaptation of the Bernice Summerfield New Adventure Oh No It Isn't!), it was in July 1999 that the released their first Doctor Who production, The Sirens of Time, on CD and audio cassette. Twenty years later, when even CDs seem a bit archaic and most people download their purchases, BF has released their own anniversary celebratory box set featuring a spread of Doctors, companions, favourite characters and time-twisting shenanigans. SPOILERS will follow in this review of the gigantic six-hour collection.






I've been a bit disappointed in BF's reliance on the same handful of writers and recurring cast, it makes sense for an event project to be placed in reliable hands. Ken Bentley directs all but one episode and by its nature, this features a host of recognisable voices playing familiar characters. The set involves six very separate stories which are linked by a general theme of things going wrong with time, all of which are eventually linked together in a just-about coherent fashion. The overall plot is basically irrelevant, though – the fun is in the individual adventures and the cross-pollination of various Doctors and spin-off casts.

LIES IN RUINS by James Goss

The set kicks off, appropriately enough, with Bernice Summerfield hard at work in the field. She's joined by River Song, who has of late been enjoying her own series of adventures in The Diary of River Song, where she has encountered various incarnations of the Doctor, and latterly, the Master, in flagrant defiance of continuity or logic. Given that River is essentially a combination of the two great heroines of the Wilderness Years, Benny Summerfield and Iris Wildthyme, it makes sense that she should finally meet one of them. (River meets Iris is one story that I'm dying to hear.)

Having two time-travelling archaeologists could have been an exercise in redundancy, but Alex Kingston and Lisa Bowerman have a great chemistry that balances finely between catty one-upmanship and bawdy companionship. It's a bit like when Rose and Sarah Jane fought over the tenth Doctor, only to bond over their mutual experiences of travelling with him. River has one up on Benny, having actually married the Doctor rather than simply been very good friends indeed, but they rub along together surprisingly well once the Doctor turns up.

The eighth Doctor is the version who arrives in the story, but he's not the version either Benny or River remember. Benny, of course, mostly encountered this Doctor in the earlier days of his life, while River, while meeting him in the latter years, still found him in generally good spirits. This is a tired, angry Doctor, though, one who's very, very close to becoming the Doctor of War. When confronted by a very personal threat, he comes closer than ever before to turning the corner from hero to warrior. It's not merely their shared affection for the Doctor that brings River and Benny together though, but also their mutual dislike of his new companion, the impossibly bubbly Ria (named for the companion in the old, pre-BF Audio Visuals range, and played with rambunctious energy by Alexandria Riley).

As good as the ladies are, though, it's Paul McGann's performance that really blows the competition away. This is a Doctor who's lost his faith in the universe after seeing it torn apart in the Time War, who, in the words of River, has lived a very long time indeed. It's a funny thing that the Doctor we saw the least of on TV (of the main incarnations) is the one whose borne one of the longest and most traumatic lives.

THE SPLIT INFINITIVE by John Dorney

The second story jumps back an incarnation for a story that sees characters from the eighties during the sixties and seventies. BF's Countermeasures series – one I haven't explored much, unlike The Diary of River Song – has featured the special operations team from 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, in their natural home of the 1960s, and latterly regrouped in the 1970s. “The Split Infinitive” hedges its bets by being set in both decades, utilising the running concept of time anomalies to tie the two periods together in ingenious fashion. Cue lines along the lines of “meanwhile, ten years earlier...” as events in one period influence the other and vice versa.

Sly McCoy rrrrollls and rrroarrs through the adventure, while Ace hops back and takes care of events in the further past. They're both completely at ease in their characters after all these years, although McCoy's performance is still as idiosyncratic as ever. The Countermeasures team are a solid troop of characters, but it's Pamela Salem's Professor Jensen who stands out for me – she's an actress of pure class. Dorney's script brings in the Rocketmen, BF's own brand of recurring space gangsters, who work perfectly in the retro setting, although they are a bit too similar to the also-ran baddies that appear in the first episode. There is, however, a gorgeous joke put in just to explain the unending nonsense around UNIT dating.

THE SACRIFICE OF JO GRANT by Guy Adams

Episode three is an exercise in nostalgia, one that could have been saccharine but is actually rather beautiful and moving. BF's UNIT series is another one that's been going for donkey's years, on and off, and lately has been updated to include not only the Moffat-era UNIT team of Kate Stewart and Osgood, but also Katy Manning as Jo Jones. This (slightly misnomered) episode sees Mrs Jones and Ms Stewart pulled back in time to the Pertwee era.

As with “The Split Infinitive,” this episode involves a story split across two points in history, this time on the Jurassic coast. Yes, there are great sea dragons wrenched from prehistory by the temporal disturbances (good idea, that). Plot is secondary here, though, with this story hinging on the emotional interplay between the characters. I certainly didn't expect a highlight of this box set to be the Doctor and Jo chatting over a pub lunch.

I've been a bit sniffy about Tim Treloar's turn as the third Doctor, but it sounds like he's lately really gotten a hold of the role. There are moments in this episode where he's absolutely dead on Pertwee, although there are others where he drifts pretty far away. Regardless, hearing Jo catch up with her Doctor is a beautiful thing. Nevertheless, the most affecting moment is Kate taking a brief but moving phone call from her late father (recreated here by Jon Culshaw), and god, that was beautiful.

RELATIVE TIME by Matt Fitton

“The Doctor's Daughter” was a dreadful episode, but it did introduce a character who clearly had more potential than the episode explored. “Relative Time” brings back Jenny Anomaly, fresh from her own BF series about a year ago. Georgia Tennant (nee Moffett) is of course the real life daughter of Peter Davison, and having the sort-of daughter of the Doctor share a story with her actual father is, of course, irresistible. They have, in fact, appeared together in a BF Doctor Who before, 2000's Red Dawn, Georgia's first acting role I believe.

In “Relative Time,” she plays Jenny as a lively, adventurous, exciting character, heavily drawing on the performance of David Tennant as the Doctor. So, we basically have someone working with her dad while playing her husband. Still, it works, and the interplay between the more fuddy-duddy fifth Doctor and the boisterous Jenny is a lot of fun. It's always good to hear the snarky side of the fifth Doctor come out, as well, and he's in a dreadful mood for a lot of this story.

The episode see the insane Time Lord known as the Nine attempt a grand heist. This is, of course, an earlier version of the Eleven, the villain of the Doom Coalition box sets with McGann. While I'm not entirely sure if a character who continually reverts to his own earlier incarnations needs to be portrayed in earlier regenerations, I really enjoyed John Heffernan's posh kleptomaniac. He's got his own sidekick in the form of Thana, an immortal ne'er-do-well played by Ronni Ancona. It's a bit of silliness that has time for a few poignant moments between father and daughter, but mostly, it's just a lot of fun.

THE AVENUES OF POSSIBILITY by Jonathan Morris

The fifth instalment of the set was originally to have been a Jago & Litefoot story, but the death of Trevor Baxter necessitated a major rethink. Jonathan Morris has come up with an ingenious idea, of alleyways that lead from the past to variant futures, and as he says in the behind-the-scenes interview, it's something that could spawn a ten-part epic. Here, though, it's mostly used as a way to up the ante as the time anomalies threaten to turn British history into a fascist nightmare, and remind that there by the grace of god we go.

In place of the Victorian sleuths, the sixth Doctor is accompanied by Charley Pollard, formerly companion to his next-incarnation-but-one, and DI Patricia Menzies. These characters first appeared together in the 2008 release The Condemned, and it's bizarre to think that this radical mix-up of a later companion and an earlier Doctor happened over a decade ago. It's still a lot of fun to hear Anna Hope's broad Mancunian police officer join forces with India Fisher's posho Edwardian adventurer.

Acting as pseudo-companions are John and Henry Fielding, (Richard Hansell and Duncan Wisbey), who ground the story in some kind of rationality. I knew Henry Fielding as the author of Tom Jones and was only peripherally aware of his role as the founder of the first modern police force, but I was completely clueless as to his brother John. This was a man who revolutionised social justice and became a respected magistrate after he was blinded as a teenager. He could even, it is said, recognise the criminals of London by the sounds of their voices. This is someone who deserves far more exploration than this relatively short adventure can allow.

COLLISION COURSE by Guy Adams
The final story in the set has to pay double duty as both the fourth Doctor adventure and the obligatory multi-Doctor knees-up. Respect to BF for not making this another full-on multi-Doctor story with the Daleks and the Master causing trouble, as might have been expected. The eventual meeting of all the Doctors to save the day is only the climax to the story, and Tom Baker gets a fairly decent story to himself, but it's easy to overlook it in all the subsequent excitement. We do, however, get a rather lovely celebration of the varied nature of the fourth Doctor era, with both Louise Jameson and Lalla Ward returning as Leela and Romana respectively. The unlikely pairing have become a great double-act over the years in the Gallifrey series, and here we have them both remembering a trip with the Doctor to the planet Henlen; however, the details of their journeys are heavily at odds.

The overarching story reaches its head with temporal anomalies and jostling timelines running out of control. It's all down to the nefarious Sirens of Time, returning from the very first BF Doctor Who adventure, something that feels quite right and proper. Tied into this is the vital journey of the first ever TARDIS, a turning point for the history of the entire universe and a moment ripe for pardoxes and cosmic catastrophe. It's fannish as hell but there's nothing wrong with that in anniversary story, and the climax, while silly in the extreme, is punch-the-air good fun. While it's a trifle hard to swallow Benny being dragged into it again, seemingly just because she's so important to BF rather than any sensible story reason, it's a good excuse to have her meet Leela and Romana plus multiple other Doctors. (At the end of this story and including all media I think she's clocked up eleven distinct incarnations, even more than River.)

It's all an excuse, really, to get as many Doctors together in one room as possible. The proto-TARDIS needs six Gallifreyan pilots, so Romana needs a crew, and all six incarnations of the Doctor from earlier in the set turn up. What's even more indulgent, yet tremendously welcome, is a drop-in cameo from three more. I won't say the actors involved, but one played a villain on the series, one played a companion, and one is married to another star of this box set. It's all rather joyous and sends this very pick-and-mix release out on a high.

WHO REVIEW: The Two Masters Trilogy

AND YOU WILL OBEY ME

VAMPIRE OF THE MIND

THE TWO MASTERS

Big Finish has been especially open to fan demand over the last year or so, and one thing that many fans - including myself - have often hoped for is a "multi-Master" adventure, to compliment the many multi-Doctor stories on the roster. Now that BF have two regular actors in the role, at different points in the character's history, they've finally been able to craft this story. Rather than a one-off, the concept has been used for the latest trilogy of main range releases, with the fifth, sixth and seventh Doctors each taking a chapter. Initially, it seems a straightforward structure, with Geoffrey Beevers portraying his calcifying version of the Master in the first release, followed by Alex Macqueen as his campier, later incarnation, before they team up for the finale. However, these temporally complex stories make it a little more complicated than that.

The trilogy starts with And You Will Obey Me, written by BF stalwart Alan Barnes and tightly directed by Jamie Anderson. Pitting Peter Davison against Geoffrey Beevers, it gives us a combination of hero and villain that we never experienced on television, with Beevers making his one screen appearance as the Master one serial before Davison took over as the Doctor. They work well opposite each other, with the most mild-mannered of Doctors providing stark contrast to this exceedingly sinister and cruel Master.

The story starts on a surprisingly light note, with the Doctor attending an auction for a mysterious but familiar grandfather clock. This begins a sequence of events that leads him to team up with Annie (Sheena Bhatessa), before becoming involved in a plot that stretches from the 1980s to the 21st century, as the Master manipulates three youngsters in a terrible plot. The story takes both Time Lords in unusual directions, with the Doctor put through the moral wringer and the Master becoming a deeply twisted father figure. While he is as sadistic and callous as we've ever seen him, Beevers's Master displays a little more flair and humour here than we're used to. Nonetheless, his final actions are quite horrific; this is the Master at his most coldly evil. It's a strong adventure, with some emotional clout, the only weak element being the alien hunters pursuing the villain. They're rather too cliched and uninteresting to make much impact.

Vampire of the Mind provides a solid middle adventure that pushes the overall story along with some intriguing questions. Once again, the combination of Doctor and Master works well. Both Baker's Doctor and Macqueen's Master are toned down a tad from their usual level of bombast, but their respective egos are enough to create a storm. The Master is somewhat more vulnerable here than we've known him in this incarnation; his memory is full of holes and he is somewhat desperate, but this only serves to make him more ruthless and cruel than ever.

Justin Richards pens the script, and while he's never going to be known for experimental material, he's always good for a straightforward and effective adventure. Vampire of the Mind gives the Doctor another one-off companion - Dr. Heather Threadstone, played very well by Kate Kennedy, and someone I'd be keen to hear return. The Mind Leech - the vampire of the title - is both a pitiful and frightening creature, and once more the Master has taken on an ally/slave that is more than he can fully handle. There are some fun pokes at the cliches of Master stories here, and it ends with a believable, albeit possibly unnecessary, reason for the Doctor to forget about this out-of-sequence encounter with his enemy.

The final instalment, The Two Master itself, is the strongest and most enjoyable of the lot. It's hard to explain just why without spoiling the plot, but some elements are too good not to gush over. Bringing the Master together in two incarnations had the promise to be a Doctor-Doctor encounter turned up to max, and this is just what we have, with the two versions of the villain butting heads as much as they admire each other, double crossing as often as they work together. The Master's cruelty and callous disregard for life reaches new heights here. It seems the Master cannot be trusted by even himself. Hilariously, the dying Master, who is here being manipulated by a lunatic cult, manages to steal his own body. Thus, for much of the runtime we have Macqueen playing the Beevers Master and vice versa. This is just one element of a time-bending storyline that involves whole sections of the timeline vanishing and a threat to the entire universe. It's bizarre and pretty ambitious; suitably apocalyptic for the clash of Masters.

The time-tearing shenanigans also give the trilogy the perfect get-out clause for out-of-sequence meetings and continuity quandarie, and although we finally get to learn what happens to the Master to leave him in the terrible state he was when found on Tersurus (leading into The Deadly Assassin), the nature of the story makes everything questionable enough to ignore this going forward if so wished. As with both previous stories, this is ably directed by Jamie Anderson, although he does overuse the dialogue-free sound in certain sequences. The weakest elements of the story are, sadly, the heroes. Lauren Crace is fine as Jemima, but she's a completely generic companion role to perform, while Sylvester McCoy becomes hard to understand in some of the more dramatic scenes. He does, however, nail the final victory over his doubled-up foe. The Two Masters is a highly effective finale to a very enjoyable series.

WHO REVIEW: The Sixth Doctor - The Last Adventure

THE END OF THE LINE 

THE RED HOUSE 

STAGE FRIGHT 

THE BRINK OF DEATH

Colin Baker's made himself something of a controversial figure in the last month or so, predominantly with comments made in an interview intended to publicise this very release. Frankly, this isn't terribly important, and will be forgotten about soon enough. Mr C. Baker has never been shy when voicing his opinion, and more power to him. It's something he has in common with the incarnation of the Doctor he portrayed. The Last Adventure is a celebration of Baker and Doctor, a combination of actor and character that have stood against disproportionate criticism since their debut, over thirty years ago. It's time to celebrate all that's loved about Doctor no. 6, from his not-so-humble beginnings to his domination of Big Finish's audio series today.


A box set comprising four hour-long stories, The Last Adventure is rather like BF's earlier celebratory anthology releases, writ large. The stories span the Doctor's post-Trial period of adventures, which is entirely appropriate – it's this part of his history that is wholly missing from the TV series. The only problem with this is that Peri has no part to play, which is a pity, seeing that she was the sixth Doctor's main companion on TV. Still, we have a broad array of adventures here with many of the Doctor's friends from his sixth life taking part, in a series of adventures that are linked by the presence of the Valeyard. Caution – by necessity, this review contains significant SPOILERS.

WHO REVIEW: The Light at the End

Let's admit it, chaps and chapettes – it's getting exciting now! The fiftieth anniversary is almost upon us, and Big Finish has released its own celebratory get together a month early, the devils. While the TV series is focusing, quite sensibly, on the 21^st century Doctors, fans who want to see the elder Doctors represented can rest assured that Big Finish has done us all proud with The Light at the End.


BF supremo Nicholas Briggs has spoken of his reluctance to go for a multi-Doctor team-up. This is understandable, of course; balancing the needs of multiple leads and all their companions with a coherent, diverting storyline isn't easy. Big Finish has quite some history with multi-Doctor stories. Briggs himself kicked off the range with The Sirens of Time, which took the fifth, sixth and seventh Doctors, then BF's entire roster, and built a fun but flawed story around them. Each Doctor had an episode, with a finale that teamed them all up to save Gallifrey. For the fortieth anniversary, BF took a different tactic, with Zagreus using the unusual idea of bringing Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sly McCoy in to support Paul McGann's eighth Doctor, but as new characters. The subscriber special The Four Doctors was more straightforward, with Doctors five to eight all taking part in a time-crossing adventure, before a brief fan-pleasing get-together at the end, while Project: Lazarus gave us a rather peculiar Six/Seven team-up.


The Light at the End is a little more traditional in its set-up. It's essentially a new Five Doctors, bringing together the five extant 20^th century Doctors together. There's plenty of interaction between the various Doctors, and while the story understandably focuses on the surviving Doctors, the first three incarnations are featured. Though separated from their successors, the first three Doctors do take part in proceedings, mostly appearing as phantoms to the rest of the characters. Big Finish's solution to the lack of the original actors is one that will divide fans, to be sure, but it is, on the whole, successful, and it wouldn't seem right to not have the characters included. The degree to which these Doctor stand-ins will convince listeners is variable, but they ultimately pull it off, and bump this five Doctor team-up to include all eight of the old gents.


The story for Light is, understandably, straightforward, despite the transtemporal shenanigans. The Master, in his pre-Traken form, purchases the services of the Vess, a rather Dalek-like race of intergalactic arms dealers. Using their ultimate weapon, the nature of which is rather ingenious, the Master causes the TARDIS to collapse in on itself, causing the Doctor's timeline to collapse inwards with it. When the various Doctor are first made aware of the threat when a mysterious red light appears in their TARDISes, as they pass through a particular point in space and time. They each track it back to Totton, Hants, on the 23^rd of November, 1963. Yet only the fifth Doctor manages to reach Totton, with the others being diverted into a peculiar pocket universe. How these supposedly disparate locations fit together is rather clever, and the crux of the Master's plan.


To begin with, the Doctors are kept separate, gradually pairing off before all eight of them come together for the grand finale. The fifth Doctor and Nyssa are able to reach the house at Totton, the location that is mysteriously linked to the unfolding events. Peter Davison and Sarah Sutton are perfect as usual as an older, more mature version of their televisual team, quietly investigating the mystery that has affected Bob Dovie. John Dorney is excellent as Bob, a perfectly ordinary man whose life is torn apart by the sudden intrusion of the Doctor and Master into his life. There's even an appearance by young Benedict Briggs, son of Nicholas, as Bob's offspring Kevin. It's rather cute, but events become unsettling very quickly in this spooky section of the story.


The fourth and eighth Doctors, and their respective companions, get to team up against the Master, and the result is joyous. The two Doctor who we never thought we'd get back, and here they are, bouncing along together, two gorgeous voices in conversation. Their Doctors get on marvellously, with the exception of a little fashion critique, and the actors have some real chemistry. If there's ever the chance of a further team-up with these particular Doctors, I'd buy it in a heartsbeat. The companions are just as good, with India Fisher's Charley and Louise Jameson's Leela sharing some fun scenes. It's just lovely stuff.


The other pair-up, between Doctors number six and seven, is also very successful. There's something extra appealing about having a Doctor dealing with his immediate successor, especially when it's the exuberant sixth Doctor meeting the more subdued seventh. Nicola Bryant doesn't get too much to do as Peri, but she has some good chemistry with Ace, and gives McCoy a gently moving moment as he comments on the strange feeling of meeting long lost friends. Sophie Aldred gets a treat of a scene as Ace. Not only does she give us the funniest moment of the play with her rundown of the various Doctors (“Old Man White Hair, Beetles Haircut...”), she's fantastic partnered with Colin Baker. It's strange to hear Ace with another Doctor – for some reason, it's hard to imagine her with anyone but McCoy – but she's well matched by Colin Baker. The temporal ghosting as the TARDIS collapses lets us hear some other companions too, with almost everyone that Big Finish still has at their disposal making at least a brief contribution.


Geoffrey Beevers is wonderful as the Master, but that's no surprise. His silkily sinister tones are perfect for the audio version of the Doctor's oldest enemy. While his successor once opined that “a universe without the Doctor scarcely bears thinking about,” this severely damaged version of the Master is fuelled by nothing more than desperation and cold, agonising hatred. He's a particularly nasty piece of work, and using the instantly recognisable villain as the threat for this story save time. It's a strong, streamlined story, well structured, cleverly revisiting the same events from alternative viewpoints. Plus, we get to hear the eighth Doctor face the Master again, which has been a long time coming.



Finally, all eight Doctors come together to solve the Master's plot, but naturally, it's the original who finally cracks it. The eventual solution is a little pat, and might irritate some listeners as it undoes much of what we've just heard. However, it works, and leads to a very funny epilogue. This is a corking adventure, balancing all the Doctors better than ever expected. A well made, well written story that celebrates all eras of the series prior to the great relaunch, The Light at the End is an absolute treat.

Who Book-Quest #6: Grave Matter by Justin Richards

“You may not like me. You may not like what I do, what I shall have to do. But I’m here to help you, and it may be that I’m the only help you have.”

So says the sixth Doctor in Grave Matter, perhaps the perfect rejoinder to this incarnation’s detractors and a fine moment for his fans. Grave Matter is a 2000 entry in BBC Books’ Past Doctors range, written by Justin Richard, then range consultant. He remains the creative director for Doctor Who novels, and has over twenty such works under his belt, plus more for spin-off characters such as Bernice Summerfield, and series of his own creation. Richards is certainly prolific, but his work rarely gets heaped with praise by fans. He’s a solid sort of writer, the Terrance Dicks of the modern era, producing decent, meat-and-potatoes stories rather than ground-breaking works.

Grave Matter is a case in point. It’s solidly traditional, going for the Hammer Horror styled spooky atmosphere of the Hinchcliffe era of the TV series rather than the bombast of the sixth Doctor’s period. There’s an air of mystery throughout the early part of the book, as the Doctor and Peri arrive on the island of Dorsill, unaware of their location in time or space and confused by the anachronistic elements in this Victorian community. This is a red herring on the author’s part, but a genuine mystery unfolds as the travellers explore the isolated settlement, and it becomes apparent that an alien influence has entered into the islanders’ lives.

While there are moments that may have translated better to screen - the action-packed climactic scenes, particularly – Richards has a way with the chills, creating an unsettling atmosphere from the Doctor and Peri’s early encounter with a raving, bedraggled figure, through the increasingly unearthly goings on in Dorsill. As the punning title suggests, Grave Matter deals with the unrestful dead, and although it never becomes an all-out zombie thriller, it has its share of shambling corpses. An ad hoc exhumation turns into a deadly encounter, while later, masses of unfeeling human slaves – not dead, but certainly zombified – form an unstoppable force for the Doctor to try to overcome.

At the heart of the goings on is a thoroughly old-fashioned alien infection plot, in the mould of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers or Quatermass 2, but brought up to date with some interesting speculation on the possibilities of the computational powers of DNA. This gets mangled into an ordinary tale of scientific zeal leading to a nefarious end, as the regenerative properties of the infectious Denarian material lead a group of geneticists on a misjudged quest for immortality for the human race. While it stops short of the sort of horror that Torchwood later explored in its Miracle Day series, the impossibility of death for the infected leads to some horrific scenes that outstrip the traditionalist era it’s based on, including the repeated attempts by one character to commit suicide by increasingly violent means.

There are some fine horror moments, from the clichéd walking dead to the more inventive, such as an alarming sequence in which Peri finds herself face to face with a flock of possessed seagulls – a scene which made me shiver, as I hate the vicious things. Despite a storyline and atmosphere that suggest an update of Tom Baker’s gothic horror era, Richards makes it work perfectly for the sixth Doctor and Peri, both being accurately reproduced without ever falling into the trap of becoming insufferable, as they occasionally did on TV. The Doctor, in particular, is very well characterised: arrogant, impatient and short-tempered when the stakes are high, yet charming and sweetly tolerant when in more relaxed company. Particularly effective is a sweet scene in which he takes time to walk the elderly local gossip home and provide her with some much-needed conversation, remembering what it was like to be old and faced with impatient younger people.

There’s nothing spectacular on offer here, nothing that will make the reader rethink Doctor Who or the characters within. Instead, it’s a straightforward, if reasonably complex tale of paranoia told in a classic horror background. A good, old-fashioned sort of read.