The Light at the End

For the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who, Big Finish pulled out all the stops - and the Doctors. Gathering all five of the living Doctors they are licensed to use, and using clips and recast voices of the first three, they spin a story spanning the Doctor's many lives.

A red light on the TARDIS console has turned on, but the Doctor doesn't recognize it. This same scene plays out across five TARDIS and brings the Doctor in contact with himself. The primary team up occurs between Paul McGann and Tom Baker, the two extreme ends of the range, and they make a beautiful pair. Baker compliment's McGann's Victorian jacket and McGann compliments Baker's scarf. Their teaming is very reminiscent of the Smith/Tennant coupling that the BBC was putting together at the same time.

I do have a bias for McGann, but each of the other Doctors is given his due, and gets a few good moments. It's actually Peter Davison's Doctor who gets most of the key plot, as the Doctors discover their TARDIS have been pulled towards the same point in space-time (a familiar junkyard in 1963).

The companions are overshadowed (as usual) by the multi-Doctor scenes, but Ace manages to get a choice description across as she lists off all the Doctors with sarcastic nicknames (including Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, no points for guessing who she means).

The tale is just enough timey-wimey to make it feel like more than just an excuse to get all the actors in the same story, but not so complicated as to get lost in expository dialogue. It's also not as absurdly long as the 40th was, which means I don't have to feel bad recommending it for a single-sitting.

M054 - The Natural History of Fear

The Doctor is not the Doctor, he's the Editor. And Charley and C'Rizz aren't themselves either. Everyone is afraid of committing Orwellian thoughtcrime while being force-fed adventure stories about the Doctor and his companions. It's almost meta, and there are a few interesting lines when that starts becoming more apparent. Otherwise the criss-cross of betrayals and revolutionaries, characters being "revised" into new personalities, and dystopic jargon make for a more confusing narrative than usual.

It does come together and prove interesting, though. And the altered theme music, which winds down like a broken tape, and the sound effect and voice of the society's warning announcements are all nice audio flourishes that make for a fun listen.

M053 - The Creed of the Kromon

Continuing in the Divergent Universe, the Doctor and Charley find themselves in a kingdom ruled by the Kromon, giant insect creatures who have enslaved the humanoids. They capture Charley with plans to turn her into a new queen. The Doctor must save her by bartering his knowledge of inter-spacial travel.

Other than the introduction of a new recurring companion, C'Rizz, this story is creepy and a little over the top. Perhaps it's just my lack of interest in bugs and all things disgusting, but the whole arc of Charley being genetically and psychically tortured into a new bug queen was unappealing. C'Rizz seems like a nice enough guy to add to the mix, but when the three of them left the Kromon behind to continue their search for the TARDIS, I was happy to go with them.

M052 - Scherzo

Scherzo starts the Divergent Universe arc, where the Eighth Doctor and Charley are lost in another dimension, and it does it in a very interesting way. This could be the essential audio story, and is reminiscent of the TV series' Midnight, where David Tennant spent the whole episode dealing with an invisible creature trying to steal his voice.

In a world with nothing, and their senses dulled, Charley and the Doctor realize they are being followed by a creature made purely of sound. And as it grows and evolves they are faced with the strange experience of being parents to a new form of life.

Since the world they have arrived in operates under different laws, it would have been inconceivable to tell this story in the TV show. The audio-only format gave the storytellers great freedom, and this story runs with it. In certain ways it loses its footing, by going too bizarre with some of the later stages of the creatures' evolution, but the story is so unique that it's worth it.

Although I didn't like the narration added in The Wormery, I think the opening story, where before the title music Paul McGann continues a tale about a power-mad king, adds great atmosphere to an already atmospheric episode. In fact, the story of the king is by itself one of the more interesting stories I've heard.

BONUS - Living Legend

Most of the bonus releases prove to be brilliant, and this is no different. The 8th Doctor arrives with Charley in Italy in 1982 after a World Cup victory. Among the chaos of celebration they find two Threllips that are about to open a transdimentional portal for an invasion force. In the most brilliant team effort (while dressed like uptight Time Lords), the Doctor and Charley turn the two aliens against each other and avert disaster.

M050 - Zagreus

This is it. The big one. Five hours, four Doctors, and a whole host of former companions (mostly playing other characters).

Following the events of Neverland (M033), the 8th Doctor is infected by Zagreus, a myth of ancient Gallifrey, and he rages about the TARDIS like Jekyll and Hyde. Charley, meanwhile, finds herself back in 1900s England with her mother, who soon turns into a rabbit. A hologram of the Brigadier comes to her and she realizes she is not really back on Earth.

Where they really are is a lot of timey-wimey explanations that don't fully make sense, but if you go with it Zagreus is a various and entertaining story. The Doctor's former selves pop up as a strange trio of alternate characters, but eventually make appearances in their proper personalities. Dozens of former companions also make appearances, and some familiar voices are easy to spot, but because most of them are not playing their original characters they may go unnoticed by those of us who have not seen the entire original series.

But many good lines and clever references to classic children's literature like Alice in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz make for a hodgepodge epic of an audio play.

M033 - Neverland

The last 8th Doctor story until the Zagreaus (M050) anniversary special is very much a prequel to that story, setting up what will be a major conflict and one of the better excuses to bring past Doctors together.

The story itself does not have anything to do with Peter Pan and JM Barrie, which is almost a shame since I could see the "never grow up" theme working well with the Doctor, but instead the Neverland of the title is an alternate universe being explored to show how Charley's continued existence despite her supposed death on the R101 is causing disasterous ripples. It's a fairly emotional story bogged down a bit by the Time Lord mythology that the new TV series was right to push aside.

M032 - The Time of the Daleks

As usual there is something extra about the 8th Doctor plays. Likely because McGann's Doctor has a majority of his life told through the radio, he seems especially well fit to any story he is given. This one, the fourth in the "Dalek Empire" storyline, pushes the bounds of believability for the time travel technology involved (clocks and mirrors becoming stargate portals), but keeps the tension and doesn't collapse under its paradox weight. The fact that the time travel plot to control Earth is linked to Shakespeare seems like a weak connection at first, but it comes full circle in the end. Even if the solution doesn't hide itself very well.

M031 - Embrace the Darkness

For a story involving blinded crewmembers of a ship on a planet with no sun, this episode had a lot of silence. Blindness is logical audio drama disability since it just gives a natural excuse for the characters to have things described, but when it is followed up by stretches of mysterious noises and ominous movements it loses some of its narrative value.

The reasons behind the blindness, and for the lack of a sun, are slowly revealed. In the meantime we are introduced to a pair of blinded space travellers who fit the unfortunate sci-fi horror movie mould of the depressed and the irrational. Nether are particularly good archetypes, which is why they are usually killed off in the middle. No so in this case, but by the end the story has resolved in a satisfying way and put forward at least a little bit of thoughtful philosophy, albeit nothing as deep as some Eighth Doctor stories have.

M030 - Seasons of Fear

The Doctor has a story to tell. Who to and why will be revealed in episodes to come, but for now we hear the story of an immortal man who has made a deal with the devil.

In Shanghai, close to Charley's own time, the two separate so Charley can visit her boyfriend Alex. This is when the Doctor meets a strange man who claims to have killed him. This starts a time-traversing tale where the Doctor and Charley find the strange man in Ancient Rome, pre-Norman England, and in the witty 18th Century as his power for long life stretches towards immortality and his moral view of life diminishes to nothing.

It's a thrilling tale, and very well told. The reveal of who the devils behind it all are is a little underwhelming for anyone not steeped in Whovian lore, but the story wraps up neatly and is followed by a tease of grander mysteries to come.

M029 - The Chimes of Midnight

I think the reason Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor shines so much in the audio dramas is he was the least bogged down by canon. All the other classic Doctors have established companions and certain characteristics, some of which (like Colin Baker's boisterous nature) are very effective on radio, but can still limit where the stories can go. McGann has none of that, so he and his companion Charley are given to explore entire new storylines, such as the mysterious effects of Charley's existence after the Doctor saved her from the R101.

Its these effects that make their first appearance in this Stephen King meets Downton Abby episode where the TARDIS arrives in the servants section of an Edwardian house that seems to have fallen out of time. That is, until the chime of midnight marks the death of the scullery maid.

Timey-wimey pseudoscience is handled with great style in this episode, and it never feels meaningless. There is an emotional purpose behind the material, and the small cast of characters around Charley and the Doctor all become important players; there are no forgettable walk-on parts in this. Good plot and some good dialogue all add up to a winning episode.