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.

M044 - Creatures of Beauty

I can't decide if there was a paradox in this story or I heard the parts out of order. I think I quite like the roundabout plot involving the Doctor and Nyssa being held by totalitarian police on a planet suffering from major atmospheric pollution, but the story takes so long to explain itself that some of the impact was lost.

Scenes of torture are not very good in audio because they involve a lot of screaming, and a few go on too long in this one. There is also the problem of no one telling the Doctor or Nyssa what is going on, which for the audience that arrives with them already captured is even worse because for the first hour there is nothing but questions without answers.

Some of the flashback structure that is used makes things more confused than they needed to be, but overall by the end I still feel like it was a good tale; just one that could have been a short story or a bonus release.

M034 - Spare Parts

Finally Peter Davison's 5th Doctor gets a good script. And it's a Cyberman story, which is all the better.

Dealing with (one of) the origins of the Cybermen, the play starts slow with the Doctor hinting that he recognizes this Earth-like planet, but then playing it off as if he landed them in England. His concern gives the story some dread going in, so that when the inhuman parts of the story start to emerge they have some proper emotional punch.

The reason Neil Gaiman was asked to write A Nightmare in Silver was because Steven Moffat felt the Doctor's silvery nemesis had lost their scaryness, and I'd say something similar was at risk with the radio plays. Without the visual side of things, the Cybermen could easily appear as Dalek ripoffs; just another weird computer-voiced collective of space Nazis. But seeing the moral dilemmas that lead the people of the planet to turn themeselves into the Cybermen makes them unique and scary again.

M026 - Primeval

I don't dislike Peter Davison. In fact, in the Children in Need special "Time Crash," I liked him quite a bit. Something about the cocky charm and the celery stick. But why are his monthly episodes so bland?

The Doctor and Nyssa are on ancient Traken, Nyssa's lost homeworld, and she is going to die if the Doctor can figure out what's going on. By the end, I wasn't sure he had. I find the Doctor stories where psychic powers play a heavy part are some of the weakest. Perhaps its because of the undefined way those powers always end up working; the rules never seem firm, and so they feel like a constant cheat in the narrative.

A grandstanding villain and the Doctor unexpectedly getting caught off guard weren't enough to make this a recommendable two hours.

EDA107-108 - Human Resources, Parts 1 and 2

This is the sort of story that Russel T. Davis could have done with David Tennant and Donna to great effect. But McGann and Lucie are just as good in the same roles, and it's possible that the TV budget wouldn't have been able to pull of the massive scale of the second part.

Everything was a dream, it seems, when Lucie wakes up starting her first day at the office she had been applying to work at when she appeared in the Doctor's TARDIS. Disoriented and annoyed, but willing to face reality, Lucie sets about adjusting to the Dilbert world of her new life working for Hulbert Logistics. But when she gets promoted to be an executive secretary, her new boss is the Doctor.

Back together, the Doctor and Lucie set out to discover the secret of Hulbert Logistics, which is that it isn't in Telford at all. War, it turns out, is far more effective when fought by the market research teams and number crunchers of an office environment, but an office environment inside massive walking war machines that are laying waste to an indiginous population to clear land for new settlements.

This finale two-parter takes many great twists and brings back the Doctor's other great villains, the Cybermen. A very clever story with a great mix of adventure and mystery makes this the best of the first series and a great reason to continue listening.

EDA106 - No More Lies

The penultimate story of the first season is one of those interesting tales that gets an "Aha!" moment somewhere in the third episode: a twist that would be a shame to ruin. The episode sets up a garden party where an aging couple are celebrating their anniversary. This is where the Doctor and Lucie arrive in pursuit of a fugitive.

Much like Immortal Beloved (EDA104), this episode offers some interesting moral questions. These are the episodes where Big Finish take full advantage of the limitations of the audio play form. Since there are no visuals to distract, stories with a lot of action are less effective. Running and shooting lasers and hiding quietly are not suitable for radio, so conversation and discussion often need to take center stage. By building scenarios around complex moral problems, these scripts can offer great discussions and arguments that (when well-written) end up being just as engaging as any chase.

EDA105 - Phobos

The Doctor and Lucie land on Phobos, one of the moons of Mars, which has become a hot spot for extreme tourism. Adrenaline junkies go gravity-boarding and wormhole-jumping while the local colonists try to ignore the interlopers.

Mid-season episodes like this fit in the mid-range of the Big Finish productions. The story is solid Doctor Who material, discovering a mysterious alien being that raises a few philisophical problems. The Doctor gets a few good lines, and Lucie manages to be a competent companion. Overall solid, but still not as memorable as other episodes.

EDA104 - Immortal Beloved

This episode's guest star is Ian MacNeice, best-known as Winston Churchill to Matt Smith's Doctor. He plays Zeus in a pseudo-Ancient Greek culture where a ship of human colonists have been using a combination of cloning and mind transfer to gain immortality.

The Doctor and Lucie land the TARDIS just in time to stop star-crossed lovers from diving off a cliff together. Then they discover the lovers are clones of the colony's leaders, raised until maturity when their minds are swapped with their dying older selves. But the mind transfer machine, which the Doctor says has been outlawed, is breaking down, and Zeus wants the Doctor to fix it.

This is where the EDA really finds its feet. The philisophical implications of cloning are pushed into uncomfortable new territory as the clones are raised like their originators' children, and even develop similar personalities and romantic interests, until they are forced to swap their health and youth for the dying bodies of their so-called parents.

A clever story with several good performances and plenty of conflicting interests makes this the second-best episode of series 1, just behind the two-part finale, Human Resources.

EDA103 - Horror of Glam Rock

Bernard Cribbins, who soon joined the TV series as Donna's uncle Wilfred, and Una Stubbs, better known as Sherlock's Mrs. Hudson, appear in this episode where Lucie and the Doctor are trapped with a mixed group inside a motorway cafe in 1974 as monsters prowl in the darkness outside.

One of the most impressive things about the EDA is how Lucie and the Doctor weren't friendly right away. Usually new companions have to be eager to continue the adventure at the end of the first episode, but because she is foisted on the Doctor unwillingly (and unwanted), their relationship has a bit of conflict that keeps things rolling.

Cribbins plays a semi-sleazy agent for a glam rock group. The music genre is running topic in the episode, from some of the characters in the cafe being musicians to comments on the Doctor's clothes, which it's nice to hear are carried over from the TV movie. Reasonable character development for Cribbin's character and others, and some horror movie moments make this Doctor Who's The Mist, but without the terrible ending.

EDA101-102 - Blood of the Daleks, Parts 1 and 2

Paul McGann, having proven the 8th Doctor's popularity in the monthly releases, headlines an independent series, The Eighth Doctor Adventures, which finally offer a glimpse of what could have been, had the US spinoff occurred. But it's a good thing it didn't because the stories offered through the four seasons of EDA often go beyond the capabilities of 90s US television.

The premier episodes introduce a new companion, Lucie Miller, an obstinant 19-year-old from Northern England who appears mysteriously in the TARDIS much like Donna Noble had in the TV series a few months before. When the Doctor tries to return her to 2006 England, the TARDIS bounces off a temporal shield and they find themselves on a wasteland planet called Red Rocket Rising. The Doctor and Lucie come to a reluctant alliance as they deal with corrupt scientists a newly-created race of Daleks. But when the real Daleks arrive, they want to wipe the "impure" Daleks out of existence and the remaining inhabitants of Red Rocket Rising with them.

As Doctor Who tales go, this one is well written and carries a good pace, and the Daleks are always a plus, but compared to the rest of the EDA, Blood of the Daleks is simply a solid, but mid-range tale. The best episodes are yet to come...