Big Finish - Mary's Story

Big Finish produce very high quality audio dramas which continue the adventures of characters from classic Doctor Who. They also have ranges covering Sapphire and Steel, Sherlock Holmes, 2000AD and Blake's 7 (coming next year). Whenever I listen to their stuff I am always impressed but time and money usually prevent me from getting more content from them. My Skype buddy Brian from Canada who hosts our British Invaders podcast has persuaded me to take out a 6 CD subscription to their regular monthly Doctor Who releases. So I've gone for it and promised to post my reviews up here as I go along.

The first one is The Company of Friends: Mary's Story. This is a prologue to some other stories that are coming up and it is available for download for only 99p!

Paul McGann plays the eighth Doctor in a story set after the TV movie, and the Mary of the title is none other than Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. The short story tells how Shelley became the Doctor's companion for a while and also sets up various parts of the Frankenstein legend. Now you can either take a purist's view and object to this meddling in the story of Frankenstein and the book's origin, or you can regard it as a neat idea which melds two fictional worlds in a charming way.

Personally I thought it was great. It is rather short, but it is lovely stuff. It's nice to hear Paul McGann as the eighth Doctor as we never really got enough of him. Maybe one day we will learn how he regenerated into his ninth incarnation. Julie Cox makes a fine Mary Shelley and we even get a bit of Lord Byron, played by Robert Forknall. In a nicely ironic moment the Doctor compliments Byron on his "look".

Anyway, this is a great audio drama that left me wanting more. I'm going to give this a Tardis score of 4 out of 5. Next up is the sixth Doctor in Recorded Time.