Big Finish - The Chaos Pool

Released in March 2009 the final part of the Key 2 Time trilogy was The Chaos Pool, written by Peter Anghelides and directed again by Lisa Bowerman.

There's a spaceship crewed by evolved and highly aggressive Slugs. On another ship there is a President who looks and sounds just like Romana but isn't. The Doctor has two companions now called Amy and Zara, or possibly just one of them at a time. There's a weird old professor who spends a lot of time moaning about his hip. And somewhere in the middle of all this confusion there is a satchel holding the parts of the Key, and something called the Chaos Pool which may end the Universe, or save it, or something. I wasn't really paying attention was I?

Good points first: Amy is more interesting in this one, as is her evil twin Zara. Peter Davison sounds like he is having fun, Lalla Ward does good voice acting for someone who is more or less retired, and Toby Longworth does great monster voices. But I was not really engaged with the story or bothered about the outcome.

I prefer my Doctor Who stories on a slightly smaller scale with more human consequences from the action. If there could be some spooky stuff as well, or a good monster, then so much the better. These bigger stories with some cosmic quest and nearly invulnerable super-beings arguing about an artefact that does everything or nothing just don't grab me. It would be interesting to go back to the Big Finish forums and try and dig up the thread about these stories when they first came out. I know a lot of Doctor Who fans love stuff like this and I would like to read what they said at the time. I still consider myself somewhat of an outsider looking in at the Doctor Who universe, although I am getting pretty well versed in the Big Finish stuff. But I have seen so few of the original serials, and can't really remember the ones I watched in the 1970s that I still feel like a bit of a newbie here. And some of my views are clearly out of step with the majority. Love and War got rave reviews from just about everyone but I hated it.

2 out of 5 pools of chaos for this story. My decision not to buy Unit: Dominion is looking more and more dodgy. I may crack in the New year. Now I need something to cleanse my palate and relight my listening pleasure.

Big Finish - The Destroyer of Delights

Second in the Key 2 Time series is The Destroyer of Delights, written by Jonathan Clements and directed by Big Finish's very own Lisa Bowerman.

Continuing their quest for the missing segments of the Key Amy and the Fifth Doctor find themselves in 9th century Sudan and caught up in a battle between Lord Cassim and the Caliph. Plus there is the almost inevitable crashed spaceship and the beginnings of several legends from the Arabian Nights including blue skinned Genies, caves of wonders and magic words which open doors. And somewhere in all of this are both the Black and the White Guardians who both want the key for themselves.

Hmmm. I'm not sure this is the series for me. I do like Peter Davison's Doctor and he almost matches Paul McGann for his naturalistic radio performances. David Troughton and Jason Watkins have great fun as the two Guardians, they inject a great deal of comedy into their parts. They are both good British character actors and it is particularly nice to hear the son of Patrick Troughton in a Doctor Who adventure.

But apart from that there wasn't much for me here. I was especially bothered by the scripting for Amy who is a constructed person with little character as yet. Unfortunately this gives us a rather flat emotionless performance  I look to the Doctor's companions for some normal reactions to the madness around them, and for some decent character development. Big Finish have done this so well with Evelyn Smythe, Hex, Charley  Pollard and many others. So this was a real disappointment. Maybe they will let her develop a bit of a personality in the third episode.

I am also bothered that every famous work of fiction in the history of Earth turns out to have been influenced by the Doctor and a conveniently new Alien race. Could we have a few more historicals like the Marian Conspiracy where the Doctor has to deal with the locals and not another random race from space?

Slightly better than The Judgement of Isskar so a middling 2.5 out 5 ( or maybe that should be 40?) thieves.

Big Finish - The Judgement of Isskar

Back catalogue time again as I start on the Key 2 Time series from Big Finish. First up from January 2009 is The Judgement of Isskar by Simon Guerrier, directed by Jason Haigh-Ellery.

Some background information for me as much as anything. The original Key to Time was a story arc that linked six serials featuring the Fourth Doctor on television in the late 1970s. The Key itself is an artefact that stabilises the Universe but can also destroy it. The hunt for the pieces of this powerful cube involved the Doctor going up against representatives of order and chaos known, respectively, as the White and Black Guardians.

Big Finish returns to that story in this Key 2 Time series, and that numeral 2 is deliberate. The Fifth Doctor is on Mars with a new companion, a young woman called Amy who also seems to be a form of tracking device for pieces of the Key. Their hunt across time and space brings them into contact, and conflict, with the creatures who will go on to become the Ice Warriors of Mars.

Now I love the Ice Warriors and their creepy, whispering voices. This was the first Big Finish story I have listened to that features them so I was quite excited by the prospect. And that's the problem, I should stop getting my hopes up too high for some of these adventures because this just seemed like a confused mess to me. I couldn't understand why the Doctor was so quick to abandon looking for Peri at the start of the story and happily head off with Amy on the hunt for the missing pieces which his earlier self had deliberately scattered across time and space. On top of this the goodies and baddies kept changing, I didn't warm to the character of Amy at all, and all the female actors sounded the same to me. The only plus points were Nicholas Briggs' marvellous Ice Warrior voices, and the cheerful enthusiasm of Peter Davison during the CD extras interviews.

There has been a lot of discussion recently about jumping on points for Big Finish, well this is not one of them. Hopefully the rest of the series will get me back on track and explain what is going on, but at the moment the Key 2 time leaves me puzzled and as cold as an Ice Warrior's breath.
2 out of 5 Cosmic cubes I'm afraid.