Big Finish - The Raincloud Man

Big Finish 116 - The Raincloud Man by Eddie Robson, directed by Nicholas Briggs.

This is a sort of sequel to an earlier story The Condemned which I have not yet heard. The Doctor and Charley return to Manchester and help the no nonsense D.I. Menzies solve a series of baffling murders. While the mysteries pile up the Doctor is obsessed by a pound coin that seems to have travelled back in time from 2012 to 2005.

If I can't have a ghost story then a good murder mystery will do nicely. And this has a splendid performance by Anna Ford as the tough police detective who, through her previous contact with the Doctor, has become used to cases with a certain degree of alien involvement. In fact I enjoyed her and Charley as an unlikely detective duo so much that I could have done with more of their investigations of the strange string of events that follow the unfortunate Raincloud man around. The other stuff about a floating casino ship and some warring aliens was rather less interesting but was probably necessary to drive the story on, and keep to the four act structure.

The mystery of Charley's timeline and the Doctor's memory deepens, and hopefully will be explained in the other dramas I have queued up on my iPod. 3 out of 5 time travelling coins for this one and on to The Magic Mousetrap.

Big Finish - The Stones of Venice

Back in time again to release 18 from March 2001, The Stones of Venice by Paul Magrs, directed by Gary Russell.

Charley Pollard joined the Eighth Doctor because she wanted travel and adventure, so it seems appropriate for the Doctor to take her to Venice. However this is a future Venice that is on the point of sinking beneath the waves for ever. Meanwhile party-goers celebrate the last days, a religious cult search for their most precious icon, and a mournful Duke waits and hopes for his lost love to rise from the dead. Of course the Doctor and Charley are soon up to their necks and while the Doctor investigates some strange artwork is it possible that Charley may somehow be the actual reincarnation of the long dead Lady Estella?

Unfortunately after the high points of Sword of Orion this story is all over the place. Only the Doctor and Charley seem to be speaking sense, and in Charley's case that is only when she hasn't been drugged. The rest of the cast spout portentous nonsense with perfectly annunciated received pronunciation. It sounds like a bad village hall Shakespeare production. Not even the talents of Michael Sheard, Barnaby Edwards and Mark Gatiss can save it. There is a fair bit of running backwards and forwards and the good old capture - escape- recapture game that was so beloved of Doctor Who writers on television.

I just didn't care for it. It never captured my imagination and has to go down as a bit of a dud really. 2 out of 5 Venetian masks. What I need is either a really good ghost story, or some Daleks. Any suggestions?

Let us see how I get on with The Raincloud Man.

Big Finish - Return of the Krotons

A bonus release from December 2009 - Return of the Krotons, written and directed by Nicholas Briggs.

The Sixth Doctor and Charley Pollard find themselves on a planet that is being mined by a group of survivors from a generational colony ship. But there is something very strange about the crystalline material they are digging out of the rocks, and deep in the mines something is reawakening.

One of the great advantages of audio drama is that it gives the writers a much broader canvas than the original television series ever had. And it means that monsters that seemed a bit silly on the small screen can be reinvented to sinister effect. So the original Krotons that went up against Patrick Troughton's second Doctor become much more menacing monsters for Colin Baker and India Fisher. It is neatly handled by Nicholas Briggs whose love of the original series shines through this script while he updates the threat level for a modern audience.

This is the first adventure I have listened to that pairs Charley Pollard with the Sixth Doctor and it is slightly confusing. As far as I know Charley first met the Doctor in his eighth incarnation on board the R101 in Storm Warning. So how the Sixth can be travelling with her and then not remember meeting her in 1930 raises some continuity problems which, I have no doubt, are explained somewhere else. But as I have hinted at before I don't get too hung up about this. The timeline of Doctor Who stories in the Big Finish universe is so long and convoluted that I am quite happy to ignore continuity glitches as long as the stories are good. And this one is pretty good.

Baker and Fisher are as good as ever and there are two other star performances to mention. Philip Madoc had a long and illustrious association with Doctor Who and this was his last role with Big Finish before his death earlier this year. He had a fantastic voice for a villain and it was great to listen to him here, and to hear him being interviewed by David Richardson in the CD extras. And as the voice of the Krotons themselves Nicholas Briggs manages to make the slightly silly mechanical voices from the 1960s sound suitably creepy.

An entertaining short story from Big Finish that gets 3.5 out of 5 Kroton teaching machines. Next I follow Charley back (or forwards?) to the Eighth Doctor in The Stones of Venice.

Big Finish - Sword of Orion

Back to February 2001 for release number 17 - Sword of Orion, written and directed by Nicholas Briggs.

The Eighth Doctor and Charley Pollard are on deep space salvage vessel which encounters a huge, and seemingly abandoned, star destroyer. It could be the biggest salvage haul ever but it also contains the dark secret of a deadly deal made between humanity and some of the Doctor's oldest foes.

The Doctor and Charley work well together as a team and India Fisher more than holds her own against Paul McGann. I felt that Nicholas Briggs made Charley sound like a genuine Edwardian adventuress, and her vocabulary was more convincing than in Storm Warning. This adventure starts immediately where that left off and if I had a criticism of the writing it would be that Charley seems more familiar with the Doctor's methods and abilities than I would expect at this stage. She came across as a long-standing companion and not one who had only just met the Doctor.

The cover image reveals who are the bad guys here but I had not really looked at it, so the slow reveal of Cybermats and Cybermen was very enjoyable. A seasoned Doctor Who fan would not have much trouble identifying them from the characters' descriptions and by the sound effects, but you can't beat a good Cybermen story. I did find it rather easy to spot who the human villain was but that might just be because I am listening to so many audio dramas at the moment and my ears are becoming attuned.

On the subject of ears I have to give high praise for the music here which is a mixture of weird electronic sounds which took me back to the black and white era of Doctor Who on television. And that is appropriate because these Cybermen are contemporaries of those locked in the Tomb of the Cybermen, although Nick Briggs gives us some very spooky voices that are more like the Cybermen from the 1980s. As well as Briggs himself the cast also includes Big Finish stalwarts Toby Longworth, Barnaby Edwards and Mark Gatiss.

Apparently this is one of Big Finish's top selling stories and I can see why. It never quite hits the heights of Spare Parts but it is very good indeed. 4 out of 5 Cybermats. Next up is the Return of the Krotons!

Big Finish - Black and White

Right up to date with the very latest monthly release from Big Finish. Number 163 Black and White by Matt Fitton, directed by Ken Bentley.

Taking up right where Protect and Survive finished Ace and Hex find themselves in the black Tardis with two characters from previous stories. Captain Lysandra Aristedes was a member of the Forge in Project: Destiny, and Sally Morgan was "recruited" by the Seventh Doctor at the end of The House of Blue Fire. There is confusion as both pairs believe they are the Doctor's current companions, nobody can explain why there are now two Tardises of different colours, and the Doctor himself is nowhere to be found.

While the companions squabble the Black Tardis deposits them in the land of the ancient Danes and right in the middle of the tale of Beowulf and the monster Grendel. This is another Doctor light story recorded while Sylvester McCoy was in New Zealand filming the Hobbit. He does appear but for much of the time the great mystery is where the Doctor is and what is his cunning plan? Even when he is absent the master manipulator seems to be influencing events but maybe this time he has gone too far.

The two Tardis crews get re-arranged  allowing Hex to flirt with Sally while Ace and Lysandra argue. In fact after some recent more grown up stories for Ace this is a bit of a return to the petulant hothead from the 1980s. The pairs get separated in time and space and to be honest it does get a little confusing as to what is happening and when, although having two actors playing the young and old Beowulf does help. Interweaving the legend of Beowulf with a Doctor Who story is done quite cleverly by the writer Marc Fitton and I particularly enjoyed a nice little joke about Grendel's mother.

Quite an interesting story which sets up the final part of this mini series. It never reached the heights of Protect and Survive for me and I did get lost from time to time, so 3 out of 5 Tardis outer shells for me. Next up will be another Eighth Doctor and Charley Pollard adventure.

James Bond - Diamonds are Forever

By 1956 Ian Fleming was turning out a Bond novel every year and they were proving to be hugely successful. Diamonds are Forever was even serialised in the Daily Express.

M sends Bond to take the place of an imprisoned courier and infiltrate the criminal gang responsible for a huge diamond smuggling scheme. Before long 007 is in America and mixing it up with a group of gangsters called the Spangled Mob. Along the way he will fall for the enigmatic Tiffany Case and meet up with his old friend Felix Leiter.

Diamonds are Forever is a quick and easy read. It does seem somewhat strange that Bond is basically working as an undercover policeman against a bunch of ordinary criminals with no connections to SMERSH. At least he is less objectionable in this book. Fleming seems to have toned down some of his more unpleasant views although he still finds time to be rude about the Irish, Americans, particularly their food (again), and Jewish people. There is also a rather extraordinary sequence describing Bond's flight to the USA and the irritations of air travel that existed even back then in the 1950s.

Bond is a bit more proactive this time and goes beyond the limits of his orders to stir up the Spangled Mob, although it seems clear that M expected him to do just that. There is a fair amount of violence and a sequence where Bond lives up to his double O status by shooting two nasty bad guys fairly quickly and efficiently. He is still using his Beretta pistol at this stage and has not yet been upgraded to his signature Walther PPK.

But it all seems a bit dull and low key for a James Bond adventure. There is no super-villain as such, the Bond girl is slightly more interesting than in Moonraker but still does not leave a lasting impression, and Bond himself seems a bit bored with it all. It feels like Fleming churned this one out fairly quickly in response to the public's reaction to the first three books.

The Bond check-list includes one minor villain with a medical condition (which Fleming gets wrong - there is no blood group F), no sporting encounter other than a rigged card game, a torture sequence which happens "off camera" between chapters, and one horrible and bizarre death (from hot mud!).

Bit of a let down really.

James Bond will return in ... From Russia with Love.

Big Finish - Storm Warning

Big Finish release number 16 from January 2001, Storm Warning. Written by Alan Barnes and directed by Gary Russell.

It is October 1930 and the Eighth Doctor finds himself on board the airship R101 where he meets the young adventuress Charley Pollard. There is a mysterious passenger in a locked cabin, a storm is coming, and the Doctor knows that the R101 has a terrible date with destiny.

This was the first time Paul McGann returned to the role of the Doctor since the 1996 TV movie, and he instantly slips straight back in to the part with no difficulty. Obviously McGann has the advantage over the other actors in that he had the shortest gap between his television appearance and his Big Finish audios. So his voice has changed the least, but McGann may be the most natural sounding of the actors and is completely convincing as the mysterious traveller in space and time. He is ably backed up by India Fisher in the first of her several appearances as his new companion Charley. There was another performance that stood out for me but for a while I could not place the voice until I realised that the actor playing Lord Tamworth was Gareth "Blake's 7" Thomas.

The story itself is a tricky one and I was perhaps spoiled a bit by having recently listened to Cryptobiosis which has a similar set up although it was written much later. In both adventures the Doctor is on a ship which is heading into a storm and cannot escape because his Tardis has been, inconveniently, lost over board. Both have mysterious passengers in locked rooms who require special equipment to keep them alive, and again the two stories involve the Doctor negotiating a settlement with some form of alien race. It may be a little hard on the writers but I would quite like a story which doesn't involve a meeting with a new set of aliens. There are plenty of existing creations in the Whoniverse that could be used. Likewise I am getting a little bored with writers creating new forms of radiation or particles for the Doctor to encounter but that is an argument for another time.

I also had a few problems with anachronistic language in this episode. In particular I am not sure that an Edwardian adventuress who was travelling to Singapore for an assignment with a young man would refer to it as "a date", but that is just minor quibbling on my part. At least the inevitable destruction of the R101 with the tragic loss of everyone on board provides an acceptable explanation for why the alien contact does not have lasting repercussions for the British empire. It was also nice to hear the Doctor quip about Mary Shelley knowing that she will later turn up briefly as a companion.

A slightly variable story but a great reintroduction of the Eighth Doctor, and a promising start for Charley. 3.5 out of 5 Vortisaurs. Now back to Ace and Hex and the problem of the two Tardises.