Big Finish - Project: Lazarus

Big Finish main range monthly release 45 - Project: Lazarus by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright, directed by Gary Russell.

The Dr Smythe and the Forge arc continues. The Doctor believes he has found a cure for the Twilight virus so they return to Norway to find the young woman he and Evelyn left there at the end of the last story. But two years have passed and the good Doctors soon find themselves prisoners of the mysterious Forge organisation. And while the villain Nimrod tries to extract the secrets of regeneration from the Doctor, Evelyn is giving up some secrets of her own.

The Forge are an evil version of Torchwood, collecting and studying alien technology. They are fascinated by the legends of the Doctor and seize on the opportunity to strap him to the examination table. As the cover image shows there are two Doctors for the price of one in this story, which involves some time hopping and a face to face disagreement. There is also a twist which is a bit obvious I'm afraid.

Terrific performances all round. I was particularly impressed by Maggie Stables who has some very difficult moments to convey and does a fantastic job. I also liked Rosie Cavaliero as Cassie, and Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy are as good as ever. I had high hopes for the character of Nimrod but unfortunately he was more of a stereotypical villain in this episode, and Stephen Chance didn't get the opportunity for the philosophical clashes with the Doctor that I listen for in these dramas.

It goes without saying that the production values and sound design are great, I did find the incidental music slightly obtrusive in places but on the whole this was another cracking instalment of this developing arc. Project: Lazarus gets 3.5 out of 5 Cardigans and Cat broaches. Next up will be release 57 - Arrangements for War.

Big Finish - Short Trips

Pausing my Evelyn Smythe marathon, here are a selection of palate cleansers as it were. Short Trips are short stories from the Whoniverse which are read, or "performed", by one of the Big Finish actors as an enhanced audio-book.

The format allows the writers to tell stories about the first three Doctors who are sadly no longer with us. The actors reading the story give us impressions of their voices, as well as those of the companions, with variable results but we get the general idea.

So I listened to a number of short stories before moving on to Project: Lazarus. The Short Trips were Neptune, Lepidoptery for Beginners, The Little Drummer Boy, The Switching and Lant Land.

I originally intended to go into greater detail about each story, and the writers and actors involved but it was actually quite hard to find that information on the Big Finish site. All of these stories were bonus content released with other main range releases in my subscription. Instead let me say that these "enhanced" audio-books are not to my liking. I much prefer the full cast audio ranges which I am so addicted to at the moment. I listened to these five stories in the car and they were just like aural wallpaper to me. Once or twice the quality of the impersonation stood out and impressed me, and I wish I could name-check the actors involved, but the stories themselves just passed me by.

More impressive is another short story in my downloads basket that I may have listened to when it first came out in September 2009. Mission of the Viyrans by Nicholas Briggs and directed by Barnaby Edwards. Peri and The Fifth Doctor are having a fine time on a massive party planet but something is seriously wrong. Peri finds herself a prisoner of the mysterious Viyrans and struggling with her imprecise memories of what happened. I mention Peri first because this is a very Doctor light story. Peter Davison appears briefly but this is mainly an encounter between Peri and the Viyrans.

I was immediately much more engaged with this story and it was quite a neat one with a clever central idea. The Viyrans were created by Nick Briggs and I am tempted to chase down their other appearances in Big Finish, but I'm going to stick to Evelyn and the Forge for the moment. My only problem with this short story was that it needed an epilogue to explain the plot twists which probably should have been clearer in the main story.

Mission of the Viryans gets 3 out of 5 memory probes, whereas the above group of Short Trips gets 2 out of 3 original Doctors. The audiobooks are just not my thing.

Big Finish - Project: Twilight

This is Big Finish monthly release number 23 - Project: Twilight, written by Mark Wright and Cavan Scott, and directed by Gary Russell.

Now this is more like it. The Doctor and Evelyn are in South London to visit the Doctor's favourite Chinese take-away. They stumble across a body, closely followed by another body, some thugs, a secret underground medical laboratory, and their first encounter with the shadowy organisation known as the Forge.

Project: Twilight really kicks off an arc of stories about the Forge that I will be listening to over the coming weeks. Now that Evelyn is a regular companion with the Sixth Doctor the tension has moved up a notch and there is a really sinister and monstrous presence to deal with. The Doctor has to makes some tough choices which put Evelyn in harm's way.

I was beginning to wonder if Big Finish had ever created a recurrent villain to match the Master or Davros. This story develops a couple of potentially recurring characters and the mysterious organisation that created them. Colin Baker and Maggie Stables are on fine form, and are matched by creepy performances from Holly De Jong and Stephen Chase. The sound design is up to the usual high standards and apart from one or two moments when the villains choose to deliver stereotypical monologues instead of action the writing and direction are excellent.

This was a terrific, fast-paced introduction to the Project series and I am looking forward to the next one. I am trying to be tougher with my marking but I can't give this any less then 4 out of 5 question-mark embroidered shirts. Stay tuned for Project: Lazarus.

Big Finish - The Marian Conspiracy

Big Finish release number 6 - The Marian Conspiracy, written by Jacqueline Rayner and directed by Gary Russell.

This is the introduction of Dr Evelyn Smythe as a companion for the Sixth Doctor. It is also the beginning of a long arc of adventures that I have bought from Big Finish which will lead to a story called A Death in the Family. As you will have gathered from my previous reviews I am a big fan of Evelyn. I like her independent and combative spirit, and her clashes with the equally abrasive Sixth Doctor. She is a good match for him. I am also charmed by her frequent interest in food and, in particular, chocolate cake and a nice cup of Cocoa.

However, I was a little disappointed by her introductory story. Dr Smythe is a historian and the Doctor crashes one of her lectures to report that there is a problem with one of her ancestors which would cause her to cease to exist if not fixed. Before we know it she is in the Tardis and back in the court of Queen Mary in 1555. What bothered me is that we didn't get enough time for the relationship to develop between the Doctor and his new companion before plunging straight into the action. I thought that a tough woman like Evelyn would have taken a little longer to trust this strange figure who literally appears in her life. However the story demands that we are quickly caught up in a plot to assassinate the Queen which only the Doctor and Evelyn can prevent, if they can only escape from the Tower of London first!

And that is another problem with this drama. It is a pure historical story, the only science fiction involved is the Tardis and the Doctor's gizmos. Now I know that originally the BBC conceived Doctor Who to be a history programme with the crew of the Tardis travelling backwards in time to meet famous figures. But, just like those early TV viewers, I am more interested when the Doctor goes forwards or sideways and comes up against all those great monsters. I don't like the historicals, never have done. They are my least favourite episodes of the new Who series.

So this story was always going to struggle with me. Actually it's a pretty good tale, quickly told with a few interesting moments. But I didn't feel that Evelyn came into her own until the last scene. And a note to any voice actors out here: no accents, no really, don't do them, they are just distractions.

I was tempted to give this the lowest score yet but it is not quite that bad. It just feels like Big Finish were finding their way a bit. I am going to give The Marian Conspiracy a middle of the pack 2.5 out of 5 cups of Cocoa.

Now let's jump past the Spectre of Lanyon Moor, skip a couple of titles and head straight on for Project : Twilight.

Big Finish - A quick review

I have gone from being an occasional Big Finish listener to becoming somewhat of an addict.

Looking back at this blog shows that I have now reviewed 36 different titles. The average review score is hovering around 3.5. I have given three different stories the lowest score so far of 2.5, and just one story has got the full 5 star rating.

Looking at the downloads folder on my Big Finish accounts page shows a whopping 23 titles waiting for me to listen to, and that doesn't include future releases that I have subscribed to but have not been released yet. That is a lot of content to get through and lots of reviews to come.

I still plan to try and keep up with my complete James Bond read through, as well as finishing my Alien marathon, watching all of the Superman movies before next year's release of The Man of Steel, reviewing more medicine from the pages of 2000AD, and getting back to talking about some comics. That is quite a wide scope for one blog but I am trying to avoid these pages becoming about just one subject.

If you have listened to any of the Big Finish stories I have reviewed I would be fascinated to read your own reviews. Please send me links or put something in the comments box here. In the meantime thank you for your attention and stay tuned for more.

Big Finish - Home Truths

This is a story from the Big Finish Companion Chronicles series. Home Truths, written by Simon Guerrier, directed by Lisa Bowerman, and starring Jean Marsh and Niall MacGregor.

Sara Kingdom met the First Doctor, but Sara Kingdom is dead. How can she be in a house in the Cambridgeshire Fens, sitting by the fire and telling a sort of ghost story to a visiting police officer?

The Companion Chronicles allow Big Finish to tell stories about all the different people who have travelled with the Doctor over the years. They tend to be shorter, single CD stories which don't feature the Doctor himself. Again this particular story was a recommendation from Brian from Canada who knows that I like a good ghost story, and this one has the added bonus that it is set in Ely where I live.

It is basically a two-hander with Sara Kingdom telling the story of how she, Steven and the First Doctor came to visit the strange house and the mystery they found there. By the end of the tale we will learn what the Home Truths of the title means. It is a cracking little ghost story with fine work by Marsh and MacGregor. It was also nice to hear them talking with director Lisa Bowerman and producer David Richardson in an extra track at the end. I know that some Big Finish listeners like to get the script or separate music tracks as CD extras, but I really enjoy the cast and crew interviews when they appear.

I can't say much more about Home Truths without giving too much away. It is not going to divert me away from the main Big Finish range where, thanks to a recent spending spree, I now have about 20 stories waiting for me to download. However I am going to give it a very impressive 4 out of 5 space security sashes.

Stay tuned for more Big Finish very soon.

Big Finish - Spare Parts

Raiding the back catalogue brings me to Big Finish monthly release 34 - Spare Parts by Marc Platt. Directed by Gary Russell and starring Peter Davison as the doctor and Sarah Sutton as Nyssa.

The Tardis lands on a strange planet and while the Doctor tries to work out where they are, Nyssa gets involved with a family who are struggling to survive in a city of people who are steadily replacing their organs with mechanical parts.

I originally bought this story after hearing it reviewed by the TimeVault team, back in their Cadmium 2 days. It has a reputation as one of the best Big Finish stories and this one certainly stood up to a second listening. Everything about this production is perfection. The cast are fantastic and include well know names such as Derren Nesbitt, Sally Knyvette and Paul Copley. Sarah Sutton is very empathic as Nyssa, and Peter Davison gave us a Doctor who grows irritable as a way of concealing his growing unease about the planet and the future. The sound design and music are great, and Nick Briggs does some astonishing things with the Cyber voices. These are the Cybermen from the Tenth Planet era with their slightly foolish sing-song voices. Yet Briggs manages to make them terrifying. It is an astonishing performance.

Even more astonishing is a moment when a newly "upgraded" Cyberman comes face to face with its former family and tries desperately to overcome its new programming and speak to them. I do not know how much of the tragic vocalisations are down to Nicholas Briggs, and how much to Kathryn Guck, but somehow it manages to be both moving and completely horrifying at the same time. It may be my favourite moment in all of Big Finish so far. And it is the sort of effect that I can imagine happening in classic Doctor Who.

Spare Parts is spoken about as the equivalent of Genesis of the Daleks for the Cybermen and, certainly, what it tells us about people of Mondas, their plight, and the Doctor's role in the events that lead to them becoming the Cyberman remind me of that great story. It is a perfect prequel to The Tenth Planet.

Looking back at the scores I have given Big Finish stories so far I can see that the top spot is shared by The Silver Turk and The Architects of History with 4.5 each. Well, no surprise but Spare Parts is going straight to the top with a full 5 out of 5 Cyber chest units. It's a perfect Big Finish story. Check it out if you have not done so already.