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Miracle in the Desert

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Review of The Eye of the Scorpion (#24)
Big Finish Release Date: Sep 2001
Doctor/Companion: Five and Peri
Stars: Peter Davison and Nicola Bryant
Preceding Story: Project: Twilight (Six, Evelyn)
Succeeding Story: Colditz (Seven, Ace)

Big Finish has achieved something I didn’t think was possible: they made an entire story in which I didn’t cringe at/actively dislike Peri. In fact, I was into Part Three before I realized that’s what was happening. I guess y’all can officially add me to the list of folks who (at this moment) think she was better paired with the Fifth Doctor than the Sixth.

Aside from that amazing feat, The Eye of the Scorpion is in itself an enjoyable adventure. While in flight, the TARDIS inexplicably changes course. Upon review, it appears the Doctor is responsible, but he has no idea when or how he might have done so.

Soon they land in Egypt, circa 1400 BCE. In typical Doctor form, they accidentally ingratiate themselves with the yet-to-be-crowned Pharaoh, a young woman named Erimem (Caroline Morris). But the Doctor knows the names of all the Pharaohs—especially the female ones, who were few and far between—and hers is not a one he recognizes.

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Thrown for a Loup

Review of Loups-Garoux (#20)
Big Finish Release Date: May 2001
Doctor/Companion: Five and Turlough
Stars: Peter Davison and Mark Strickson
Preceding Story: Minuet in Hell (Eight, Charley, the Brigadier)
Succeeding Story: Dust Breeding (Seven, Ace)

It’s not often that Doctor Who tackles widely familiar fantastical creatures (e.g., vampires), but when it does, it doesn’t shy from calling out the popular mythos. That’s part of why Loups-Garoux works as well as it does.

For me, it was my tabletop RPG background that clued me in, but those who know French will also have a good idea what they’re in for the first time they look at the title of this adventure. In that sense, there was nothing surprising in the story. For the most part, it rolled out about as I expected: the Doctor and Turlough find themselves embroiled in a crisis among a group of werewolves in and around Rio de Janeiro in 2080.

While the Doctor identifies the werewolves’ condition with a quasi-scientific name, and not everything they do matches with legend, there’s no doubt that these are the traditional werewolves we expect from literature. They are pack animals whose behavior is strongly influenced by the lupine side of their nature, silver harms them, and they are long-lived. For fans of werewolf stories, then, this audio adventure is a win.

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Favorable Mutation

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Review of The Mutant Phase (#15)
Big Finish Release Date: December 2000
Doctor/Companion: Five and Nyssa
Stars: Peter Davison and Sarah Sutton
Preceding Story: The Holy Terror (Six, Frobisher)
Succeeding Story: Storm Warning (Eight, Charley)

You know that feeling you get when one of your friends is really excited about a story—be it a book or a show or a film—and you’ve got no problem with it, but it just doesn’t excite you? That sense that you’re either about to disappoint your friend or that an unpleasant conversation about your differing opinions is about to ensue? That’s how I felt coming into The Mutant Phase.

You see, although I’ve always liked Peter Davison’s Fifth Doctor, I’ve also found him slightly bland—nothing to get excited about (I know I have several friends who are about ready to dump me upon reading that…). So when I got a nudge from one such friend to try one of Five’s Big Finish (BF) audios next, I agreed with a certain trepidation. My unease increased when I realized the first one on tap from the list of recommendations I have co-starred Sarah Sutton’s Nyssa—another of those dichotomous “friend’s favorite/just okay for me” characters.

Imagine my relief when I realized I was quite enjoying the adventure. With no need to come up with something nice to say simply to appease the Five and Nyssa fans, I could relax and take the story as it came.

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Might-Have-Beens and Never-Weres

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Review of Neverland (#33)
Big Finish Release Date: July 2002
Doctor/Companion: Eight, Charley, and Romana II
Stars: Paul McGann, India Fisher, and Lalla Ward
Preceding Story: The Time of the Daleks (Eight, Charley)
Succeeding Story: Spare Parts (Five, Nyssa)

It’s been diverting to broaden my Big Finish horizons and listen to some adventures with the Sixth and Seventh Doctors, but I found I was missing the Eighth. Thus I’ve returned to the last of his adventures recommended to me from the first fifty releases in the Main Range.

Charley has visited a couple more interesting points in space and time with the Doctor since last I joined them. We do not, however, start with the two of them—instead, we are on Gallifrey with Lord President Romanadvoratrelundar—known to the Doctor (and us) simply as Romana. Someone is reading out historical facts revolving around Charley’s anomalous survival of the R101 crash and her subsequent travels, but the recitation soon becomes garbled. The paradox appears finally to be too much for the Web of Time to bear.

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A Future Set in Ash

Review of The Fires of Vulcan (#12)
Big Finish Release Date: September 2000
Doctor/Companion: Seven and Mel
Stars: Sylvester McCoy and Bonnie Langford
Preceding Story: The Apocalypse Element (Six, Evelyn, Romana II)
Succeeding Story: The Shadow of the Scourge (Seven, Ace)

Although I’ve always had a soft spot for Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh Doctor (especially when he’s paired with Sophie Aldred’s Ace, my all-time favorite Companion), somehow in my explorations of audio adventures, I’d never sat down with one of his before. I’ve come close, in that I did once track down episodes of Death Comes to Time, a webcast from 2001-02, which had only limited visuals and relied heavily on the audio component to get the story across. As for Big Finish product, though, this was my first.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, especially given that The Fires of Vulcan co-stars Mel, of whom I’ve never been a fan. Although supposedly a bright woman—a computer programmer, no less—she seems to have been reduced on screen to an overly optimistic cheerleader to the Doctor and an epic screamer. I had been told she was much improved on audio, but I still winced a little at the prospect.

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Wholly Satisfactory

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Review of The Holy Terror (#14)
Big Finish Release Date: November 2000
Doctor/Companion: Six and Frobisher
Stars: Colin Baker and Robert Jezek
Preceding Story: The Shadow of the Scourge (Seven, Ace)
Succeeding Story: The Mutant Phase (Five, Nyssa)

When I realized the next audio on my list was the first one to include Frobisher the talking penguin (okay, he’s actually a Whifferdill; he just prefers the penguin shape), I was pretty psyched. I’d heard good things about the character and was looking forward to his introduction.

Alas, my limited experience with alternative media stories led me astray; as Frobisher was already an established character in comics (a fact which had somehow escaped me), Big Finish apparently felt he needed no introduction in the audio format. I had flashbacks to my first experience with Evelyn, which was frustrating; I’d been so pleased that I wouldn’t be jumping into the middle that way again. Unfortunately, the only way to get Frobisher’s whole story is to dig into yet another medium, which I am unlikely to do.

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Proven Formula

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Review of The Spectre of Lanyon Moor (#9)
Big Finish Release Date: June 2000
Doctor/Companion: Six and Evelyn Smythe
Stars: Colin Baker and Maggie Stables
Preceding Story: Red Dawn (Five, Peri)
Succeeding Story: Winter for the Adept (Five, Nyssa)

Storytelling in Doctor Who has several tried and true formulae (the most well known (at least by name) probably being “base under siege“), so it was almost comforting when I realized that The Spectre of Lanyon Moor was making use of one of them: the fantastical explanation for an Earth legend (see also The Dæmons, or the more recent (and extreme) example of Death in Heaven).

The exact details of how a 3-foot-high alien troll uses its psionic energy to further its own purposes, affecting the surrounding area in Cornwall of course take a full, convoluted four parts. But it only takes a few minutes to realize this creature is being presented as the basis of a great many stories and superstitions—most notably the existence of Cornish pixies. I found it reassuringly familiar.

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Starting Fresh

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Review of The Marian Conspiracy (#6)
Big Finish Release Date: March 2000
Doctor/Companion: Six and Evelyn Smythe
Stars: Colin Baker and Maggie Stables
Preceding Story: The Fearmonger (Seven, Ace)
Succeeding Story: The Genocide Machine (Seven, Ace)

Apparently I just needed to start in the right spot.

After my last experience with a Big Finish audio adventure, I was a little reluctant to dip my toe back into the pool. Although previous forays had been enjoyable, I didn’t get as much out of my first Sixth Doctor story as I’d hoped. (Actually, it was only the first full-length one; I’ve heard a couple of shorts in which Six teams up with Jago & Litefoot.) I wanted to be as enthusiastic about Six’s adventures as I’d been about Eight’s, but something just didn’t quite click.

Good thing I persevered.

Having come into the middle of Evelyn’s travels with the Doctor in The Apocalypse Element, I didn’t quite “get” their relationship. Starting at its beginning, though, I was immediately charmed by Evelyn’s manner with him, and her refusal to take any of his shit. As a 55-year-old woman, she’s well established in her life as a history professor and knows her own mind. She has no need to feel in awe of him, as so many of his (especially younger) Companions have initially been. The more mature give and take between them makes for a refreshing change of pace—not least because it shows him not to be the brusque boor he often was in the televised stories.

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Can Every Christmas Be “Last Christmas”?

Review of Last Christmas
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

Santa Claus has absolutely no place in Doctor Who. Except when he does.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2014 BBC

I will freely admit that I was among those fans who cringed and gnashed teeth when Santa showed up in the TARDIS at the end of Death in Heaven. The whole idea that this mythical (if well-beloved) person should exist as an entity as real as the Doctor himself within the Whoniverse just gave me hives.

The comedy-rich pre-credits sequence was, thus, painful to watch (though I do love to see Dan Starkey wearing his own face for a change). And on first viewing, Clara’s declaration that she does indeed believe in Santa Claus just adds the cherry to the top of the whole saccharine mess.

After one knows how it all pans out, though… Well, it all fits together nicely.

Note, for starters, that the Doctor never gives Clara an answer when she asks with breathless wonder if being back in the TARDIS with him is real. Combine that with his face-off with Santa before joining her there (“I know what this is. I know what’s happening. And I know what’s at stake.”), and I think it’s hard to argue that he’s not completely aware for the entire episode that they’re all dreaming.

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The Element of Distraction

Review of The Apocalypse Element (#11)
Big Finish Release Date: August 2000
Doctor/Companion: Six, Evelyn Smythe, and Romana II
Stars: Colin Baker, Maggie Stables, and Lalla Ward
Preceding Story: Winter for the Adept (Five, Nyssa)
Succeeding Story: The Fires of Vulcan (Seven, Mel)

A few months ago when Big Finish was having a sale, I managed to snatch up a few audio adventures for a song. Now that I have a bit of vacation time coming, I thought I’d listen to a few of them. Starting with the earliest release I had in my downloads, then, I jumped into one with Ol’ Sixie.

Perhaps it was simply the rigors of preparing for the approaching holiday while caring for a sick child, or perhaps it really was something about the story itself, but for what may be the first time, I found myself unable to enjoy a Big Finish drama to its fullest extent.

The Apocalypse Element follows the Sixth Doctor and his Companion Evelyn as they find themselves pulled off course (surprise!), and subsequently arriving at a time travel conference, where various temporal powers have gathered—including some Time Lords.

Over the course of the play, we learn that Romana, now Lord President of Gallifrey, is missing (along with an entire planet) and that the Daleks are involved. Eventually it comes to light that control of the mysterious “Element,” and its use as a weapon of galactic-scale destruction, is the Daleks’ objective.

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