Start to Finish: 6.04 - The Many Deaths of Jo Grant

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

It's time for the Third Doctor, and we're back with Jo Grant, in a title that does not bode well for the pluckiest UNIT agent; Cavan Scott and Mark Wright's The Many Deaths of Jo Grant.

The Doctor is desperately striving to save the life of a wounded alien and UNIT HQ is under attack. As the attackers close in, time is running out. This is the day that Jo Grant dies... and dies, and dies.

Scott and Wright's slightly trippy entry in the series doesn't ever convince you that Jo is doomed, of course, but it presents its puzzle well, with the common elements which drift through the different scenarios. Nicholas Asbury provides one of those elements as the recurring Rowe, but presents a range of characters within that umbrella, and between just the two of them Katy Manning and Asbury provide a staggering number of characters.

The old melancholy is back a little, but overall this story is one of defiance and celebration of the third principle of sentient life. The saarlac-esque scene is a little grim, but overall it's a solid entry and a lot of fun.

Next time, we'll wrap up the Oliver Harper trilogy with The First Wave.

Start to Finish: 6.03 - The Memory Cheats

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

As the series progresses, not only do the formats of the Companion Chronicles get more varied, they also begin to build up complex post-travel histories for some of the Companions. Such is the case with Zoe Herriot, whose story picks up in The Memory Cheats, with a framing narrative that is a direct sequel to Echoes of Grey.

Zoe Herriot remembers everything, and she knows she never traveled with the Doctor. So why is she under arrest, charged with various crimes, and presented with a chance to save herself if only she can explain what happened in Uzbekistan in 1919?

Having denied the Company her help in Echoes of Grey, the framing narrative for Simon Guerrier's The Memory Cheats picks up Zoe's story in prison, with a court-appointed defender urging Zoe to recall the information she needs for a plea bargain. Unusually, this Chronicle plays very much with the idea of the Companion as an unreliable narrator, not as a result of forgetfulness, but deliberation. Zoe specifically claims that her story is false, and peppered with hints to manipulate her listener, although the audience is left unsure.

Wendy Padbury is joined by her daughter Charlie Hayes, no stranger to the Chronicles having played Gatlin in Bernice Summerfield and the Criminal Code, as Jen, and the interview room scenes click well. The story is somewhat strange and unsettling. In fact many of the Zoe Chronicles have an air of claustrophobic menace about them, but in this instance Zoe's attempts to manipulate Jen's perceptions lead to some distinctly odd character moments.

Next, more perceptual shenanigans in The Many Deaths of Jo Grant.

Start to Finish: 6.02 - The Rocket Men

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

Back to the First Doctor, and another TARDIS 'holiday', in John Dorney's The Rocket Men.

Vacationing on the Platform 5 luxuy hotel on the gas giant Jobis, the TARDIS crew are enjoying the break from danger and adventure. Then the Rocket Men arrive, and the holiday is very much over.

The frame of The Rocket Men is a bit of an oddity, with William Russell as Ian skipping back and forth in the narrative and breaking off to muse on that perennial favourite of Chronicle writers, Ian and Barbara as the OTP of the First Doctor era. The frame also blends into the main story, and is ultimately overtaken and let behind.

Despite the art deco look and 50s pulp adventure name, the Rocket Men themselves are a brutal depiction of piracy, murderous and more than a little sadistic, as represented by Gus Brown as their gleefully vicious, scene chewing leader Ashman. The massacre of innocents is classic Who all over, and the look of the Rocket Men makes it easy to visualise them in Radio Serial style, while the descriptions are rather more sophisticated.

Despite the limitations of the form, The Rocket Men manages to generate a real sense of tension and peril, and the Rocket Men themselves were good enough to return in series 7's Return of the Rocket Men, as well as Requiem for the Rocket Men, a forthcoming full-cast adventure for the Fourth Doctor and Leela.

We'll catch up with them later then. For now, the next play is a Second Doctor outing which develops the story of the older Zoe Herriot in The Memory Cheats.

Time for a change

"What's the site called?"

"The Bad Movie Mecca."

"Oh, that's brave."

Well, no it isn't. Calling my blog the Bad Movie Mecca was a callback to a student joke, and increasingly I've been aware that it was potentially offensive without making any actual point, and I figure if you don't have a point to make, it's not worth being offensive. If you mock those with faith just because you don't have any, you just turn into Richard Dawkins.

So, welcome to the Bad Movie Marathon!

Start to Finish: 6.01 - Tales from the Vault

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

We open series 6 of The Companion Chronicles with a bit of an oddity, in Jonathan Morris's Tales from the Vault, starring Daphne Ashbrook and Yee Jee Tso, who played the 'almost' companion Dr Grace Holloway and the 'almost almost' companion Chang Lee in the Paul McGann TV movie.

It's Warrant Officer Charlie Sato's first day at a new job, as assistant curator of the UNIT archives under the supervision of Captain Ruth Matheson. It might also be his last, if he doesn't learn to respect the archive's contents.

Ashbrook and Tso provide the framing narrative for a quartet of short stories, each taking the form of the UNIT archive's record on a particular artefact. Katy Manning, Wendy Padbury, Mary Tamm and Peter Purves voice Jo, Zoe, Romana and Steven, describing the four items which become central to the plot of the arc story, which is itself really a two-handed play which, with its single (locked) room setting is most like Solitaire among the Chronicles.

Matheson and Sato are likable protagonists, and the accents are an interesting change (although a little head-scratching given that the Vault is apparently located under the Angel of the North in this instance). The portmanteau stories are brief snippets compared to the richness of a full chronicle, but the weaving together of the four is done well.

Next up, interstellar piracy with The Rocket Men.

Edge of Tomorrow

There's a poster with Tom Cruise on as well.

Last week, I went to see the new Tom Cruise actioner, Edge of Tomorrow. Cruise is someone I can take or leave - as an actor; I have no time for Scientology - depending on his role and performance, and director Doug Liman's record balances The Bourne Identity with Jumper. I've liked Emily Blunt in most things I've seen her in, but this is no Sunshine Cleaning, so overall I went into this not sure how it would pan out.

This is a film in which Cruise plays a smug jerk, who becomes a hero in order to survive, in the course of which he is killed at least 24 times, often by Blunt, and gets called 'maggot' by Tony Todd an average of once every five minutes. It is also a mid-concept SF action film with a reasonable grasp of its philosophical limitations (unlike, say, Looper, it knows full-well that it's cleverness is essentially a trick) and Emily Blunt in power armour.

Breaking it down, and without spoilers, Cruise works well in the role of a smug snake who spins military press releases to avoid combat until he finds himself shoved onto the front line. He's actually a decent character actor if he can stop grinning for five minutes, and he's pretty effective here. Blunt, heretofore primarily a dramatic and light comedy actress, is a powerful physical presence as Sergeant Rita Vrataski (unlike Cruise's William Cage, her name isn't changed from the Japanese original, although she is British rather than American) and about as sexualised as a half-brick in a sock.

And then there's the supporting cast, including Tony Todd, whose only role is to call Cage a maggot, Bill Paxton as Cage's terrifyingly chipper platoon sergeant, a bunch of minor character actors as the expendable squad, and Brendan Gleeson as a ruthless general. They're all good, and if the dialogue isn't exactly deathless, it isn't full of howlers either. There are plenty of little character moments which give the film some dramatic weight to go with the action, although for myself I would have liked to see a little more of the squad rather than just the central dyad.

As to the action, it's pretty faultless. The combination of costume and wirework lends real weight to the characters' exosuits. The invasion, a brutal landing on the beaches of France, invokes Saving Private Ryan's frenetic, terrifying opening while making no attempt to pretend to equal weight.

The ending of the film is, for me, a little bit of a let down and feels slightly tacked on, although I've managed to square it in my own head.

Coming out of the film, we ran down whether it would be a suitable entry for the Bad Movie Mecca and decided it wasn't, combining high production values with a good cast, acceptable dialogue, a tight plot and good use of what it had to work with. Well worth a look.

The Great Gatsby

Don't get blase; everything in the film looks this good.

It was a couple of years ago that I found out Baz Luhrman was making a new adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, all art deco style and anachronistic musical numbers, and I said 'sign me up'. Hannah was also keen, which makes it odd that neither of us managed to watch it until a couple of weeks ago.

So, this is a Baz Luhrman film, so if you don't like Baz Luhrman, it's not going to be for you. It is a gorgeously stylised film, evoking the period of the novel through sumptuous art deco set design and costumes. The actors all look the part, in fact the casting is near-perfect, and the dialogue is snappy, while the plot rattles along at a rapid pace.

Di Caprio has now emerged from his difficult hearthrob phase and, like Brad Pitt, is now cheerfully excelling in the kind of character roles once denied him on account of his boyish good looks. Maguire is a perfect ingenue, and the supporting players - from Mulligan's self-centred Daisy and Edgerton as her brutish husband - to lesser parts such as Fisher's brassy moll and Debicki's enthusiastic socialite. The interaction between the characters - in particular the central triad of Gatsby's optimism, Carraway's blinkered devotion and Daisy's brittle reserve - is note perfect.

It's not a film with a great deal of depth, but it's slick and beautiful, and was definitely worth the wait.

Start to Finish: The Three Companions

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

Marc Platt's The Three Companions was part of an experimental phase when Big Finish were toying with the format of their monthly Doctor Who releases. One experiment was the 3 + 1 format (a three episode main story plus a single episode 'short', usually linked either to the main story and to a loosely thematic series of shorts); this was another. Inserted in place of the usual 'making of' featurettes, The Three Companions was released in a dozen 10-minute segments, and later compiled as part of the Specials boxed set.

London is flooded, the world is mired in mould. Polly and the Brigadier are put in mind of their past adventures with the Doctor, but it is another companion who knows what is actually happening. Victorian pickpocket Thomas Brewster has run into trouble, and now the fate of the world - and the Doctor's TARDIS - hang in the balance.

Parts 1 and 2 of this three part story use a framing narrative of an email conversation between Polly and the Brigadier, connected owing to Jo Jones nee Grant's careless blog post (in The Doll of Death). It establishes Polly as a senior civil servant, which provides a bit of background for her ability to address world leaders in The Forbidden Time, and picks up the Brigadier post-Battlefield.

Part 3 shifts to a play with four cast members. Nicholas Courtney and Anneke Wills are joined by John Pickard as Thomas Brewster (not a favourite of mine, here or elsewhere) and Russell Floyd as alien wheeler-dealer GL (using the aliases Gerry Lenz, Garry Lendler and Gerard Lander in the three parts). For my money, this part is less successful, as Brewster is not really engaging as a hero or as an anti-villain, although GL's role is interesting, as an alien presence offering to help the Earth in exchange for fiscal remuneration.

As a single play, the episodic nature of the piece is somewhat against it, as the pace rises and falls for a dozen chapter breaks instead of three, but the first two parts stand well as Companion Chronicles. The third is weakened (for me) by the presence of Brewster, who seems to be channelling all of the least likable traits of companions like Adric and Turlough, and the fact that the melding of play and Chronicle formats results in a slightly stilted four-hander.

I'm going to take a break for a bit, having finished series 5 and the specials, and having a holiday booked for next week. I'll pick up when I'm back home with series 6 and portmanteau episode Tales from the Vault.

Start to Finish: The Mists of Time

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

Like Freakshow, Jonathon Morris' story The Mists of Time was originally released as an exclusive, promotional bonus to readers of Doctor Who Magazine, but is still a full-fledged, full-length story.

Jo Grant is lost. She is in a strange facility, with a strange man, and she doesn't know why, or where the Doctor is. To remember, she'll have to work through the story of how she got there, but the answer may not be one that she likes.

The framing narrative of The Mists of Time is perhaps a little contrived, even for a Companion Chronicle. Jo, apparently suffering from amnesia, is urged to recall how she came to be there 'as if you were telling a story'. I think this was the first Chronicle released through the Magazine, so perhaps a little lampshading was felt necessary.

The story itself is a pretty classic Third Doctor with TARDIS. You can absolutely see the whole thing being shot in a series of quarries and sound stages with the benefit of every smoke machine in the BBC's arsenal, and the twist is good enough that I'm not going to give it away in advance. Katy Manning remains an excellent narrator, and Andrew Whipp's Calder provides good support. Interestingly, as the story is being told to Calder, Manning provides his voice in the story itself, which hasn't been done previously.

The last of the specials is The Three Companions, which was originally presented as a series of short episodes appended to the main range of monthly releases, featuring Polly Wright, somewhat obnoxious audio companion Thomas Brewster, and the swansong of Nicholas Courtney as The Brigadier.

Start to Finish: Freakshow

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

No number today, as we dip into Doctor Who Magazine's exclusive release*, Freakshow, and adventure for the Fifth Doctor's companion Turlough, written by Mark Morris.

Free of the Black Guardian, Turlough is resentful of the Doctor and Tegan's continuing distrust, so he goes for a walk in the Nevada desert during a layover. In a welcoming town, he encounters the carnival of Thaddeus P. Winklemeyer, displayer of unusual specimens and purveyor of the Elixir of Life.

Say what you like, Big Finish have never half-arsed a release just because it is to be given away free with Doctor Who Magazine. They've released at least two plays and two Chronicles this way, and each has been a full, hour long, two-part production, with all the whistles and bells.

Freakshow has a few touches of the western, but its real milieu is more akin to the grand guignole. Winklemeyer's theatre of the grotesque and its enslaved performers are the tragic monsters of the Gothic rather than black hatted villains. Morris includes the captives in their own salvation, as well as allowing a prominent role to Turlough, even if that role is revealed in a way not entirely in keeping with the presentation of the narrative as an affidavit to the Galactic Authorities.

Toby Longworth, man of a thousand voices, is clearly having a whale of a time as sinister quack Winklemeyer, and if is American accent isn't perfect, it is better than Strickson's. It is a little odd that there is a second voice, given the framing narrative, but it's a minor quibble.

* Later made available to buy in a boxed set entitled The Companion Chronicles: The Specials, and also including The Mists of Time (from the Magazine) and The Three Companions (originally included as bonus tracks on a run of main range releases.

Start to Finish: 5.12 - The Cold Equations

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

We wrap up the fifth series of The Companion Chronicles with the second part of the Oliver Harper trilogy, Simon Guerrier's The Cold Equations.

There are some things that come down to cold, physical truths; situations where the numbers don't add up to anything but death. It is Oliver Harper's first trip in the TARDIS. He's a fast talker, a shrewd dealer, but you can't barter with a vacuum.

The Cold Equations takes Peter Purves' star pilot, Steven Taylor, back into space, in a hardish SF disaster story, which gives Steven a chance to flex his muscles as an astronaut and to confront both Oliver Harper's secrecy about his reasons for joining the TARDIS crew and his own fears following the loss of Katarina, Brett Vyon and Sara Kingdom. It's a highly emotional story, carried by Purves and Tom Allen as Harper, and could easily have tilted over into farce.

Fortunately, the two men work together well. The big payoff of Oliver's dark secret is handled with deft lightness, even as the story hangs their destiny over them. As the first openly gay companion in Big Finish (there were a couple in the various novel series, and TV had to wait for Captain Jack), Harper could have been horribly over-played, but the end result is pleasing in its restraint as well as it's reaction. Like the opposition to votes for women in The Suffering, the idea of rejecting someone for their sexuality is depicted as alien to the space age Taylor.

I'm going to look at some of the special releases next, starting with Freakshow, before coming back for the start of series six, Tales from the Vault.

Start to Finish: 5.11 - Ferril's Folly

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

Mary Tamm returns to The Companion Chronicles, this time for a two-hander in Peter Anghelides' Ferril's Folly.

Landing on Earth in search of the fourth segment of the Key to Time, the Doctor and Romana clash with the haughty and ruthless Millicent, Lady Ferril. Her body rebuilt after an accident in space, the sculptor, astronomer and former astronaut is engaged in mysterious experiments; experiments that, as so often happens, could spell disaster for the entire world.

Set between The Stones of Blood and The Androids of Tara, Ferril's Folly is told from alternating perspectives by Romana and Lady Ferril, each a fierce and determined woman convinced of her superiority, and by far the best elements of the play are where the switch in narrative reveals their divergent perceptions (such as when Ferril describes sweeping out magnificently, but Romana sees her storm off in a huff.)

The story fits neatly into a style of story common to Who, in which an alien force renders inanimate objects - in this case, anything metal - hostile. It's a scary idea, and unhampered by visual effects considerations is well-realised here.

The behind the scenes feature is a little melancholy here, as Tamm recounts her enjoyment of recording for the Chronicles and her desire to do another. While she would return for a number of full-cast plays with Tom Baker, this was to be her last Chronicle before her death in 2013*. I get the same sort of emotion listening to The Three Companions and in particular The Last Post, Nicholas Courtney and Caroline John's final Big Finish projects (reviews still to come).

Just one more story left in this fifth series of The Companion Chronicles, as Peter Purves and Tom Allen present the second Oliver Harper story, The Cold Equations.

* Correction; she would reappear in one of the four short segments of Tales from the Vault in series 6.

Start to Finish: 5.10 - The Sentinels of the New Dawn

Image (c) Big Finish Production Ltd

A bonus review today, as I managed to squeeze an extra Chronicle in last night. Caroline John returns as Liz Shaw in Paul Finch's The Sentinels of the New Dawn.

Liz Shaw knows that time travel can be dangerous, so when a friend plans to unveil a prototype time tunnel, she asks the Doctor to come and take a look. The resulting accident grants her a chilling vision of the future, but also a chance to avert it.

This story - which finally gives Liz Shaw a chance to travel in time - is, in the framing narrative, recounted by Shaw to a UNIT interviewer, with the interviewer and the villain of the main story both played by Big Finish stalwart Duncan 'The Ladies Bras' Wisbey. The main narrative has the Doctor and Shaw transported into the unimaginable future of 2014 by a prototype time window; chases in jet-copters to the Cambridge heliport ensue, as they strive to prevent the rise of a far right utopian political group before it starts.

This is one of those Doctor Who stories that takes time travel and runs with it. It concludes with the truncation of an entire timeline, but also features a group who use the time windows to ensure their financial success, by viewing the future of investments, lotteries and casino games. The Doctor is a near-constant presence, but Shaw still gets to be an active agent.

Overall, The Sentinels of the New Dawn is another successful effort.

Next up, a Fourth Doctor outing for Mary Tamm's Romana I, as the search for the Key to Time leads to Ferril's Folly.

Start to Finish: 5.09 - The Forbidden Time

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

The black and white era of Who was notable for a number of rather eerie episodes where mysterious and seemingly overwhelming forces threatened the TARDIS crew; episodes like The Celestial Toymaker or The Mind Robber. David Lock's The Forbidden Time harks back to this style of serial.

A telepathic warning alerts the people of Earth than in a few months they will be fined, even executed, for trespassing in someone else's time. Of those who believe the threat, only one isn't really worried, because only Polly Wright has already faced this threat.

The Forbidden Time's framing narrative has Anneke Wills' Polly giving a presentation to a gathering of experts on how the Vist have already been dealt with. It's a good concept, although the presentation is too much a straight audiobook to really do it justice, and the break for coffee in the framing narrative kind of steps on the cliffhanger. Jamie's inclusion through a digitally recorded 'message in a bottle' voiced by Frazer Hines is an excellent way of getting him into the story without messing with memory again, however.

Perhaps the greatest weakness of the play is that it keeps Polly with the Doctor throughout, and thus does not take the opportunity offered by the Chronicles to develop her beyond the role of witness to his brilliance. Unlike Resistance, this episode essentially gives Polly nothing to do except watch and worry. As an aside, it also muddies the waters of the Pollen question, offering a slightly different version of Polly and Ben's future incarnation than other sources.

Next up, another adventure for UNIT's former scientific advisor Liz Shaw, in The Sentinels of the New Dawn.

Start to Finish: 5.08 - The Perpetual Bond

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

Okay, I lied last time. Peter Purves was a less convincing American than Nicola Bryant in his brief cameo as a Texan tourist in infamous time trawl The Chase, but here he is on steadier ground as Steven Taylor in Simon Guerrier's The Perpetual Bond.

People are seldom what they seen. City gent Oliver Harper, sought by the officers of the law, knows that all too well. When his employer suddenly appears to him as a being of mushroom-like glass, however, it all seems a bit too strange for words.

The Perpetual Bond is a play about freedom, choice and pretence. It is also a play about Oliver Harper, a man with a big secret (not yet revealed), who wants to travel in the TARDIS for fear that that secret has been revealed. The alien plot - to sell humans into indentured labour - is all the more horrifying for the civilised manner in which it is done; all in accordance with galactic law, we are told, and with the full connivance of the government. It evokes its sixties setting with a Henry Mancini-inspired score and its depiction, not of a flower power haze, but of a close, controlled society of bowler-hatted city traders, all pretending to be something that they are not.

Tom Allen turns in a tightly controlled performance as Harper, while Purves' Taylor (and his Hartnell) remain strong. The story captures the sometimes alien motivations of the Doctor, and his tendency to seem cold even to his companions. This is especially true because the pay is set in the wake of The Daleks' Master Plan, and the deaths in quick succession of short-lived companions Katrina, Brett Vyon and Sara Kingdom.

Oliver Harper's secret will have to wait for the end of this series. Next up is a Second Doctor adventure for Polly and Jamie in The Forbidden Time.

Stat to Finish: 5.07 - Peri and the Piscon Paradox

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

It's time, apparently, for another double-length Companion Chronicle, this time featuring the oft-maligned Nicola Bryant as Perpugilliam 'Peri' Brown, the world's least convincing American, in Nev Fountain's Peri and the Piscon Paradox.

Los Angeles, 2009, and the Fifth Doctor is chasing down Zarl, a malevolent fish man intent on stealing the Earth's oceans. He has the help of his companion, Peri, and unexpectedly of Peri's post-TARDIS future self, a successful talk show host. Looking back, the Sixth Doctor finds this more than a little strange.

A bit of a first here, as our second voice is provided not by a one-off character or additional companion, but by a Doctor. Nicola Bryant covers the Fifth Doctor (with an in-narrative note that it's not what he actually sounds like, just Peri doing a posh voice), but Colin Baker is on hand to provide the Sixth. Bryant, meanwhile, is also providing incidental voices and her own, older self, and to cover an obvious question, her American accent remains imperfect, but is a hell of a lot better than it used to be.

The first disc is narrated by young Peri as the TARDIS travels from Earth to Androzani minor. In it, the older Peri appears as a cool, tough alien hunter with big secrets. The second half is narrated by the older Peri, revealing that she is really a talk show host who only traveled with the Doctor once. Both halves start quite light, but end up somewhere darker, and the whole takes on the task of exploring what the character of Peri is really all about. As with some of the best of Who - and this is itself a pretty good entry into the Chronicles - Peri and the Piscon Paradox is a silly story with a surprising amount of weight behind it.

Next up, the Chronicles bring us their first all-original companion, as Tom Allen joins Peter Purves for The Perpetual Bond.

Start to Finish: 5.06 - Quinnis

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

Before he ever travelled with a single human, the Doctor travelled with his granddaughter, Susan. Marc Platt's Quinnis tells the story of one of those early adventures.

The planet Quinnis in the Fourth Universe is a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there. Unfortunately, when the TARDIS - currently disguised as a market kiosk - is lost, there may be little choice, especially if the Shrazer has its way.

Quinnis taps a long-running concept in the show, an alien who wants to be taken away in the TARDIS for nefarious purposes, as well as a wider plot about the Doctor getting caught up as the result of a boast of his scientific genius. The genral plot is taken from a throwaway line in the TV serial Edge of Destruction, which is why the story has to take place in a parallel(ish) universe (classic series technobabble being what it was).

Carole Anne Ford channels her younger self perfectly, and continues to provide a good range of other voices. Our actual other voice is Tara-Louise Kaye, Ford's daughter, as Meedla and the Shrazer, a bird of ill-omen, with some relish.

Quinnis is an interesting addition to the pre-series deuterocanon, although it sits at odds with works (such as Here There Be Monsters) which characterise Susan as young for a Time Lady, but still older than most humans, instead presenting her as the age which she appeared to be. Overal, it's a good story, embracing the weird alienness of First Doctor SF episodes, in a setting that the TV series could not have recreated.

Next, another double bill, as Peri Brown appears with the Fifth and Sixth Doctors in Peri and the Piscon Paradox.

Start to Finish: 5.05 - A Town Called Fortune

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

Dr Evelyn Smythe is another companion introduced for the audio plays. A prickly, abrasive, opinionated history lecturer, she was written from the first to be the Sixth Doctor's foil, to match him in stubbornness and be instrumental in mellowing him from the erratic writing of his TV appearances to the characterisation that the plays were settling on. She is probably the oldest companion ever, and is mostly pretty good, even if she is occasionally thrown a ludicrous bad-history argument* to carry. Fortunately, there is no sign of that in Paul Sutton's A Town Called Fortune.

In this story, the Doctor and Evelyn land on a train in the wild west, only to discover that the Doctor is wanted for a years-old murder. Revenge, corruption and secrets; there's gold in them thar hills and evil in the hearts of men.

The framing narrative in this case is part of the main story, as Evelyn recounts her view of events to the Sheriff of Fortune (Richard Cordery, with a passable accent) immediately after the fact, and in doing so provides the cap on the main story. Stables carries the narration well, and provides a good range of voices for her supporting cast.

The story is another pure historical, something that the Sixth Doctor never got on television. Even the TARDIS is whisked away along the line for the majority of the play. The recreation of the old west may not be accurate, but it is certainly evocative with its saloons, bar brawls and squalid mine camps; slick gamblers, weary lawmen and honest barmaids. The worst to be said, as is a risk with historicals, is that it's not really anything that hasn't been done before, but it has some good characterisation and moments.

Next up, we go back beyond the beginning, with a pre-series adventure for the First Doctor and Susan on Quinnis.

* For instance, claiming that if Julius Caesar had been born a woman, the cause of equality would have been advanced a thousand years, rather than Caesar simply occupying a woman's role in Roman society.

Start to Finish: 5.04 - The Invasion of E-Space

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

After a poignant couple of episodes, we're back in adventure territory with Andrew Smith's The Invasion of E-Space.

The Doctor and Romana have been looking for a CVE to take them back to N-Space, but when they finally manage to find one it turns out to be in use, as the bridgehead for an invading flotilla intent on plundering the mineral wealth of the planet Ballustra.

The Invasion of E-Space is a full-on space opera, more akin to Babylon 5 than classic Who. By keeping the focus small, however, Smith maintains the importance of the Doctor and Romana, however. In fact, by teaming the Doctor up with the second narrator (Suanne Braun's space cop, Marni Tellis, has her own framing narrative alongside Romana's) gives him a larger and more direct role than in almost any Companion Chronicle to date.

Romana's framing narrative, interestingly, seems to operate without knowledge of Big Finish's extensive use of Romana II, setting her at the end of a crusade to free the Tharrils (from Warriors' Gate) from slavery. Tellis, meanwhile, is recording an account of the invasion of her homeworld and her brief adventure with the Doctor. The opening of that second strand sets up a much more authoritarian world than the rest of the script suggests, but it's a minor niggle in an engaging action piece.

The sound design is the real star here, evoking the kind of space battle that Who could never do on the screen, even in this day and age (where the story might be more at home).

Next, another audio companion, as Maggie Stables' Evelyn Smythe tells of her adventures in A Town Called Fortune.

Start to Finish: 5.03 - Find and Repace

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

Paul Magrs' Find and Replace delivers a minimal dose of the Third Doctor, but a double bill of Katy Manning.

Jo Grant remembers the time she spent with UNIT and the Doctor only too well, and often she misses that life of excitement. It comes as quite a surprise, therefore, when a pushy noveliser comes into her life and starts explaining that he knows that she was the companion of quite a different time traveler.

Find and Replace dispenses entirely with framing narrative. Instead, the story is a narrated play, featuring Manning as Jo Grant, and also as the other character she plays for Big Finish, renegade trans-temporal adventuress Iris Wildthyme. Support comes from Alex Lowe, reprising his role as the noveliser Huxley from Ringpullworld.

Iris Wildthyme is a sort of raddled, perpetually-drunk, female version of the Doctor from an inverse dimension, who travels through time and space in a TARDIS trapped in the form of the Number 22 bus to Putney accompanied by a sentient, mobile, talking stuffed panda called Panda. She was originally gay, but Magrs - her creator - seems to have since decided that it is more apposite that she be obsessed by the Doctor, since she is somewhat aware of her own nature as a parody of the titular Time Lord. She is in many ways the antithesis of angst, and yet in her own way often very poignant. Here, her irrepressible persona is one of the few things keeping a story about the Doctor's attempt to protect Jo by removing himself from her memories from becoming a complete downer. This makes her presence somewhat jarring, but then that is pretty much what she is.

Manning differentiates superbly between Jo and Iris, and provides strong support in the form of a passable Third Doctor. Lowe is excellent again as Huxley, perpetually baffled by his subjects' failure to be awed and honoured by his attention, although both Iris and Huxley are kind of sidelined for the final act.

Next up, the Companion Chronicles go epic with The Invasion of E-Space.

Start to Finish: 5.02 - Echoes of Grey

Image (c) Big Finish Productions Ltd

Series 5 continues with John Dorney's Second Doctor bio-horror, Echoes of Grey, with Wendy Padbury returning as Zoe Herriot.

Once, there was a girl named Ali, who met another girl named Zoe at a research institute in Australia. Now, they meet again, but Zoe is much older than Ali, and doesn't recognise her. Has she lost her memory, or is it something more sinister? What happened at the Whittaker Institute? What happened to the Achromatics?

Once again, the framing narrative for Echoes of Grey is concerned in large part with establishing a reason for Zoe to recall what she has forgotten, but it also ties in to what will become an ongoing story exploring the fate of the older Zoe, in the manner of the arc-stories of the Leela and Sara Kingdom Chronicles. In Echoes we are first introduced to a shadowy corporate group with an interest in Zoe's memories of her travels.

Padbury gives assured and quite different performances as her old and young selves, and fills in the additional roles well. Her Doctor is solid, although her Jamie is a little too broad at times. Emily Pithon provides sound support, with a subtly creepy performance as the overeager Ali.

Echoes of Grey returns us to the nostalgic mode of earlier plays, with the sparseness of Zoe's post-TARDIS life in stark contrast to Jamie in The Glorious Revolution, enumerating his children and grandchildren. We'll be somewhere not dissimilar next time, with the Third Doctor in Find and Replace.