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| Image (c) Big Finish Productions |
First established back in the main range's Project: Twilight, the Forge is the audio equivalent of Torchwood, but vaguely competent, determinedly scientific/military, and without all the gratuitous sexy-sexy. The story of the Forge ran from Twilight's WWI-set prologue through several spin offs of questionable canonicity (including the comic Project: Longinus, novel Project: Valhalla and the short stories Twilight's End and Project: Wildthyme) and the audio plays Project: Lazarus and Project: Destiny. They made passing appearances in other Big Finish plays, such as Zagreus and Cryptobiosis, identified either by name or the use of their motto/code phrase, 'For King and Country.' The influence of the Forge and its nigh-immortal Director, Nimrod, extended into A Death in the Family and the Black and White trilogy, which is where we find ourselves here.
After near-destruction in the Crimean War forces it to grow a new outer plasmic shell, the TARDIS appears for a time not as a blue police box, but white, except in some stories when it shows up black. It is eventually revealed that the Black TARDIS is a 'cutting' from the regenerating plasmic shell which the Doctor grows into a new vessel. Recruiting a young soldier named Private Sally Morgan and former Deputy Director of the Forge, Captain Lysandra Aristedes, the Doctor uses the Black TARDIS to conduct a direct campaign against the malevolent entities known as the Elder Gods, although in time he would discover that this was all part of a larger game played out by his old enemy Fenric and his great opponent, Weyland.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. In Project: Nirvana, Maggie O'Neill and Amy Pemberton take turns narrating the action as Aristedes and Morgan, with the added voice of Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor (and if you got through my description of the Black and White stuff unsure which Doctor was going to war with gods, shame on you.) In order to take out one of the Doctor's targets, the two soldiers attempt to infiltrate a speeding train and steal its cargo, but the cargo itself has other ideas, and the train's security team is led by one of the Forge's finest; the intelligent and unflinching Sergeant Lysandra Aristedes.
Messing with time and memory, Project: Nirvana is a pretty effective heist story (and regulars may have realised that I'm a sucker for a heist,) although the final adversary is slightly underwhelming in fact, if terrifying in concept. Aristedes and Morgan are good characters, and this was a good opportunity to see the Doctor's strike team in action, away from the dominating presences of Hex and especially Ace. I'm especially glad that they went with using the Doctor as the extra voice, to complete the team.
Next up, Liz Shaw gets a little help from her old Mum to wrestle with The Last Post.
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