I imagine, if you're a regular Big Finish actor, there is a range of reactions you experience when getting your latest script, depending on which of the various standard Big Finish categories it falls into. A lot of the time, you're going to be wondering how you're going to get all that jargon out. "Blimey, it's a bit complicated. I don't really understand a word of it. I must remember to be ever so serious."

Quite a lot of the time, you're also going to be thinking, "Ooh, goody. This looks like fun. We're going to have a laugh doing this, aren't we?"

And then, just occasionally, you'll get one through that not only makes you think, "Ooh goody, that'll be fun," you'll also be thinking. "Ah! I love the smell of ham in the morning."

Continue reading "Review: Doctor Who - The Doomwood Curse"

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There are species of sloth faster than me. I really do learn incredibly slowly sometimes. Case in point: the Big Finish Sapphire and Steel audio plays.

These have been a largely hit-and-miss affair, with the distinct emphasis on 'miss'. Yet I've kept on getting them and wasting my time with them. Doh! Still, once in a while, a good one turns up, so I'm not wholly insane.

Where I'm learning impaired is in forgetting to note who writes each story. In particular, if it's producer Nigel Fairs, the Sapphire and Steel supremo at Big Finish, you can pretty much guarantee that the first part of the whole play is going to be absolute drek, with a second part that manages to make the misery you've experienced almost worthwhile.

Turns out that for this, the final play in the series, possibly ever, pretty much the whole of the second part is absolute drek as well. The final ten minutes or so? Now that's where it gets really interesting.

Continue reading "Review: Sapphire and Steel - Wall of Darkness"

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Well, there's good news and bad news for this, the second of the now-monthly Companion Chronicles. The good news is that after two spectacular misses (Fear of the Daleks and Helicon Prime), we finally have a second Doctor Companion Chronicle that actually feels like a second Doctor story. The bad news is that it's just not very memorable.

Told by Deborah Watling, who played Victoria during the second Doctor's reign, it's one of those future Earth stories that were so beloved by the era (eg The Moonbase, The Invasion, The Seeds of Death), in which some exciting world-changing doohickey has been invented and some aliens come along to take it over.

The trouble is that it's pretty much that – a regular old second Doctor story – rather than something more exciting, such as a chance to give Victoria some decent characterisation.

Continue reading "Review: The Companion Chronicles 3x2 - The Great Space Elevator"

JACK: Okay, listen up fucktards. It's Torchwood here. We're below the law, beside the government and over the top and we're here to educate you about the Higgs Boson.

MURMURS OF PROTEST FROM AUDIENCE

JACK: Yes, you idiots. You know nothing about CERN or the large hadron collider or really difficult science things. So Radio 4 have asked us to come and educate your asses for Big Bang Day.

MORE MURMURS OF PROTEST FROM AUDIENCE

JACK: Shut it or I'll make you smell my coat. I haven't washed it since I first got it and I was buried in peat for 2,000 years.

GWEN: Ych y fi, Jack!

JACK: Right, the Higgs Boson. It's… Hmm. Anyone know? Gwen?

GWEN (ON PHONE): Can I phone a friend? Rhys? Oh, Rhys man! What are you doing? I loves you. You knows I loves you!… But Rhys… Why her?…

JACK: Maybe not then. Tosh? Oh sh… she's dead. Owen. Oh sh… he's dead too. Christ, they were the only ones who knew anything. Martha?

MARTHA GIGGLES AND IMPERSONATES A PIECE OF WOOD

JACK: Ianto?

IANTO TRIES TO AVOID JACK'S EYE BY READING THE CRACK-A-JOKE BOOK AND LAUGHING UNCONVINCINGLY

JACK: Guess it'll be me then. Erm, it's a thing that you, like, see. Erm, inside rain drops. Protons? Are we clear yet?

MORE MURMURS, THIS TIME OF RIDICULE FROM THE MIDDLE CLASS WELL EDUCATED RADIO 4 AUDIENCE

JACK: What do you mean Torchwood know sweet FA about science, so much so it's embarrassing? Oh…Look over there. It's an eagle. No really. Look! Look!

AUDIENCE LOOKS STAGE RIGHT

JACK: Quick, Ianto - the rear entrance!

Excerpt from Torchwood: Lost Souls

Continue reading "Review: Torchwood - Lost Souls"

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'The boy whom time forgot', surely? Oh well.

First off, let's ask ourselves a rhetorical question in a loud, slightly self-righteous voice.

“Is nothing sacred? Nothing, I ask you?”

Just thought I'd get that off my chest. See, this Big Finish adventure takes one of the classic moments of the fifth Doctor's TV reign, tramples all over, gets into its SUV, drives over it, reverses back for another go, then throws it into an old reservoir where it's left to float among the dead fish and tyres.

Memories: crushed.

All the same, once you've accepted that particular shock to your system, The Boy That Time Forgot is quite fun and interesting. Treading a very fine line between self-mockery and pathos, it manages to avoid being an utterly pointless exercise in mining continuity for all its worth - and then some - and becomes something almost thought provoking.

Be warned, I'll have to spoil you a little bit after the jump just so you have the faintest idea what I'm on about. It might make you more interested in the play, too.

Continue reading "Review: Doctor Who - The Boy That Time Forgot"

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It's not often that the biggest fault with a Big Finish play is that it's not long enough. Quite often, you just sit there, watching the tumbleweed go by and glaciers nip past you as you wait for the play to come to its inevitable conclusion.

But for the first time in quite a while, I came to the end of a play and found myself wishing that they'd spent a whole lot more time on it. I'm not saying that it was brilliant, it's just when you have a character who has the potential to be one of the most interesting Doctor Who villains around, an hour doesn't seem like quite enough to explore the character properly, does it?

Continue reading "Review: The Vengeance of Morbius"

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