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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'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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Not all of you listen to the Big Finish audio plays. That's fair. Although there are plenty of good reasons for this, including not liking Doctor Who, Sapphire and Steel, etc, one big reason is they cost money.

But Big Finish is currently giving away a free play from their UNIT range of stories that stars Nicholas Courtney (the Brigadier from the adventures of the second, third, fourth, fifth and seventh Doctor TV stories), Siri O'Neal (Moondial anyone?), Scott Andrews, Matthew Brehner, Sara Carver, Michael Hobbs, Joseph Lidster and Mark Wright. So if you fancy a taster and have half an hour to spare, why not give this one a go?

Written by Simon Guerrier, The Coup is set in London in the near future. The UK division of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce is prepares to cede its authority to a new organisation. But who is attempting to sabotage the hand-over?

You can buy the full first series for only £20 and it's worth noting that episode four also stars David Tennant. Yes, that David Tennant.

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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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And so it is we have a new regular series of audio plays at Big Finish: The Companion Chronicles. As we all know, Big Finish has been creating monthly, full cast plays featuring the television Doctors and companions for over a decade now. Not all the Doctors, mind, because some have passed on to the great Matrix in the sky – and one's a complete mentalist.

The Companion Chronicles was an attempt to (cheaply) fill that gap, by having two-handed dramas featuring just one of those missing Doctors' companions relating a tale featuring him or her and the missing Doctor – usually as they're about to kark it.

Two series in and the idea's proved so popular, Big Finish have gone monthly with it and decided to extend it to later companions as well. Up first is Susan, the Doctor's first ever companion and only known (proper) relative.

Continue reading "Review: The Companion Chronicles 3x1 - Here There Be Monsters"

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Casting's a funny old game, isn't it? You can ruin a production with it, or make it a triumph. You can make thousands flock to it, or send them running for the hills.

Take The Death Collectors for instance. It's been sitting on my metaphorical shelf for the best path of a month now, glowering at me sinisterly. I say sinisterly purely because it's a Sylvester McCoy story and I find them about as appealing as an emergency tracheotomy performed with a Pizza Hut knife and coke straw. This one doesn't even have Hex (or, shudder, Ace) to make it slightly more appealing.

Oh, but what's this? Katherine Parkinson is the guest star? The sort of red-headed one with the nice voice off The IT Crowd?

Ah. Now, I really think you should have made more of that Big Finish. Maybe written it in giant letters across the cover and relegated Sylvester McCoy to the small print perhaps?

Pass me my iPod…

Continue reading "Review: Doctor Who - The Death Collectors"

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If you've spent enough time reviewing the Big Finish plays as I have, sooner or later you begin to ask yourself the question "What's the point?" To put it bluntly, there's more than a few that have been complete rubbish. There are entire ranges that are almost pure rubbish, such as the Eighth Doctor/Lucie Miller plays and the Sapphire and Steel range. So what's the point in spending time listening to them and reviewing them if all you're going to end up doing is variants on "Oh my God, why?" There are more constructive things to do with your life.

The answer is simple. As well as regularly turning up plays that can be described as not bad, sooner or later, you hit upon ones that can only be described as excellent. And then I get to tell you about them.

It's been a long time coming, but it's finally here: it's the first excellent Big Finish Sapphire and Steel play, Zero. Except it's Gold and Silver who have been assigned this time.

Continue reading "Review: Sapphire and Steel - Zero"

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You always know you're in safe hands with Nicholas Briggs. He's been doing Doctor Who audio plays for 20 years or more – writing them, directing them, acting in them – so he's pretty much got them down pat.

If he has an area of expertise, it's the Doctor Who continuity piece. Above all other Big Finish writers, he's the one most inclined to use an old enemy and reference continuity, all within the realms of a reasonably traditional story, albeit one unrestricted by special effects and design budget.

Guess whether Sisters of the Flame is a continuity fest (older fans may already spot the reference).

Continue reading "Review: Doctor Who - Sisters of the Flame"

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What is it about Big Finish and piers? Every time they want to do somewhere creepy, they send the cast off to a pier to get tormented by comedians and Punch and Judy. Piers are the sandpits of the modern audio horror age, apparently.

This time, though, it's Sapphire and Steel who have been assigned to the sea-front, rather than the usual Doctor Who crowd. In the company of Sam Kelly from 'Allo, 'Allo and plenty of other Big Finish plays (The Holy Terror, Return to the Web Planet), Joannah Tincey and David Horovitch, our heroes, David Warner and Susannah Harker, manage to wend their way through an above-average S&S tale that for once, contains an interesting idea or two.

Continue reading "Review: Sapphire and Steel - Remember Me"

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