Reviewed by Matthew Kilburn

The Talons of Weng-Chiang
Starring Tom Baker
Written by Terrance Dicks
Narrated by Christopher Benjamin
Released by BBC AudioGo, January 2013

Reviewing a twenty-first century reading of a twentieth-century novelization of a Doctor Who television serial set in the nineteenth century can be a reminder that perspective, as it travels through time, can become as distorted as Magnus Greel was by his precious zygma beam. When both television and book forms of The Talons of Weng-Chiang appeared in 1977, popular culture’s Victoriana was shaped by different currents of memory, nostalgia and imagination to those we know today. Most obviously, the story’s music-hall setting would have been familiar to many television viewers. The Good Old Days, where Leonard Sachs hosted an hour of music hall featuring contemporary entertainers in late Victorian or Edwardian dress, was a recurring part of the BBC schedule as it had been since 1953. Drama series set in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were fashionable, Upstairs Downstairs having been followed on ITV by sagas of the great such as Jennie, Lady Randolph Churchill and Edward the Seventh, with Lillie and Disraeli still to come. Television closer to Doctor Who’s viewing time included several series set in the same period, including the turn-of-the-century The Phoenix and the Carpet and the Sunday afternoon Dickens adaptation Nicholas Nickleby.

All these programmes were fed by the fact that in the 1970s the end of the Victorian period was just within or just outside living memory. Pennies and ha’pennies of Queen Victoria weren’t difficult to find in my (post-Victorian) grandparents’ house. Britain had spent most of the twentieth century trying to live up to an imperial myth largely manufactured in the late nineteenth century, of an empire where the sun never set and where British arms and British ships, military and merchant, dominated the globe. Just over thirty years before, Britain had fought, it thought, to defend that empire; by 1977 that empire was gone and with it economic self-assurance and a secure sense of national identity. However, historical dramas set in the Victorian period didn’t just compensate for national bewilderment; they were a reminder of a society from which mid-twentieth century Britain had escaped, one of poverty and disease and rigid conventions governing relations among classes, genders and ethnic groups. At the same time, the culture of British industry still owed much in the 1970s to the Victorian age; it was one where trade unions pointed both to the craft skills of their nineteenth-century predecessors and to the battles won by them for fair wages and working hours, and where managing directors still based their businesses on heavy machinery which had not changed greatly in eighty years. While for Doctor Who’s child audience, its eyes fixed on the twenty-first century, the 1890s of The Talons of Weng-Chiang might seem like ancient history, for many of the adults watching the 1890s might not have felt a long time distant.

This sense of time displacement is relevant to consideration of the book and the audio. One of the first things Christopher Benjamin’s vinicultured voice brings out is how careful Terrance Dicks was to explain the nuances of the story’s setting to his target audience of children reading Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang by themselves. With the visual element removed, the written and spoken word both rely on Dicks’s depiction of the social hierarchy of the music hall audience for initial contextualisation. This opens the first chapter and introduces music hall as something which appeals to all classes in the 1890s, but which does not unite them: ‘toffs’, ‘bank clerks and shop assistants’, ‘Labourers, dock workers, soldiers and sailors, even some of the half-starved unemployed’ are all present but all in places assigned by their spending power. The effect is more raw than that conveyed by the well-groomed audience seen on television at the Royal Theatre, Northampton. It also conveys something of the gap between the welfare state of a 1970s Britain which thought itself egalitarian and an 1890s London which had no social safety net and where class distinctions were dominant in a way easily comprehensible to the child readership.

Terrance Dicks’s attention to replacing lost visual and aural cues with new written detail friendly to an intelligent young audience also applied to characters. Listeners to Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang will hear Christopher Benjamin relate Dicks’s outline of Litefoot’s background as the rebel member of a family with aristocratic connections, and his resigned tones as the elderly waterman spitting his way through life, baffled at the expedition undertaken by the Doctor and Litefoot complete with giant fowling pistol. Dicks’s invention of Teresa’s occupation as ‘a waitress in a gambling club, in Mayfair on the other side of London’ compensates for the loss of Teresa’s costume and make-up, which some viewers have understood as representing a profession unsuitable for children’s literature. Christopher Benjamin’s falsetto Teresa is a brave attempt at youthful feminine joie-de-vivre, but his real strength is the matter-of-fact relation of events which he steadily leavens with urgency and horror as Chang presents his victims to a suitably maniacal Greel.

As 1977 has receded into the past, so John Bennett’s appearance as Li H’sen Chang, a white European actor under pseudo-oriental prosthetics, has caused more and more pained expressions among admirers of the story. Terrance Dicks, in an allusion to the cultural baggage Bennett’s casting and make-up carried with it, contrasted Chang with ‘most Oriental magicians who were usually English enough once the make-up was off’. Chang’s name recalls that of Chung Ling Soo, really the American-born William Ellsworth Robinson, killed when a trick went awry at the Wood Green Empire in north London in 1918. It’s possible that Robert Holmes’s choice of name for his Chinese magician was based on the expectation that an actor of western appearance would play Chang under make-up. Bennett’s casting in this vein drew attention to the artifice of Doctor Who and its reliance on a showbusiness tradition of deception, as well as an exoticism which portrayed the Chinese as unquestionably ‘the Other’. Dicks’s reference in the text acted as a historical note and placemarker for a visual gag at the expense of both conventions which could not be reproduced on the page. However, the fiction of Sax Rohmer, whose Fu Manchu is based on the assumption that world affairs were a competition between easily-defined ‘races’, would still have been current in the childhood of many parents and grandparents watching. The film series starring Christopher Lee was a very recent memory.

Chang’s character is based as much on an understanding of the audience at home as white British as it is upon Chang’s manipulation of the prejudices of the white community. Chang is used, of course, to emphasise the Doctor’s own Otherness – ‘Are you Chinese?’ reminds the hypothetical white British viewer and listener that the Doctor does not share their prejudices. A twenty-first century restaging might seek to reinterpret Chang for a more broadly-conceived audience, but this is not an option here. Christopher Benjamin reads the speeches of Li H’sen Chang in a stage Chinese which suits the status quo, but Chang is now doubly a recreation of past attitudes, steeped in an irony which has lost some power since the 1970s. Nevertheless Benjamin recognises that for all his crimes, Chang is a person to be treated with some sympathy, and his reading of his final scene has the distance of someone dulling with opium the torment of moral self-realisation as well as his physical agony.

Admirers of Leela might feel disappointed by this audiobook. In Benjamin’s reading, Leela is more of a simpleton than she appeared on television, lacking the self-assurance Louise Jameson brought to the role. Dialogue of which Louise Jameson made the most – such as ‘You ask me so that you can tell me’ – is flattened and made more submissive than Jameson performed it on television. Benjamin, though, adequately represents Terrance Dicks’s interpretation of Leela as a childlike innocent in thrall to the Doctor’s genius, whose bravado often exceeds her bravery, difficult though that position is to reconcile with many of Leela’s actions in this story.

Christopher Benjamin’s Doctor is difficult to pin down, not least because he doesn’t seem to have a fixed interpretation. For long periods his intonation is reminiscent of Tom Baker’s deep ringing tones, without capturing them, and at other times there is a mercurial self-satisfied air reminiscent of the Doctor with which Benjamin has worked most recently, Colin Baker. (Admirers of the Jago and Litefoot double act might find that Benjamin’s Litefoot is reminiscent of Trevor Baxter.) However, there is occasionally a glimpse of another Doctor, a gruff and amiable Time Lord who casts a sometimes sternly avuncular gaze over proceedings. The portrayal of the Doctor in a performed reading of a novelisation encourages expectations in a reader and while Benjamin is always authoritative there are too many different voices there to feel one is listening to a consistent portrayal; or perhaps the legacy of Tom Baker looms too large.

Benjamin’s voice is good at conveying the self-consciously heightened sense of danger in Dicks’s economical prose. Much of The Talons of Weng-Chiang depends upon the unknown lying beneath the familiar; so there is trepidation as manhole covers are removed and a deliberate, heavy wariness as characters wade through the filthy, rat-infested sewers. Benjamin and Dicks tell of a London dark and treacherous in its diversity, which it takes the universalist outsider, the Doctor, to navigate appropriately. There are some cautious notes - there seems to be care, for example, not to make ethnic epithets as emotively-charged as they might have been performed on screen in 1977.

There are some memorable moments of sound engineering in this audiobook. The echo placed over Christopher Benjamin’s voice in the pathology lab scenes almost dispel associations with the cramped tiled room and its anachronistic electric sockets covered by even more anachronistic adhesive plastic in the television production. The giant rats are relieved of the burdensome necessity of appearing in the fabric-and-stuffing, and can rely on piercing shrieks alone to instil terror into the heart of the listener. There are not quite as many porcine grunts from Mr Sin as I expected, but care has to be taken not to undermine the reader’s performance. Instead, one can sometimes imagine Christopher Benjamin moving from pathology lab to the night streets of Limehouse, climbing down into Greel’s hidden chamber as a silent companion opens the hatch for him, or hauling himself up in the dumb waiter in an attempt to escape from Greel’s clutches. Despite the reservations above, it’s an admirable reading, with Benjamin moderating his Henry Gordon Jago so as not to overwhelm his narrator’s voice, but not obliterating it; the way he uses his delivery to highlight the differences of class and education between Jago and Litefoot when they meet is a particularly skilled performance.

A release of a science fiction or fantasy story set in Victorian London in 2013 raises a question of genre unknown in 1977. Can Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang be described as steampunk? If steampunk depends on a situation where ‘anachronism is not anomalous but becomes the norm’, as Rachel A. Bowser and Brian Croxall wrote in their introduction to volume 3, part 1 of the journal Neo-Victorian Studies (available free at www.neovictorianstudies.com), then novelisation and audiobook perhaps score less highly than the broadcast version. Terrance Dicks describes Greel’s organic distillation equipment simply as ‘ultra-modern’, which isn’t adequate to the baroque eclecticism of the machinery seen on television. Mr Sin and the Eye of the Dragon fuse the futuristic with cultural signifiers of the ‘old’ in book form as well as on television, though the audiobook’s blaster sound effects probably reinforce the high-tech connotations at the expense of the image of the gold dragon from which the blaster is fired. Even as a digital download in 2013, Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang remains the product of a mechanical age when the dissonance between inexplicable futuristic technology and Victorian machinery was more powerful than the imagining of impossibly world-transforming engines; its lacquered Time Cabinet is a gateway for a generic reading which from the book’s own point of view in 1977 has yet to emerge from it.

Whatever the problems it inherits from its source, Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang remains a hugely entertaining story and there is much to discover in Christopher Benjamin’s reading. Linger over descriptive passages and muse on how Magnus Greel’s ramblings about time agents and the Doctor’s counter-revelations about the battle of Reykjavik came to influence the programme’s mythology. Hear how both the Doctor and Leela confound the Holmes-Dicks pastiche of late Victorian manners which for all their assumed superiority are no match for the foe from the future. That the story measures its imagined past against a present day which is now very much our history, however recent, only adds another level of curiosity to one of Doctor Who’s pivotal tales.

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The Reign Of Terror
Written by Dennis Spooner
Directed by Henric Hirsch and John Gorrie
Broadcast on BBC1: 8 Aug - 12 Sep 1964
DVD release: 28 Jan(R2), 6 Feb(R4), 12 Feb(R1)

This review is based on the UK Region 2 DVD release.

The historical adventures are quite often overlooked in the grand tapestry of Doctor Who's 50-odd years of adventures. A staple aspect of the very early seasons of the show, they fell out of fashion and practically disappeared completely by the time the show transformed itself through the introduction of regeneration. A number of modern stories have taken the 'celebrity historical personality' route with the likes of Dickens, Shakespeare and Churchill making an appearance, but during the first year of the show, a concerted effort was made to enhance the education of its viewers through the alternation between 'sci-fi' serials and concepts behind genuine historical times and figures. We experienced the fight for survival of early man, journeyed to Cathay with Marco Polo, experienced the sacrificial belief systems of the Aztecs and then, as the first year of Doctor Who drew to a close, the fear of a populace under The Reign of Terror.

Set during the bloody aftermath of the French Revolution just before Napoleon's ascension, the TARDIS travellers find themselves embroiled within the intigues of those wishing to usurp First Citizen Robespierre's tyrannical grip on France, whilst also trying desperately not befall the fate of 'traitors' to the revolution, the guillotine.

Unlike The Aztecs, The Reign of Terror languishes quite a way further down in fan affections, at least as far as Doctor Who Magazine readers are concerned - Barbara's attempts to change a culture ranked 57th whereas the Doctor's favourite era could only manage 144th in the (then) 200 stories. This seems a bit unfair, really, as the latter story has just as much going for it with strong performances from regulars and guest cast alike amidst the firm Parisian locations.

However, one key factor to such aloofness is that, unlike the former, two of the episodes no longer exist, so watching Reigh is a disjointed experience. Fortunately, the soundtrack to every Doctor Who episode does still exist, and (in what's hopefully a new lease of life for the remaining curtailed stories) BBC Worldwide commissioned animations for both missing episodes, The Tyrant of France and A Bargain of Necessity.

An Animated Tale:

The focal point of interest in this release, of course, is the recreation of the fourth and fifth episodes, giving many of us a chance to finally "visually" experience a story that has only existed on audio for decades - and as always does this ever match up to how we can imagine the adventure to have been? There are scant clues to how the story originally played out on screen (with just a few photogeaphs, a script, but no telesnaps) so animators Planet 55 have a fairly free - ahem - reign on how they recreate the appearance of unknown scenes and characters (especially the cellar scenes during episode five). The backgrounds are truly spectacular (and can be seen in a separate feature on the DVD), and the depiction of the regulars etc. are broadly very accurate.

The animation itself is presented in a 'modern' style, with quick cuts between characters speaking, and close-ups on faces - something that is quite distinct from the production style of the existing episodes themselves with their more static scenes and strategic close-ups. Going from episode three to episode four can, in the first instance, almost feel like you're watching a different story, but I personally found that I soon settled into the action and was able to enjoy the adventure in much the same way as I had done so with The Invasion's animated episodes. In many ways I actually preferred the new look and the switch back to the 'real' episode six made me feel the same way as replaying the original Myst and seeing the island after the experience of the version depicted at the end of Myst V: End of Ages - it seemed a bit two-dimensional and sluggish.

There is a lot of attention to detail within the animation for viewers to spot, from flickering candlelight through to scuttling spiders. Faces are also 'alive' with expression in close-up, with the Doctor's eyes often seeming to have a mischievous gleam to them that you can't always pick up on screen; however, if I have a gripe about that, it's that his face sometimes seems a little 'wide' - though then again it bring an strangely more alien countenance to him that I've come to quite like!

I think that much of what has caused consternation in fan circles is how aspects of this animation style can seem 'unfaithful' to the original episodes they replace - is it something to put you off though? The main aim of the recreated episodes should, of course, be to continue your immersion in the story without being distracting, and all-in-all I believe the Thetamation technique works. It might seem a bit strange on the very first viewing - not unlike the way in which Rose gave us a 'shock' with its whole new way of presenting Doctor Who - but as fans we don't just watch stories once and I can foresee that these will be just as acceptable to most people as they become familiar with the style.

The DVD:

The episode quality of Reign is a little variable as we get a mixed bag of sources: episodes one and two are derived from the lower definition suppressed field prints that only exist for them, episodes three and six derive from higher, stored field prints, whilst four and five are the animated episodes. All four existing episodes have been cleaned up and look much better than their VHS counterparts. More importantly, though, the audio presentation of all six episodes sounds great, having benefited from remastering by Mark Ayres - especially the removal of the annoying theme tune bleed-through that plagued episode four on the original CD soundtrack release.

Don’t Lose Your Head is the documentary for this release, and features the usual cast and crew look-back on how the story developed from script to screen: in particular they recollect on how the director of the production, Henric Hirsch, suffered a breakdown during recording, and the influence of lead actor William Hartnell (something also covered quite extensively in the production notes). Also, it was good to see William Russell, whose presence is sadly missing from the commentaries.

The commentaries themselves are comprised of three parts: the existing four episodes are discussed by Carole Ann Ford (Susan) and Timothy Combe (Production Assistant), with contributions from cast members Neville Smith (D'Argenson, episode one), Jeffrey Wickham (Webster, episode two), Caroline Hunt about her first television role (Danielle, episode three) and Patrick Marley (soldier, episode six); episode four features actor Ronald Pickup, who chats about his first ever professional role as the Physician; finally, episode five is dedicated to the hunt for missing episodes as discussed by hunters Paul Vanezis and Philip Morris.

The usual production-intensive text notes that accompany episodes are present - except for the two animated episodes! Though it is understandable that notes about the animation itself would not be possible due to them not being available that far in advance, it does mean that there are none of the usual pertinent details about the original episodes and their production to be enjoyed, either. So, if you want to know Radio Times comments and broadcast statistics you'll have to look elsewhere this time.

Similarly, though one of the features is a presentation of the animated backgrounds from the story as previously mentioned, plus an animation gallery, there are no actual interviews or a look at how the episodes were made themselves on the DVD, which feels lacking for such an inaugural event - maybe there'll be something more extensive on the techniques in a forthcoming DVD like The Tenth Planet or The Ice Warriors (fingers crossed we get these, too!). However, BBC Worldwide have provided a short look at the animation of the First Doctor via their YouTube channel.

Random Observations:

• Reign was the last story in the original VHS incarnation of classic series releases (accompanied by existing episodes of The Faceless Ones and The Web of Fear). It was also the last classic story that I sat down to watch a couple of years ago, having put the experience off to savour a "premier viewing" of the old series for as long as possible. It's good to know that there's two more episodes to look forward to, now, hoorah!
• This was the first story to feature 'proper' location filming, albeit without the regular cast involved. Being slightly interested in such things, I immediately did a Susan and said "That's not right at all" when I saw the production notes refer to the poplar avenue as a lane rather than the driveway of the White Plains resident home ... but that's just me being finicky, as the information derives from what is in the BBC's film diary.
• The Doctor is reportedly not a man of violence, yet we see him quite merrily hit the foreman over the head with a shovel on his way to Paris!
• Back in An Unearthly Child we see Susan reading a book on the French Revolution and remarking on an inaccuracy. Here, we discover it's the Doctor's favourite era of Earth history (still not a man of violence, hmm?) - does this mean the two have been here before?
• In this modern era of celebrity historical figures gracing the show, it is quite easy to forget that this was actually a relatively commonplace during the First Doctor's travels - this time it's Robespierre and Napoleon's turn.
• The animated episodes make a lot more sense of what's going on in some of the audio-only scenes: in particular the scuffles Ian endures in the cellar during episode five are much clearer now (even though this is an interpretation of the script!)
• One thing that struck me in the recreated end titles of episode five was the next episode caption reading "Prisoners of the Conciergerie - I thought this was a mistake at first as the surviving episode six clearly doesn't have the extra word, but this was apparently what was in the camera script for A Bargain of Necessity, so I guess that's why it's here ... but was that on screen?!?! The lack of production notes on the animated episodes is a little frustrating in that regard!
• Carole Ann Ford reminisced about a model of Paris she used to have, which had been made for the show but never used. It's a shame they didn't use that rather than the photo-caption for establishing the city.
• The temptation to add "Carry on" in front of the documentary title is almost irresistible!

Conclusion:

The Reign of Terror is an interesting tale, set in a variety of locales as the story progresses. Its ranking of 144 in DWM's list to me seems quite unfair, and with its fresh animated resurrection hopefully will improve its appreciation for the grand poll!

I think the enjoyment of the animated episodes themselves is always going to be a matter of personal taste; however, I'd say try to approach them with an open mind and don't pre-judge - yes, they may not seem very 1960s in look, but then again Doctor Who is meant to be timeless!

Coming Soon...

The survivors of a devasted Earth are on the brink of calamity as an unknown menace infiltrates and claims its victims one by one ... can the Doctor, Sarah and Harry avert the fate of humanity in The Ark in Space ... ?

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Reviewed by Richard Watts

The Shadow Heart
Big Finish Productions
Written by Jonathan Morris
Released November 2012

This review is based on the MP3 download from Big Finish, and contains spoilers.

In televised Doctor Who episodes, we rarely see the after-effect of the Doctor’s travels on the planets and peoples he visits. There are notable exceptions, of course, including the rise of the Monoids in The Ark (1966); Xoanon, the computer left with a split personality after the Doctor’s previous attempt to repair it in The Face of Evil (1977); the damaging consequences of the Time Lord’s visit to Satellite Five in The Long Game (2005); and in A Good Man Goes to War (2012), Lorna Bucket’s ultimately fatal devotion to the Doctor years after meeting him briefly as a child. But usually, once the Doctor has stepped through the doors of the TARDIS, he leaves any repercussions from his latest adventure behind him.

Not so in Big Finish’s recent Drashani Empire trilogy. Beginning with the Fifth Doctor story, The Burning Prince, continuing with Sixth Doctor adventure The Acheron Pulse, and now concluding with Seventh Doctor story The Shadow Heart, these three audio adventures allow us to witness just how drastic the Doctor’s meddling can be, not just for individuals, but entire civilisations – making the Time Lords’ notorious policy of non-intervention seem rather justified.

The Plot:

Written by Jonathan Morris, The Shadow Heart is set some 50 years after the events of The Acheron Pulse, making it 80 years since the Fifth Doctor first blundered aboard a Drashani spaceship bound for the swampy planetoid, Sharnax. Much has happened over the intervening decades, including the destruction of the Drashani Empire itself, at the hands of the alien marauders known as the Wrath. Despite (or more accurately, because of) the Doctor reprogramming them as a force for good at the conclusion of the previous adventure, the Wrath have since spread out across the stars, maintaining their own strict definition of justice and destroying any planet which does not live up to their own exacting standards. Now the Wrath are expanding into new territory, and only the Earth Empire stands in their way.

On the planet Temperance, the TARDIS materialises in the midst of a sleazy bar known as Starbaff’s, much to the displeasure of the publican, who dogmatically maintains (despite evidence to the contrary) that his is ‘a respectable establishment’. Moments later the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) staggers out the TARDIS doors, chest smoking from a laser blast, and collapses at the feet of scrap merchants Talbar (Eve Karpf) and Horval (Alex Mallinson), a pair of loveable rogues reminiscent of Garron and Unstoffe (The Ribos Operation) or Glitz and Dibber (The Trial of a Time Lord). The conniving pair take the injured Time Lord to safety, only to learn firsthand that involving oneself in the Doctor’s affairs is to invite trouble – which in this instance comes in the determined form of bounty hunter Vienna Salavatori (Chase Masterson).

Events quickly escalate. Salavatori has not one but two employers, and is intent on playing them off against each other for her own gain. One of her employers is the Wrath – the other is a shadowy figure from the Wrath’s past whom they also seek revenge upon. The fate of all will be decided within the walls of the Imperial Fortress on the Wrath’s homeworld – the Shadow Heart.

Observations:

Just as the first two stories in this trilogy were dramatically dissimilar to each other, The Shadow Heart is different again to its predecessors. Whereas The Burning Prince was a fast-paced action/survival story, and The Acheron Pulse was a somewhat underwhelming space opera, here Jonathan Morris has given us an inventive, playful, and chronologically convoluted story that acknowledges and incorporates the popular perception of the Seventh Doctor as puckish, inquisitive, and manipulative.

Obviously a writer who delights in language, Morris peppers his script with smart continuity references, such as a comment about the marsh-moon of Magros 5 stinking like ‘an Ogron’s armpit’; narratively, this adventure should appeal to viewers who enjoy the timey-wimey structure of Steven Moffat’s television screenplays – the Doctor experiences the events of The Shadow Heart in a very different order to the listener, and is usually, though not always, one step ahead of the other protagonists.

Of the many highlights in Morris’s detailed vision of the Doctor Who universe, his most engaging creation in this story is Talbar and Horval’s unique means of transport – Hercules, a stellar ammonite, or ‘space snail’ in layman’s terms. A giant space-faring gastropod about the size of a lunar shuttle (perhaps inspired by the Great Glass Sea Snail from Hugh Lofting’s 1922 children’s book, The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle), Hercules has a control cabin implanted in his stomach, entered via a catheter, from which Talbar directs his flight. It’s a wonderfully daft idea but makes perfect sense in a universe that’s already home to star whales, megalomaniacal cacti, and bad-tempered, hermaphroditic Chelonians.

Talbar and Horval themselves are well written characters who quickly transcend the stereotype of slightly dodgy confidence trickers-cum-scroungers thanks to strong writing and excellent casting; Karpf is particular gives a throaty, cynical performance that is especially engaging. In contrast, bounty hunter Vienna Salavatori comes across as unimaginatively written and rather two-dimensional, an impression not aided by Masterson’s underwhelming performance in the role. Clearly, however, Masterson has already impressed the powers-that-be at Big Finish, with a spin-off series for the character already in the works (The Memory Box).

Wilfredo Acosta’s sound design and incidental music are solid (Star Wars fans should enjoy his musical homage to the famous Cantina sequence) and work well to advance and enrich the story, though the voices of the Wrath are frustratingly over-produced, and consequently often difficult to decipher – a flaw which becomes especially frustrating in the later stages of the story when the action shifts to the Wrath homeworld.

The first two episodes of The Shadow Heart advance at a cracking pace, and introduce a range of additional characters, including Captain Webster (John Banks) and Lt Dervish (Jaimi Barbakoff) of the Earth Empire spaceship HMS Trafalgar, as well as shifting the action between multiple locations. Episode three is slightly slower, and suffers a little from the now-traditional third act exposition which often plagues Doctor Who adventures, but still impresses, thanks in part to some striking imagery from Morris and a strongly written balcony scene evoking Romeo and Juliet – which ties in nicely with first impressions of The Burning Prince, the first story in the Drashani Trilogy. The fourth and final episode ends strongly, and surprisingly emotionally, though not without some classic Seventh Doctor deus ex machina, which once again reinforces the wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey nature of Morris’s script, and the manipulative personality of this particular regeneration of our favourite Time Lord.

Conclusion:

As a stand-along story, The Shadow Heart is engaging, intelligent and generally well-written. It successfully balances a lightness of tone with an expansive vision and engaging characters, and features original world-building and some truly memorable additions to the Whoniverse. But what of the trilogy as a whole?

With each episode so tonally different from the story preceding it, the Drashani trilogy feels somewhat lacking in cohesion, despite the unifying presence of Ken Bentley, who directed all three stories. Story elements designed to carry on through the following adventures feel somewhat tacked on to The Burning Prince, while in The Shadow Heart, there’s a sense that Morris was slightly underwhelmed by the plot threads he was required to incorporate from the first two stories in the series. The Acheron Pulse, as previously noted, just felt cumbersome. Given that each of these stories were scripted by different writers, it’s perhaps not surprising that they don’t cohere as strongly as one might expect – a problem the television series has long been able to fix thanks to the presence of such dedicated script editors as Robert Holmes, Helen Raynor and Terrence Dicks.

What the trilogy does succeed in doing, albeit in broad strokes rather than in fine detail, is an examination of the impact of the Doctor’s involvement upon the planets he visits – an impact which in this instance is positively cataclysmic. In Episode Three of The Shadow Heart we learn that ‘hundreds of worlds boiled in flame’ thanks to the Doctor’s meddling in the war between the Wrath and the Drashani Empire – no wonder the Time Lords once banished the him to Earth for the crime of meddling in other civilisation’s affairs!

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The Auntie Matter
Big Finish Productions
Written by Jonathan Morris
Released January 2013

This review is based on the MP3 download from Big Finish, and contains spoilers.

The Auntie Matter reunites the fourth Doctor and the first Romana, albeit under sad circumstances with Mary Tamm having passed away not long ago. It’s a tragic turn of events acknowledged by the tribute contained on this release, and it’s something that casts an inescapable shadow over the otherwise light, frothy tone of Jonathan Morris’s P.G. Wodehouse pastiche. Morris is also, of course, pastiching the appropriate era of Doctor Who, as well as firmly playing to Tom Baker’s flamboyant persona (one section of dialogue even sounds suspiciously like an infamous Baker anecdote). And though the ‘behind-the-scenes’ feature reveals a number of Baker gags that failed to make the final release, I suspect the Doctor’s mistaken addressing of housemaid Mabel as “Mary” was a Tom ad lib. There are also some very amusing riffs on well-known Who dialogue: “take me to your leader!” gets a make-over, and at one point Time and the Rani is unexpectedly, wittily brought to mind.

But if Jonathan Morris is playing with audience memories of Who, he also takes this story a step further than televised Doctor Who ever managed, giving Romana far more to do – in story terms – than was often the case on TV. Here, there’s a real sense of Romana’s capabilities, independence and resourcefulness: she’s very much a Time Lord in her own right rather than a companion. And by splitting the story into dual strands, following the Doctor and Romana, this adventure also takes on a sharp comedic edge as the two time-travellers continually fail to spot one another’s involvement.

The Auntie Matter is cursed with a lumberingly daft title, however, even if its basic formulation isn’t so far away from something like The Armageddon Factor. But whereas the culmination of season 16 had an earnest, portentous identity, this time around we’re treated to some pretty facile punning. And the story’s guest star – Julia McKenzie – goes so far over the top that she’s close to stratospheric on a few occasions.

Given the broad satire of some of what’s on offer, I think a few other performances could have been profitably toned down by Ken Bentley's direction: for example, Reggie (Robert Portal) is such a cartoonish figure that it’s difficult to care about him, or to believe that Romana would decide to accompany him anywhere. By contrast, housemaid Mabel (Lucy Griffiths) and factotum Grenville (Alan Cox) are performed more naturalistically, creating a sense of realism and stylization rubbing up against each other in a rather indecorous way. Perhaps the story's mildly schizoid nature comes from Jonathan Morris trying to second-guess which antics might appeal to Tom Baker, and which different tonalities might appeal to the nostalgic listenership. As it is, the play’s centre of gravity shifts around, veering from P.G. Wodehouse to G. Williams and back again.

Mabel gives the story some genuine heart; she’s an inquisitive housemaid who plays an unusual role for Doctor Who: in essence, she’s a multi-companion, being paired up with both the Doctor and Romana at different moments. But despite excellent, unshowy work from Lucy Griffiths, there’s little room for the character to be fleshed out, and her eventual fate seems implausible, with conventional sensibility triumphing over story sense.

Tom Baker seems to be enjoying himself immensely throughout, and the same can be said of Mary Tamm’s return to the role of Romana. Post-Key-to-Time, we hear a Romana who’s surer of herself, and who enjoys the Doctor’s banter whilst pointing out his lapses in logic. K-9 is missing from this release, though, meaning that we'll have to wait for The Sands of Life for a full-scale TARDIS crew reunion. (On this occasion, the Doctor doesn’t seem at all bothered about sending his canine computer off on a randomized tour of a thousand worlds… you’d almost think he wanted to spend some quality time by himself with Lady Romana).

As always with Big Finish, sound design is top notch and unobtrusively contributes to this tale’s realization of a 1920’s stately home and gardens. But clever plotting and sharp structuring are the real pay-offs here, once all the Wodehouse window-dressing has been tidied away. What makes this drama most compelling is the fact that it so obviously rewards its two returning leads, giving both Tom Baker and Mary Tamm something interesting to play. The Auntie Matter is surely an ‘actor matter’: written to please its stars as much as its listeners. And if such a strategy was instrumental in reuniting this particular Time Lord team, then Big Finish and Jonathan Morris have done us – and them – proud.

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Doctor Who - A Big Hand For The Doctor
Written by Eoin Colfer
Puffin Books
UK release: 23 January 2013

This review contains plot spoilers and is based on the UK edition of the ebook.

This title kicks off Puffin’s monthly series of ‘eshorts’ (or short stories available electronically), featuring the first Doctor and his granddaughter Susan. Having recently rewatched An Unearthly Child at the BFI, and also having recently read Phil Sandifer’s sharp analysis of Kim Newman’s Time and Relative novella, the first thing that struck me about Eoin Colfer’s story was how unrecognisable his first Doctor seemed to be. This rendition isn’t loath to intervene, acting like a sort of anti-hero or proto-hero (as in Newman’s pre-Unearthly Child tale). No, this version of the William Hartnell Doctor has been busy pursuing Soul Pirates through space and time in order to combat their evil ways. He’s a swashbuckling action hero trapped in an ageing body. He even sees visions of his later and more physical selves, mainly so that younger readers can be reminded that this figure is the same character played today by Matt Smith. It’s a device, a convenience, that probably wreaks havoc with Doctor Who continuity, but neither Colfer nor whoever signed off on this short story are overly concerned with capturing the spirit of 1960s Who. Instead, the Doctor is a generic do-gooder who refers to things such as Hogwarts, referencing pop culture familiar to 2013 readers.

And as if symbolic of the way that Colfer has grafted his own approach into the world of the first Doctor, the integrity of the Time Lord’s body has also been violated. He’s lost a hand – sliced off by a Soul Pirate Captain – and so has to make do with a two-fingered ceramic model housed inside an ill-gendered spare. Surely Colfer isn’t putting two literary fingers up at fans who might be dismayed by this turn of events? Although the mental image of William Hartnell’s Doctor sporting a woman’s hand, painted fingernails and all, is certainly a striking and incongruous one, it’s not quite how I expected to be thinking of the first Doctor at the beginning of this anniversary year. It’s a good gag, sure. But it's one that isn’t afraid to ride roughshod over the dignity of the Doctor. This is a full-blooded contrast to the first Doctor instalment of Destiny of the Doctor, and each series looks set to work in very different ways for very different audiences. Destiny is era-appropriate fan service, while this eshort strikes a vastly revisionist, irreverent tone. This is Doctor Who’s history rewritten from a present-day perspective, enclosing younger readers in demographic now-ness rather than truly opening a window on mysterious other times.

And Doctor Who of fifty years ago, a strange and wonderful and enigmatic thing, is further reworked here as a burst of auteurist whimsy. Yes, Colfer’s authorial voice shines through – making this part of a marketing strategy where ‘name’ authors take the Doctor in hand – but I still would’ve liked to witness more of a meeting of author and character rather than the scales being tipped very much in the writer’s favour. And some jokes (e.g. a Time Lord known as the Interior Designer) breezily transform Gallifrey into a planet of Time Morons. The Doctor himself is depicted as unsmiling, and chided about his unrelaxed state, as if readers are being warned they need to take what follows in good humour.

Without spoilering the story’s Epilogue, there is a neat twist that frames Colfer’s heightened fantasy version of Who. H.G. Wells and his time machine have made a few appearances across Doctor Who’s lifespan, with ‘scientifiction’ (early science fiction) being positioned as one source for the Doctor’s time-travelling adventures. Colfer takes a rather different intertextual tack, however, in line with his genre-shifting towards children's fantasy adventure, and in the end this conceit works rather beautifully. It’s a handy pay-off which bathes events in a clever, new glow. And it makes excellent use of the short story form; there can be little doubting Colfer’s skill as a writer. Indeed, he retraces Douglas Adams' fingerprints here by adding Who as well as The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy to his CV.

Like The Coming of the Terraphiles before it, though, this title is more concerned with being a publishing industry ‘event’ than with addressing fandom’s notions of authenticity. In short, this simply isn’t speaking to long-term adult fans. The signal it sends, loud and clear, is that the 50th anniversary is for all sorts of audiences, and for varied generations who have become fascinated by the Doctor. It's a post-Potter first Doctor. Bill Hartnell for Generation Z. And perhaps such diversity and plurality can only be a good thing.

That said, this eshort still sticks out like a sore thumb.

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Reviewed by Matthew Kilburn

Dark Eyes
Big Finish Productions
Written by Nicholas Briggs
Released November 2012

This review is based on the MP3 download from Big Finish, and contains spoilers.

First, a confession. I’ve never been a regular follower of any of Big Finish’s Doctor Who series, purchasing rarely and selectively over the years, so much of what I have gathered about their additions to and refinements of Doctor Who mythology has been gleaned secondhand. However – metaphorically – they have a well-stocked larder of Doctor Who ingredients and can call on the services of confectioners of the highest skill. Here, the writer-director is Nicholas Briggs, who has reportedly been known to marshal his cast in character as a Dalek and so could surely be the focus of some bizarre reality TV series.

Returning to the kitchen, Doctor Who is like chocolate in that it is served in a wide variety of forms and has its addicts and connoisseurs. Dark Eyes is presented as the sort of event story which sets out to appeal to both. Its four instalments – The Great War, Fugitives, Tangled Web and X and the Daleks – provide several hours’ worth of concentrated essence of Doctor Who, more than enough to quieten the withdrawal symptoms of the fan desperate for a new hit, but it’s the substance and texture which are the proof of this pudding. Dark Eyes is constructed from layers of Doctor Who sponge, fudge cake, cream, ganache and mousse, but it’s the craft and the proportions which count, and some of the best chocolate recipes depend on the juxtaposition of the dark and light, the bitter and the sweet.

Dark Eyes is both a literal reference to a remarkable physical characteristic of the story’s heroine, Molly O’Sullivan, and a comment on the gloom which pervades the eighth Doctor’s universe. Lucie Miller is dead, Susan betrayed, the ascendancy of the Daleks seemingly inevitable. Seeking a vantage point at the end of time from which he can look back on the universe in the hope of ‘a wonderful view’, the Doctor is tempted away from this act of finality by the promise of hope elsewhere. The Western Front in the middle of the Great War is not necessarily an unpromising place to start looking for universal redemption, and the first instalment of the story is full of great kindnesses partially masked by circumstance.

In his short time on screen, the eighth Doctor was contextualised by a heady cocoa of religious imagery, and this is reinforced here. Within a few minutes the Doctor is gassed and buried and ‘resurrected’, only to be thrust back into a series of personal hells. Somewhere along the way he presumably gains the new costume which adorns the cover illustration of Later, he and Molly go for a perspective-shifting dip in the English Channel, and she takes to referring to his home planet as ‘Galilee’. For the Doctor, though, Gallifrey is not just the place he came from, but the heaven with all the answers to which he is not allowed, in this story, to ascend. The fragmented and state of the Doctor’s mind at the start of the story is conveyed through disorienting sound design and the tones of a Paul McGann who knows how his reading of the Doctor as a forsaken immortal tortured by existence can guide the listener through a convoluted and non-linear plot.

Ruth Bradley gives Molly a rich, dark, peaty voice, capable of expressing extremes of love and defensive cynicism. Molly is an Irishwoman in domestic service in London, effectively adopted as a sister by her mistress Kitty, whom she has joined in France as a member of the Voluntary Aid Detachment of nursing auxiliaries. She is naturally well-suited to travelling with the Doctor: she is broadminded, adaptable, capable of command and not overawed by TARDIS-travelling, albeit for reasons both good and sinister. There’s a playfulness too, even a flirtatiousness, though there are also flashes of old-fashioned companion dependency which sit ill at ease with the rest of her character.

Doctor Who Magazine compared Dark Eyes to The War Games, to which it bears some similarities of setting, structure and iconography. Most of the first episode, The Great War, is set on the Western Front, where the question of whether the Doctor is a spy is raised, strange and threatening mist falls, and there is evidence of non-terrestrial intervention in events. However, the differences are perhaps more striking. At the start of The War Games the Doctor fell among the (junior) officer class, finding allies in a lieutenant and the ambulance-driving daughter of a peer of the realm. Here there are no officers, and privates and VADs are oppressed by a status-conscious matron and a doctor who hides his hostile agenda behind an American accent.

Fittingly for an incarnation of the Doctor whose experiences seem to express his inner torment, the Doctor is dogged in this story by characters who are his mirrors. Peter Egan’s urbane Straxus may be supercilious and condescending, but his ability to step outside the well-worn conventions of Time Lord thinking is an asset and he is, despite himself, quite at home conversing with the arch-yokel goatherd (a descendant of Pigbin Josh, The League of Gentlemen’s Papa Lazarou, and Babylon 5’s Zathras) who adds an appreciated bizarre note to a couple of the early Srangor scenes. Toby Jones lends believability to the somewhat inept Kotris, an ex-Time Lord crippled by self-loathing psychosis. If this didn’t remind the listener of recent interpretations of another character somewhat central to Doctor Who, the Doctor’s denunciation of Kotris’s belief in the wrongs done by the Time Lords must intentionally recall one of the most well-remembered speeches in The Trial of a Time Lord.

There’s often been an element of comfort food in Big Finish releases, and even amid the 70% cocoa questioning of the Doctor’s moral purpose, there is the chocolate cream of retroengineered continuity and allusions to the past and future of the television series. Ian Cullen’s Nadeyan enunciates names rather like his Ixta did nearly fifty years ago in The Aztecs. There are characters in The Great War whose names seem to be borrowed from early production personnel. There are time winds and of course medical personnel to be baffled by double heartbeats. As suits a story by Dalek scholar Nicholas Briggs, there are lots of homages to the work of Terry Nation in both theme and incident.

Against this Dark Eyes is animated by a relentless pressure to move on. It’s expressed in the different settings, realised in the Doctor’s search for meaning; in a breathtaking diversion which teases the listener with the prospect of the Daleks building a flower-garlanded variant of Prince Charles’s Poundbury; and the increasing complexity of the four-dimensional dance of death between Daleks and Time Lords. Andy Hardwick’s sound design deserves a large amount of credit, particularly in his imagining of the distinct sounds of different wars. There are references forward to what is from the point of view of Dark Eyes the Doctor’s future, too, tantalising as Big Finish inch closer to that bend in both licence and Doctor Who universe, the Time War.

Molly says that the Doctor reminds her of a victim of shellshock. Dark Eyes – as Straxus and the enigmatic Time Lord President seem to recognise – is not the best therapy for someone suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The scenario repeats several of the elements of the Doctor’s ill-fated relationship with Lucie Miller. The Daleks seem ubiquitous, undermining almost every small triumph the Doctor and Molly have. The way in which the schemes of Daleks and Time Lords are upset fits a story which concerns over-reliance on the analyses of processes psychological, managerial and temporal, and blindness to the fates of individuals. The nature of this kind of victory is the dusting of sugar on this particular gateau, counterbalancing some of the more bitter curls to make one wonder what flavour the eighth Doctor’s adventures will take next.

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Reviewed by Craig Murray

1001 Nights
Big Finish Productions
Written by Emma Beeby and Gordon Rennie, Jonathan Barnes, Catherine Harvey
Released December 2012

This review is based on the MP3 download from Big Finish, and contains spoilers.

Penned by 4 different authors, this years Big Finish Christmas offering is a wonderful adaptation of the ancient tale 1001 Nights, maybe better know on these shores as the Arabian Nights.

The classic version of the tale is a collection of short stories from far and wide, hence the multiple contributors – though these are actually estimated as being somewhere in the region of 260 and the phrase 1001 nights considered just an exaggerated term for many. Legend says that any person who reads the whole collection would go insane and the theme of insanity is one that is touched on throughout this intriguing reimagining.

Though there are countless versions of the tale, all share a common theme, that of a Persian King and his new bride. Having had his wife executed for her infidelity, he becomes bitter and marries a succession of virgins who he executes the next morning, until he meets the daughter of Vizier – the man charged with identifying them on his behalf. In order to ensure her survival, the daughter tells the King a story, but she purposefully does not finish by nightfall. A curious King orders her to proceed with her tale the following evening - and so she continues for 1001 nights.

Here, the storyteller is Nyssa, who is forced to recount tales of her adventures with her time travelling companion, so as to keep the imprisoned Doctor alive. But who is the mysterious Sultan and the captive who resides in the dungeon with our timelord hero?

The Plot:

With the Doctor locked away in a prison cell awaiting execution, Nyssa plots to delay his demise by telling stories of their travels to the Sultan. Speaking of their adventures and how they moved between worlds, she explains that they came to the planet to deactivate a beacon that was hidden in the Palace, belonging to the Gantha - the Sultan’s interest is peaked.

Her next tale sees the travellers aiming for the Celestial Basilica, but in true Tardis style, they arrive instead in prison grounds, to find a man tortured in an electric chair surrounded by a fixed atom force field. Here we are introduced to the Myaxa and a truth that binds prisoner and executioner together throughout eternity.

Next we meet Elizabeth Spinker, resident of a large house with a single aid –her other servants having long since fled. Screams are heard loudly in the distance as she awaits the arrival of the specialist, a man her father knew long ago. A ring at the doorbell indicates his arrival and reveals the identity of a man who left the patient there long, long ago – so as not to infect his Tardis. Here he tackles a mysterious virus and tries to release the friend within whom it resides.

As Nyssa moves on to her next tale, deep in the dungeons, the Doctor finally uncovers the true identity of the man aiding his escape and they make their way towards the Tardis – but they are not alone in their quest. As Nyssa feeds her captor more and more information, so the Doctor begins to weaken and his memories begin to fade. Will they arrive before his mind is lost forever?

What Works:

Well firstly, he’s my Doctor… we’ve all got one and I’m not ashamed to admit it. Peter Davison is on top form in this offering and Sarah Sutton delivers an equally accomplished performance.

The individual stories are of differing strength, but the tale that underpins them is very strong indeed and a great way to bring the curtain down on an exceptional year for big Finish.

I do love an affectionate nod to the past and this time it is delivered by Elizabeth Spiniker. Those who recall Sharaz Jek’s verbal jousting in The Caves of Androzani will remember that, whatever people make of the Doctors appearance, the eyes tell a different story.

What Doesn't:

Well not an awful lot in fact – my only gripe is the 'story of stories', where tales and jokes are currency. The concept here is very weak in comparison to the rest of the tale and brought my final rating down to reflect my disappointment.

Summary:

A really strong offering with a clever and intricate plot. As for the ‘story of stories’ section, it’s what the fast forward button was made for!

Rating 7.5/10

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Reviewed by Richard Watts

The Acheron Pulse
Big Finish Productions
Written by Rick Briggs
Released October 2012

This review is based on the MP3 download from Big Finish, and contains minor spoilers.

Featuring the blustering, bombastic Sixth Doctor, as portrayed by Colin Baker, The Acheron Pulse is the second in a trilogy of recently released Big Finish audio adventures set in the Drashani Empire – a galaxy-spanning civilisation akin to a futuristic Rome, and like the Roman Empire, beset both by internal turmoil and external invaders.

In the first part of the trilogy, The Burning Prince, the Fifth Doctor found himself caught up in an interplanetary rescue mission to the swampy planetoid Sharnax, populated by marauding alien beasts known as the Igris – later revealed to be a rebellious, genetically engineered slave race.

Despite the Doctor’s involvement, the mission – intended to unite the Empire by ensuring a wedding between two warring noble houses – was not a success.

The Plot:

Following the deaths of Princess Aliona of House Gadarel and her fiancée Prince Kylo of House Sorsha, in the skies over Sharnax, Aliona's infant cousin, Cheni Gadarel (Kirsty Besterman) was crowned Empress of the Drashani. Thirty years later, the Doctor – once again travelling alone – returns to the Empire, though a little later than he’d intended, in order to visit Empress Cheni and fulfil a promise made to a dying man. Landing on the relatively primitive planet of Cawdor, he is quickly caught up in a drama involving bloodthirsty native tribesmen, arrogant aliens who think themselves better than the local populace, and a monomaniacal, vengeance-obsessed foe.

For many years, under Cheni's rule, peace reigned. Now that peace is threatened by the Wrath – a mysterious race led by the sepulchral Lord Deliverer, Tenebris (James Wilby).

Wielding a dreadful weapon capable of laying waste to worlds – the Acheron Pulse – the Wrath seem intent on destroying the Empire completely, and only the Doctor stands in their way – as long as he can get away from the barbarian warriors who have taken him prisoner on Cawdor…

Observations:

Compared to its predecessor, a tightly scripted and fast-paced adventure, The Acheron Pulse feels cumbersome and clumsy. Plot strands feel forced and predictable, and despite a technically proficient production overseen by director Ken Bentley, the story fails to generate tension and drama.

The script, by Rick Briggs, features characters so two dimensional that they’re virtually cartoonish, the most exaggerated of which is the barbarian warlord Athrid (Chook Sibtain), into whose hands the Doctor first falls when he lands on Cawdor. Reminiscent of King Yrcanos from The Trial of a Time Lord parts Five to Eight (aka Mindwarp) Athrid is quickly established as a violent buffoon; bloodthirsty and stupid but essentially decent, and certainly a potential ally for the Doctor – an impression which is jarringly contradicted by his sexual assault upon an incognito Empress Cheni in episode one.

Additional characters, including a minor Drashani envoy, Duhkin Stubbs (Joseph Kloska) and Cawdorian technician Teesha (Jane Slavin), as well as Tenebris himself, also lack definition and detail, though Jane Slavin does an excellent and engaging job as Teesha, Athrid’s strong-willed wife and battle-partner.

Uncomfortable sexual politics and thinly-written characters aside, the unlikely idea that an Empress would travel incognito to witness diplomatic negotiations between Cawdor and her Empire, when her Empire is under attack from a mysterious warlord, makes suspension of belief difficult, while at least one of the major plot threads – the defence of Cawdor by Teesha and Athrid’s barbarian horde – feels like filler. Even the main plot, involving the Doctor, Cheni and Tenebris (whose identity, when it is revealed, fails to surprise) elicits little in the way of suspense or narrative tension, while the lack of a regular companion means the listener needs to become emotionally invested in the lives and actions of the supporting cast – a challenge when the characters they play are so thinly drawn.

An additional subplot involving an alternate dimension, the Undervoid, and further revelations concerning the origins of the Wrath and the Igris, also fails to sustain interest, although it does provide Colin Baker with an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the Sixth Doctor’s intelligence and arrogance, via a decision that will no doubt have devastating results come the final part of the trilogy.

Conclusion:

While The Burning Prince was a well-written story marred by a key performer’s overacting (that same actor performs well here, suggesting the fault was primarily a directorial one) The Acheron Pulse is a disappointing story featuring strong performances. Its laboured and predictable plot, two dimensional characters, and an anti-climactic ending fail to sustain interest or narrative tension over its four episodes, resulting in a disappointing middle third to Big Finish's latest trilogy. Thankfully, the epilogue, though again featuring extremely clichéd characters, promises better things to come in the final part of the series, Jonathan Morris’s The Shadow Heart.

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Reviewed by Craig Murray

The Child
Big Finish Productions
Written by Nigel Fairs
Released December 2012

This review is based on the MP3 download from Big Finish, and contains spoilers.

Since its 2005 television reboot, Doctor Who has become an integral part of the Christmas schedule and is now widely recognized by broadcasters and critics alike, as the perfect vehicle to convey the magic, mystery and excitement of the festive period.

This years Big Finish Christmas offering is similarly laced with that magical feel; a gentle tale written in the style of a childs fairytale. Penned by regular Big Finish contributor Nigel Friars, The Child is a story of creation and of hope. Fittingly it is also the launch pad for a new era for companion Leela in the Companion Chronicles series, who appears this time as a projection in the mind of Emily – a young girl with old eyes.

Leela’s frequent challenging of Emily’s acceptance of a life in servitude – in the manner her mother supports her father – is perhaps just encouragement to aspire to more; but why old eyes? Call me suspicious, but the smell of a future story arc is as strong as the smell of mulled wine on Christmas Eve.

The plot:

As we meet Emily, she sits alone in her room penning a story for her mother accompanied by her imaginary friend, who uses her as a channel to convey stories of the Wizard and the Warrior girl and their travels in the magical blue box.

It isn’t long before the pair arrive on a snow covered planet, the first snow Leela has ever seen. Placing a snowdrop in the palm of her hand, the wizard tells his sceptical companion that in it she holds the answer to all creation and he promises to show her the map of life – which holds all the answers.

The map, a creation by Richard Stempuss – a dying man with grand ideas when the Doctor last met him - is the largest work of art in the universe. In fact it is so big that it covers an entire continent. But when they reach the map of life, it bares little resemblance to the image in the Doctors crumpled photo – instead they enter via a Golden gate now blackened and decaying with age.

As they explore their new surroundings, the Doctor is captured by a mysterious woman, fixated by a desperate need to understand the meaning of existence and to destroy those without purpose.

But who is the mysterious figure? Can Leela find her time travelling companion? Why would I want nuts in the bottom of my Christmas stocking (I don’t even have a nut cracker!)? The answers to all these questions – well almost – are neatly packaged within The Child.

What works:

Firstly I think the soundtrack is a really good accompaniment to the production and helps the story to seamlessly flow.

There is a nice interplay in the early exchanges between Emily and Leela, where they discuss story structure and its level of detail as Emily tries to perfect the tale for her mother. It rather reminds me of sitting with my parents doing my homework.

Constant reminders of the charming relationship between the Doctor and his companion, as he continues to challenge and educate her, are a nice throw back to Saturday tea times gone by – and the jelly babies make a welcome cameo appearance.

What doesn’t:

Sorry - but for me, it’s the story itself. Christmas TV Who episodes are often a little lightweight in comparison to the regular show and this is very much in the same mould. The problem here is that, while TV uses it to attract a wider audience, the Companion Chronicles are for the Doctor Who hardcore, who I doubt are looking for easy listening.

The Fourth Doctor is back – and when you’ve had a taste of the real thing, its difficult to accept anything less.

The minor characters that the Doctor projects to help Leela – if you didn’t like Frobisher, its time to cover your ears!

Summary:

A pleasant tale for a winters evening by the fireside with your children and a good way to introduce them to the franchise. However, if you’re looking for something more challenging, this is maybe one to avoid.

6/10

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Reviewed by Richard Watts

The Burning Prince
Big Finish Productions
Written by John Dorney
Released September 2012

This review is based on the MP3 download from Big Finish, and contains minor spoilers.

Two planets, both alike in dignity,
In fair Drashani, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

John Dorney’s latest Big Finish adventure – the first of a trilogy featuring the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors – is, at least initially, reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet.

Travelling alone, having temporarily left his companions Tegan and Nyssa behind in Amsterdam after the events of Arc of Infinity, the Doctor finds himself on a spaceship in the midst of the Drashani Empire; a galaxy-spanning civilisation caught up in a long and bloody civil war. Two noble houses, Gadarel and Sorsha, are fighting for the imperial throne, vacant for decades since the death of the mad Emperor. The wedding of star-crossed lovers Prince Kylo of Sorsha and the Gadarel Princess Aliona is intended to finally bring peace to the Empire, but behind the scenes, fanatics are plotting a very different outcome.

The Doctor’s arrival coincides with a sudden escalation of hostilities. Aliona’s wedding-barge has crashed on Sharnax, a remote and swampy planetoid and a rescue mission is underway. Unfortunately events aboard the rescue ship, where the TARDIS has landed, quickly degenerate, and the story becomes less Shakespeare, more Drashigs on a Plane – and that’s just the first episode!

Observations:

Despite its simple premise, The Burning Prince is a rich and engaging story, featuring a judicious balance of political intrigue, personal drama and thrilling action sequences. A genetically engineered slave race running amok and the wayward use of psychic powers by a key character further enliven the narrative.

Dorney’s script is generally excellent; he quickly and efficiently establishes the tone and setting of the story with help from Martin Montague’s evocative sound design and Toby Hrycek-Robinson's dramatic score. The story’s numerous characters are also effectively introduced, including the non-nonsense Captain Shira (Caroline Langrishe); hot-tempered Prince Kylo (George Rainsford); elderly Tuvold (Clive Mantle), Aliona’s uncle and the Gadarel ambassador; conflicted Commander Corwyn (Dominic Rowan); the bigoted spaceship pilot Riga (Caroline Keiff); and solid, dependable trooper Tyron (Tim Treloar).

Not every character is written quite as effectively; Princess Aliona (Kirsty Besterman) comes across as somewhat two dimensional, an impression not helped by Besterman’s occasional overacting. Another minor script flaw is the introduction of a somewhat grating catchphrase, "Empire be praised!" uttered by most of the characters at one point or another during proceedings. It sounds extremely forced when first heard, though as events progress, the phrase takes on a more ominous, ironic tone.

Another flaw is the introduction of the adventure’s new monster. In episode one, a saboteur aboard the rescue ship releases a caged Igris, described somewhat floridly by Ambassador Tuvold as "an eight foot tall bipedal killing machine; a sabre-toothed emissary of death". The presence of such a beast aboard the rescue ship strains credibility, and even after an explanation for its presence is offered, it still seems a trifle unlikely.

The narrative itself is fast-paced and engaging; a judicious mix of action-adventure tropes, the occasional in-joke, and more than a hint of the pessimistic tone of such Fifth Doctor adventures as Warriors of the Deep and Resurrection of the Daleks. Director Ken Bentley keeps a tight lid on the story, and maintains the pace nicely. The action never flags across the four episodes; events swiftly propel the Doctor from one drama to another towards a particularly bleak climax.

Conclusion:

Fans of the Fifth Doctor will enjoy hearing Peter Davison on his own, unencumbered by companions (though a head cold the actor was suffering from is somewhat distracting in the early parts of the adventure) and the story’s set-up allows Dorney to explore both the Doctor’s intelligence and charisma, and his habit of walking straight into trouble as soon as he arrives somewhere new. Save for minor flaws as discussed above, The Burning Prince is a fine addition to the Big Finish range, and highly recommended.

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This review is based on a preview of the UK Region 2 DVD, which is released on 7th January 2013.

Of all the DVDs in the classic series collection, this set has perhaps been the most divisive within fandom online before its release than any other. Without dragging this review into the quagmire, much of the discussion surrounds the presentation of the abandoned and never-broadcast Tom Baker adventure Shada and expectations over whether the unrecorded scenes would be 'completed' by animation or other means, and the resulting disappointment from some quarters when it was announced that it would 'simply' be based upon the edit produced for the VHS range in 1992.

Context is everything, though: is this a release of the story Shada with other extras, or is this a collection of bits and pieces that includes Shada? Steve Roberts of the Restoration Team clarified:

The whole point of the 'Legacy' boxset is a mopping up exercise - it's mopping up Shada, MTTYITT and a few other extras that are left over at the end. That's all it was ever supposed to be!

In this context utilising the previous commercially available version in this set alongside More Than Thirty Years makes sense; so, enough of what we didn't get, let's look at the wealth of material we do have in the set!

 

Disc One: Shada:

There are two versions of the story to choose from on the disc, the 'reconstruction' presentation of the original Tom Baker material from 1979 that was produced by John Nathan-Turner for VHS in 1992, and a revised animated version with Paul McGann that was produced by Big Finish in 2003 for the BBC Doctor Who website. Being a classic series release, it isn't surprising that the primary version on the disc is the 1992 version, whilst space limitations mean that the animated version is consigned to watching on a computer - however, which is actually considered the 'better' presentation of the story will fall to personal taste!

Apart from the necessary adjustments to continuity to introduce why a different Doctor is involved, the main plot remains essentially the same in both. The Doctor answers a message from retired Time Lord Chronotis, now living at St Cedd's college in Cambridge, finding out that his old friend is actually in possession of a 'dangerous' book, The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey. However, Doctor Skagra of Think Tank is also after the book, knowing that its pages can reveal the way to the Time Lord prison planet of Shada where a criminal Salyavin has been incarcerated - Skagra wishes to obtain the latter's ability to project his mind into others in order to become the most powerful person in the universe. What ensues is a run around Cambridge and the galaxy as the Doctor, Romana and Chronotis with the aid of students Chris and Clare chase Skagra and his Krarg allies in order to thwart his plans.

And that's essentially it. To be honest there isn't much more to the story and the filmed scenes show that whilst the sparkle of Douglas Adams dialogue is present, there isn't an awful lot of plot to fill the 1hr49m running time of the release, let alone a full six episodes' worth had the story been completed. Adams himself had said that he hadn't thought it very good (and cannibalised elements of the script for other works) - the story had only been released on VHS through him accidentally signing the paperwork.

It's the notoriety of the production that makes the story interesting, and this is documented quite thoroughly through both the production notes that accompany the episodes, and documentaries that can be found on the other discs in the set. Briefly, strikes were quite commonplace within the BBC in the 1970s, and Doctor Who suffered three consecutive years of industrial action for the recording of season finales - 1979 was the year the production team's luck ran out and so Shada was never able to recover the time needed to complete it, much to the chagrin of cast and crew. Nathan-Turner attempted to resurrect the story a number of times (including a potential Colin Baker-narrated version in 1985), but in 1992 was able to convince BBC Enterprises that the story could be produced with new effects and linking narration from its star.

The ensuing release is a brave attempt to tell the story, but the lack of filmed material really becomes noticeable in the latter half the story, where much of the unrecorded studio material was destined. Chronotis's rooms, Skagra's ship brig, and Think Tank scenes were recorded, but TARDIS interiors, Skagra's and the Krarg's ship control rooms, and Shada itself were all lost. Though judicious use of new special effects help bridge some of the gaps, the latter episodes end up very heavily reliant on Tom Baker's narration of what's happening "off-screen", and can lead viewers to wonder what is actually going on! Watching the animated version first can actually help a lot here as, with all the scenes 'present and correct', it means that when watching the original version it is possible to 'visualise' what is going on during those narrated moments.

One thing that grated in 1992 and still does in 2013 is the incidental music, which was written for the release by late 1980s resident composer Keff McCulloch. I'm afraid I've never been a fan of his music in Doctor Who, and the "tinkle tinkle" throughout Shada is quite distracting at times. It's a shame JNT didn't secure Dudley Simpson's services to provide a 'contemporary' score (and a shame the budget for the DVD couldn't stretch that far, either!). I also found K9's voice a little irritating too, but at least David Brierley is contemporary (though John Leeson's interpretation will always be definitive, and very welcome in the animated version).

A few observations on the VHS version:

• From the outset it feels like the story is being introduced by Professor Geoffrey Hoyt, as Tom struts around the old MOMI Museum Doctor Who exhibits in a suit straight out of Medics. His delivery is also quite OTT, though fortunately the actual narration is delivered in a matter-of-fact way (and as the Doctor).
• Watch out for Professor Chronotis's magic spectacles in episode two!
• The major plot point of needing Salyavin's mental agility is perhaps of less importance if you consider the Doctor demonstrated this ability with himselves in The Three Doctors, or more recently with Craig in The Lodger!
• The one genuine recorded effect of the two TARDISes in the vortex actually looks quite poor in comparison with the 1992 CGI ...
• ... though the "blocky" effects used in some places feel very dated!
• Nobody seems to know why Clare's hair changes from severe scientist bundle to a more feminine wavy loose style in episode five - maybe her shock at the sparking console had more of an effect on her than originally thought ...
• K9 seems to be back under the influence of the Shadow at one point, judging by the Danger, Doctor exclamations as Think Tank explodes.
• There was a proposal for romantic interest between Chris and Romana ... half-human on his father's side?!?!
• Christopher Neame spends way too much of his time resembling Julian Glover!
• If you consider Shada as part of the canon then there's plenty of Time Lord lore here to challenge Robert Holmes! Time Lords are allowed to retire on alien planets so long as they don't have a TARDIS. Time-Tots (an unscripted line by Lalla Ward now often quoted in the never-ending debate over Time Lord procreation). Time Lord bodies fade out of existence in their final death (is that what was potentially happening to the Doctor in The Five Doctors?).

The alternative Eighth Doctor version of Shada is accessed through a computer, and is presented as a flash movie powered by any web browser capable of running the Adobe format. An initial menu gives access to the six episodes, which can then be watched through the browser. The episodes play very smoothly, and as it is local to the machine the occasional annoying net-pauses are of course absent. There are a couple of issues that occur with playback though; firstly, you have to select each episode to watch (there's no "play all"), and when watching the episodes the chapters and running time remain permanently visible at the bottom of the screen - these are a product of the code included on the DVD to play the files, however, and the raw SWF episode files can easily be played through another capable player without such distractions!

There are no special features included on the discs for this version, but related extras can still be found via the BBC website.

Overall, as one might expect, Shada's picture quality has been cleaned up and looks much better on the DVD, especially when compared with scenes included in other features. However, it's the animated version that really benefits from being released in this way, as it is no longer constrained by the lower resolution/bandwidth limitations online. Plug your computer into your HD-TV and enjoy!

Disc Two: Extras:

The disc kicks off with a documentary on the making of Shada: Taken Out of Time, filmed in the glorious surrounds around The Backs in Cambridge, saw cast and crew recount their personal experiences of the filming (though incongruously Tom Baker was occasionally seen walking his dog in the woods!). Much of the first half focusses on how much fun everybody had filming in the city, with Tom Baker commenting on how much better it was to be out of a quarry, Daniel Hill on it being the best week filming of his life, and production assistant Ralph Wilton wryly observing on the blossoming relationship between Hill and director's assistant Olivia Bazelgette. Then, as strikes loomed the latter half focusses on how everybody became concerned and ultimately heartbroken with how production was delayed and eventually cancelled by the BBC.

One particular anecdote that sticks out is how Angus Smith of the St John's College Choir recounts how they managed to wrangle their way onto the show through appealing to a rather drunk director Pennant Roberts in the pub, and then their increasing dismay over the next year as they never got to see themselves on air.

Now & Then provides viewers with the usual comparisons between how locations look now with how they appeared during filming - or in this case, how Cambridge has pretty much been stuck in a time bubble over the last three decades! As well as those scenes that were recorded, the documentary also looks at locations that didn't quite make the cut due to time running out when filming, and those abandoned due to the strike's impact on night shooting. (Also, for those interested in such things, the music playing throughout is from the second movement of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, named Scene at the Brook, which seems quite apt if you think of one scene in particular!)

Strike! Strike! Strike! is a candid review of how industrial action has affected the show over the decades both in production and broadcast. The documentary looks into the well-known cancellation of Shada, the way in which other BBC strikes caused practical problems for production, and on how the 1970s saw a number of problems with broadcast interruptions due to national industry disputes. Amongst the many anecdotes, one that in particular tickled me was how William Hartnell nearly brought the production of the show to a halt with his haughty attitude to a dresser. (Keep your eye out for a cameo by Doctor Who News too!)

Being a Girl is bit of an oddity; the feature's premise seems to be to look at how women are portrayed in the series (both in front of and behind the scenes), but meanders around topics like whether it really matters that the production team seldom featured women, is gender-blind casting a good thing, and are powerful female villains empowering or insulting? Louise Jameson guides us through the documentary, with insights provided by professional women (and confessed fans). The roles of all of the female companions are explored, with particular emphasis in the class series of Susan, Sarah, Tegan and Ace - and how the latter finally saw a move away from cipher to personality, a trait foremost to modern female companions. The question of if it is okay to fancy the Doctor also rears its head, and of course the old chestnut over whether a woman could ever play the Doctor.

The disc is rounded off with a production gallery, accompanied by clean cues of some of Keff McCulloch's music score for those who can tolerate it (using mute or running at x2 more than ably resolves that problem for those who can't!).

Disc Three: More Than Thirty Years In The TARDIS:

It is perhaps fitting that the 'definitive' celebration of Doctor Who in the 20th Century is on one of the final of the original releases in the Classic DVD range for the 21st - in many ways it the the forerunner of all we've come to enjoy about the range!

With all the interviews, documentaries, behind-the-scenes clips etc. that we've been treated to for over a decade now - including the wealth of features on this very boxed set - it's hard to imagine how starved we were for such information back then. The preceeding year's Resistance is Useless on television had given us a tongue-in-cheek retrospective of the series, but then in 1993 the BBC indulged us with a wealth of clips, chats with the stars (and celebrity fans like Toyah Wilcox, Ken Livingstone and Mike Gatting - plus not-so fans like Gerry Anderson), and all manner of archive material in the form of an hour long Thirty Years in the TARDIS - and then even more delights with the expanded More Than version presented here when it arrived on video a few months later.

Though much of the archive material may have since appeared in full on the DVDs, there's still a number of bits and pieces that haven't quite made it to digital clarity before and can be enjoyed for the "first time" here (for example the Terry Nation interview conducted on Whicker's World). Regardless of whether I've seen some clips more recently, though, it still generates a little thrill seeing those original tantalising moments from my youth once again - many of which were seen for the very first time in Thirty Years.

The documentary is split into loosely themed sections, with Part One being Doctor Who and the Daleks, Part Two covering Monsters and Companions, and Part Three on Laughter and Tears Behind the Scenes. These "episodes" were linked by Doctor Who adverts like Sky-Ray lollies and The Doctor and Romana interacting with PR1ME computers (something that I was doing myself at the time in my programming job!). The expansion also enabled a number of items that hadn't made it onto TV, including an interview with the originally very poorly represented Seventh Doctor Sylvester McCoy (I wonder whether Paul McGann would be similarly 'restored' to history if the 40th Anniversary celebration The Story of Doctor Who ever were to be released!).

Perhaps the most memorable innovation of the documentary are the recreations of classic scenes from the show, such as Daleks crossing Westminster Bridge, and of Cybermen marching down from in front of St Paul's Cathedral; as well as these we also have a number of encounters 'drawn from the imagination' of Josh Maguire, the boy representing us the viewers - for those still revelling in the sight of Clara entering the TARDIS through its doors for the first time in The Snowmen, hark back here to where Josh does the very same thing almost two decades earlier!

(One sobering thought arising from the documentary was that, back then, there were 110 missing episodes. Two decades on and just four more episodes have been recovered. Though, of course, you can also say that four more episodes have been recovered! There's still hope ...)


More Than Thirty Years In The TARDIS was narrated by the late Nicholas Courtney, and the disc includes a wonderful tribute to the actor. Remembering Nicholas Courtney explores the actor's life, in many cases using his own words from interviews conducted by friend and co-author Michael McManus, who also presents the documentary. Talking candidly about his career, Nick's love of the show and his rich life shine through, and it is easy to understand how so many admired the man who played one of the Doctor's oldest and most trusted friends. Plus, watch out for the special appearance by a very familiar Doctor Who star, one of Nick's oldest friends. (On a personal note, you can also watch out for a "blink-and-you-miss it" appearance by yours-truly, too!)

Having mentioned The Story of Doctor Who earlier, the next two features are extended interviews with Peter Purves and Verity Lambert that were originally recorded for that documentary. Being that these items tend to be cut quite severely to fit their eventual destination, the context of the quotes can be lost, but having said that, the unedited material can sometimes feel quite rambling! Certainly, in Doctor Who Stories - Peter Purves the actor's reflections on his time on Doctor Who, the pittance he was paid, the 'cheapness' of the show, and the effect it had on his career in the immediate aftermath all come across as very negative, yet he speaks highly of how imaginative and innovative the series was, how strong the scripts were, and how its prestige attracted a number of big-name stars. Similarly, in The Lambert Tapes - Part One the producer flits between how excited she was to be offered to produce such an imaginative series having only been a production assistant before, versus the challenges of being the only woman amongst the other producers, and overcoming the then inherent attitudes towards women amongst her own team. Actually, I feel this latter interview does far more to explain the prevailing male-dominated industry than the attempts by Being a Girl on disc two, but then again the former was trying to encompass the whole of Doctor Who's history.

Speaking of girls, the final documentary for the set is entitled Those Deadly Divas, which conjures up images of women in smart attire vamping up the universe ... which in the case of self-confessed diva Kate O'Mara isn't far off the mark! The actress reflects upon how the various portrayals of women characters in Doctor Who bring the show some glamour and pizazz, alongside Camille Coduri, Tracy-Ann Oberman ... plus Gareth Roberts and Clayton Hickman! The item examines facets of female 'domination' such as enemies like Kate's Rani, Lady Peinforte and Captain Wrack, business-focussed individuals like Tracy's Yvonne Hartman, Krau Timmin and Madame Kara, and those who do it all for misplaced love like Queen Galleia, Lucy Saxon, and Countess Scarlioni. The Doctor's "good" companions also come under scrutiny when they are possessed by evil, such as Sarah by Eldrad in The Hand of Fear. It's quite a light-hearted piece, and to be honest I found the most interesting bits to be the linking titles created by out-takes from Maureen Lipman's Wire!

The disc is rounded off with a Photo Gallery from the Thirty Years shoot - and unlike Shada has a welcome selection of score bites from its respective composer, Mark Ayres - and for computer users there's a PDF file of the Radio Times listing for the transmitted documentary.

Conclusion:

All-in-all, I think this set is likely to have quite a mixed reaction. If, like me, you find the documentaries that accompany releases to be a bonus then there is plenty here to keep you occupied - not least More Than Thirty Years itself. If, however, you're more of a fan of just the stories themselves rather than the value-added material that accompanies them, then perhaps the rather bland fragments of Shada won't be to your taste.

Next Time:

The Doctor visits his favourite era of history, the French Revolution, but will he, Susan, Barbara and Ian be able to survive The Reign of Terror ...

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