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Black Mirror Season 1

The Entire History Of You

Black MirrorGrain is a neural implant that records everything a person sees, even details they don’t notice at first, and stores it for later recall. During a replay, called a “redo”, different details can be enhanced and brought into focus, obsessed over, even litigated. A scan of recent memories has become the new background check: airport security, insurance, and job offers are all contingent upon memory scans with no unusual incidents – and no major deletions from the record hinting at a cover-up of such incidents. Liam, unsettled by news that the law firm for which he works will begin using recorded Grain memories to allow people to sue their parents for negligence during childhood, is in no mood for a party with old friends, but he still shows up, annoyed that his wife Fiona is being very attentive toward a male guest Liam regards as a blowhard. Upon learning that his wife had more than a mere passing acquaintance with the man in her single life, Liam is fixated on proving that they’re still having an affair. But the memory of what he does to resolve the situation may yet haunt him.

Get the DVDswritten by Jesse Alexander
directed by Brian Welsh
music by Stuart Earl

Black MirrorCast: Toby Kebbell (Liam), Jodie Whittaker (Fiona), Tom Cullen (Jonas), Amy Beth Hayes (Lucy), Rebekah Staton (Colleen), Rhashan Stone (Jeff), Phoebe Fox (Hallam), Jimi Mistry (Paul), Daniel Lapaine (Max), Karl Collins (Robbie), Elizabeth Chan (Leah), Mona Goodwin (Gina), Kemal Sylvester (Airport Security)

Note: Jodie Whittaker would go on to become Doctor Who‘s thirteenth face, making her debut in the closing moments of Twice Upon A Time (2017).

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who New Series Season 06

The Doctor, The Widow And The Wardrobe

Doctor WhoThe Doctor sabotages a gigantic spaceship on a mission to destroy Earth, only barely getting a spacesuit on in time to ride to the planet’s surface amid the ship’s debris. Amazingly, he survives re-entry and the landing, but he has to enlist the help of a woman named Madge Arwell, who believes he’s either a spaceman or an angel.

Three years later, Madge Arwell has completely forgotten the otherworldly visitor. Days before Christmas, she receives a telegram informing her of her husband’s death in an RAF fighter during the war. Worse still, Madge and her children, Cyril and Lily, are evacuated to a country house to avoid the air raids. The Doctor is waiting for them, having renovated the house in his own unique way. Under the tree, a gigantic present awaits, but the Doctor insists that it remain unopened until Christmas. Naturally, Cyril opens it early and climbs in, finding himself in another world. When the Doctor learns of this, he and Lily follow, and the Doctor explains that it literally is another world, one where the trees grow their own organic Christmas ornaments. Huge footprints in the snow reveal that Cyril wasn’t alone here. The Doctor and Lily find Cyril in a domed, castle-like structure where a king and queen carved from sentient wood are sizing the boy up as a host body for the collected consciousness of the forest outside – a forest which will soon be clear-cut by acid rain induced by human harvesters from Androzani Major. But Cyril isn’t up to the task, and to his own surprise, the Doctor is judged unfit for the task as well.

That’s when Madge Arwell shows up, having followed the Doctor and her children to this world through the gift-wrapped gateway. She’s also managed to drive the crew from Androzani off-planet and commandeered their harvester. And the trees decide she is their ideal host, but she already has the weight of the world bearing down on her: she hasn’t told her children that their father has died in the war, until it’s revealed for her by the trees.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Farren Blackburn
music by Murray Gold

Doctor WhoCast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Claire Skinner (Madge Arwell), Maurice Cole (Cyril Arwell), Holly Earl (Lily Arwell), Alexander Armstrong (Reg Arwell), Sam Stockman (Co-Pilot), Bill Bailey (Droxil), Paul Bazely (Ven-Garr), Arabella Weir (Billis), Spencer Wilding (Wooden King), Paul Kasey (Wooden Queen), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Arthur Darvill (Rory)

Notes: Androzani Major was the site of murderous political intrigue in 1984‘s The Caves Of Androzani, at the end of which the fifth Doctor was forced to regenerate. This story doesn’t make clear if the forest snowscape is on Androzani Major or not. Actor Alexander Armstrong has a long association with the Doctor Who universe, having provided the voice Doctor Whoof Sarah Jane Smith’s alien computer, Mr. Smith, for the entire run of The Sarah Jane Adventures. The set of Sarah Jane’s attic also makes an appearance here, heavily redressed as the attic of the house where the Arwells are celebrating Christmas. Arabella Weir also has a voice-only Doctor Who connection; she starred as the Doctor in Big Finish’s continuity-busting Doctor Who Unbound story Exile in 2003.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Army Of Death

Doctor WhoThe Doctor takes Mary to the serene planet Draxine, discovering that the planet’s pleasant reputation doesn’t apply to its entire history. The dead walk Draxine again, and one of the planet’s fabled major cities has fallen to the might of the armed skeletons. The Doctor and Mary encounter two escaped prisoners, only to be pursued by both the skeletons and flying security robots, one of which captures the Doctor and whisks him away to be interrogated by the planet’s president. The Doctor learns that the dead are walking the surface of Draxine and have recently taken over the planet’s other most populous city, which lies in ruins in the aftermath of what is said to be a thermonuclear explosion. Mary, cooperating with her captors, continues toward that city, which is also a place the Doctor wants to explore. But this place is the city of the dead, and at the heart of that city is the horrifying living secret of what happened there.

Order this CD written by Jason Arnopp
directed by Barnaby Edwards
music by Fool Circle Productions

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Julie Cox (Mary Shelley), David Harewood (President Vallan), Carolyn Pickles (Lady Meera), Eva Pope (Nia Brusk), Mitch Benn (Commander Raynar / Karnex), Joanna Christie (Sherla / Baden / Tox), Trevor Cooper (Captain Maddox / Stennan / Sentries)

Notes: The Doctor mentions that he was once falsely accused of a presidential assassination; the incident in question involved the leader of the Time Lords, as chronicled in the Tom Baker TV story The Deadly Assassin (1976). The Doctor also reminisces about having had a “flying car with a great number plate” (obviously his third incarnation’s Whomobile, though it was never referred to that on screen).

Timeline: after The Witch From The Well and before Storm Warning

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
5th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

The Five Companions

Doctor WhoThe Doctor’s companions find themselves united and in deep trouble. Steven and Ian barely have the time to reintroduce themselves before they are pursued through a mazelike structure by a Dalek, while Polly and Sara Kingdom get to know each other while being pursued by dinosaurs. Nyssa, imprisoned in a cell, has only Daleks for company. The Doctor’s friends and allies join forces, certain that their time-traveling old friend is involved. When the Doctor finally makes an appearance, having just escaped from a platoon of Sontarans, his friends who knew his first and second faces are startled by his youthful appearance, and explanations ard in order. The Doctor has just escaped from the Death Zone on his home planet, Gallifrey, and believes that this place and its combatants – former companions and enemies alike – were also intended to be taken there, but were misplaced by whoever controls the Time Scoop. Now the Doctor must find a way to help his friends escape… without also releasing his enemies.

Order this CDwritten by Eddie Robson
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Richard Fox & Lauren Yason

Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), William Russell (Ian Chesterton), Peter Purves (Steven Taylor), Jean Marsh (Sara Kingdom), Anneke Wills (Polly), Dan Starkey (Sontarans), Nicholas Briggs (Daleks)

Notes: The Five Companions was the subscriber-only exclusive released in 2011 alongside the audio story Army Of Death. Dan Starkey has played numerous Sontarans since they began appearing in the current Doctor Who TV series, as well as playing the part of the imp Randall Moon in Russell T. Davies’ series Wizards vs. Aliens, but most Who fans know him best as the Doctor’s Sontaran ally, Strax.

Timeline: from the Doctor’s perspective, this entire adventure happens during The Five Doctors, between the Doctor’s escape from the Cybermen and his appearance in the transmat in the Time Lords’ capitol.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
4th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Destination Nerva

Doctor Who: Destination NervaShortly after leaving Victorian London, the Doctor and Leela ride the TARDIS to Victorian Kenton, where a fierce battle has left a manor house coated in the blood of men… and a dying alien who was their quarry. The alien failed to escape its hunters to return to its spacecraft, which has now been commandeered by a man named Lord Jack. The Doctor sets the TARDIS to follow the ship through time and space, and it arrives at the still-under-construction Nerva Dock in orbit of Jupiter, hundreds of years later. The crew, dealing with equipment failures and a shortage of manpower, fails to notice anything strange about a new arrival at Nerva until it’s too late. Simply by touch, the visitor can physically join with anyone, and he’s able to take control of Nerva’s flight deck in very short order, absorbing crew members and expanding his own skin to fill every available space. With Nerva’s commander and medical officer in tow, the Doctor and Leela race to the TARDIS, only to be cut off before they can reach it. That’s when the aliens whose technology has been used to take over Nerva arrive… and considering that it was originally stolen by a man named Lord Jack in Victorian times, they’ve had centuries to make plans to take revenge on Lord Jack and the rest of the human race.

Order this CDwritten by Nicholas Briggs
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Jamie Robertson

Cast: Tom Baker (The Doctor), Louise Jameson (Leela), Raquel Cassidy (Dr. Alison Foster), Sam Graham (McMullan / Pilot), Tilly Gaunt (Laura Craske), Tim Bentinck (Giles Moreau / Jenkins), Kim Wall (Jim Hooley / Drelleran #1 / Security Guard), Tim Treloar (Lord Jack / Drudgers / Drelleran #2)

Timeline: immediately after The Talons Of Weng-Chiang and before Renaissance Man

Notes: This is the Doctor’s third visit to Nerva, each time at a different point in the station’s history and in a different orbit: The Ark In Space (1975) takes place on Nerva in its distant future orbiting Earth, while the Nerva of Revenge Of The Cybermen (1975) is orbiting Voga, a moon with rich deposits of gold. After years of campaigning by Big Finish, dating back to the beginning of the company’s license to produce Doctor Who audio stories, this is the first Big Finish audio to feature Tom Baker as the fourth Doctor. Louise Jameson has been reprising the role of Leela for Big Finish since 2003’s Zagreus.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
6th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

The Curse Of Davros

Doctor WhoA year after her brief encounter with the Doctor, Flip and her boyfriend Jared witness the crash of a Dalek ship in London. As police surround the wreckage, Flip and Jared find the Doctor among the debris, acting strangely disoriented. Naturally, the Daleks are close behind, along with humans under their control, looking for the Doctor. Flip is startled to witness the Doctor displaying a casual disregard for those around him, and is powerless and speechless when the Doctor surrenders himself to the Daleks. Aboard the Daleks’ mothership, the Doctor is brought before Davros, and only then does she learn that the Doctor’s mind is trapped in the body of the gnarled Kaled scientist, and vice versa. The Doctor performed this dangerous swap with Davros’ own technology to thwart a plan to change Earth’s history by turning the Battle of Waterloo in Napoleon’s favor… but now he’ll need Flip’s help to finish the job and return to his own body.

Order this CDwritten by Jonathan Morris
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Wilfredo Acosta

Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Lisa Greenwood (Flip Jackson), Terry Molloy (Davros), Ashley Kumar (Jared), Jonathan Owen (Napoleon Bonaparte), Rhys Jennings (Captain Pascal), Granville Saxton (Duke of Wellington), Robert Portal (Marshal Ney), Christian Patterson (Captain Dickson), Nicholas Briggs (The Daleks)

Notes: The Daleks employ “mind exchange” technology here, and the portrayal of it by the cast is reminiscent of the Dalek-possessed humans seen in television episodes such as Asylum Of The Daleks and The Time Of The Doctor; additionally, the mind-swapped Jared is armed with Dalek weaponry, which lines up handily with the palm-mounted Dalek guns seen on TV… all of which is an especially good trick considering that The Curse Of Davros was recorded nearly a full year prior to Asylum‘s premiere.

Timeline: after Industrial Evolution and before The Fourth Wall

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
4th Doctor Doctor Who Lost Stories The Audio Dramas

The Foe From The Future

Doctor Who: Valley Of DeathThe TARDIS arrives in Devon, 1977, near the grounds of an estate called the Grange. The Doctor’s arrival coincides with the latest in a series of unexplainable appearances of highwaymen from the past, terrorizing the locals. With all of the apparitions centering around the Grange, the Doctor decides to pay the lord of the manor a visit, only to find an uncooperative butler (named Butler) covering for the enigmatic Lord Jalnik. Suspecting that Jalnik is exploiting a weakness in the time vortex, the Doctor continues his investigation despite Jalnik offering some deadly deterrents. With a local girl named Charlotte in tow, the Doctor and Leela follow Jalnik’s trail of mystery to Devon in the distant future, finding the human race on the edge of extinction. The last of the human race regards Jalnik as a savior for his mad plan to open an escape route to the past. The Doctor realizes that Jalnik is also the cause of their predicament, and that he intends to move up the timetable for humanity’s extinction to the 20th century.

Order this CDwritten by Robert Banks Stewart
adapted by John Dorney
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Howard Carter

Cast: Tom Baker (The Doctor), Louise Jameson (Leela), Paul Freeman (Jalnik), Louise Brealey (Charlotte), John Green (Butler), Blake Ritson (Instructor Shibac), Mark Goldthorp (Constable Burrows), Philip Pope (Father Harpin), Jaimi Barbakoff (Supreme Councillor Geflo), Dan Starkey (Historiographer Osin), Camilla Power (Councillor Kostal)

Timeline: after The Talons Of Weng-Chiang and before The Invisible Enemy

Notes: The Foe From The Future was commissioned an written for a six-episode slot in season 14, but was deemed impossible to produce with the budget constraints on hand. Elements of the story were reused in a completely new replacement script written in a rush by script editor Robert Holmes, which became the all-time fan favorite The Talons Of Weng-Chiang. Guest star Paul Freeman has also dabbled in forces beyond his control as Belloq in Raiders Of The Lost Ark, while Dan Starkey’s Doctor Who resume includes numerous Sontaran roles in both the new TV series and The Sarah Jane Adventures.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
4th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Valley Of Death

Doctor Who: Valley Of Death1873: Renowned explorer Professor Cornelius Perkins ventures into the Amazon rainforest to follow up on clues that might lead him to a legendary lost city of gold. He, his assistant and the locals they’ve hired to haul their supplies are never seen again, though a diary chronicling some of his discoveries turns up at a later date in surprisingly good shape.

1977: Edward Perkins, great-grandson of Cornelius Perkins, announces his intention to follow up on the lost expedition, using his great-grandfather’s journal as a guide. The Doctor, with Leela in tow, pulls rank as a UNIT observer and gets himself added to the new expedition. A freak storm brings the plane down near the Amazon River, requiring all of the Doctor’s piloting skills to bring the plane to a survivable crash landing. As the Doctor and photojournalist Valerie Carlton go exploring on foot and find what appears to be a downed (but not destroyed) UFO, Leela and Perkins discover signs of advanced technology and are taken to a creature called Godrin, worshipped by the natives but careful to conceal himself since he’s obviously not from Earth. Godrin has another surprise: thanks to a time bubble he has erected around his crashed spaceship, time is dilated, and Cornelius Perkins is still alive, the only survivor of the 1873 expedition and the last person Edward expected to find. Godrin proposes a peaceful exchange with the people of Earth, but once the Doctor brings him back to London, he realizes that Godrin has been far from truthful about his real intentions. Godrin and the last of his people are ready to begin the stealth colonization of Earth, and by bringing him into modern civilization, the Doctor has made this invasion possible.

Order this CDwritten by Philip Hinchcliffe
adapted by Jonathan Morris
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Andy Hardwick

Cast: Tom Baker (The Doctor), Louise Jameson (Leela), Nigel Carrington (Emissary Godrin / Dr. Summersby / Announcer), Delia Lindsay (Overlord Saldor / Newsreader), Jane Slavin (Valerie Carlton), Anthony Howell (Edward Perkins), David Killick (Professor Cornelius Perkins), Richard Bremmer (General Hemmings / Valcon / Taxi Driver)

Timeline: after The Horror Of Fang Rock and before The Invisible Enemy

Notes: Originally devised by producer Philip Hinchcliffe as a story for Doctor Who’s 15th season, The Valley Of Death was shelved when Hinchcliffe’s successor, Graham Williams, was given orders from the BBC brass to tone down the gothic horror elements that characterized the much-acclaimed but occasionally controversial tenure of Hinchcliffe and his script editor, Robert Holmes. Leela mentions that she has been blinded once before, a reference to the conclusion of The Horror Of Fang Rock (a scene added to that story at a late stage sees Leela temporarily blinded, resulting in her eyes turning blue, allowing actress Louise Jameson to ditch the brown contact lenses that were causing her considerable pain), so Valley Of Death a la Big Finish happens at some point after that story and, due to the absence of K-9, presumably before the television story that immediately follows it, The Invisible Enemy.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
4th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

The Renaissance Man

Doctor Who: Renaissance ManThe Doctor promises to show Leela a museum on another world, but the TARDIS lands at a destination that seems anything but otherworldly. A pleasant professor shows off her butterfly knowledge to the time travelers, but before long all three are drawn into the vast library of Harcourt, a man who claims to know a little of everything – and wants to know more. It’s something he wants so badly that he’s willing to take the knowledge from the minds of others by force. When he becomes intrigued by the Doctor, it’s a meeting of the minds that the Time Lord and his companion will be lucky to survive.

Order this CDwritten by Justin Richard
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Jamie Robertson

Cast: Tom Baker (The Doctor), Louise Jameson (Leela), Ian McNeice (Harcourt), Gareth Armstrong (Jephson), Anthony Howell (Edward), Daisy Ashford (Lizzie), Laura Molyneux (Beryl / Professor Hilda Lutterthwaite), John Dorney (Dr. Henry Carnforth)

Timeline: after The Talons Of Weng-Chiang; after Destination Nerva and before The Wrath Of The Iceni

Notes: Ian McNiece guest starred in the eleventh Doctor’s first television season as Winston Churchill. Gareth Armstrong guest-starred alongside Tom Baker in TV Doctor Who also, as Count Giuliano in 1976’s Masque Of Mandragora. Anthony Howell has also appeared in Big Finish’s fourth Doctor Lost Stories adventure The Valley Of Death, and the Blake’s 7 Liberator Chronicles audio story Solitary.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
Audio Dramas Blake's 7 Liberator Chronicles

The Turing Test

Blake's 7The Liberator follows the tenuous trail of a group of brilliant scientists shipped off to a rogue planet by the Federation. Avon, suspecting that the “exiled” geniuses are top cyberneticists, concocts a plan to infiltrate their ranks. Vila poses as a rogue digital memory expert, while the ever-impassive Avon finds it easier to pass as Vila’s creation: a sentient android. The double-act ingratiates them with the isolated scientists enough for Vila and Avon to meet their creation: a real android simply named 14. Poised on the edge of attaining sentience herself, 14 represents a technology that the Liberator crew can’t allow to be put into use by the Federation. When the distant science outpost is attacked by pirates, however, Avon realizes why 14 is named 14: her predecessors, all marvels of technology, have become cannon fodder to protect their creators. At that moment, Avon succumbs to an unusual, Blake-like urge to set the android free.

written by Simon Guerrier
directed by Lisa Bowerman
music by Alistair Lock

Cast: Paul Darrow (Avon), Michael Keating (Vila)

Notes: This is one of the three stories comprising the first Liberator Chronicles box set produced by Big Finish Productions, marking the first new classic series audio stories since the two BBC-produced radio plays in 1999. In much the same format as Big Finish’s Doctor Who Companion Chronicles, only two cast members are featured, with Darrow recounting the story from Avon’s perspective and occasionally performing dialogue scenes between Avon and Vila with Keating. All three stories take place between the first season episodes Project Avalon and Breakdown.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
Audio Dramas Blake's 7 Liberator Chronicles

Solitary

Blake's 7Vila awakens, locked in a cabin on the Liberator and struggling to remember how he came to be there. He is eventually contacted telepathically by a man named Nyrron – a man who Vila and Cally teleported into the middle of a Federation weapons factory to find. Nyrron, an Auron, tries to talk Vila through his recent memories of that mission, including finding Nyrron to be the only living person in a sea of burned corpses after an accident at the factory. Though Cally feels Nyrron is a promising candidate to join the cause of freedom, Avon and Jenna are less sure; Blake gives Nyrron a chance to prove his loyalty to the rebellion. Nyrron and Vila are sent to another Federation facility to find the communications component that had already been destroyed on the factory planet, but this world has another problem: a non-corporeal life form has taken hold here, capable of inhabiting any mind and copying its memories, essentially assuming its identity. The reason Vila has been locked up after this mission is simple: he isn’t really Vila. But is Nyrron, free to mingle with the Liberator crew, really Nyrron?

written by Nigel Fairs
directed by Lisa Bowerman
music by Alistair Lock

Cast: Michael Keating (Vila), Anthony Howell (Nyrron)

Notes: This is the second of the three stories comprising the first Liberator Chronicles box set produced by Big Finish Productions. All three stories take place between the first season episodes Project Avalon and Breakdown. Nyrron returns in Wolf, a story in the second Liberator Chronicles box set.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
Audio Dramas Blake's 7 Liberator Chronicles

Counterfeit

Blake's 7Using the communications decryption equipment stolen from the Federation base on Centero, Avon learns of a top-secret mining facility where the Federation is putting some of its smartest prisoners to work on a project to mine an ore that can transform into any other element. Keen to keep this from being used as a weapon, Blake decides he must investigate and interfere if possible. Under the assumed name of Galloway, Blake teleports down to the mining colony and passes himself off as one of the laboring prisoners. But things don’t add up: two years were spent mining a seam of the ore that proved to be useless, a failure on a scale that usually convinces the Federation to stop sending more resources and start sending firing squads. And yet the mine still operates, and Blake has to operate undercover without being able to contact the Liberator. Blake’s cover is quickly blown and his identity becomes known to the senior Federation officer, and worse yet, Blake is told that Space Commander Travis has arrived to personally take charge of the situation. The resistance leader steels himself for a reunion with the one man in the Federation most eager to see him dead, only to discover that it’s not that simple.

written by Peter Anghelides
directed by Lisa Bowerman
music by Alistair Lock

Cast: Gareth Thomas (Blake), Paul Darrow (Avon)

Notes: This is the third of the three stories comprising the first Liberator Chronicles box set produced by Big Finish Productions. All three stories take place between the first season episodes Project Avalon and Breakdown.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
6th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

The Fourth Wall

Doctor WhoFlip is somewhat startled to find that, with all of time and space to roam, the Doctor is occasionally satisfied with watching a cricket match on a device that can receive signals from any place in any era. But something interferes with the signal, and then Flip disappears from the TARDIS, both very much to the Doctor’s alarm. Flip finds herself trying to save a woman from an alien creature, but the alien seems indifferent to Flip’s presence. The only thing that gets the alien’s attention is the arrival of a gun-toting, punch-throwing hero, complete with heroic music. The TARDIS lands on a planet where an action-packed new adventure series, Laser, chronicles its hero’s exploits in real time thanks to its cast being locked away in a pocket dimension with very real alien dangers… but somehow Flip has wound up being transported into this “live set”, and her attempts to simply survive are not part of the script. Also not part of the script is the arrival of aggressive aliens, a very real invasion attempt that the Doctor must try to thwart.

Order this CDwritten by John Dorney
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Jamie Robertson

Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Lisa Greenwood (Flip Jackson), Julian Wadham (Augustus Scullop), Yasmin Bannerman (Dr. Helen Shepherd), Hywel Morgan (Nick Kenton / Jack Laser), Martin Hutson (Matthew Howland / Lord Krarn), Tilly Gaunt (Olivia Sayle / Jancey), Kim Wall (Chimbly / Head Warmonger), Henry Devas (Junior / Warmonger)

Notes: The Time-Space Visualizer was introduced in The Chase in 1964; though it has yet to reappear on TV, the Doctor has put the Visualizer to use again in Big Finish lore (Relative Dimensions), in the novels (“The Eye Of The Giant”), and even in computer games (City Of The Daleks).

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
6th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Wirrn Isle

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS lands the Doctor and Flip in a frozen wasteland near a hut containing a transmat pad and related equipment, where they meet Roger Buchman and his daughter, nicknamed Toasty. Flip is surprised to learn that this is Earth, Scotland to be precise, during a future ice age. Buchman and Toasty bring the time travelers back to their home, an isolated settlement near Loch Lomond. Decades after humanity took refuge aboard Nerva Beacon, Earth is being resettled by its heartiest occupants. But something is wrong: the Buchmans’ son has been missing for years, though memories of his disappearance (or death) cause wildly different reactions among the surviving family members. When the Doctor realizes that the Wirrn are still trying to overrun humanity, reaching the transmat hut becomes a priority, and Flip volunteers to pilot and ultralight plane to go there and make the necessary repairs, against the Doctor’s better judgement. Not only does her flight end prematurely, but she also discovers that everything she and the Doctor have heard about the fate of the Buchmans’ son is wrong.

Order this CDwritten by William Gallagher
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Simon Robinson

Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Lisa Greenwood (Flip), Tim Bentinck (Roger Buchman), Jenny Funnell (Veronica Buchman), Tessa Nicholson (Toasty Buchman), Rikki Lawton (Iron), Dan Starkey (Sheer Jawn), Helen Goldwyn (Dare), Glynn Sweet (Paul Dessay)

Notes: This story takes place 40 years after The Ark In Space, the Doctor’s previous bruch with the Wirrn. The apparent capitol of the resettled Earth is named Nerva City in honor of Nerva Beacon, the space station in which humanity rode out a period of intense solar flares and fought off an attempted Wirrn invasion.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
4th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

The Wrath Of The Iceni

Doctor Who: The Wrath Of The IceniThe TARDIS lands in 60 A.D., where Leela is entranced by the sight of Boudica routing a legion of Roman soldiers. The Doctor, knowing full well how history will unfold for Boudica and her followers, orders Leela back to the TARDIS, only to be disobeyed. Leela saves Boudica from two Romans and then, after hearing her story, pledges to leave the TARDIS and fight by Boudica’s side. The Doctor attempts to leave, only to be accused of being a spy. Leela claims the Time Lord is a prophet, which saves him from execution but turns every word he says into something that could change the course of human history.

Order this CDwritten by John Dorney
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Richard Fox & Lauren Yason

Cast: Tom Baker (The Doctor), Louise Jameson (Leela), Ella Kenion (Boudica), Nia Roberts (Bragnar), Michael Rouse (Caedmon / Festucas), Daniel Hawksford (Pacquolas / Man)

Timeline: after The Talons Of Weng-Chiang; after Renaissance Man and before Energy Of The Daleks

Notes: Leela is in good company – Boudica, also sometimes called Boadicea, crossed swords with Xena in the controversial 1997 Xena: Warrior Princess episode The Deliverer, during that show’s third season, though that televised rendition of Boudica diverged even more from the known details of history than this audio story does. Ella Kenion also appeared in 2011’s TV episode Let’s Kill Hitler, as the crew member responsible for ensuring a close likeness to anyone whose body was copied by the Teselecta.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green