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Earl Green is the creator, curator, and head writer of theLogBook.com.
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Classic Series Specials Doctor Who New Series Specials

An Adventure In Space And Time

An Adventure In Space And TimeIn 1963, newly arrived BBC Head of Drama Sydney Newman shakes the stolid BBC establishment with his rebellious attitudes and his desire to make the British broadcaster’s output less posh and more popular. With a 25-minute gap in the Saturday evening schedule to fill, Newman assembles a team to begin working on a new television series called Doctor Who, concerning an eccentric time traveler whose incredibly time-space machine, the TARDIS, is disguised as a 1950s police box. Wanting to appoint a producer to run this show, Newman looks for someone with “piss and vinegar” and settles on Verity Lambert, who had previously worked as his production assistant. But in her new position as the first female producer in the BBC, Verity makes waves… and a few enemies. She bucks conventional wisdom in hiring esteemed character actor William Hartnell to play the part of the Doctor, the show’s wizened and yet ageless time traveler. For his own part, Hartnell has been looking for a role to get him out of a rut of being typecast as tough authority figures and military characters. Verity also finds a willing collaborator in rookie director Waris Hussein, and after months of preparation and planning, Doctor Who is finally in a studio (one of the smallest and least sophisticated at the BBC’s disposal, naturally), though the show is fighting for its life up to the moment of broadcast and beyond.

Order this series on DVDwritten by Mark Gatiss
directed by Terry McDonough
music by Edmund Butt

Cast: David Bradley (William Hartnell), Ross Gurney-Randall (Reg), Roger May (Len), Sam Hoare (Douglas Camfield), Doctor WhoCharlie Kemp (Arthur), Brian Cox (Sydney Newman), William Russell (Harry – Security Guard), Jeff Rawle (Mervyn Pinfield), Andrew Woodall (Rex Tucker), Jessica Raine (Verity Lambert), Jemma Powell (Jacqueline Hill), Lesley Manville (Heather Hartnell), Cara Jenkins (Judith Carney), Sacha Dhawan (Waris Hussein), Toby Hadoke (Cyril), Sarah Winter (Delia Derbyshire), Jamie Glover (William Russell), Claudia Grant (Carole Ann Ford), David Annen (Peter Brachacki), Mark Eden (Donald Baverstock), Ian Hallard (Richard Martin), Nicholas Briggs (Peter Hawkins), Carole Ann Ford (Joyce), Reece Pockney (Alan), Reece Shearsmith (Patrick Troughton), Anneke Wills (Farewell party attendee), Jean Marsh (Farewell party attendee), Anna-Lisa Drew (Maureen O’Brien), Sophie Holt (Jackie Lane)

Notes: Numerous actors appear in this movie who have appeared in actual episodes of Doctor Who before, not least of which are surviving members of the original 1963 cast William Russell and Carole Ann Ford, who played Ian and Susan respectively. David Doctor WhoBradley appeared in the 2012 episode Dinosaurs In A Spaceship as the episode’s villain, while Jessica Raine guest starred in 2013’s Hide. Hartnell-era companions Jean Marsh and Anneke Wills – both of whom reprise their 1960s roles for Big Finish Doctor Who audio dramas – appear as partygoers at Verity Lambert’s farewell party. Big Finish Doctor Who producer Nicholas Briggs, the voice of the Daleks in modern Doctor Who, appears (in a wig) as 1960s Dalek voice originator Peter Hawkins.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who New Series Season 07

The Day Of The Doctor

Doctor WhoIn the waning days of the Time War, the Doctor tires of the constant fighting and bloodshed. He breaks into the Time Lords’ Omega Archives, containing forbidden Gallifreyan superweapons (most of which have already been unsuccessfully deployed against the Daleks). He takes the Moment, a galaxy-devouring weapon of mass destruction which has never been used because its sentient operating system has developed its own conscience, and will stand in judgement over whoever might try to use it. The Doctor abandons his TARDIS and sets off on foot to a bombed-out structure in the wastelands of outer Gallifrey, fully intending to activate the Moment and end the war. He’s puzzled when a young woman appears suddenly and refuses to leave: this is the Moment’s conscience, ready to try to dissuade its operator. It has chosen the appearance and voice of one of the Doctor’s companions, but has gotten past and future mixed up. The Moment offers to show the Doctor what will happen to him after he destroys Gallifrey…

Clara, having taken a job at Coal Hill School, gets a message from the Doctor and sets out to find the TARDIS. Moments after the time travelers are reunited, the TARDIS lurches unexpectedly, thanks to the UNIT helicopter that has grappled it and is hauling it toward the center of London. With the TARDIS now relocated to the National Gallery, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart shows the Doctor why UNIT need his expertise: a number of paintings, exhibiting an unusual three-dimensional effect, have had their glass frames broken from within; all of the paintings also once had humanoid figures in them, but those figures are now missing. Before the Doctor can investigate, a time fissure appears in mid-air in the Gallery, and he leaps through it, finding himself face-to-face with his tenth incarnation, who is dealing with a shapeshifting Zygon attempting to impersonate Queen Elizabeth I. And moments later, both Doctors are stunned – and alarmed – when another of their incarnations emerges from the fissure: an older man who does not regard himself as the Doctor. This is the incarnation of the Doctor who fought in the Time War, ending it in a pyrrhic stalemate that wiped out both the Time Lords and the Daleks, the incarnation that the later Doctors refuse to acknowledge; the Doctor’s true ninth life. The Queen orders all three of them taken away to the Tower of London.

In the modern day, the Tower is now UNIT’s headquarters, and the home of the Black Archive, a top secret repository of captured alien technology that would rival Torchwood’s collection. Kate and Clara return to the Tower, but it’s not until she is trapped in the Archive that Clara realizes that Kate has already been kidnapped and replaced by a Zygon. Grabbing a portable time manipulator that UNIT once took off of the briefly-dead body of a man named Captain Jack Harkness, Clara makes her escape, travels back to the past and rescues the three Doctors as well. The Doctors manage to thwart the Zygon invasion, but then the Doctor from the Time War vanishes. The tenth and eleventh Doctors follow him back to Gallifrey’s past – a place and time that the TARDIS shouldn’t be able to visit – and offer to help him activate the Moment so he doesn’t have to bear the consequences alone.

But the Doctor’s later incarnations, having struggled with the remorse of this act for hundreds of years, take the unprecedented decision to change history: save Gallifrey while allowing the Daleks to be destroyed, without interrupting their own timeline. But to save the Time Lords, more Doctors will be required – perhaps even Doctors who have yet to exist – and Gallifrey will have to be forcibly relocated, possibly into a parallel universe, leading to the impression that it has been destroyed. And even the Doctors’ attempt to save their home planet may still lead to its destruction.

Order the DVDwritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Nick Hurran
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), David Tennant (The Doctor), Christopher Eccleston (The Doctor), John Hurt (The Doctor), Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Colin Baker (The Doctor), Peter Davison (The Doctor), Tom Baker (The Doctor), Jon Pertwee (The Doctor), Patrick Troughton (The Doctor), William Hartnell (The Doctor), Jenna Coleman (Clara), Billie Piper (Rose), Tristan Beint (Tom), Jemma Redgrave (Kate Stewart), Ingrid Oliver (Osgood), Chris Finch (Time Lord Soldier), Peter de Jersey (Androgar), Ken Bones (The General), Philip Buck (Arcadia Father), Sophie Morgan-Price (Time Lord), Joanna Page (Elizabeth I), Orlando James (Lord Bentham), Jonjo O’Neill (McGillop), Tom Keller (Atkins), Aidan Cook (Zygon), Paul Kasey (Zygon), Nicholas Briggs (voices of the Daleks and Zygons), Barnaby Edwards (Dalek 1), Nicholas Pegg (Dalek 2), John Guilor (Voice Over Artist)

Doctor WhoNotes: The War Council shouldn’t be surprised at all that the Doctor can access the Omega Archives; his seventh incarnation was shown to be in possession of Time Lord superweapons that had presumably been with him for quite some time (Remembrance Of The Daleks‘ Hand of Omega and the living metal validium from Silver Nemesis, both aired in 1988). The Moment, first mentioned in The End Of Time Part 2 (2010), most closely resembles validium, but the Nemesis statue carved from validium had no obvious sign of a conscience, but did show signs of sentience.

The Zygons, though a popular monster in Doctor Who fandom, have only been seen in one prior television adventure, the Tom Baker era four-parter Terror Of The Zygons Doctor Who(1975), though they have reappeared in novels and numerous times in the eighth Doctor’s audio adventures, and even have their own action figure – not bad for a one-off villain.

This story seems to necessitate a reshuffling of the Doctor’s playlist: the incarnation commonly believed to be the ninth Doctor is actually the tenth, the tenth Doctor is actually the eleventh, and the current incarnation played by Matt Smith is actually the twelfth. This means that the incarnation to be portrayed by Peter Capaldi – glimpsed very briefly in the scene in which all of the Doctors rush to Gallifrey’s rescue – is the Doctor’s thirteenth and final life… unless, of course, the Doctor has somehow used up another regeneration somehow.

Asthmatic UNIT scientist Osgood may or may not be related to Sergeant Osgood, who served under Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart in The Daemons (1971). UNIT’s Black Archive was Doctor Whoestablished in the Brigadier’s final televised appearance, in the Sarah Jane Adventures two-parter Enemy Of The Bane, though it was not in the Tower of London at that time, meaning that the Black Archive has either been moved, or has a decentralized series of locations. Voice artist John Guilor, who had already provided the voice of the first Doctor in bonus features for the DVD release of 1964’s Planet Of Giants, reprised that voice for the every-incarnation-of-the-Doctor climax.

Whether you consider his final appearance to have occurred in 1981’s Logopolis or the 1993 charity special Dimensions In Time, this episode marks Tom Baker’s first appearance in new footage in Doctor Whotelevised Doctor Who in a very long time; the exact nature of his character is left extremely vague.

One day after its premiere unfolded simultaneously in 94 countries, The Day Of The Doctor and its production team were awarded the Guinness World Record for the most widely watched non-news, non-sports drama presentation in the history of the medium of television.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
6th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

The Trial Of The Valeyard

Trial Of The ValeyardThe Doctor is once again dragged into the court of the Time Lords, but this time he is sought not as the accused, but as the attorney for the accused. His client is revealed to be the Valeyard, who mercilessly prosecuted the Doctor at his own trial before being revealed as a dark, twisted future incarnation of the Doctor himself. The crimes of which the Valeyard is accused are kept classified, leaving the Doctor few avenues for defending his client, so the Doctor takes the opportunity to delve into the Valeyard’s background, trying to use the trial as a way to discover how the Valeyard came into existence. The answers prove to be both disquieting and cryptic, with the Valeyard finally admitting that he is the result of an experiment to extend a Time Lord’s regenerative life span beyond the accepted limit of 13 incarnations. The Valeyard claims to be the product of a failed bid for immortality, but whose bid? And how does the Valeyard’s very existence constitute a crime punishable by his death?

Order this CDwritten by Alan Barnes & Mike Maddox
directed by Barnaby Edwards
music by Andy Hardwick / ERS

Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Michael Jayston (The Valeyard), Lynda Bellingham (The Inquisitor)

Notes: The Doctor’s symbiotic nuclei are mentioned; first mentioned in The Two Doctors (1985), these cells play a role in the regeneration process and, when subjected to the Rassilon Imprimatur, enable Time Lords to travel through time with no ill effects. The Valeyard foreshadows the seventh Doctor as a manipulative chess master, and the eighth Doctor as a man trying to “escape the shadow of death”, which was probably intended, at the time of writing, to refer to the events of the audio story To The Death and the Dark Eyes saga that followed, but can also be applied to the eighth Doctor’s avoidance of fighting in the Time War (Night Of The Doctor). The Doctor’s school nickname, Theta Sigma, was first revealed in the television story The Armageddon Factor (1978), and hints of it have continued to appear in other media as well as the TV series.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
7th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Afterlife

Doctor WhoTraumatized by Hex’s selfless sacrifice of his own life, Ace is boiling over with rage and grief. She cripples the TARDIS until the Doctor agrees to treat Hex’s death as a tragedy on a human scale, complete with a memorial for the one remaining member of Hex’s family. The Doctor can barely face Hex’s grandmother with the news, and even then he isn’t able to divulge what truly happened to Hex. Ace saves a woman from what seems like a mugging, only to discover that a gang war is overrunning Hex’s home town, and that war is being fought with seemingly supernatural weapons far beyond human technology. She also discovers that the other major rival in this gang war is a man who is, at the very least, Hex’s identical twin: Hector Thomas. At Hex’s memorial, the Doctor is relieved to see Sally Morgan in attendance, and she briefs him on the unnatural warfare threatening to consume the city. As the Doctor steps into the fray, he discovers that he is once again playing games against gods…and the stakes are an old friend’s soul.

Order this CDwritten by Mike Fitton
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Howard Carter

Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Philip Olivier (Hex), Amy Pemberton (Sally Morgan), Jean Boht (Hilda Schofield), Mandi Symonds (Lily Finnegan), Jonathan Forbes (Barry Finnegan), Andrew Dickens (D.I. Derek Mortimer)

Notes: Hex died at the end of Gods And Monsters (2012) saving his friends aboard the TARDIS, though that story’s post-end-credits “coda” made it clear that Hex still existed in some (possibly spiritual) form. Private Sally Morgan was introduced in House Of Blue Fire, returning in Black And White and Gods And Monsters; she also appeared in the Companion Chronicles story Project: Nirvana. Hex’s mother, Cassie, encountered the sixth Doctor twice (Project: Twilight, Project: Lazarus).

Timeline: after Gods And Monsters and before Revenge Of The Swarm

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who New Series Season 07

The Time Of The Doctor

Doctor WhoThe Doctor is confronted with a mystery: a powerful signal is emanating from a backwater planet, defying any attempt to translate or decipher it, and luring ships from nearly every spacefaring race to that world. Having salvaged the severed head of a Cyberman to harness its processing power, the Doctor attaches a piece of Gallifreyan communications technology to the head, presumably capable of translating any language, much like the TARDIS herself, and “Handles” promptly identifies the planet from which the signal is transmitting as Gallifrey, though it bears no resemblance to the Doctor’s home planet. The Doctor and Clara are invited to board the first ship to have arrived here, the Papal Mainframe of the Church. The head of the Church, Tasha Lem, reveals the true name of the mystery planet: Trenzalore. The Papal Mainframe is protecting Trenzalore with a force field, but all hell will break loose the moment that the other ships realize that not only has someone been granted access to the planet, but that someone happens to be the Doctor. Upon first setting foot on Trenzalore, the Doctor and Clara find that others lie in wait, including Weeping Angels. They narrowly escape, and this time the Doctor insists on visiting Trenzalore on his terms, using the TARDIS instead of Tasha Lem’s teleport. The signal emanates from a large crack in the wall of a church tower on Trenzalore, shaped like the crack that the Doctor witnessed numerous times during his early travels with Amy and Rory. The signal is in the Gallifreyan language, repeating one question over and over: “Doctor who?” – the question that the Doctor has been warned must never be answered. Soon, the occupants of the many ships orbiting Trenzalore lose their patience, and try to invade the planet, only to find that the Doctor has given up his travels in space and time to defend it. Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, Weeping Angels and others attempt to land on Trenzalore, and are either driven back into space or destroyed.

Involuntarily returned to Earth by the TARDIS, Clara tries to resume her day-to-day life, only to be visited by Tasha Lem, piloting the Doctor’s timeship. She wants Clara to return to Trenzalore. Hundreds of years after he last saw her, the Doctor is dying of old age, able to regenerate no more. Tasha Lem wants Clara to visit him because the Doctor shouldn’t have to die alone.

But yet another force in the universe seems to believe that the Doctor shouldn’t have to die at all.

Order the DVDwritten by Steven Moffat
directed by Jamie Payne
music by Murray Gold

Cast: Matt Smith (The Doctor), Jenna-Louise Coleman (Clara), Orla Brady (Tasha Lem), James Buller (Dad), Elizabeth Rider (Linda), Sheila Reid (Gran), Doctor WhoMark Anthony Brighton (Colonel Albero), Rob Jarvis (Abramal), Tessa Peake-Jones (Marta), Jack Hollington (Barnable), Sonita Henry (Colonel Meme), Kayvan Novak (voice of Handles), Tom Gibbons (Young Man), Ken Bones (Voice), Aidan Cook (Cyberman), Nicholas Briggs (Dalek/Cyberman voices), Barnaby Edwards (Dalek 1), Nicholas Pegg (Dalek 2), Ross Mullan (Silent), Dan Starkey (Sontaran), Karen Madison (Weeping Angel), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Peter Capaldi (The Doctor)

Notes: Daleks, Cybermen (including a unique Cyberman made of wood, echoing the King and Queen from The Doctor, The Widow, And The Wardrobe), Sontarans and Angels are seen to attempt landing on Trenzalore; others, such as the Terileptils (seen in only one story, 1982’s The Visitation), are mentioned by name only. Silurian Ark ships (Dinosaurs On A Spaceship) are also seen besieging Trenzalore. The device the Doctor attaches to “Handles” is indeed a communications device given to the Master by the High Council of Gallifrey before venturing into the Death Zone with orders to rescue the Doctor (The Five Doctors, 1983); the significance Doctor Whoof this reference lies in what happened before the Master was given that device in The Five Doctors: he was offered “a complete new life cycle” of regenerations, something which one may infer has been granted to the Doctor by the end of this story. The Punch & Judy-style puppet show performed on Trenzalore recounts the Doctor’s misadventures with the one-eyed Monoids in The Ark (1965).

The Silence, seen throughout the eleventh Doctor’s era, are part of the Church, and stand with the Doctor to defend Trenzalore; the Silents that pestered the Doctor in seasons past (The Impossible Astronaut, Day Of The Moon, The Wedding Of River Song) were part of a rogue task group led by Madame Kovarian to prevent the Doctor from ever reaching this point; obviously that group was not successful, even when they took great pains to kidnap infant Melody Pond to program her to assassinate the Doctor. The cracks, first glimpsed in The Eleventh Hour (and, in that story, attributed to Prisoner Zero), are apparently the Time Lords attempting to signal their location to the Doctor so he can retrieve Gallifrey and return it to its proper place in reality.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Audio Dramas Big Finish Blake's 7

Fractures

Blake's 7Following a close call from Travis’ battalion of pursuit ships, the Liberator is forced to take shelter in an area called the Derelict Zone while auto-repair systems patch up the engines. The Derelict Zone is aptly named, densely packed with the hulks of dead ships. But even after the engines are repaired, the Liberator remains unable to move, and Blake and his crew disperse to different parts of the ship to track down the cause. But in the course of communicating with one another in different parts of the ship, each learns that one of their shipmates can’t be trusted – one of them has seized control of Zen and the Liberator and is trying to kill everyone else.

The problem is that each one of them thinks a different person is the traitor. The result is the entire crew, standing on the flight deck, training their weapons on one another. Who is really sabotaging the Liberator?

Order this CDwritten by Justin Richards
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Alistair Lock

Cast: Gareth Thomas (Blake), Paul Darrow (Avon), Michael Keating (Vila), Jan Chappell (Cally), Sally Knyvette (Jenna), Brian Croucher (Travis), Alistair Lock (Zen/Orac), Bethan Walker (Mutoid)

Notes: Fractures and the stories that follow it take place shortly after the TV episode A Voice From The Past and prior to Gambit; Blake and his crew know of the existence of Star One, but not its location, and the incident with “Shiban”‘s mind control is mentioned as being not only recent, but still a source of concern.

LogBook entry and review by Earl Green

Categories
6th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Antidote To Oblivion

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS picks up a distress call from another TARDIS, and the Doctor and Flip follow the signal to 24th century London, a near-wasteland in which it is no longer the capitol city of the UK, but is instead part of a geographical area govened by ConCorp, a corporate entity which runs the once-great nation like a huge company. But ConCorp’s chief benefactor is Sil, a profiteering Mentor who has extended enough loans that he and his species stand to own the entire country if those loans are defaulted upon. The Doctor and Flip learn that ConCorp (at Sil’s urging) is embarking on a genocidal plan to reduce the numbers of the unemployed to whom it must pay benefits: Sil and his chief scientist, Cordelia Crozier, are about to unleash a deadly plague to wipe out most life on Earth. And they’ve duped the Doctor into coming to Earth so they can mine an antidote from his Time Lord immune system… a cure for which they’ll happily charge the plague’s survivors a princely sum.

Order this CDwritten by Philip Martin
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Fool Circle Productions

Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Lisa Greenwood (Flip Jackson), Nabil Shaban (Sil), Dawn Murphy (Miss Cordelia), David Dobson (Pan / Lord Mav), Mary-Ann Cafferkey (Cerise), Scott Joseph (Boscoe / Voda / Knight Marshal), Mandy Weston (Kristal / Mistress Na / Velena)

Notes: Cordelia Crozier is the daughter of “young Crozier,” whose mind-transplantation process resulted in the direct intervention of the Time Lords and Peri’s removal from the timeline. The Time Lord Anzor was first mentioned in the scripts of the unmade 1986 television adventure Mission To Magnus, which established his past relationship with the Doctor. Mission To Magnus was novelized in the late ’80s and then recorded as a full-cast adventure in the Lost Stories range in 2009, so Antidote To Oblivion effectively canonizes that story. A disease known as Lasarti’s Wasting is mentioned, which may be a reference to Nyssa’s husband Lasarti (Circular Time, Cobwebs, Prisoners Of Fate).

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
4th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

The King Of Sontar

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS brings the Doctor and Leela to the site of an unlikely sight: Sontarans fighting another Sontaran. But the target of this operation is no ordinary Sontaran. A Sontaran platoon has been sent to kill – and has failed to kill – a seven-foot-tall Sontaran renegade called Strang. Thanks to a mishap with one of the clone warriors’ cloning vats, Strang has received the concentrated DNA of multiple Sontarans, making him almost unstoppable, and he has his eyes set on wiping out Sontar and its race of “inferior” Sontarans. The Doctor believes that the Time Lords have once again deposited him at a critical moment in history to do their dirty work: to stop Strang from making the Sontarans a far more dangerous race. And just as happened on Skaro, the Doctor has grave misgivings about carrying out this assignment… but others feel differently about the matter.

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

Cast: Tom Baker (The Doctor), Louise Jameson (Leela), Dan Starkey (Strang / Hutchins), David Collings (Rosato), John Banks (Vilhol / Mercenary), David Seddon (Irving / Garn / Tashan / Mercenary 2), Jenny Funnell (Reaver)

Notes: Technically, this is Leela’s first encounter with the Sontarans, pre-dating The Invasion Of Time.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
Star Trek Star Trek Continues Star Trek Fan Films

Lolani

Star Trek Continues

This is an episode of a fan-made series whose storyline may be invalidated by later official studio productions.

Stardate not given: The Enterprise comes across a damaged and drifting Tellarite vessel with a single life form aboard. When beamed aboard, the ship’s sole survivor is an Orion slave girl who is prepared to fight off the entire crew of the Enterprise to save herself. She finally reveals her name – Lolani – and declares her wish to be free of the Orion system of slavery. But since Orion is not a Federation member word, Captain Kirk’s hands are tied when Lolani’s master comes to reclaim her. When he decides to go against express orders to avoid provoking the Orions by ignoring their laws, Kirk simply seems to make things worse, not only for himself but for a woman determined to change life for all women on her world.

Watch ItWatch Itwritten by Paul Bianchi and Huston Huddleston
story by Huston Huddleston & Vic Mignogna
directed by Chris White
music by Fred Steiner
additional music by Vic Mignogna

Cast: Vic Mignogna (Captain Kirk), Todd Haberkorn (Mr. Spock), Larry Nemecek (Dr. McCoy / Tellarite Crewman), Chris Doohan (Mr. Scott), Grant Imahara (Sulu), Kim Stinger (Lt. Uhura), Michele Specht (Dr. McKennah), Lou Ferrigno (Zaminhon), Fiona Vroom (Lolani), Star Trek ContinuesMatthew Ewald (Crewman Kenway), Erin Gray (Commodore Gray), Daniel Logan (Ensign Tongaroa), Reuben Langdon (Security Guard), Scott Grainger (Security Officer), Hannah Barucky (Crew Member), Stephanie Hall (Security Guard), Michelle Siles (Crew Member), Dom Baldwin (Security Guard), Abbey Hazel (Nurse Temple), Alexandra Preston (Crew Member), Felia Mano (Crew Member), Adam George (Crew Member), Stephen Cevallos (Security Guard), Danny Pytell (Crew Member), Donald Huston (Crew Member), Megan Warner (Crew Member), Hayley Warner (Crew Member), Kevin Fry-Bowers (Sev Bim Jor), Ryan T. Husk (Tellarite Mercenary)

Notes: Guest star Lou Ferrigno is best known for another role which required him to be painted green, as 1970s TV superhero The Incredible Hulk. Erin Gray is another ’70s genre star, known to fans of Buck Rogers In The 25th Century as Colonel Star Trek ContinuesWilma Deering. Daniel Logan may still be best known as the young Boba Fett, a role he played as a boy in 2002’s Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones. Matthew Ewald also guest starred as a young James T. Kirk in The Protracted Man, an episode of the fan series Star Trek Phase II. Co-writer Huston Huddleston is the organizer of the Enterprise-D Bridge Restoration Project, a non-profit, fan-supported project to build a museum around recovered pieces of the Star Trek: The Next Generation bridge set, both screen-used and replicas left over from the now-defunct Las Vegas Hilton Star Trek: The Experience attraction.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Audio Dramas Big Finish Blake's 7

Battleground

Blake's 7Having become aware of a Federation equivalent to Orac – which may even be able to detect where the Liberator is by detecting Orac – the crew is racing to find the mind behind its development, a Federation officer named Mikhailov. Orac has narrowed down a list of possible leads, all of whom have proven not to be the person Blake and his crew are seeking. Only one possibility remains, on the planet Straxis, a world known informally to the Federation as Battleground 9. The planet is heavily defended, and when Blake and Avon teleport down, they find a war in progress between the Federation and forces led by a deposed Federation governor. He was removed from office and sent to Battleground 9 to serve as cannon fodder for training exercises, but he has instead organized a functional resistance movement that has become a thorn in the Federation’s side. Blake and Avon meet up with this rebel group, but are separated in the fierce shelling; Avon is captured by the Federation and interrogated by the officer grading the current training exercise – none other than Mikhailov herself, who finds herself answering as many questions as she is asking.

Order this CDwritten by Andrew Smith
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Alistair Lock

Cast: Gareth Thomas (Blake), Paul Darrow (Avon), Michael Keating (Vila), Jan Chappell (Cally), Sally Knyvette (Jenna), Timothy Bentinck (Abel Garmon), Abigail Hollick (Alexa Mikhailov), Alistair Lock (Zen/Orac), Dan Starkey (Voss Ferrell)

LogBook entry and review by Earl Green

Categories
Audio Dramas Big Finish Blake's 7

Drones

Blake's 7Crippled above the planet Straxis, the Liberator all but shuts down to effect automatic repairs. When Federation pursuit ships appear to finish the job, Orac links up to Zen and assumes control of the Liberator, directing the ship to dive into the atmosphere of Straxis and crash into the ocean, opening select external doors and flooding parts of the ship to submerge it in the sea, out of sight. Blake, Vila and Cally teleport to land, where they find another resistance cell suffering heavy losses as a result of Blake and Avon’s interference in the insurrection on the other side of the planet. This cell’s leader is more fanatical than methodical, but he has good reason to be paranoid: robotic Federation drones, small as insects, infect their targets with a neurotoxin that, in nearly every case, causes a very unpleasant death – and Vila is the latest to be stung. Underwater, Avon and Jenna have to deal with more Federation drones, crab-like salvage robots scouting out the Liberator. Worse yet, Orac has yet to surrender its control over Zen and the Liberator…and is working to its own agenda, which it won’t divulge even to Avon.

Order this CDwritten by Marc Platt
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Alistair Lock

Cast: Gareth Thomas (Blake), Paul Darrow (Avon), Michael Keating (Vila), Jan Chappell (Cally), Sally Knyvette (Jenna), Alistair Lock (Zen/Orac), Sara Powell (Dr. Cara Petrus), Tim Treloar (Bru Renderson)

LogBook entry and review by Earl Green

Categories
Audio Dramas Big Finish Blake's 7

Mirror

Blake's 7There is dissent aboard the Liberator about the crew’s next course of action. Jenna wants to hunt down Space Major Kade and take revenge, but Blake sends Cally to trail Kade instead, over Jenna’s protest. Cally finds that Travis has beaten her to it: he’s using Kade as bait to draw Jenna and the rest of the Liberator crew into a trap. Blake, Avon and Vila teleport to a cargo ship that may contain a clue to the whereabouts of Fedorac, the Federation’s analogue of Orac, only to discover that the ship seems to contain Fedorac itself – and other dangers. Acting on her own desire for revenge, Jenna leaves Blake and the others stranded and takes the Liberator back to the planet to find Kade, but Orac, preoccupied with discovering more about Fedorac, then leaves Jenna and Cally stranded on a primitive planet with Travis and a hostile local population. Is anyone, or anything, among the Liberator crew acting out of anything except self-interest?

Order this CDwritten by Peter Anghelides
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Alistair Lock

Cast: Gareth Thomas (Blake), Paul Darrow (Avon), Michael Keating (Vila), Jan Chappell (Cally), Sally Knyvette (Jenna), Brian Croucher (Travis), Alistair Lock (Zen/Orac), Bethan Walker (Locklan), Hugh Fraser (President)

Notes: The planet Vere is a nod to classic Blake’s 7 TV director (and, in series four, producer) Vere Lorrimer (1920-1998).

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Audio Dramas Big Finish Blake's 7

Cold Fury

Blake's 7Accidentally left behind by the Liberator crew after narrowly escaping the trap laid for them using Fedorac as a lure, Vila is now Travis’ prisoner. Though he proves surprisingly resilient to Travis’ methods of persuading him to talk, and despite one escape attempt during which he’s able to send a distress signal, even Vila has limits to his endurance.

Zen detects Vila’s distress signal and traces its point of origin to an underground Federation facilitiy on an inhospitable ice planet, but en route, it is also discovered that the President of the Federation may be there as well, making an unannounced visit to that same top-secret facility. Blake becomes obsessed with what he perceives as an opportunity to behead the Federation’s power structure, and to the alarm of Jenna and the rest of his crew, seems to regard rescuing Vila as a minor mission objective.

Which is exactly what the President and Travis are counting on.

Order this CDwritten by Cavan Scott & Mark Wright
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Alistair Lock

Cast: Gareth Thomas (Blake), Paul Darrow (Avon), Michael Keating (Vila), Jan Chappell (Cally), Sally Knyvette (Jenna), Brian Croucher (Travis), Hugh Fraser (President), Anthony Howell (Gustav Nyrron), Caroline Langrishe (Dr. Tirus), Alistair Lock (Zen/Orac)

Notes: Travis reminds Vila of the events on the planet Exbar, from the television episode Hostage, a surprising callback since Hostage is, perhaps, not the best-regarded episode of the TV series. The President says that the Federation’s (frequently unsuccessful) cloning experiments are taking place without the knowledge or help of the Clone Masters (seen only once in Weapon). Gustav Nyrron was introduced in the Liberator Chronicles audiobook Wolf, while the scientist overseeing the cloning experiments is from Auron (Children Of Auron), where such technology is in frequent use, though one gets the impression she has knowledge of only part of that process.

LogBook entry and review by Earl Green

Categories
Audio Series Survivors

Revelation

SurvivorsAn unusually potent winter flu has swept across the British population, leaving classrooms mostly empty and businesses struggling to operate. American attorney Maddie Price finds that she can no longer simply hop on a plane back to Chicago, while reporter Daniel Connor confers with his co-worker and acting editor, Helen, about how best to cover the growing crisis. A low-level government official, Redgrave, confides to Maddie that the spread of the illness is worse – becoming fatal for some – and flights to America (or, for that matter, anywhere else) won’t be resuming anytime soon). Jaded Professor Gillison finds himself giving pre-Christmas-break refresher lectures in sociology to a classroom nearly empty of students. When Helen becomes increasingly sick, Daniel tries to take her home, only to find that her husband and children are dead. Daniel finds every excuse he can to avoid telling her and decides to try to get her to a hospital, but London traffic has come to a standstill; Helen herself dies before Daniel can get her help. Maddie and Redgrave make their way to the airport control tower, now abandoned, to try to get a message out to any other survivors of the plague who may be listening. Similarly, Gillison commandeers the campus radio transmitter to attempt reaching out to others. Daniel, alone, powers up his tape recorder and begins recording events as they unfold.

None of them know if they’ll ever hear another human voice again.

Order this CDwritten by Matt Fitton
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Nicholas Briggs

Cast: John Banks (Daniel Connor), Louise Jameson (Jackie Burchall), Sinead Keenan (Susie Edwards), Caroline Langrishe (Helen Wiseman), Adrian Lukis (James Gillison), Chase Masterson (Maddie Price), Terry Molloy (John Redgrave), Camilla Power (Fiona Bell), Phil Mulryne (Pnil Bailey), San Shella (Sayed)

Notes: Based on Terry Nation’s cult classic mid-1970s series about a plague sweeping through the human population and leaving few survivors, Big Finish’s audio series populates its cast with original characters who bump into the original TV characters as their stories unfold. The technology referenced in dialogue still dates the story to the 1970s. This first installment features none of the original TV characters.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Audio Dramas Big Finish Blake's 7

Caged

Blake's 7Travis’ trap has been successfully sprung: with Vila’s betrayal, Travis has control of the Liberator and its crew, Blake is critically injured, and all of the above are being delivered to the President of the Federation. The President awaits his prize at a space station in orbit of Saturn’s moon Titan, a station which appears to have been custom-built to dismantle and study the Liberator. When Avon says he has no idea where Orac’s key is, Travis tortures him. Vila continues to obey Travis’ every whim, and his former crewmates would be happy to see him dead as a result.

The President of the Federation invites Blake to an extravagant dinner, promising to give Blake time to expound his viewpoint on the Federation’s stance on freedom, all while robotic drones begin slicing into the Liberator’s hull through the windows. Is this the last supper of the resistance?

Order this CDwritten by Cavan Scott & Mark Wright
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Alistair Lock

Cast: Gareth Thomas (Blake), Paul Darrow (Avon), Michael Keating (Vila), Jan Chappell (Cally), Sally Knyvette (Jenna), Brian Croucher (Travis), Hugh Fraser (President), Alistair Lock (Zen/Orac)

Notes: Thanks to Orac’s brief direct connection to the Federation computer network (and Avon’s quick thinking), a further clue about Star One is uncovered, leading the crew to Docholli in the TV episode Gambit, which takes place not long after this audio story.

LogBook entry and review by Earl Green