Categories
8th Doctor

Seasons Of Fear

Seasons Of FearAfter numerous misadventures, the TARDIS finally brings Charley to Singapore in 1930, right on time to make her appointment with a young man who she had originally stowed away aboard the R-101 to meet. While she is away, the Doctor meets a man named Sebastian Grayle – a man both blessed and cursed with immoirtality, a man who knows that the Doctor is a Time Lord, and a man who claims to have killed him some with the help of his masters at some point in the Doctor’s future. When Charlie returns, the Doctor once against whisks her away, urgently setting out to find out how Grayle came to be immortal, and who he serves who might want the Doctor dead. They travel back in time to the third century A.D. and meet Grayle in his original form: a naive priest who has made a tenuous pact with an alien power beyond his understanding. If the Doctor cannot stop Grayle from gaining immortality, his new nemesis will grow in power and cunning through the centuries until, at least, he does have the means to defeat a Time Lord.

Order this CDwritten by Paul Cornell and Caroline Symcox
directed by Gary Russell
music by Jane Elphinstone

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Stephen Perring (Sebastian Grayle), Stephen Fewell (Marcus), Robert Curbishley (Lucillius / Grayle’s Masters’ voices), Lennox Greaves (Edward), Sue Wallace (Edith), Stephen Fewell (Richard Martin), Justine Mitchell (Lucy Martin), Don Warrington (The Auditor)

Timeline: after The Chimes Of Midnight and before Embrace The Darkness

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor

Embrace The Darkness

Embrace The DarknessA science station on the distant world of Cimmeria IV is plunged into darkness. Its three-person crew can’t see, but they can feel – and what they feel, at the hands of whatever has attacked the station, is intense pain. The Doctor arrives by chance, having always wondered how the sun of the Cimmerian system went dark at some point in the future, but when he and Charley pay a visit, things go horribly wrong, including Charley encountering the science station’s crew…who have been relieved of their eyes. The same fate then befalls Charley when she’s separated from the Doctor – and the Time Lord is getting no help from ROSM, an artificial intelligence whose inflexible thinking may not only doom an entire species inhabiting Cimmeria IV, but may also force the time travelers to be present for the death of the sun.

Order this CDwritten by Nicholas Briggs
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Nicholas BriggsJim Mortimore

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Nicola Boyce (Orllensa), Lee Moone (Ferras), Mark McDonnell (Haliard), Ian Brooker (ROSM / Solarian / Cimmerian), Nicholas Briggs (Cimmerian Voice)

Timeline: after Seasons Of Fear and before The Time Of The Daleks

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
6th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Excelis Rising

Doctor Who:The TARDIS materializes on Artaris, exactly one millennium after the Doctor’s previous visit. But it has landed in the wrong place at the wrong time: a robbery is underway in the prestigious museum in the city of Excelis, and the sudden appearance of a blue police box and its colorfully-dressed occupant is just one more mystery for the investigators to solve. The Doctor learns that the Relic itself – which, in his fifth incarnation, he had helped to find – was the target of the robbery, and is astonished to see a familiar face arrive to take charge of the investigation. The man the Doctor knew as Lord Grayvorn is known to the citizens of Excelis as Reeve Maupassant, but he’s definitely the same man – he recognizes the TARDIS, and somehow even recognizes the Doctor, and he is apparently still suffering side-effects of coming into direct contact with the Relic. When the museum curator and one of the break-in suspects are killed in a grisly manner, Maupassant eagerly declares the Doctor to be the culprit. But can the Doctor prove his innocence, much less prove that a thousand-year-old warlord is trying to steal the Relic for himself?

Order this CDwritten by David A. McIntee
directed by Edward Salt
music by David Darlington

Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Anthony Stewart Head (Reeve Maupassant), Charles Kay (The Curator), Rupert Laight (Solomon), Toby Walton (Thief), Nicky Goldie (Inquisitor Danby), James Lailey (Minister Pryce), Patricia Leventon (The Mother Superior)

Timeline: between The Trial Of A Time Lord and Time And The Rani

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor

The Time Of The Daleks

The Time Of The DaleksJust as happened just before he visited the Cimmerian system, the Doctor’s TARDIS is thrashed by the energy of a time corridor – a corridor which just happens to bring him to a future in which few humans seem to know the historical significance of the works of Shakespeare. Even more alarmingly, time has somehow been altered to a degree that even Charley doesn’t know who Shakespeare is. General Mariah Learman does, however, remember the Bard, and she is intently trying to perfect a time machine of her own to set history to rights. The Doctor is troubled enough by Learman’s mission, but when the Daleks emerge from the time corridor – spouting Shakespearean prose – the Doctor knows something is terribly wrong. Shakespeare has been removed from time altogether, and the Doctor may not be able to put history’s most famous dramatist back where (and when) he belongs.

Order this CDwritten by Justin Richards
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Nicholas Briggs

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Dot Smith (General Mariah Learman), Julian Harries (Major Ferdinand), Nicola Boyce (Viola), Jem Bassett (Kitchen Boy), Mark McDonnell (Priestly), Lee Moone (Hart), Ian Brooker (Professor Osric), Nicholas Briggs (Dalek voice), Clayton Hickman (Dalek voice / Yokel), Robert Curbishley (Marcus), Ian Potter (Mark Anthony / Army Officer / Tannoy), Don Warrington (Rassilon)

Timeline: after Embrace The Darkness and before Neverland

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
5th Doctor Doctor Who

Spare Parts

Doctor Who: Spare PartsThe Doctor and Nyssa visit a planet which seems to be almost exactly like Earth, but the sky is nowhere to be seen – the cities are all underground. The people have already taken plastic surgery one step further as well – they’ve added artificial organs and limbs, not just altered their skin, and even the indigenous animals are being subjected to the augmentation surgeries. It all adds up to confirm the Doctor’s worst fear: the TARDIS has landed on Mondas, at the moment in history poised precariously between the extinction of the Mondasians and the birth of the Cybermen. And if he and Nyssa stay there too long, they may be captured and converted themselves.

Order this CDwritten by Marc Platt
directed by Gary Russell
music by Russell Stone

Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), Sally Knyvette (Doctorman Allan), Pamela Binns (Sisterman Constant), Derren Nesbitt (Thomas Dodd), Paul Copley (Dad), Kathryn Guck (Yvonne Hartley), Jim Hartley (Frank Hartley), Nicholas Briggs (Cyberleader Zheng)

Timeline: between Primeval and Creatures Of Beauty

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor

Neverland

Doctor Who: NeverlandIn the time vortex, the Doctor’s TARDIS is surrounded by other Gallifreyan time vehicles – some of them armed for battle. The Doctor manages to escape them, but Charley – growing more aware of the borrowed time on which she’s been living since the Doctor took her away from the doomed R-101 – hits the TARDIS’ fast-return switch, leaving the Doctor and herself at the mercy of the Time Lords. On Gallifrey, the Doctor is briefed: his rescue of Charley has created a paradox which opened an opportune breach in the fabric of space-time, allowing anti-time to spill into the universe of real time. But creatures in the universe of anti-time now want to establish their own foothold in the real time realm, regardless of the disastrous consequences it could have for history across the universe. Romana, still the President of the Time Lords, asks for the Doctor’s help, but is unaware that much of what is happening is the direct result of another Time Lord. Along the way, the Doctor fights the Time Lords’ assertion that Charley must die in order for history to be saved, and an ancient TARDIS is found…one which belonged to Rassilon, but is now being used to lure the guardians of time to their doom.

Order this CDwritten by Alan Barnes
directed by Gary Russell
music by Nicholas Briggs

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Lalla Ward (President Romana), Don Warrington (Rassilon), Anthony Keetch (Coordinator Vansell), Peter Trapani (Kurst), Holly King (Levith), Lee Moone (Under-Cardinal), Mark McDonnell (Rorvan), Nicola Boyce (Taris), Dot Smith (Matrix voice), Jonathan Rigby (Matrix voice), Ian Hallard (Matrix voice)

Timeline: after The Time Of The Daleks and before Zagreus

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
7th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Excelis Decays

Doctor WhoAfter refurbishing his TARDIS, the Doctor allows the time machine to decide its own next stop. It takes him to Artaris, once again in the city of Excelis. But things have changed since the superstitious age the Doctor visited in his previous incarnation: a totalitarian government has taken over, the populace is divided between the elite Inner Party, their Outer Party underlings and a helpless proletariat, history now paints Reeve Maupassant and Lord Grayvorn as heroes, and someone is abducting lower-class citizens and stealing their life energy to power a new race of mindless, brutish cannon-fodder soldiers called meat puppets. This government is locked in a bitter stalemate of a war with another power, and the Inner Party seems content to keep it that way. At the heart of the corrupt Inner Party lies Lord Sutton, a calculating, amoral being who has been waiting for the Doctor for centuries. But the Doctor knows Sutton as Grayvorn – and makes drastic plans to free Artaris from the immortal warlord’s grasp. But will freeing the planet’s people from oppression also mean killing them?

Order this CDwritten by Craig Hinton
directed by Gary Russell
music by David Darlington

Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Anthony Stewart Head (Lord Vaughn Sutton), Ian Collier (Commissar Sallis), Yee Jee Tso (Major Brant), Stuart Piper (Mattias), Alistair Lock (Reeve Cless), Mark Gatiss (Deputy Warden Baris), Penelope McDonald (Jancis), Patricia Leventon (The Mother Superior)

Timeline: after Forty-Five (the Doctor has just remodeled the TARDIS) but before the TV movie

LogBook entry and TheatEar entry by Earl Green

Review: A more traditional Doctor Who than we’ve previously gotten from the Excelis trilogy, Excelis Decays has a dark, fatalistic air about it. And it’s hard to believe from the seamlessly edited recording, but Anthony Stewart Head and Sylvester McCoy never occupied the same studio at the same time – and yet this story gives us the best verbal sparring yet between Head’s character and any of the Doctors. Adding a distinguished air to the proceedings is Ian Collier, last seen/heard as the voice of Omega in 1983’s Arc Of Infinity, as an embittered warrior who realizes that the whole motivation for keeping the war going is crumbling around him.

Yee Jee Tso, who acted briefly alongside McCoy in the 1996 TV movie, returns here and does a nice job with a role that requires him to be cocksure and elegant. It’d be easy to be shown up here by Head, with whom he shares most of his scenes, but Yee Jee Tso holds his own – well, at least until his character is gently dropped out of the narrative.

If nothing else, Excelis Decays proves that perhaps, of all the remaining Doctors, Sylvester McCoy is the one most able to keep a story afloat on his own. He’s traveling companionless in this adventure, but his tendency to talk to himself in fits and starts keeps things flowing and lets us in on his thoughts without resorting to a lot of painfully obvious “Oh, look, that huge green slimy monster is about to eat us!” signposting.

In the end, Excelis proves to be a worthy experiment – changing Doctors, but retaining a fairly constant (if evolving) setting and villain for the Doctor to fight. An interesting concept, well-scripted by some writers with their own unique takes on the series.

Categories
Big Finish Spinoffs Doctor Who Sarah Jane Smith The Audio Dramas

Comeback

Sarah Jane Smith: ComebackYears after her travels in the TARDIS ended, Sarah Jane Smith has resumed her job as an investigative journalist, though her stint with TV network Planet 3 ended in disgrace after one of her exposes was proven to be based on false evidence. Fired by her network, Sarah’s troubles didn’t end there, as her identity, bank account and her employability were systematically erased. With the help of Natalie, her former Planet 3 producer, Sarah is still on the trail of a big story, but now she’s trying to find out who tainted her last big story – and her paranoia is growing. The trail leads to a bank where Sarah assumes a new identity and takes a job – but her cover is blown by the police when the bank is robbed. Sarah receives a message from her friend Ellie, an environmental activist, to meet her the next day at an isolated village, and Ellie’s friend Josh insists on accompanying Sarah, especially after she goes to meet with the bank manager again and finds him dead – with a note on his desk also referring to the village where Sarah is supposed to meet Ellie. Sarah and Josh go to retrieve her car, which she’s taken to keeping hidden in a garage away from her home for security reasons, only to see a man break into it and blow it up. They decide at this point that public transport might be a safer way to get there, and when they do arrive, they find Ellie’s environmentalist group preparing to protest a French biochemical company’s gradual plan to take over the entire village. Only some of Ellie’s environmentalist colleagues have gone missing, and the corpses have begun piling up near the village’s legendary healing well…

Order this CDwritten by Terrance Dicks
directed by Gary Russell
music by David Darlington

Cast: Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), Jeremy James (Josh Townsend), Sadie Miller (Natalie Redfern), Robin Bowerman (Harris), Juliet Warner (Ellie Martin), Alistair Lock (Mr. Venables), Matthew Brenher (Bank Robber), David John (Bank Robber), Nicholas Briggs (Mr. Hedges), David Jackson (The Squire), Peter Sowerbutts (Reverend Gosforth), Patricia Leventon (Maude)

Notes: Sadie Miller is Elisabeth Sladen’s daughter. David Jackson was better known to British SF fans as the gentle giant Gan during the first two seasons of Blake’s 7, and played minor roles in two episodes of Space: 1999; he died in 2005. Guest star Peter Miles has played characters who have crossed Sarah’s path before; during Jon Pertwee’s final season, he played Professor Whitaker in Invasion Of The Dinosaurs, and Davros’ right-hand man Nyder, who terrorized Sarah in Genesis Of The Daleks, during Tom Baker’s first year as the Doctor. The character of Ellie Martin, still played by Juliet Warner, was originally intended to be Samantha Jones from BBC Books’ early eighth Doctor novels, but the character was changed when it posed too many continuity problems for Big Finish; Ellie also shows up in the Doctor Who Unbound audio play He Jests At Scars… as the ill-fated human traveling companion of the Valeyard.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
6th Doctor Doctor Who

…ish

Doctor Who: ...ishThe Doctor and Peri pay a visit to a linguistic symposium in the future, to which the Doctor, legendary for his own viurtuoso verbosity, has a personal invitation. But things begin going horribly wrong soon after the TARDIS lands. Professor Osefer, an old friend of the Doctor who is due to deliver a keynote speech, turns up dead – apparently by her own hand – though the Doctor is mystified by her unusually misspelled suicide note. The campus artificial intelligence, designed to offer its adaptable, ever-growing database to students and experts alike, begins exhibiting murderous tendencies. The Doctor learns that a young man who has caught Peri’s eye may be the most diabolically dangerous man on the planet. And then all of the attendees begin repeating one thing, a suffix without a prefix, a syllable with barely any meaning of its own, the calling card of a malevolent intelligence bent on universal domination: ish.

Order this CDwritten by Philip Pascoe
directed by Gary Russell
music by Neil Clappison

Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Nicola Bryant (Peri), Moray Treadwell (Book), Marie Collett (Professor Osefa da Palabra Hftzbrn), Oliver Hume (Symposiarch Cawdrey), Chris Eley (Warren)

Timeline: between Whispers Of Terror and The Gathering

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
Big Finish Spinoffs Doctor Who Sarah Jane Smith The Audio Dramas

The Tao Connection

Sarah Jane Smith: The Tao ConnectionThe latest in a series of disappearances of young men hits close to home for Sarah’s friends, and she decides to investigate the matter herself. With Josh in tow, Sarah finds that the missing men have become unwilling contributors to an experimental anti-aging serum which can only be replenished with the blood of living donors. At the center of this web of intrigue lies the eccentric Will Butley, determined to keep himself alive even at the expense of others – but even Sarah can’t begin to guess at how long his obscene experiments have been going on. And then Josh becomes his next “donor”…

Order this CDwritten by Barry Letts
directed by Gary Russell
music by David Darlington

Cast: Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), Jeremy James (Josh Townsend), Sadie Miller (Natalie Redfern), Caroline Burns-Cook (Claudia Coster), Juliet Warner (Ellie Martin), Mark Donovan (DI Morrison), Moray Treadwell (Will Butley), Steven Wickham (Mr. Sharpe), Jane McFarlane (Nurse Jepson), Robert Curbishley (Read), Wendy Albiston (Meg Hawkins), Toby Longworth (Wong Chu), Maggie Stables (Mrs. Lythe)

Notes: Sarah apparently picked up a few of the finer points of Venusian Aikido from the third Doctor. Department C19’s Glasshouse, a top-secret government covert ops unit mentioned in the novels “Who Killed Kennedy?” and “The Scales Of Injustice” – gets its first audio mention here.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
7th Doctor Doctor Who

The Rapture

Doctor Who: The RaptureThe Doctor and Ace arrive in Ibiza on the eve of an international broadcast from a recently-opened nightclub called The Rapture. The club’s two DJs, Gabriel and Jude, have established a reputation for throwing quite a party – and that suits Ace just fine, following her harrowing experiences in Nazi Germany. As Ace joins some other people her age for a night of clubbing, the Doctor meets his old friend Gustavo, who warns him that something sinister is afoot at The Rapture. When the Doctor goes to investigate, he finds that Jude and Gabriel’s trance music is living up to its name quite literally – the two DJs who claim to be angels are slowly exerting mind control over their club’s patrons…including Ace.

Order this CDwritten by Joseph Lidster
directed by Jason Haigh-Ellery
music by Jim Mortimoreand Jane Elphinstone, with Simon Robinson and Feel

Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), David John (Liam), Anne Bird (Caitriona), Daniel Wilson (Brian), Carlos Riera (Gustavo), Matthew Brenher (Jude), Neil Henry (Gabriel), Tony Blackburn (himself), Jeremy James (Bouncer)

Timeline: after Colditz and before The Harvest

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
Big Finish Spinoffs Doctor Who Sarah Jane Smith The Audio Dramas

Test Of Nerve

Sarah Jane Smith: Test Of NerveAt her home, Sarah receives a package – a live rat in a glass cage, with a note attached. When Josh removes the note from the cage, a mechanism seals the cage completely and fills it with nerve gas, killing the rat. If that isn’t ominous enough, the note promises that the same will happen to all of London unless Sarah “finds the truth” in 24 hours. Sarah next gets a visit from James Carver, a man whose name has been in the news recently after being detained and questioned by police following a scuffle with a member of Parliament. Carver, seeming nervous and unstable, claims to have gotten hold of enough sarin gas to kill the entire population of London – and even shows real proof. He claims that he’ll release it in the London underground during rush hour if certain demands aren’t met by six in the morning. Natalie insists that Sarah call the police, but Sarah tries to make use of her contact within the C19 agency instead; shortly after confirming that Carver is dangerous and is in possession of the sarin capsules, Sarah’s contact is found dead and Sarah herself is framed for the murder. And while she’s in police custody, answering questions, Sarah’s losing precious time …and so is London.

Order this CDwritten by David Bishop
directed by Gary Russell
music by David Darlington

Cast: Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), Jeremy James (Josh Townsend), Sadie Miller (Natalie Redfern), Robin Bowerman (Harris), Caroline Burns-Cook (Claudia Coster), Juliet Warner (Ellie Martin), Mark Donovan (DI Morrison), Roy Skelton (James Carver), Alistair Lock (Newsreader)

Notes: Roy Skelton’s voice graced many an episode of the original Doctor Who series, emanating from Daleks and Cybermen alike.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
6th Doctor Doctor Who

The Sandman

Doctor Who: The SandmanThe TARDIS brings the Doctor and Evelyn to the Clutch, a ragtag fleet of ships flying in a constant close formation for mutual protection. The chief inhabitants of this interstellar gypsy caravan are a repitilian race known as the Galyari, who – according to their legends – are forbidden from ever settling a world of their own. They’re not safe on the Clutch either, as a number of them, both young and old, have turned up dead recently. The Galyari believe that the Sandman, the being who banished them from their planet, is also responsible for the murders. But they also believe he wears a coat of blindingly bright colors, travels in a blue box, and calls himself the Doctor. To Evelyn’s shock and horror, the Galyari are right about all but one of those things.

Order this CDwritten by Simon Forward
directed by Gary Ryssell
music by Russell Stone

Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Maggie Stables (Evelyn), Anneke Wills (Director Nrosha), Mark Donovan (Orchestrator Shol), Mark Wharton (Commander Brel), Robin Bowerman (Mordecan), Stephanie Colburn (Nintaru), Ian Hogg (General Voshkar)

Timeline: between Project Twilight and Jubilee

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
Big Finish Spinoffs Doctor Who Sarah Jane Smith The Audio Dramas

Ghost Town

Sarah Jane Smith: Ghost TownDetermined to get away from it all after the sarin gas threat, Sarah and Josh take a vacation to Romania to visit one of Sarah’s journalism mentors. But trouble seems to follow – with an international peace conference taking place nearby, and the delegate from America and his wife staying with Sarah’s friend, the visit is hardly normal. On the first night, Sarah sees something that she can only describe as a ghost; the next night, a sighting of something similar frightens the American delegate’s wife literally to death. Sarah and Josh set up recording devices to capture the next appearance of the “apparitions,” but even though there is another sighting, the evidence doesn’t show up on tape – and the enigmatic butler of the house turns up dead. Sarah realizes that someone is manufacturing the “ghosts” to disrupt the peace talks, but that realization, and her hunch about who is responsible, may make her the next target.

Order this CDwritten by Rupert Laight
directed by Gary Russell
music by David Darlington

Cast: Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), Jeremy James (Josh Townsend), Ingrid Evans (Yolande), Brian Miller (Abbotly), Robert Jezek (Jack McElroy), Elizabeth Faulkner (Candice McElroy), Mark Donovan (Professor Vodanski)

Notes: For the first time in the Sarah Jane Smith audio series, the 1981 one-off Doctor Who TV spinoff K-9 & Company is referenced as part of the continuity. Between Test Of Nerve and this story, Sarah has sold off her late Aunt Lavinia’s Moreton-Harwood residence; Brendan hasn’t been living there as he’s moved on to a career in Silicon Valley.

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
6th Doctor Doctor Who

The Maltese Penguin

Doctor Who: The Maltese PenguinNot long after parting ways with the Doctor, Frobisher is just slipping back into his private eye routine when the TARDIS materializes in his office – the Doctor has come to ask the shape-shifting penguin to reconsider his departure. Frobisher brusquely asks the Doctor to kindly butt out of his life so he can get on with his detective work – and just in time, too, as a sultry female client walks into his office with a new case. But once he starts investigating on what few leads his new customer will give him, Frobisher realizes he’s in over his head – and as a result, that head could soon be on a platter being delivered to tyrannical business magnate Josiah W. Dogbolter. Ditching his penguin disguise, Frobisher shapeshifts into a familiar humanoid form – a tall man with curly blond hair and an appallingly colorful coat, and quite possibly the one man who can help him now.

Order this CDwritten by Robert Shearman
directed by Gary Russell
music by David Darlington

Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Robert Jezek (Frobisher), Toby Longworth (Josiah W. Dogbolter), Jane Goddard (Alicia Mulholland), Alistair Lock (Chandler)

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green