Despite going out of their way to undo a lot of fan theories about a “Season 6B” Big Finish have done a 180 and with new Second Doctor voice Michael Troughton in tow they’ve dived head-first into the idea. Does it work? Let’s find out!
“The Final Beginning” is an odd story as it’s a four-parter but the length of a two-parter, so each part is 15-or-so minutes long. Honestly I’m not sure if it’s a good or bad thing really, as it doesn’t effect the story beyond inserting end and opening credits all over the place.
The gist of the plot is that The Doctor (as mentioned, now played by Michael Troughton, who continues to impress with his good Second Doctor, even if it doesn’t always sound like his father) wakes up on a barren, snowy planet with no TARDIS or memory of how he got there. He meets two prospectors named Catrona (Anna-Maria Nabirye) and Silas (Tim Treloar) and later a wrecked TARDIS. He also meets a mysterious and uninterested-sounding girl named “Raven” (Emma Noakes) who turns out to be a Time Lord from the Celestial Intervention Agency who tells The Doctor of his fan-theorised fate: he was taken out of time a nanosecond before his regeneration so the CIA can use him as an agent, and once they think he’s outlived his usefulness or they think he’s betrayed them he’ll be placed back into his timeline and regenerate in the Third Doctor (who we hear via Tim Treloar as she shows him his destined future). In no hurry to effectively “die” The Doctor agrees.
There is also another, frankly completely unnecessary twist towards the end that I’ll get to in the spoiler section, but otherwise it’s a fun, brief story to give us an intro into this new period of the Second Doctor… well, new to being so directly told, anyway…
The Continuity:
Jeez, as covers go this one lacks in the imagination department, that’s for sure…
Obviously as a box set implies this takes place mere seconds after The Second Doctor’s finale: “The War Games”. It also heavily ties into another Second Doctor TV classic but again I’ll get into that in the spoiler section…
Overall Thoughts:
The Final Beginning is a fun, though brief intro to “Season 6B”. It has its issues, including in the end rather pointlessly cutting up the story in four smaller chunks and a shoehorned in link to another story, but it’s fine for what it is: an intro story.
Right, well, I’ve hinted at it enough: halfway through the story it’s revealed that the planet they’re on is Skaro and that The Doctor’s civil war during TV classic “The Evil of the Daleks” that gave them their “final end” caused a serious error in time and so Skaro begin to phase back between the Daleks still existing and not. The abandoned TARDIS was another CIA agent that got sent there and was lost. In the end The Doctor escapes as The Daleks begin to reform proper.
Frankly given this was about setting the scene shoehorning in a connection to Evil and forcing in the Daleks in general was a complete waste. It’s said in the intro that it was Nicholas Briggs’ idea to make it a pseudo-sequel to Evil of the Daleks after the first script was written and that fits with how this story feels as more continuity is forced into it. Poor decision that thankfully doesn’t ruin the story much given it was just a concept intro to begin with…
Hogan Reviews 