This is a strange boxset. It sees the Seventh Doctor come across Harry Sullivan and a female UNIT member called Naomi Cross in the near-present day because the Fourth Doctor dropped them off in the wrong time. What makes this weird is that story hasn’t been released yet due to the nature of how far in advance Tom Baker’s stories are so this is picking up from a cliffhanger we’ve yet to hear! Thankfully a conversation between the two catch us up pretty quick anyway. As for the story itself? A bit too fantasy for my liking, something that’s becoming something of a theme for Big Finish Who releases recently… Let’s take a look!
The story starts with a young Harry Sullivan (played in this story by Christopher Naylor) happening to come across an incident with some elf-like people in a London hospital, a large Elf with a sword named Keryth (Hywel Morgan) who tried to kill him, and a house full of massacred Elf bodies. Its odd and unexplained nature led him to joining UNIT in the first place, and flashforward to the 2010s and he and Naomi (Eleanor Crooks) look into a dig site where people claim to have unearthed a door to a lair of Elf-like monsters and he finds similar pointy-eared people and Keryth, who is surprised he hasn’t aged much given the time that as passed. Keryth is warded away by The Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) having some sort of magic talisman and our lead trio reunite, though Sullivan and Cross haven’t met this specific Doctor before.
The Doctor leads the duo into the Elf lair but they become separated, with The Doctor heading off into magical Elf land and Sullivan and Cross ending up being taken to a skyscraper which opens up to… another magical elf land. Apparently they’re from another dimension that has recently, and temporarily, connected to Earth and their science is like our idea of magic. Really John Dorney wanted to write a story about warring Elves in London and that’s that! I can’t say I liked it though, it was too out-of-genre for me, I just couldn’t take it seriously, which I know is a weird thing to say about a Doctor Who story of all things. Anyway, Sullivan and Cross meet the King of the Ljosalfar Elves Agrandir (Youssef Kerkour) whose son Balmaris (Joshua Riley) was apparently killed by their rivals the Dokkalfar. Harry recognises Balmaris as one of the Elf couple he saw in the hospital way-back-when and confirms that he was probably was killed. Outside the skyscraper they’re attacked by Keryth, who is then attacked by the Dokkalfar with The Doctor, who takes Harry and Naomi away from the warfare.
It’s here they meet Balmaris and Queen of the Dokkalfar Elidar (Saffron Coomber), who are something of an item and the former wishes to change his people’s unjust prejudice towards the Dokkalfar people. So bit of an on-the-nose look at racism using white and black elves instead. Very weird idea for the story when you think about it! I’ll get to the resolution later but like I said I wasn’t a fan of the fantasy and magic leaking into a Seventh Doctor audio story. Also I have to mention that this is my first experience with Eleanor Crooks’ Naomi and she really doesn’t leave any impression at all. She’s just got the one mildly excited tone that she uses when speaking plainly, in panic, being sarcastic, just… everything. I can only assume she’s not used to acting in a booth rather than on a stage/ in front of a camera so she’s just literally reading the script with a bit of excitement in her voice rather than… well, acting. Really got on my nerves…
The Continuity:
Despite not really loving either story in this set I can’t deny that’s a great cover!
Not much, I would like to talk about Naomi Cross’s debut story and how she and Harry first left with the Fourth Doctor but I don’t even know the title of that story yet! Beyond a few callbacks to prior UNIT incidents there isn’t anything to put, anyway. I’ll try and remember to update this when their debut adventure does actually come out…
Overall Thoughts:
“London Orbital” is a rare John Dorney script that I just didn’t get on with. I liked the depiction of how Harry ended up on UNIT’s radar and Christopher Naylor does a good impression but the whole magic and elves thing really isn’t my thing, especially not within the Who-niverse. Throw in not being impressed with Naomi Cross and it was a bit of a flat experience all being said…
Basically Balmaris manages to make it to his father and convince him that his rivals aren’t seeking his death and that there can be peace but before everything can be sorted Keryth appears, kills both the King and a Dokkalfar that had accompanied Balmaris and uses his body to prove the Dokkalfar had broken in and assassinated their King in order to lead his people to wipe out their “enemies” for good. It leads to a big showdown between both forces while The Doctor and Harry try and save a wounded Balmaris at the same hospital they first met. There the Doctor fails to stop Keryth but Harry manages to drive a lorry into him and bury him under rubble. Before the fighting takes too many lives Balmaris and Elidar appear before both their people to unite them at long last.
The Doctor claims the two dimensions are beginning to separate from each other so they’ll not likely be seeing them again (*phew*) and then offers to make up for past mistakes and take Harry and Naomi back home… with a few stops on the way, naturally.
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