Lost Stories

Doctor Who: The Rosemariners Review

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DW The Rosemariners

After the bit of a disaster that was “Prison in Space” (by which I mean complete disaster), it wasn’t hard for Rosemariners to be good, or at least an improvement. I’m happy to say that although the story didn’t light the world on fire, it was a fun story, and not sexist to the extreme! Hooray! Let’s take a look then, at this story from Donald Tosh, the script editor of several latter First Doctor stories, and is also the man who re-wrote his original script into this audio, so extra authentication!

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Doctor Who: Prison in Space Review

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DW Prison in Space

The Lost Stories range reaches the Second Doctor and boy… it gets off to some kind of start, that’s for sure. I can only imagine how this story would’ve came across on TV at the time, let alone retrospectively. Credit to Simon Guerrier for not changing much of the original script because I can now truly look back on this and go “Yeah, I’m glad that didn’t get made”. So with all that being said, let’s take a look at the frankly sexist Prison in Space, and then suddenly gain a new respect for The Krotons (the story that ended up replacing it when this script was rejected after author Dick Sharples refused to do re-writes).

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DW: The Daleks – The Destroyers Review

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DW Daleks The Destroyers

Before we get to the Second Doctor’s Lost Stories, I want to cover this “Lost Story”, which was a pilot Terry Nation wrote for a standalone Dalek TV Series. It was bundled with the first Second Doctor Lost Story, but given its strong ties to First Doctor TV Serial “The Daleks’ Master Plan” I thought I’d include it here, in between the first two Doctors, although it will be stored in the Spin-Off section, obviously. So how can you have The Daleks in their own TV story? Well, just have them as the central antagonists and build a cast of characters to fight them! But does it work?

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Doctor Who: The Dark Planet Review

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DW The Dark Planet

The run of First Doctor Lost Stories comes to an end with a story set during that rare Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicki period of the show, and a script that was clearly shot down at the due to budget! (Actually turns out it was shot down due to being too similar to another story they were developing, The Hidden Planet by Malcolm Hulke, which ironically also wouldn’t see the light of day) Large crystal cities, people literally made of light and shadow, several scenes of people flying… It just wouldn’t have worked. At all. Still, does it work as an adapted “advanced audiobook”? That’s the main question! Let’s find out…

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Doctor Who: Farewell, Great Macedon Review

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DW Farewell Great Macedon

When it comes to lost Doctor Who stories that were actually made, Marco Polo is often held in high regard, and it’s fair to say that Farewell, Great Macedon shares a lot with it. Not just as a historical story, as many Hartnell stories were, but as a longer story with lots of political intrigue, murder (of which our leads are often falsely accused) and a knowledge of history that must not be changed. With just three cast members and six episodes of mostly talking, does Macedon manage to hold your attention? Read on!

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Doctor Who: The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance Review

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DW The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance

Next up on our look at the Lost Stories is the very oddly named “The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance”, and is actually quite the oddity. It was completely scripted and pitched as a single-episode story (the serial format hadn’t been set in stone at the time of writing) but the pitch was shot down. Really it was only adapted here because the original script still existed and Big Finish was adapting writer Moris Farhi’s other story (Farewell, Great Macedon) so why not? Well… why not indeed, I guess! It’s an odd story, but is it a good story? Let’s find out!

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Doctor Who: The Masters of Luxor Review

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DW The Masters of Luxor

Time to kick off my look at the whole of Big Finish’s Lost Stories range. Although after the First Doctor I’ll be looking at them in the order they were released (per Doctor) I wanted to start off with Luxor, even though this story contains references to two other Lost Stories, because it was originally going to be the 2nd ever story before it was replaced with a little known story called “The Daleks”! That makes it extremely interesting and technically the earliest Lost Story to be recreated … It’s a shame it’s a bit crap, really…

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New irregular Doctor Who Marathon in-coming!

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DW Announcement

Small update: Now the Titan Comics coverage has come to an end (well, for now, I’ll get to the more recent ones soon) I couldn’t decide between the Big Finish Lost Stories range and the DWM Eighth Doctor comics in terms of older Doctor Who stuff to cover, so I’ve decided to do both! Yes, over the coming months you’ll see either a Lost Story or a DWM Eighth Doctor comic review pop up from time to time, never enough to dominate the blog, and always taking a back seat to newly released Who, but they’ll be there, and in this order:

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Doctor Who: The Ultimate Evil Review

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DW The Ultimate Evil

Back when the original run of Lost Stories came out “The Ultimate Evil” was notable by its absence, especially given it was so far along back in the day that it had a Target novel adaptation, something most of the other releases in this audio range didn’t have. So rights issues have apparently been sorted and The Ultimate Evil finally gets a dramatized adaptation and… yeah… erm, it’s not good. Very of its time, no doubt, but … Yeah. Let’s take a look! Continue reading →

Doctor Who: Nightmare Country Review

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DW Nightmare Country

The Lost Stories make an unexpected return this month (as in it was unexpected when it was announced months ago…), starting with Nightmare Country, a Fifth Doctor story that was proposed for Season 21 but deemed too expensive to produce. This audio adaptation proved not only fun to listen to, but also… not really sure how it would have been too expensive, honestly. Either way, let’s have a look at Nightmare Country!

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