The trilogy originally billed as a “UNIT Trilogy”, but in reality is more a trilogy surrounding tragic UNIT soldier Daniel Hopkins, comes to a close with Warlock’s Cross, a story that also features the return of Big Finish sort-of-companion Elizabeth Klein. So how does the three-part story close itself out? The tone of the story may surprise you…
It’s the last of the trio of companion introduction stories that weren’t actually intended to be companion introduction stories, as much like Flip and Klein before her, Liv Chenka wasn’t conceived as anything other than a one off character for this story. This is an odd one though as Liv would go on to be a companion to the Eighth Doctor, rather than the Seventh, yet this is still her debut story! ANYWAY, as for Robophobia itself, it’s a sequel to Fourth Doctor TV classic “The Robots of Death”, but it manages to avoid the classic sequel pitfall by not just recycling the original but instead building a new story with the materials provided. Let’s take a closer look!
As I mentioned in my Gallifrey: Time War Vol. 1 review, I brought the two spin-off range boxsets that included Derek Jacobi’s version of The Master in a recent sale, but unlike Gallifrey, which surprised me with two excellent stories, this anthology is not up to the same standard, and if anything Jacobi’s Master is one of the few highlights… Let’s take a look!
A couple of months ago Big Finish did a “best of the year so far” sale, where everything returned to its pre-order price, so after thinking about it for a while, my enjoyment of the War Master set last year lead me to buy the two spin-off releases he appeared in, starting with this! Gallifrey, as a series, never appealed to me. Gallifrey politics was always a negative rather than a positive, and Lalla Ward hasn’t exactly won me over with her performances in the Fourth Doctor audios, but I can say this: There are two stories here that were fantastic! So let’s take a look at the set as a whole, and see what worked and what didn’t, in my opinion, of course!
While this TARDIS team has had more misses than hits, The Quantum Possibility Engine is at least a fun story, more comic book silliness (with some actually well-written political satire) than standard Who, and given it has Dogbolter from from comics, that’s a fitting decision. Let’s take a closer look then, at the end of this most recent Doctor-Ace-Mel trilogy…
Ravenous 2 ends with “Seizure”, a story that goes full on with the horror clichés, though admittedly with a Doctor Who twist of being set inside a dying TARDIS. We’re finally introduced to the Ravenous, or a member of the Ravenous, who turns out is some sort of demonic… zombie… thing, who likes to have a bit of a chat. Let’s take a look!
It’s the start of October and it’s time for a new Doctor Who Christmas story! The Eighth Doctor already holds the prize for best Doctor Who Christmas story with the classic audio “The Chimes of Midnight”, and while I don’t think this topples it, it’s a damn fine story. Creepy, fun and told with a really interesting story-within-story narrative, this two parter is not to be missed (though probably best listened to a little closer to December…)
Thanks to Ravenous 2 doing a two part story in the middle of the box, I’ve had to split it into three rather than the usual two, which is mildly annoying… Anyway! What isn’t mildly annoying is a fun story set on Kaldor itself, even if it lacks the kind of imagination I associate with the planet. Plus it adds several layers onto Liv Chenka, which is a nice bonus! Let’s take a closer look…
Now, technically the War Doctor made his debut in a 30 second stinger at the end of “The Name of the Doctor”, but that would seem like a waste of that story for the sake of 30 seconds, so I decided to go down the Eighth Doctor route and do John Hurt’s first performance from start to finish in the role as the lead (as Day of the Doctor was covered last year…), meaning we get the first Full Cast Audio Drama to feature him: “The Innocent”, from the “Only the Monstrous” box set. Is it any good? Well… It’s alright, I guess. It’s nice to finally debut my War Doctor image template anyway!
So, yeah, this isn’t Paul McGann’s debut story, that’s obviously the TV Movie, but as that was already covered in the Regeneration marathon I thought I’d follow the other pattern of these debut stories and cover Paul McGann’s first full story as The Doctor, which release-wise is Storm Warning. It also neatly crosses over with the “Audio / Comic Companion Debut Story” marathon I’ve been doing on and off (though not quite in the right order) as it features the debut of Charley, one of the more memorable and iconic Eighth Doctor companions. So… let’s get to it!
Hogan Reviews 