The sixth series of Fourth Doctor audio Adventures continues and reaches a rare high point. Dethras is an great story, uses its runtime perfectly and does a few new and / or interesting things among a generally good Doctor Who story. This is Adrian Poynton’s first story for Big Finish, and I certainly hope it’s not his last. Let’s take a closer look!
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The Doctor, Romana and K9 arrive in 20s Hollywood, with the transition between silent and “talkie” films in full effect. This story plays with the concepts well, but I can’t help but feel in a few weeks time I’ll have forgotten about it. It’s one of those Fourth Doctor Adventures stories that just isn’t very memorable. Not bad, not great, just… alright. Let’s take a closer look to see why…
Sontarans! Zombies! … Zombie Sontarans! The Eternal Battle is certainly an odd story, but not in a bad way. It takes a possibly over-used classic villain (in recent Big Finish history, anyway) and at least puts a bit of an interesting slant on them. Let’s take a closer look…
After playing catch up with the Main Range, it’s time to do the same with the Sixth series of “Fourth Doctor Adventures”, which kicks off with this story featuring the return of Jago and Litefoot, as well as the general Victorian London theme that is… well, overused, let’s be fair. Still, a lot of fun interaction between the lead cast make this a fun, if not particularly memorable, audio story.
Finally caught up with the Main Range with this, the last of the trilogy of two two-part stories, this time reuniting the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Hex, the classic audio trio whose story came to an end a few years ago. This story is set somewhat early in their adventures, certainly before their story became arc heavy, which makes sense given most of Big Finish’s Who output is placed in the middle of an established Doctor Who time period, so why not plonk a new story in the middle of your own established era? Anyway, enough of all that, both stories are actually good this time, with World Apart being a standout…
Vortex Ice and Cortex Fire are an unmemorable duo, though the former is at least a fun spin on time travel, even if the rest of the story is pretty dull. Cortex Fire on the other hand is generic as generic gets, not bad, not good, just… there. Ah well, at least this is the second (and third, I guess) story to feature Flip recently, and once again she was actually an enjoyable companion, so it seems the Big Finish writers have managed to pull her back into an actually consistently good role…
We reach the yearly “experimental” trilogy in the main range, this time instead of one linking story or villain across Doctors 5 – 7, this time each of three Doctors gets a two two-parters release. This is a bit odd as I often find, at least in the Fourth Doctor range (made up mostly of two parters) this often leads to rushed stories with poor character development, where as the main range with its four episodes is often better for it. This release shows a good example of the worst and a great example of the best way to handle two part, or 1 hour, stories on audio. Let’s take a closer look at each!
The first Fifth Doctor, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan trilogy comes to a close with Zaltys, a fun story with some good twists and turns along its runtime. A very enjoyable trilogy overall, made better by the freshness of the lead cast, after nearly a decade and a half of Fifth Doctor releases, it’s good to hear this period of the show getting new stories at last!
The travels of the Doctor, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan continue as the quartet arrive in Victorian London (an original idea!) and end up in an exclusive club full of delusional people and an endless supply of people called Edward. Funnily enough, there is more too it than that…
The Main Range reaches a new milestone as The Star Men kicks off a Fifth Doctor trilogy staring Matthew Waterhouse reprising his role as Adric for the first time in the long-running range. As if that wasn’t good enough, the story itself is good too! Handy. Let’s take a look…
Hogan Reviews 