In the latest from Big Finish, the Eighth Doctor returns to their main sequence of audio releases with a new companion - the writer Mary Shelley, who joined him in 1816, at the end of a short audio episode released in 2009, but whose adventures in the Tardis we had otherwise not seen or heard. This is an excellent start for the new team. The two ( Read more... )

Another of the Big Finish "missing stories", this one drastically expanded by Marc Platt from a note he did for Andrew Cartmel shortly before Old Who was cancelled. I find Platt's work a bit hit and miss, but this was a hit for me: the setting in Moscow in 1967, with the human side of Cold War relations between Britain and Russia colliding with Ice ( Read more... )

While I have been diligently logging anniversaries and rewatches, I'm behind with my logging of recent Who. Quinnis tells the story of how the First Doctor and Susan almost lost the Tardis, as mentioned in a throwaway line in The Edge of Destruction, and now at last told through the pen of Marc Platt. It's a good adventure - unusually penetrable ( Read more... )

I had thought I would try and get into the habit of posting about each new Doctor Who audio play as I finished them, but the hectic events of the last couple of weeks meant that this was one intention that fell by the wayside. Three new Big Finish audios to write up, then, and the new Fourth Doctor play from the BBC. As usual I'm doing them in ( Read more... )

Big Finish have been releasing this story at a rate of a ten-minute episode a month at the end of their regular releases, the twelfth and last episode being released last weekend. I have to say that I am not sure it was such a successful strategy: myself, I stopped listening out for the episodes in recent months, knowing that I would eventually ( Read more... )

I have decided to work through the Virgin New Doctor Who Adventures, and since I had already read the four Timewyrm novels, that meant starting with this, the first of the Cat's Cradle trilogy.

It's actually rather fascinating, just after watching The End of Time, to experience a completely different reinterpretation of the Time Lords and ( Read more... )

I feel a bit mean posting this, because the other reviews I've seen so far of An Earthly Child are rather positive (without spoilers here and with spoilers here). I think Marc Platt's scripts are a bit like Marmite - you love 'em or hate 'em. However, to explain why I didn't like it requires a cut-tag and spoiler warning, thus:

( Read more... )

Last month was a bonanza for us Who audio fans. Not only was there an extra Big Finish release, concluding the story of Charley Pollard, but Tom Baker returned to the role for the first time since 1981 (not counting The Thing We Don't Talk About).

( Hornets' Nest 1: The Stuff of Nightmares - The Fourth Doctor returns, with homicidal taxidermy )

It's ten years this month since Big Finish put the first of their audio Doctor Who plays on sale. I have just about caught up with the complete range (though not quite with all the spinoffs) and am mulling a big Big Finish post to explain it all to those of you (probably at least 90%) who haven't listened to any BF plays. Meanwhile these are the ( Read more... )

Some time ago I watched the Doctor Who spinoff video Downtime, written by Marc Platt and directed by Christopher Barry, which unites the Brigadier, Sarah Jane Smith, Victoria Waterfield and the Yeti. Platt's extended novelisation, published as one of the Virgin Missing Adventures, is much better, with lots more background of Victoria's life after ( Read more... )