written by Alan Barnes
directed by Barnaby Edwards
music by Howard Carter

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sheridan Smith (Lucie Miller), Helen Lederer (Aunty Pat), David Schofield (Billy), Jon Glover (Father Christmas / Security Guard), Harriet Kershaw (Natasha / Marika / Receptionist), Nicholas Briggs (Shopkeeper)

Timeline: after Worldwide Web and before Situation Vacant

Review: Released at around the same time as The End Of Time was hitting the television airwaves, Death In Blackpool is eerily similar: an oddly dark tale which uses Christmas as a backdrop and bids farewell to a much-loved character. And, like The End Of Time, Blackpool has more of a dose of hand-wringing melodrama than what we’re used to.

On the one hand, it is good to see the Aunty Pat plot thread come home to roost in a not-insignificant way, rather than just being forgotten. If Lucie had left the Doctor’s company none the wiser, it might not have said a lot about the intelligence of a character whose above-average intelligence the series has spent a lot of time pointing out. The biggest drawback may be the degree of melodrama to which we’re treated; it’s really one of Big Finish’s “soapiest” Doctor Who installments, with tearful exclamations aplenty.

I’m not adverse to some expansion and development of the Zygon mythos, but the whole idea of a subspecies called the Zynogs was just a bit snicker-inducing. Death In Blackpool is awfully heavy compared to most eighth Doctor/Lucie stories, and that can make it a bit of an exhausting listen. Sheridan Smith makes the most of her exit, but I couldn’t help but feel that perhaps a better departure for Lucie was warranted, rather than a tale thick with anguish. The character deserved to go out on a high note – or at least a higher one than this.

written by Eddie Robson
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Martin Johnson

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sheridan Smith (Lucie Miller), Stephen Moore (Clark Goodman), Sophie Winkleman (Kelly Westwood), Sanjeev Bhaskar (Dr. Avishka Sangakkara), Katarina Olsson (The Headhunter), Kerry Godliman (Karen), Richard Earl (Rob), Anthony Spargo (David), Beth Chalmers (Queen), Barnaby Edwards (Newsreader)

Notes: The Doctor last encountered the giant spiders of Metebelis 3 in the last adventure for his third incarnation, Planet Of The Spiders, although mentions of Metebelis 3 had been seeded into prior adventures, as far back as the last story of the previous season, The Green Death, in which the third Doctor acquired a blue crystal like the ones which help the spiders control humans’ minds in Worldwide Web.

Timeline: after The Eight Truths and before Death In Blackpool

Review: For all of the promise set up by The Eight Truths, Worldwide Web somehow isn’t quite as impressive, devolving into a series of chases and plot contrivances. Where The Eight Truths was a startlingly good emulation of the tone of the first part of any of the new TV series’ season finales, Worldwide Web is a letdown… and that, unfortunately, makes it a pretty good approximation of the second part of most of the TV series finales: heavy on action setpieces, a little bit light on the plotting that made the first part so interesting in the first place.

To give credit where it’s due: it’s nice to see Lucie get a central role in defusing the situation, even if it is from the slightly hackneyed vantage point of “let me see what I can do to screw things up from inside the enemy’s hive mind” (i.e. a plot point of virtually every Star Trek: Voyager episode to feature the Borg). But between that and the gunplay holding the Doctor at bay (which simply doesn’t thrill me as part of an audio play), Worldwide Web just isn’t as interesting as it could’ve been. There was an opportunity here to make some sort of statement about cults, letting other people abuse one’s faith or frailties, but it was passed up in favor of non-stop action and an oddly heroic gesture by the Headhunter before that character makes her apparent exit from the storyline. The giant spiders, who were last seen in Jon Pertwee’s final adventure (and were responsible for the third Doctor’s regeneration into the fourth), lack the menace of their original appearance; the Eightfold Truth might have been more formidable if it had been a human-run scam with leftover alien tech.

For all the thought that was put into the pacing and topicality of The Eight Truths, Worldwide Web is a little bit of a letdown.

Review: I suppose it’d be a bit too easy to hook me with the very notion of David Tennant introducing ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky” on the radio, putting two of my favorite things in one spot. That admission of bias and favoritism aside, Who On Who? is a lively examination of Russell T. Davies’ era as executive producer and head writer of Doctor Who in a clip-heavy interview format. If anything, I wish that some of the time spent on clips – namely the massive and somewhat disjointed montage of disassociated scenes from Davies’ era at the top of the show – could’ve been given over to more in-depth interviews. This could’ve gone on for two hours and I don’t think it would’ve outstayed its welcome.

That being said, Who On Who? is general audience fare, and wasn’t really conceived as a vehicle for obscure questions that only Doctor Who fans could love. I’ve listened to other audio memoirs from past producers of Doctor Who over the past year, and while those memoirs were meant for the faithful, Who On Who? is clearly made for the masses. But that doesn’t mean that it’ll insult the intelligence or waste the time of Doctor Who die-hards. The questions are all legitimate; if you’ve poured over and analyzed every word that Davies has said in his Doctor Who Magazine columns, his book “The Writers’ Tale”, or dissected his every statement to the press in internet forums, you likely won’t find much here that’s new.

I haven’t really done that, despite being quite the Doctor Who fan, so I found it both interesting and fascinating. It’s surprising to hear Davies admit that he applied lessons learned from watching reality TV to the new series from the moment planning started; from the flashy, color-saturated visuals to Doctor Who’s wall-to-wall music and rapid-fire editing, Davies has sought to make every episode an event on par with reality TV. In that respect, maybe his move to America is a godsend: he made a scripted drama compete, successfully, with reality TV in Britain. Speaking as someone who isn’t a fan of reality TV (indeed, the very name is a massive misnomer), I’d like to see Davies make something that cuts through the clutter of the American airwaves as well. I don’t know how long it’d last on the air, but when Davies talks about learning from American TV and teaching American TV a few things at the same time, surely it’d be worth a try.

Tennant often gets roped by Davies into helping answer the very questions he’s asking; he’s not just a passive interviewer trying to prod information out of his subject. Perhaps the most heartening thing that comes out of this Q&A session is Davies’ constant refrain that he doesn’t want to ruin the show, or the surprise of the show, for its younger audience, and his lament of the spoiler-hungry internet culture that seeks to expose every plot twist ahead of the broadcast schedule. Also interesting is Davies’ answer as to why he, as a writer, has even gotten involved in the press dialogue about any of his projects, whether the project in question is Doctor Who or Queer As Folk. His answer as to why he feels that responsibility and doesn’t just leave the much more visible cast members field some questions explains a lot about why he’s held in such high regard as a British TV writer.

With only five dozen episodes of Doctor Who under his belt in five years (not counting Torchwood and the Sarah Jane Adventures), Russell T. Davies may well have left a more indelible impression on Doctor Who than his predecessor, John Nathan-Turner, who was the series’ producer for ten years. Love it or hate it, Davies brought Doctor Who in step with the times, worthy of grabbing attention away from its television contemporaries (and how). He sewed the show’s previously seldom-visible heart onto its sleeve and made it not just science fiction, but Drama, with a capitol D. And the BBC has been rewarded with its biggest hit in years, one that has made quite a few careers in the process. While I have found things to criticize about the new show, I can forgive quite a lot of them for the simple fact that Davies did the impossible and resurrected a property that most people felt had sunk into the obscurity of its own fandom, and when it fires on all cylinders, this new late-model Doctor Who has been one of the very best things on TV for the past decade.

written by Eddie Robson
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Martin Johnson

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sheridan Smith (Lucie Miller), Stephen Moore (Clark Goodman), Sophie Winkleman (Kelly Westwood), Sanjeev Bhaskar (Dr. Avishka Sangakkara), Katarina Olsson (The Headhunter), Kerry Godliman (Karen), Richard Earl (Rob), Anthony Spargo (David), Beth Chalmers (Queen), Barnaby Edwards (Newsreader)

Notes: Sophie Winkleman also guest starred on Red Dwarf, as the crew’s holographic nemesis in the 2009 revival miniseries Back To Earth. The Doctor mention’s NASA’s Messenger mission to Mercury, which is in fact a real mission to that planet, and one that’s still operating.

Timeline: after The Cannibalists and before Worldwide Web

Review: One of the ideas behind the relaunch of the eighth Doctor audio adventures was to create a midway point between Big Finish’s homage to the original series and the style and pace of the new series. No story since the relaunch has exemplified that aim better than The Eightfold Truth, which just feels like a big season-ended written by Russell T. Davies. Its pacing, its emotional underpinnings, and its background references to media reactions to the story’s events show that someone’s been studying Davies’ style and studying it closely. One almost expects to hear McGann turn into Christopher Eccleston at the end of the story – it’s that much like the TV series under Davies’ direction.

It’s also a clever story with which to follow The Cannibalists – which shows the Doctor’s admiration for a belief system which brings hope to those who need it – in that The Eightfold Truth is basically a Doctor Who take on organized cults, and there are enough similarities between the Eightfold Truth and Scientology that there’s little subtlety. In fact, about the time that Lucie is declared the Chosen One, I had to stop myself from laughing out loud at the plot parallels to one of my all-time favorite episodes of South Park (not something I ever expected from Doctor Who).

The writing and pacing are sharp, the cast is excellent, and the whole thing captures the feel of the Russell T. Davies era and yet retains the feel of McGann’s “era” on audio.

written by Jonathan Morris
directed by Jason Haigh-Ellery
music by Andy Hardwick

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sheridan Smith (Lucie Miller), Phil Davies (Titus), Phill Jupitus (Servo), Nigel Lambert (Domitian/Diode), Teddy Kempner (Macrinus/Crusher), Oliver Senton (Probus/Ripper), Charlotte Fields (Minerva), Beth Chalmers (Elevator Voice)

Timeline: after The Scapegoat and before The Eight Truths

Review: This is one of the most brilliant stories that Big Finish has committed to a shiny round thing in the history of its Doctor Who license. The latter two movies in the Matrix trilogy wish they were as smart as this story.

The Cannibalists is, at its heart, an interesting allegorical examination of faith, its uses and its misuses. The pacifist robots may be taking the high road and doing no harm, but their beliefs seem to be a crutch – and they’re blinded to just how close the danger is. The Cannibalists themselves use their beliefs to justify just about any action they wish to take against anyone – a plot point that would be even more disturbing (and, perhaps, disturbingly close to home) if the characters were human(oid) instead of robotic. And then there’s Servo, stuck in the middle, not really following either side and just trying to survive. It’s the kind of allegory that the Star Trek franchise used to be really good at.

The Cannibalists doesn’t sacrifice its entertainment value or listenability for the sake of its barely-hidden soapbox, however. It’s actually quite a fun listen, with a mixture of obsequious characters and, for all intents and purposes, a robot motorcycle gang that brings the wild and woolly antagonists of the various Mad Max movies to mind. Throw Lucie into this mix and you’ve got more comedy out of this situation than you might expect.

The Cannibalists is one of the best Doctor Who audio stories starring Paul McGann – something you can listen to with your brain unashamedly switched on.

written by Pat Mills
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Jamie Robertson

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sheridan Smith (Lucie Miller), Samantha Bond (Mother Baroque), Clifford Rose (Major Treptow), Christopher Fairbank (Doc Baroque), Paul Rhys (Max Paul), Thorston Manderlay (Lieutenant), Beth Chalmers (Helene)

Notes: Another Sarah Jane Adventures actor appears here; Samantha Bond has appeared several times as one of Sarah’s arch enemies, Mrs. Wormwood, in the series pilot Invasion Of The Bane and Enemy Of The Bane.

Timeline: after Wirrn Dawn and before The Cannibalists

Review: With moments that range from goofy (Lucie fantasizing about Ewan McGregor) to incredibly dark (the realization of how Max Paul is being kept alive), The Scapegoat is an unusual audio adventure for the eighth Doctor. In many ways, it hearkens back to one of Big Finish’s earliest stories, The Shadow Of The Scourge, which dramatized the concept of depression by giving it a corporeal form. The Scapegoat does much the same thing, giving a sci-fi twist to victimization and abuse by bullies.

Even if the Doctor-vs.-the-Nazis trope is a bit overused in Doctor Who (though it’s nice to have Lucie’s horrified reaction to that instead of Ace complaining about running into Nazis again), this gives the story more edge and originality than if the concept had played out in a schoolyard. The story is very straightforward about where the listener’s sympathies should lie, but even then there’s still the mystery about why the situation exists to begin with.

Again, with Nazis being a recurring feature of Doctor Who (whether you’re talking about the literal variety or the more symbolic kind, i.e. Daleks), it takes some real effort to make them interesting, and fortunately The Scapegoat has a cast of supporting characters that can do that. It’s a terribly interesting take on a concept that could’ve been handled in a much more literal (and less engrossing) manner, and it doesn’t even wrap the story up in a pat way, so The Scapegoat gets a hearty recommendation.

written by Nicholas Briggs
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Jamie Robertson

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sheridan Smith (Lucie Miller), Colin Salmon (Trooper Salway), Daniel Anthony (DeLong), Liz Sutherland (Farroll), Ian Brooker (Winslet), Beth Chalmers (Queen)

Notes: Wirrn Dawn is the first Big Finish appearance of the parasitic, insectoid Wirrn, whose only TV appearance to date was in Tom Baker’s second story, the all-time Doctor Who classic The Ark In Space. The Wirrn have already appeared in spinoff audio dramas produced by BBV. Also making his Big Finish debut here is Daniel Anthony, the actor who fans of the Sarah Jane Adventures will recognize as gung-ho series regular Clyde Langer; with David Tennant’s appearance in that show’s third season, Anthony has now worked alongside two Doctors.

Timeline: after The Beast Of Orlok and before The Scapegoat

Review: Where Hothouse turned out to be not much more than a rapid-fire retelling of a classic series episode, Wirrn Dawn takes a much more interesting approach: it uses a classic villain and the facts established about that enemy, and puts those elements into play in a situation that’s significantly different from its earlier appearances.

The source story for the Wirrn, The Ark In Space, is not only an all-time Doctor Who classic but it’s arguably a major influence on Alien. Wirrn Dawn – whose title informs the viewer of who the story’s enemy is several minutes before the Doctor himself finds out – daringly puts the Wirrn into a situation where the only way to survive the day will be coexistence, rather than driving them away, challenging everything that either the characters or the listener knows about the Wirrn. That the Doctor quickly exhausts everything he learned about going on the offensive against the Wirrn during his previous encounter with them also puts the listener on notice that this will not be The Ark In Space Redux.

The small cast is excellent at helping to build the story’s claustrophobic setting, though it’s hard sometimes to get over how young Daniel Anthony sounds. That probably has a lot to do with why he’s a regular on The Sarah Jane Adventures, but as interesting as it is to hear him in another role, he doesn’t exactly sound battle-hardened.

Wirrn Dawn is a welcome revisitation of an enemy from Doctor Who’s past, mainly because it’s taking the opportunity to use an element from the show’s past to tell a new and different story.

written by Barnaby Edwards
directed by Barnaby Edwards
music by Andy Hardwick

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sheridan Smith (Lucie Miller), Miriam Margolyes (Frau Tod), Samuel Barnett (Hans), Peter Guinness (Baron Teufel), Nick Wilton (Otto Pausbacken), Trevor Cooper (Judah), Alison Thea-Skot (Greta), Nicholas Briggs (Lugner)

Timeline: after Hothouse and before Wirrn Dawn

Review: After Orbis and Hothouse, The Beast Of Orlok gets the eighth Doctor adventures back on track in considerable style, with a fresh setting (at least by Doctor Who standards) and some surprisingly topical dialogue that doesn’t feel like an anachronistic modern touch.

The topical element is more background color than foreground story, but it’s interesting to hear one of the characters complaining about the local lawmen keeping everyone whipped up into a constant state of “emergency” for the sole purpose of passing laws that deliver more and more power into their hands. Again, this doesn’t really affect the story at all, it just informs the mindset of one particular character, and it’s a surprisingly topical jab for Big Finish, which is normally a bit less topical than the TV series.

Orlok gets even more interesting at the end of part one, at which point the seemingly even playing field is disrupted by a character who knows exactly who and what the Doctor is, despite apparently being a local. Though it’s not exactly spelled out, the implication is that we’re also seeing the origins of the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel, complete with an “oven” that they have to brave. This aspect of the story isn’t exactly hammered into the listener’s head – it’s a very subtle hint that shows a little bit of respect for the listener’s intelligence.

Overall, a nice original romp with plenty of action and intrigue.

written by Jonathan Morris
directed by Barnaby Edwards
music by Martin Johnson

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sheridan Smith (Lucie Miller), Nigel Planer (Alex Marlowe), Lysette Anthony (Hazel Bright), Adna Sablyich (Christina Ondrak), Stuart Crossman (Stefan Radek), Barnaby Edwards (Newsreader)

Notes: The Krynoids were last encountered in The Seeds Of Doom (1976), which is where the Doctor – in his fourth incarnation – encountered both the World Ecology Bureau and Sir Colin Thackeray, both of whom get a mention in Hothouse.

Timeline: after Orbis and before The Beast Of Orlok

Review: It seems that there are two kinds of classic series references in the eighth Doctor/Lucie audios: those that use old adversaries in interesting new ways, and those that use them as “name dropper” baddies and don’t really make the most of their established mythology. Alas, Hothouse is in the latter category.

The sad thing, it really could’ve been much more interesting; there are hints aplenty that the story might deal with the thorny (and now hopelessly politicized) issue of climate change, repopulating the rainforest, and so on; the main villain of the piece warns that Lucie is about to “go green” when she is threatened by a Krynoid seed pod. But Hothouse fails to innovate, instead essentially taking the major plot beats of The Seeds Of Doom and replaying them in a much more compressed sequence of events in a modern setting. You can comfortably assign Harrison Chase’s motives to Alex Marlowe, Lucie steps into Sarah Jane’s shoes as the companion threatened with Krynoid infection to force the Doctor to cooperate, Marlowe’s hired thug turns against him in the end (but still pays the price for her past misdeeds on his behalf) and we even get to know the hapless soul who unwittingly becomes the leader of the Krynoid pack. Hothouse is The Seeds Of Doom, in fast-forward.

The Doctor is still, irritatingly, slightly amnesiac where Lucie is concerned, and while the cast does the best job possible with the recycled script (see? Maybe it really is an environmentally-conscious story after all!), but there just isn’t much to work with – even the Doctor-rediscovering-Lucie plot strand isn’t serviced very well. It’s bad enough that the new TV series sees fit to crib entire stories from the books and audios; Big Finish doesn’t need to return the favor by poaching stuff from the original series. Hothouse is a very disposable adventure for the eighth Doctor – especially if you’ve already seen The Seeds Of Doom.

written by Alan Barnes and Nicholas Briggs
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Andy Hardwick

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sheridan Smith (Lucie Miller), Andrew Sachs (Crassostrea), Laura Solon (Selta), Katarina Olsson (Headhunter), Beth Chalmers (Saccostrea), Barry McCarthy (Yanos)

Notes: The “time bullets” used by the Headhunter seem to have a similar effect to the slow-motion gunshot wound suffered by Gwen in the Torchwood episode They Keep Killing Suzie. The Doctor admits here that he’s lost track of his own age, and in any case he’s guilty of rounding it up or down to account for relativistic time, which is a handy throwaway explanation for why the tenth Doctor is only 900 years old, while the seventh Doctor – in his first adventure – was 953 years old, and the third Doctor was “over a thousand years old”.

Timeline: after The Vengeance Of Morbius and before Hothouse

Review: A strange way to pick up from the Morbius two-parter that closed the second eighth Doctor/Lucie “season”, Orbis matter-of-factly tells us that the Doctor didn’t fall to his death, no questions asked, and Lucie’s off to save him. All fairly routine stuff, except that the Doctor has been living among sentient sea creatures so long that he’s lost his memory. I’m of the opinion that there are few plot/character devices in drama that are as cheap as amnesia or mind control, and Orbis doesn’t improve my outlook on that front.

The eighth Doctor and Lucie had a good thing going, a real partnership of equals that didn’t require anybody to have a crush on anybody else; Lucie doesn’t love the Doctor so much as she loves traveling with the Doctor. The amnesia plot throws an unnecessary complication into a relationship that was delightfully free of such issues. Though it could be that this was necessary to pad things out: the other plot, involving the two alien races poised at the brink of war, is largely an uninteresting land grab/illegal colonization story that relies on weirdness and only really gains a moral component at the very end. When things start flagging toward the end, a plot element from The Vengeance Of Morbius returns briefly – it’s just about the most interesting thing going here.

Paul McGann and Sheridan Smith make the most of what they’ve got in this story, though many of Lucie’s scenes are with the Headhunter, a role that merely requires an acid, icy delivery from Katarina Olsson. There just isn’t a lot of meat to Orbis – not the epic comeback demanded by that the cliffhanger that it inherited.