Flashpoint - Doctor Who - Short Trips - Big Finish

Written By: Andrew Smith; Directed By: Lisa Bowerman

Cast

Sheridan Smith (Narrator)

The Eighth Doctor and Lucie Miller (Sheridan Smith, here narrating) find themselves on a viewing platform high above Cerberin, a world where storms famously rage across it’s ravaged surface. They find themselves caught up in an attack by vicious assassins, and the pair are separated. The TARDIS has plummeted to the planet’s surface, and things most definitely don't look good.

Desperately trying to contact the Doctor, Lucie finds herself in the company of the very child that the assassins are hunting. Together, on the planet they must not only dodge cold, hard killers, but also deadly lightning strikes that are hitting all around. All the while trying to track down the Doctor, and striving to establish who might be a friend and who a foe.

The reviews on the Big Finish site are positively glowing for July’s Flashpoint, but to be honest it left me a little cold. I just didn't’t find it that engaging, and I found my mind wandering. Sheridan Smith performs the narration with absolute gusto, and is very good indeed, but the material that she has to work with was, I found was just.....lacking. The format of the story was very familiar, and VERY Doctor-lite. It’s essentially hard sci-fi riddled with clichés. The big reveal on the character who saves Lucie and the boy is very predictable. Nothing really surprised me, which is a shame as I am a great fan of writer Andrew Smith’s Full Circle.

The very nature of the Short Trips series is to expose as many different story telling styles to a wide audience. All of them in short, affordable, easily manageable stories. I'm sure Flashpoint has an audience, but unfortunately it just wasn't’t for me.

Flashpoint is available now as a digital download from Big Finish, and costs £2.99.