This review is based on the MP3 download from Big Finish, and contains spoilers.

Following on directly from The Sands of Life and its cliffhanger, this two part story continues the Conglomerate’s scheming, as led by their CEO Cuthbert (David Warner). Warner revels in his megalomaniacal role, with Cuthbert buying whatever scientific expertise he needs while going head-to-head against the Doctor and testing the mettle of Earth’s newly elected President, Sheridan Moorkurk (Hayley Atwell).

The Sands of Life configured an intriguing dilemma: respecting the Laan’s life cycle could mean all of humanity facing extinction. War Against the Laan picks up this puzzle, but the titular struggle is not one readily engaged in by the Doctor and Romana. Unlike the ruthless Cuthbert, our heroes are instead seeking a peaceful way to resolve the situation; it’s jaw-jaw not war-war for this TARDIS team, especially given that the scenario they’re up against is not at all an archetypal ‘invasion’.

Nick Briggs’ script gives both Warner and Atwell more to do this time round, and Tom Baker lavishes actorly attention on a number of his anti-Cuthbert expostulations, as well as sneaking a mention of badgers into his performance (I refuse to believe that moment was penned by Briggs, unless and until I see evidence to the contrary!). K-9 basically vanishes from proceedings  – having not been well utilized in this adventure – and Cuthbert also disappears at the very end, leaving the President to tie up a few (but not all) loose ends and bid the Doctor and Romana adieu. A closing scene between the Doctor and Cuthbert would have been more dramatically satisfying and less conventional, but this possibility is instead displaced by a slightly run-of-the-mill goodbye scene.

Combined with The Sands of Life, War Against the Laan ends up feeling like a strangely cosy four-parter despite some of its hard-hitting subject matter. It resists emulating the new series or “doing a Moffat” and shifting its second half to a wholly different time zone, setting or subgenre, and even finds time to revisit Genesis of the Daleks again, after its dialogue had already been referenced in the preceding release. I felt slightly let down by the resolution of the Laan conundrum, though. Having defined a brilliant, epic problem for the fourth Doctor and Romana to tackle, one with a real emotional and moral kick to it, things are clarified here until the main issue is pretty much sandpapered way. Tough questions are posed; easier answers are supplied. Likewise, a scientist whose services are bought and paid for by Cuthbert is called upon to wield his “auto dissect tools” on a child-bearing Laan, and although the emotional darkness of this is gestured at, any moral grey areas are fairly rapidly done away with. War Against the Laan tends to retreat into pulp fiction certainties or dodges, despite depicting a complex world of real politik and rampant commercialism.

There’s a mystery left dangling: Cuthbert’s thwarted experiment in the Proxima Four System evidently concerns some sort of time-space manipulation, but beyond that we learn little of the specifics. Presumably this will be returned to later in the current run of fourth Doctor tales, though the villain who wants time travel is itself a fairly well-worn Who theme. Perhaps Cuthbert wants total brand domination across all temporalities as well as all territories… less the Master, and more the evil Merchandiser. If so, Cuthbert’s moment as a zeitgeist baddie may well have arrived; initially an Audio Visuals’ creation of the Thatcher years, it is striking that he's been reimagined both as Doctor Who itself enters a peak of (anniversary) commercial activity, and as the UK simultaneously faces a resurgence in free market rhetoric and privatization. It seems fitting that the fourth Doctor's contemporary Moriarty figure should be a corporate celebrity, operating outside the law and above the government.  

The Laan are also an interesting creation, pregnant with possibilities, and represented almost as a kind of time-vortex salmon (though they’re actually described and visualized as giant seacows) instinctively returning to a particular space-time to spawn. I realize their massification is part of the story’s bid for scope and scale, but I still would have liked a greater sense of Laan culture or individuation. There are implications and hints – they refer to “sisters”, and there are “elders” who lead the birthing – but when Romana communicates empathetically with them we don’t get much in the way of Laan personality, quirks or differences. Instead, they seem to be a resolute collective; a big society of seven billion or so.

War Against the Laan does an excellent job of building Cuthbert's villainy and character, as well as seeding plot points which are sure to return. As a complete story alongside its predecessor, however, it promises more than it quite delivers. But there's real storytelling ambition on show here, and I'm already looking forward to Cuthbert's reappearance, not to mention the next full-on performance skirmish between David Warner and Tom Baker.            

This review is based on the MP3 download from Big Finish, and contains minor spoilers.

“You must change the channel – even if it’s Space: 1999! Just this once, it’s worth it! The Scorchies are evil!”
Jo Grant

I first met Katy Manning at a convention over a decade ago in my (and back then her) native Australia. The first thing that struck me about her is how extroverted and mischievous she is in comparison to her softly spoken alter ego Josephine Grant. The second thing that struck me was what a talented voice artist she is. She kept her audience thoroughly entertained for an hour by breaking into an assortment of voices belonging to characters she had portrayed in animation and children’s programmes at the time.

The Scorchies, her latest contribution to Big Finish’s Doctor Who Companion Chronicles, is right up Katy’s alley. It gives her the chance to not just reprise her role as Jo but to also voice some of the wacky characters that infest this oddball tale.

In the context of the story, the Scorchies are a bunch of madcap, homicidal extraterrestrials masquerading as children’s TV show puppets! Author James Goss, director Ken Bentley and sound designers Richard Fox and Lauren Yason bring to life a narrative in the guise of a fictional 1970s TV programme that can only be best described as The Muppets, The Teletubbies, Play School, Romper Room and Basil Brush on acid, complete with crazy, juvenile songs – and Jo Grant as a hostage on live TV! Jo is at one point trying to make a psychic anti-Scorchies gun out of cardboard tubes, sticky backed plastic, a pipe cleaner and a mind control crystal. Then there’s the Scorchie (TV) scanner, the sort of thing you might have seen on Play School or Romper Room in your tweens! The story also has a very pantomime feel which is, of course, very deliberate, especially when Jo herself ends up breaking into rhyme with some of the characters!

Like most Companion Chronicles, The Scorchies is a two-person affair. However, unlike previous titles, in which the story is told from the perspective of a narrator, assisted by some additional dialogue from a guest performer, the story is very much carried by the interplay between Manning and guest star Melvyn Hayes who clearly relishes the opportunity to play the villainous Scorchies, led by their leader Grizz Fizzle. Hayes, of course, is the ex-husband of former Who companion Wendy Padbury and father to their daughter Charlie Hayes (who has also appeared in other Who audios). Like Manning, Hayes has also done his fair share of voice work in children’s programmes, including Pongwiffy (in which he also voiced a character called Grizz), a TV adaptation of Jack & The Beanstalk and Super Ted (which, of course, starred the late, great Jon Pertwee). Clearly, Hayes is also in his element, playing other off the wall characters like Cool Cat and Professor Baffle.

I haven’t listened to too many Companion Chronicles so this is the first time I’ve heard Katy Manning as Jo on audio. Although you can sometimes detect the more seasoned tone to her voice, for the most part Katy captures Jo’s naïveté and youth perfectly – impressive when you consider that (her recent appearance in The Sarah Jane Adventures aside) she hasn’t played the part for the best part of 40 years. Even the token Jo piece of dialogue – “But the Doctor can’t be dead! He just can’t be! You’re lying!” – is delivered with the same teary inflection and emotion that Katy was so famous for delivering on-screen all those decades ago.

Indeed, this style of storytelling literally pivots on the back of emotion. In an interview with Big Finish’s Vortex newsletter (which is available as a downloadable PDF file on this release), Katy discusses her approach to mixing her own portrayal of Jo with her other character voices (including the Magic Mice – “Would it help if we ate her a little bit?” - and Amble the ugly doll) on The Scorchies. She says the key to getting all the characters right is by “being in the moment ... with all the emotions that are happening at that time”. With the exception of the songs, which were recorded separately, Katy and Melvyn Hayes effectively performed the story “live”, effortlessly jumping between voices rather than recording the dialogue of each of the different characters separately. As a result, you as the listener get carried along rather convincingly, just as Jo, the hostage to this bizarre collection of aliens, is also powerless to influence the events of the story-cum-children’s programme.

The extras at the end of this release feature an interview with sound designers Richard Fox and Lauren Yason. They discuss the songs they had to compose for the story – Jo is Making a Thing and We killed the Doctor Dead – along with untreated performances of the songs before they were delivered to Katy Manning and Melvyn Hayes and treated electronically. This is actually quite refreshing, as we don’t often hear enough about the actual sound design work on a Big Finish audio, as opposed to the usual interviews with some members of the cast and production crew. What it does underline, though, is how important an aural experience The Scorchies is and how much it exploits the medium.

The Scorchies is an entertaining hour of childish mayhem, almost as if you really were watching a puppets’ TV show – and not listening to a Doctor Who audio. From that perspective, the story succeeds in parodying 1970s children’s programmes. If you’re not a regular listener of The Companion Chronicles, I urge you to try a few of the more conventional plays first. You won’t pick up on the nuances and emotion that Katy Manning refers to if you come to this cold.

Polly finds herself in a literal race against time after the TARDIS brings her, Jamie, the Doctor and Ben to a futuristic casino with a strict ‘no time travellers’ policy.

In the CD extras which accompany House of Cards, writer Steve Lyons and producer David Richardson discuss how they were “channelling” Season Four of Doctor Who in this release. While this may have been their intention, the finished product is reminiscent of a more recent sub-genre of Doctor Who. With its simple storyline, cartoonish villains and broadly drawn supporting characters the adventure feels closest in style to the BBC books/audios produced for younger audiences since 2005 (notably The Stone Rose with which it shares a similar structure). It’s an odd approach for a Companion Chronicle, given that they are geared to a more sophisticated, adult fan audience.

Once you accept that House of Cards is a more straightforward adventure than a typical Companion Chronicle there is much to enjoy here. Anneke Wills gives a typically spirited performance as Polly, with able support from Frazer Hines as the story’s secondary voice. A highlight comes in the first episode when Polly is confronted by Fortune, the mastermind behind the casino. Here Lyons capitalises on Polly’s strong sense of morality, calling to mind similar scenes with the Cybermen in The Tenth Planet.

While the first half of the play is a fairly standard set up, manoeuvring the regulars into varying degrees of peril, things get more complicated as we move into episode two. Here, Polly travels in time back to an earlier point in the narrative, and Lyons has a few clever tricks up his sleeve to stop things getting predictable. The identity of the lady in the china mask, who appears at key points in episode one, is central to this. Lyons deliberately wrong-foots the listener a number of times, making what first appears an obvious ruse a lot more fun than you’d expect. It’s in episode two that Jamie’s role as secondary narrator clicks into place. His present is Polly’s past, allowing us to see the impact her journey in time has had.

You would think that a casino would be a perfect setting for the mischievous Second Doctor but he takes a surprisingly small role in House of Cards. When he resurfaces towards the end of the story he is given a wonderfully ‘Doctorish’ moment (which I won’t spoil here, but concerns the game he picks to play to decide his fate) and it’s a shame there couldn’t have been more of these throughout the play. With Polly’s story neatly wrapped up, it falls to the Doctor to defeat Fortune. However, after being built up as a sinister, formidable foe her swift dispatch is something of a disappointment.

Overall House of Cards is one of the weaker instalments of the Companion Chronicles, but if you’re a fan of Polly and Jamie there are plenty of moments to enjoy. The disc’s extras confirm that Lyon’s will be penning a further adventure for this TARDIS team in the near future. This is welcome news as he captures them all very well, but it would be nice to see him return to the more nuanced, complex storytelling he is widely praised for (stories like Resistance, Colditz and The Crooked World).It would also be good to see more experimentation with the ‘second voice’ in Polly’s Companion Chronicles, as this is the third release in a row that has seen her paired with Frazer Hines as Jamie. One of the most successful aspects of the range as been the pairing of companion actors with co-performers/characters who bring out new and interesting sides of them, and it would be good to see Wills benefit from this, especially as it worked very well in her first Companion Chronicle (the previously mentioned Resistance).