Warlord Games
Released October 2016

Undoubtedly one of the highlights of Russell T Davies’ March 2007 television story “Smith And Jones” was its introduction of the Judoon upon an unsuspecting ‘Nu Who’ audience and the extra-terrestrials’ infuriatingly catchy single-syllable dialogue – "Blos So Folt Do No Cro Blo Cos So Ro"; a dialect which has already resulted in the creation of several Judoon Language Translators upon the World Wide Web.

Perhaps sensing the popularity of the race of “black armoured Rhinoceroid bipeds” within the wargaming community, as well as the potential for a “Doctor Who: Exterminate!” fan to field the “mercenary intergalactic police force affiliated to the Shadow Proclamation” on the tabletop, “Warlord Games” have now released a boxed pack of three 38mm scale metal Judoon figures as one of their first expansions for their miniatures game, and marvellously rendered they are too. Indeed, even though the “logical but stupid” single-cast aliens come supplied unpainted, their sculpts’ attention to minute detail, such as quarry scanners and incineration blasters, really makes them come alive in the hand the moment you take them out of the Gallifreyan-influenced translucent blue packaging.

For those interested in painting the Judoon, rather than simply owning the trio as collector pieces, matters could not be any easier either, as “Warlord Games” have already helpfully posted up a straightforward palette guide on their “Into The Time Vortex” website, and being predominantly black in colour should mean the vast majority of each miniature can be finished with a quick black prime and charcoal dry-brush. I certainly finished my first three models within just a few hours by using this technique and later just appropriately picked out the mercenaries’ collars, buckles, toe caps and equipment in either silver or red.

Slightly disconcerting however, is the fact that anyone who wishes to actually use the models specifically for “Doctor Who: Exterminate!” must first own a copy of the miniature game’s starter set, as the Judoon’s official Recruitment and Adventure cards are currently only available within that particular boxed product and cannot be found with the figures themselves. Fortunately, “Warlord Games” are slowly releasing such essential statistical data on their aforementioned “Into The Time Vortex” website as PDFs, and also apparently plan to sell physical copies of the cards at some point in the future. For now, though, the only way for a person to play “Judoon Rockets”, “Ricochet” or “You’re Under Arrest!” upon their opponent during a battle is for them to own the main game; albeit that's probably even more reason to pick up a copy… 

Fans of the intergalactic mercenaries will also need to buy at least two packs of the miniatures if they want to deploy a typical Judoon Faction for the game. This will allow them to ‘field’ a Leader, three (ordinary) Judoon and a couple of Judoon Enforcers. Unsurprisingly, this duplication of the same models has already led to much internet debate on the conversion possibilities of the sculpts, and having removed a few limbs and repositioned them myself, it seems perfectly doable in my eyes, even if a simple arm swap between two models requires some careful pinning.

Writer: Julian Richards
Director: Lisa Bowerman
Featuring: Matthew Waterhouse

Big Finish Release (United Kingdom):
Due to released on: Thursday 30th November 2017
Running Time: 35 minutes

When you are a fan of a particular show and it changes, it's difficult to let go of what you loved about what it did and embrace the new. Doctor Who has regularly tested the allegiance of its fanbase from 1966 onwards with the introduction of regeneration for example. It’s not only the lead of the show that changes, the companions on rare occasion stick around, but mostly seem to arrive  only to be off before you could work out how to spell their full name. Adric was a pure example of this, not a popular companion, though his out of placeness, bad clothes, moods and mistakes spoke to my teen self more than someone dressed like my dad playing cricket.

Doctor Who had run for some time with the cliche dynamic of the doctor and one plucky young woman for the longest time. As the first 5th Doctor season arrived this all changed with a fully packed tardis, Adric seemed like a leftover piece of the transition that now no longer worked. I liked Adric’s relationship with 4th Doctor and missed it when suddenly Tegan and Nyssa and a New Doctor changed the feel of the show. The Ingenious Gentleman Adric of Alzarius picks up on that feeling and gives the listener a chance to relieve that period of the old familiar hero being a subject of a strong nostalgia it overwhelms you to nothing else.

Excellently read by Matthew Waterhouse, this short story follows Adric as he finds himself In a different position than usual, instead of playing second fiddle he is now a worthy side kick in fact a squire to the noble Sir Keeyoht of la Koura. Much of this story eludes to Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote and as it revealed later the  infamous ‘chivalrous quests’ in this insistence Is stop an evil man called the Doctor. Also Sir  Keeyoht of la Koura shows a passing resemblance to the 4th Doctor and Adric insecurity of the recent literal change of character of a new friend and mentor seems to be the crux of his new world. The subconscious shaping our Perception is a regular pattern in doctor who from the matrix being a terrifying mental landscape controlled by the master to surreal adventures in The Mind Robber. With a work like this you know what it’s coming, the reveal all is not what it seems because it isn’t. Buffy the Vampire Slayer followed a similar narrative in one episode “Normal Again’. Partly critiquing how fantastical the show had become with Buffy was shown as a patient in a mental ward. This story has a sting In it’s tail as Buffy fights back into the world we know in the series, the final shot is our hero Still in the hospital her doctor claiming ‘ we’ve lost her’. Adric was the lost companion, stuck between two opposing styles of the show and finally let go the following season. This audio story hints that with the 4th Doctor, Adric may have been destined for a stronger role and A better life.

This is a perfect example to having time to examine an unlooked aspect of the series, the Writing style and presentation lifts the concept away from it’s science fiction cliche roots. I am very keen to experience Adric again by the side of might and truth once again, If this was a pilot for The Ingenious Gentleman Adric of Alzarius, hurry up Netflix and commission a series. 

Written by John Dorney

Directed by Ken Bentley

Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Bonnie Langford (Mel Bush), Gabrielle Glaister (Cowley), Hywel Morgan (Kempton/ Tribesman), Kate Duchene (Regina/ Seraphim), Leighton Pugh (Fulton), Jack Monaghan 
(Dunne/ Selfdrive), James Joyce (Robowardens)

Big Finish Productions - Released July 2017

Having successfully reintroduced Bonnie Langford’s Mel Bush as a returning character last year alongside the already popular TARDIS team of Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor and Sophie Aldred as Ace, the dynamic trio are all set for the first of a new trilogy of their ongoing adventures.

The High Price of Parking finds the travellers attempt to reach a galactic beauty spot and renowned tourist trap leads them to a nearby planetoid designed as a giant car park and named, appropriately enough, Parking. Here they quickly find themselves caught up in a civil war between the planet’s Wardens and a sect called Free Parkers. Beneath the rather obvious puns is a fairly standard Doctor Who plot with some nice twists and turns which builds to a satisfying conclusion.

As ever there is a competent supporting cast headed up by Gabrielle Glaister, who will be most familiar to television audiences from her role of “Bob”, the only character to have straddled the comedic universes of Blackadder and Upstart Crow. Here she plays the slightly out of her depth head warden Cowley and gets to share some enjoyable scenes with Mel. Bonnie Langford’s computer programmer is at her proactive best for most of this story. Also worthy of mention is Kate Duchene playing two very different roles, the first of these is Regina, tribal leader of the Free Parkers, and the other is super computer Seraphim. The latter role could easily have been very clichéd but the scenes shared with Sylvester McCoy in the play’s climax are very enjoyable with the Seventh Doctor as his “r” rolling best. Additional support comes from Hywel Morgan as the slimy Kempton and Leighton Pugh in several smaller roles including an enjoyable turn as Fulton an overzealous enforcer for Galactic Heritage.

Overall, this is an enjoyable tale which combines some light comedy with clever moments of jeopardy even allowing for the fact that the listener will know that whatever happens the three lead characters won’t come to any harm. The only slight misfire for long-term listeners is that having apparently established Mel’s return as taking place sometime after the departure of Hex, Ace seems to have regressed to a slightly younger version of her character. Unlike some of writer 17011’s more memorable offerings of recent years, this isn’t a story to set the world alight with originality but nevertheless is a promising start to this new trilogy of adventures.

The High Price of Parking is available now on general release.

Written by Pat Mills,‎ John Wagner,‎ Steve Moore
‎ Illustrator Dave Gibbons
Paperback: 164 pages
Publisher: Panini UK LTD
First Published (22 Jan. 2013

It’s difficult to imagine the impact The Iron Legion must have had on readers when it was originally serialised in the pages of the first eight issues ofDoctor Who Weekly. The world of Doctor Who comics had, up until this point, certainly been something of a mixed bag. The TV Comic adventures of the first and second doctors have become notorious in their own right (a particular panel of the Second Doctor shooting a giant spider with a laser gun whilst screaming ‘Die hideous monster! Die!’). Despite reaching a high point in Pertwee’s run, the strips had once again dipped in quality at the start of Tom Bakers reign. At points the strips even relied on reprints with Jon Pertwee given ridiculous hair in an attempt to resemble Tom Baker. Enter Editor Dez Skinn, who having come off the back of the successful Hammer Halls of Horror movie magazine, has grand ideas for a Doctor Who Weekly. When the comic was eventually launched he turned to two of the brightest upcoming names in the British industry at that time, 2000ad creator and stalwart Pat Mills and Judge Dredd creator John Wagner. Skinn didn't stop there, he also carried over 2000ad artist Dave Gibbons. The resultant story has quite rightly, become one of the classics of the early years of DWM along with The Star Beast and Junkyard Demon.

Immediately, Iron Legion stands out for the expansive nature of its story. Arriving in a small English village, the Fourth Doctor is quickly transported to a parallel Earth when the Roman Empire never ended and has now conquered the Galaxy with an army of robots. Featuring a robot General shaped like an eagle, hideous demon creatures known as the Malevilus, the brave cyborg slave Morris and of course Vesuvius, Historian and oldest surviving Robot of the alternative Rome, the story cannot be criticised for lack of imagination. Mills and Wagner really let themselves go wild and whilst certainly endowing the script with a flavour of 2000ad, with its bizarre off the wall characters and insane city-scapes, manage to keep true to the spirit of Doctor Who. The Fourth Doctor, whilst perhaps a little more active and energetic than his television counterpart still has the trademark wit and humour that Tom Baker brought to the role. Certainly, the concept of a Roman Empire that never fell, conquering its way across the universe is something you can imagine making an ideal two-parter. Here it’s given eight episodes but never outstays its welcome as Wagner and Mills explore all aspects of the world they have created. Whilst, the TV Comic/Action/Countdown stories had their epic story-lines (Sub-Zero springs to mind as one of the most successful of these), they pale in comparison to the sheer scale demonstrated here. Not only that but Wagner and Mills also give the story an emotional depth unseen up to this point, particularly in the character of Morris.

Their writing is equally matched by the superb work of artist Dave Gibbons. Gibbons contributed to the pages of DWM several times after this and really took the concept of the programme and brought superb and unrestrained visuals to it. His likeness of Tom Baker is pretty good, despite a few wobbly moments, but given the insane backgrounds he’s placed against, one can hardly begrudge him this. Admittedly as Doctor Who fans I think we’re used to small English villages and bases with five or six characters and so the sheer craziness on display can take a moment to adjust to. However if you let yourself just enjoy the sheer imagination on display, Gibbons artwork really is incredible and one of the main reasons why I revisit The Iron Legion time after time.

If you’ve yet to delve into the History of DWM, then Iron Legion is an ideal starting point. It’s available in an affordable paperback from Panini and contains a number of other early DWM strips, including favorites The Dogs of Doom and the aforementioned The Star Beast. Now…when are we going to see a rematch with Malvelius? 

Writer: Joseph Lidster, Jenny T Colgan, Matt Fitton

Director: Scott Handcock
Script Editor: Scott Handcock
Featuring: Tracy-Ann Oberman, Gareth David-Lloyd

Big Finish
First Released: Tuesday 31st January 2017

With every new Big Finish boxset, there’s the same question as to just what format the narrative will take. Some sets tell one complete story across all their discs, others contain an episode series of separate tales, and some lie somewhere in between, with individual episodes but a story arc running through them. Sometimes huge arcs will even stretch over multiple boxsets. But the one thing you can be sure of is that the official description never seems to quite match the reality (I don’t think anyone would say Doom Coalition felt like one sixteen part story, for instance).

Before the Fall tells two parallel tales of Torchwood One’s newest recruit, Rachel Allan (a name quite distracting if you’re in Ireland, where there’s a celebrity chef called Rachel Allen), and queen bee Yvonne Hartman, and the balance between them – one rising as the other falls. But each of the three installments also tells its own story of this new Torchwood team as the arc elements percolate in the background. It creates a great window into an alternative version of Torchwood and a team we’ve never gotten to see on TV. Introduced in Joseph Lidster’s brilliant opener New Girl through the eyes of eponymous recruit Rachel they’re an appropriately motley crew.

Yvonne is of course, front and centre and perfectly captured again by Lidster as in his earlier One Rule as a splendid mix of intelligence, charm, ruthlessness and menace, and vulnerability. Meanwhile, while we were actively given the impression on TV that Ianto was a low-level drone at Canary Wharf, here he’s promoted to being Yvonne’s right-hand man – an improbability that can be excused for the strong role it gives him in the drama. Nicely, though there’s a callback to his later persona when he audibly bristles at being asked to lower himself to fetching coffee by the head of HR. Alongside these returning favourites, we get that gossipy HR expert Pippa, professional heavies Dean and Kieran and scientific advisor Thomas. Thomas is probably the breakout star here. Effectively a cross between the Third Doctor and Gene Hunt from Life on Mars he’s an unreconstructed sweary, politically incorrect Northern curmudgeon with little respect for authority but given a lot of latitude because, frankly, he’s brilliant. There’s a particularly neat bit of homage in his relationship with his new assistant Rachel – when she blunders into his lab, messing things up, he’s only short of calling her a ‘ham-fisted bun vendor’ and she quickly becomes the Jo to his Doctor. Rachel herself cuts such a sweet, insecure figure that one of New Girl’s great achievements is how it manages to completely wrong-foot the listener – lots of references to the speed of promotion at Torchwood being the result of a high mortality rate and to Yvonne’s very final way of dealing with betrayal or incompetence makes it seem we’re getting a swift encapsulation of how Torchwood can eat up and destroy the unwary. But the final sting sends us in a surprising and intriguing new direction instead.

The following two-thirds of the set sees Rachel finding her feet as the improbable new leader of Torchwood One, and establishing the tenor of her reign, while a fugitive Yvonne, wanted for treason and murder, tries to keep one step ahead of her own agents. Through the Ruins sees the latter at her lowest ebb, couch surfing and calling in every favour she can to try and figure out what’s really going on and how she was framed. Meanwhile, on the Torchwood One team-building Away Day exercise, the sunny, cheerful Rachel has everyone messing about building highly unstable alien weapons in what’s clearly a thinly disguised cull of the slow, the dim and the unlucky. Caught between the two is Ianto. Now romantically involved with Rachel (the Jones boy sure can pick them) but secretly helping Yvonne evade capture, he can all too easily believe almost anything of Yvonne and the evidence seems conclusive, yet he can’t shake the sense that she didn’t actually do this particular horrible thing.

By the concluding Uprising, the stakes have been raised and the fightback begun. With a massive alien fleet about to enter Earth’s atmosphere and lay waste to all, the possibilities as to why it’s all happening are kept convincingly multiple choice until late in the day. Is Rachel a traitor in league with the aliens, or is she just incompetent? The ultimate answer to why Rachel has been making the decisions she has turns out to be very Torchwood – simultaneously grand and tragic, yet kind of petty and pathetic and all too human at the same time. If the essence of Torchwood, as a series, is deeply damaged people trying to rise to challenges that they’re not actually quite up to, then Before the Fall is a fine continuation of that tradition. Yvonne’s ultimate turning of the table on her adversary, meanwhile, is also very Torchwood in its way. Cynical and twisted, but nothing so straightforward as revenge.

Of the mirroring plot strands, Yvonne’s escapades are by far the more successful. Three parts Jason Bourne to one part Mean Girl, she crisscrosses London, getting in car chases and gunfights, while pressing her contracts and hunting leads, all while severely irked that thanks to all this she hasn’t had her hair blown out in days. It also underlines that she’s probably the only unambiguously hyper-competent Torchwood agent we’ve ever had. Rachel’s rapid transformation from naïve newbie to chirpy autocrat is a great deal less successful. We’re regularly told the secret of her success is that she’s a “people person,” adept at making everyone feel she’s their best friend and earning their loyalty. Yet with the entire boxset taking place over the course of a single month, it strains belief that she can command such good faith from her team of agents even as her decisions very, very quickly become hugely suspect.

So, Before the Fall, despite the three episodes, is very much a game of two halves. It’s at its strongest during the initial setup and introductions and New Girl, on its own strengths, is one of the finest hours of Torchwood Big Finish have yet produced. But, despite some nice character work and one or two killer twists, the resulting battle for control of Torchwood all too often feels contrived and just a bit silly. The result overall is a boxset that includes some great stuff but, as a whole proves rather average. However, perhaps its legacy will be this fully fleshed out Torchwood One team. They’re an engaging bunch, and practically worth the price of admission all by themselves. Return visits to Canary Wharf to spend more time with them would be extremely welcome.

Night of the Stormcrow

Writer: Marc Platt
Director: Nicholas Briggs
Featuring: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, 
Chase Masterson, Ann Bell

Big Finish
First Released: Tuesday 31st December 2013!

One of the benefits of a Big Finish main range subscription, is, of course, the short trips subscriber bonuses. Special one off short trips, only available to those whose subscriptions include particular releases. Back in the day, however, these were a somewhat grander affair with bonus full-cast dramas offered to those who took a six or twelve story subscription. These were often somewhat…gimmicky, with titles such as Return to the Web Planet, Trial of the Valeyard and The Four Doctors. When in 2012, after many long years Tom Baker finally joined the Big Finish family, no gimmick was required and the next subscriber special released was simply an extra adventure for the Fourth Doctor, Night of the Stormcrow. Fortunately, it would take only a year before this story was available for general sale and that really is something of a blessing as Night, turned out to be one of the best releases featuring the Fourth Doctor thus far…

The Fourth Doctor Adventures certainly have proven to be one of the more controversial ranges put out by Big Finish. Easily their most nostalgia-heavy range, I must confess to being one of their detractors. Like many people, Tom is one of my favourite Doctors and so when the range was announced I was ecstatic, only to be left bitterly disappointed. It’s a feeling that has gradually lessened as the series has matured but Series 1, however, is still in my mind one of the weakest BF runs. Wrath of the Iceni is superb but the rest of the series was incredibly fan pleasing, often at the expense of good stories, something the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era never was. More distressing was the lack of anything ‘spooky’, given the strong links between gothic horror and the era when these stories were supposed to be set.

Night of the Stormcrow changes this and provides a wonderful hour of evocative and genuinely creepy ‘cosmic’ horror that feels nostalgic to nothing, other than the cultural memory of ‘hiding behind the sofa’. Scripted by easily one of the greatest gifts to Doctor Who fandom, Marc Platt, the story is a wonderfully dark base under-siege scenario. The plot concerns the personnel of an observatory under attack from the mysterious ‘Stormcrow’ and the ‘No-Things’ that follow in its wake. When the Doctor and Leela arrive, the group soon becomes trapped as Stormcrow devours all around it…

I’ll praise Marc Platt to the end of the world and it’s very rare that I dislike any of his work. His incredible imagination is really on display here, giving us enough information about Stormcrow to make it genuinely frightening and disturbing but keeping it mysterious enough so that we aren’t comforted by any of the answers. The script is full of a number of genuinely shocking reveals, keeping the listener on the edge of the seat as a character reacts to a situation without actually revealing what it is he or she is reacting too. When the reveal is made, it’s shocking and creepy- helped by a wonderful soundscape from Jamie Robertson. In the behind the scenes feature Nick Briggs reveals that he actually had to get Platt to make the script a little more obvious. It’s a shame as I for one would love to hear what a more mysterious and opaque version of this story would have sounded like!

Night, gives Tom the chance to play the darker, more alien Fourth Doctor and here it works beautifully, ramping up the tension and assisting in delivering some spine-tingling moments. Louise Jameson really gets to shine as Leela in this story, at one point becoming convinced that she has lost the Doctor and reflecting on her situation since she left the Sevateem. The guest cast is superb, the entire piece oozing immense paranoia, with no character at all trustworthy.  To get a guest cast this good was integral to the piece working as a whole and is doubtless one of the reasons for its success. Ann Bell provides an entertaining turn as the obsessive Professor Gesima Cazalat, at points appearing endeared to the Doctor and at others seeming undeniably sinister. Peggy Brooks, Trevor Gale and Erica MacMillan all excel in their roles and it’s easily one of the strongest guest casts that Tom and Louise have worked with this far.

Night of the Stormcrow feels like what the fourth doctor adventures should be and fortunately more ‘gothic horror’ based releases have found themselves filtering into the range since with The Crooked Man, White Ghosts and The Haunting of Malkin Place all providing good examples