Written by Lisa McMullin, Lizzie Hopley,
Gemma Langford and Sarah Grochala
Directed by Helen Goldwyn
Stars: Alex Kingston, Louise Jameson, Sophie Aldred,
Lisa Bowerman, Neve McIntosh, Catrin Stewart,
Dan Starkey, Jemma Redgrave,
Ingrid Oliver, Sylvester McCoy
Big Finish Productions, 2019

In 2019, to mark International Women’s Day, Big Finish launched an anthology – The Eighth of March – that celebrated the diversity of its stable and highlighted the exploits, courage and ingenuity of some of the women the Doctor has travelled with or encountered in his/her long lives. In addition, the four 60-minute-long serials were written, produced and directed by women, some of whom have been long-standing contributors to Big Finish over its 20-plus years.

BF’s decision to do an International Women’s Day release was a curious one, given its track record in the portrayal of women and in promoting opportunities for female actors and directors is pretty rock solid. It has given many former Doctor Who companions who weren’t necessarily served well on TV new leases of life – eg Nicola Bryant, Bonnie Langford, Maureen O’Brien, the late Deborah Watling – and its Bernice Summerfield range is the longest-running audio SF series with a female lead. Add to that other output featuring female leads – such as Torchwood, The Diary of River Song, Gallifrey, Missy, UNIT, Counter-Measures and new series spin-offs for Rose Tyler and Donna Noble – and the opportunities the company has given to many other women to work behind the scenes as well – Bryant, Louise Jameson, Bernice actor Lisa Bowerman and Helen Goldwyn are directors as much as they are actors – it could be argued there is little cause for an anthology release that celebrates the work of its women. Nonetheless, The Eighth of March is a decent primer for showcasing the wonderful work that women are doing across the Doctor Who audio range and in Big Finish’s other output.

The anthology consists of four serials, some of which tie in with other spin-offs in the Doctor Who range. Emancipation pairs the Doctor’s wife River Song (Alex Kingston) with former companion Leela (Jameson), while The Big Blue Book is effectively a Nineties 'New Adventures' reunion of Ace (Sophie Aldred) and Professor Bernice Summerfield (Bowerman). Inside Every Warrior is effectively a pilot episode for The Paternoster Gang audio series, while Narcissus is a modern UNIT story with Kate Lethbridge-Stewart (Jemma Redgrave) and the two Osgoods (Ingrid Oliver) post-The Zygon Invasion/Inversion two-parter.

In Emancipation, River attends a Galactic Heritage convention on a primitive planet under the guise of former Gallifreyan President Romanadvoratrelundar. Enter Leela, who is despatched by the real Romana to expose the impostor, only to find herself (in her own words) “jumping through time to rescue princesses”, as she and River uncover an age-old conspiracy by that world’s royal personage to appease her people’s gods.

Kingston and Jameson make a great team, with the usually feisty Leela being the more level-headed and soothing influence, and River the more emotional, flamboyant tearaway (a reversal of the Fourth Doctor/Leela partnership). There are, of course, moments where Leela’s inner warrior seeps through this more restrained exterior – “Get up – or I will scalp those unnecessary curls from your head!” – but it is River’s recklessness and throwing of caution to the wind (much like her final TV appearance in The Husbands of River Song) that more often than not endangers their mission. This not only occurs over the course of the episode but in the conclusion when River quite unashamedly begins to meddle with time itself, at potentially great cost to many lives (something that the Doctor would rarely, if ever, do).

Pitted against the charismatic Kingston and Jameson is Julie Teal (Luther, Doctors, Waking the Dead) as the villainous and flamboyant Royal Magnificat. Teal almost steals the show from the two leads as the deliciously wicked and calculating evil queen mother. It’s an “arch” performance which Goldwyn admits she encouraged Teal to “revel” in, and it’s no doubt assisted by some great dialogue by scribe Lisa McMullin, whose script also borrows from the Steven Moffat playbook of witty discourse. As McMullin herself admits in the CD extras, it was “hard to pull back from the jokes. Because the characters are so brilliant, you want to make every line a standout line, so you start trying to one-up yourself while you’re writing it”. The episode is indeed very entertaining listening as a result, although it doesn’t surpass another River Song instalment – The Bekdel Test – which had the advantage of pairing River with Michelle Gomez’s maniacal Missy.

The second instalment – The Big Blue Book – is perhaps the most “traditional” of the four serials, given it features popular companions Ace and Bernice (aka Benny), minus Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor. Benny is drawn into an elaborate extra-terrestrial library-cum-dimension ship, and Ace has to rescue her before Benny is lost forever within a matrix of twisted and dying souls. Lizzie Hopley’s script is the most macabre of the four scripts – the manner in which an alien race imprisons and effectively damns its criminals for eternity brings a whole new meaning to the term “body horror”. It would have perfectly suited the style of the New Adventures (NA) that have clearly inspired it.

Ace and Benny are matched against another female antagonist in Vassa, played by Rosemary Ashe, who describes her character as a “kleptomaniac serial killer”, and her emasculated partner in crime Lycurgus (Robert Gill). With Benny sidelined for some of the story, it is the streetwise Ace who steps up to thwart this bizarre, villainous couple and free the trapped souls within the dimension ship. There is an assumption (particularly on the part of the villainous Vassa) that because Ace isn’t academically minded, she is no real threat and therefore not worthy of induction into the ship’s library. Of course, anyone familiar with Ace from the TV series – or her NA persona – will know that she is very smart; she may lack certified qualifications but she is by no means simple-minded (she’s a non-qualified chemist, given her affinity for making Nitro-9 bombs) nor is she completely science-phobic either. Hopley shows in her script how resourceful any informally educated person can be – yet another appreciation of the diversity this set is promoting – and Aldred (as expected) does an outstanding job of recreating her signature role (even down to recapturing Ace’s youthful verve) and its knack for ingenuity.

It is easy to forget that the TARDIS is also ostensibly female and sometimes can be as much of a character in 'her' own right as the cast of whichever era a story is set. 'She' also becomes a worthy plot device and instrumental to the conclusion in the Doctor’s absence.

Inside Every Warrior, the third script by Gemma Langford, takes us back to 8 March, 1894, when the Paternoster Gang – comprising Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh), her wife/housemaid Jenny Flint (Catrin Stewart) and their Sontaran butler Strax (Dan Starkey) – are called upon by a conceited, misogynistic Victorian scientist Cornelius Pinch (Nigel Fairs) to investigate werewolf sightings in London. Pinch does little to enamour himself to the Victorian detective trio, while Jenny befriends Pinch’s ill-treated maid Daisy Hodge (Julie Atherton). However, when Strax is kidnapped by a werewolf and interned in an extra-terrestrial menagerie – in which the alien prisoners’ life essences are being drained by London’s upper classes – Vastra and Jenny realise the antagonist is not quite whom they were expecting.

As a primer for The Paternoster Gang series, Inside Every Warrior provides a “taste” of the Victorian-style adventures of the assorted trio. McIntosh and Stewart effortlessly recapture the love, affection and flirtatiousness their duo shared on-screen, while Stewart also gets to display her compassionate side in scenes with her counterpart Hodge. Starkey has less air time as Strax but his larger than life presence is certainly felt when he features, especially in the opening and climactic scenes of the story, underlined by the unmissable 'Sontar-ha' baritone.

The other performers in this play are also very strong. Tom Bell does an outstanding job of portraying two different characters – the downtrodden alien Prog and the foppish upper class 'gentleman' Percy – while BF veteran Louise Faulkner is both equally eccentric and deliciously sinister as Percy’s wife Laeticia. Atherton also shines in her role as she eschews the demoralised, browbeaten maid in the second half of the play. “Whatever we do, we’re always the vessel taking others to fairer lands. For once, don’t you want to be master of your own destiny?” Hodge poetically asks of Jenny, reinforcing the very solid writing that Langford brings to this entry and the sympathy it engenders for the central antagonist.

The final play – Sarah Grochala’s Narcissus – brings us squarely back to the 21st century as the modern day UNIT team encounter an internet dating site that is a cover for extra-terrestrial activity in London. This serial (as the title strongly implies) focuses on the concepts of beauty and self-image in both women and men, particularly in this age of social media, ‘selfies’, online personas and self-gratification.The interesting contrast with these notions is the character(s) of Osgood. Not only do the twin Osgoods not always get along (implying that having a physical duplicate of yourself is not guaranteed to make you faster, more efficient and more productive) but Osgood’s more modest sense of self is equally important in countering the extra-terrestrial threat in the androgynous Jordan (played by both Alix Dunmore and Dan Blaskey).

Ingrid Oliver delivers a fantastic performance as the two Osgoods. The actor admits in the CD extras that trying to convey the different moods and tones of each Osgood in the booth at the same time proved problematic . Therefore, Oliver would perform as one Osgood, with her other dialogue being read to her, and then perform her counterpart’s lines, leaving the editing suite to marry the two performances. The end result is a plausible conflict between two very alike individuals. And when they do get along, they are quite enterprising – one of them goes ‘undercover’ at one point to try to uncover the truth – to the horror of feisty Scots journalist Jacqui Magee (Tracey Wiles). The only downside with the Osgoods is that there is a strong implication in the climax that one of them is indeed human, whereas in The Zygon Invasion/Inversion, Steven Moffat went to great lengths to hide exactly whether the surviving Osgood was the original human or her Zygon copy. The question is whether a Zygon could convincingly outwit and confuse the serial’s antagonist in the almost oblivious, and selfless, manner that Osgood demonstrates.

Jemma Redgrave is also excellent throughout the serial as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, her calming, diplomatic tones providing her with the scope to mediate some very difficult and challenging personalities, whether that be the Osgoods, Jackie or the villainous Jordan. Her calm, matter of fact demeanour also plays a significant role in her being able to resist the villain’s mindwashing techniques and overtures in the serial’s climactic stages.

So did Big Finish really need to do an International Women’s Day release with such a smorgasbord of tales? Probably not, as again the company’s record of hiring women as directors, producers, writers and actors is outstanding. Nonetheless, listeners will still be grateful for what is an excellent anthology set. Each tale is extremely entertaining, exploring the full gamut of emotions – from dark humour right through to self-deprecation – and there are morals from each of the tales that will appeal to both women and men alike.

Should there be another boxset in the future as a companion to this release? Perhaps it will depend on the theme and the types of stories that can be told, eg it may honour women and men of colour, LGBTIQ status or ethnicity. Regardless, you can be assured Big Finish will deliver an outstanding product. 

Written By: Xanna Eve Chown
Directed By: Scott Handcock
Featuring: John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness); Gareth David-Lloyd (Ianto Jones); Aaron Anthony (Jonty); Catherine Ayers (Paula); Meryn Davies (Resident); Jessica Hayles (Brigadier); Emily John (Resident)

Released by Big Finish Productions – December 2019
Order from Amazon UK

“I’ve gotta be honest – I’m really struggling with this.”

“Why?”

“Why? Why? Because two of our friends die and Jack goes off and I think he’s coming to terms with it but oh no, suddenly he’s pregnant!”

Were we to have compiled a checklist of unseen Torchwood moments craved by fans as of the show’s audio resurrection in 2015, then by now, Big Finish would’ve already ticked a remarkable number of those boxes. From the truth behind Jack’s predecessor at Torchwood Three taking his entire team’s lives in 1999 (The Torchwood Archive) to the conspirators behind the Miracle (ditto), from the inception of Jack and Ianto’s romance (Broken) to the agency’s international branches (The Dollhouse, The Dying Room), at this rate the studio will soon have plugged more holes than the good Captain has bullet wounds in his immortal body. And yet amongst the most obvious remaining gaps for many fans still has to be the show’s most ‘shipped’ coupling never raising any offspring before Ianto’s Shakespeare-calibre tragic downfall.

Until now, that is. For in honour of the festive season last December, Main Range freshwoman (and Doctor Who: Short Trips regular contributor) Xanna Eve Chown delivered the ultimate Christmas gift to the doomed lovers’ followers – but, to paraphrase the Eighth Doctor somewhat, “probably not the one that they were expecting”. On the bright side: Expectant affords the pair new purpose after the harrowing death toll of “Exit Wounds”, specifically in the form of a youngling to protect and nurture in its formative days. On the downside: said youngling is an extraterrestrial royal-to-be to whom Jack might give birth at any moment…so long as they’re not all slaughtered by alien bounty hunters or overzealous UNIT troopers beforehand. Cue a relentlessly zany, eclectic hour of audio drama which – much like October’s Smashed did for Eve Myles – lets its stars showcase dynamic new shades of their long-established characters, all the while providing ample chuckle-worthy moments for their listeners too.

This reviewer initially couldn’t help but fear the worst upon hearing of such a wish-fulfilling yet equally bonkers premise as that described above; what if the inevitably comic relief-fuelled concept failed to yield more than 15 minutes of half-hearted chortles, let alone sustain the usual 50-60 minute running time afforded to Big Finish dramas? And might the challenge only prove exacerbated by its scribe’s newcomer status on the Torchwood audio scene? Thankfully it took merely a few minutes for Eve Chown to lay those concerns to rest with some downright hilarious overblown action and comedic set-pieces, then another 10-20 minutes tops for her to confirm that – as per the quote which opened our review – there’s far more on her mind than cheap guffaws. Indeed, Expectant plays marvellously as both a sitcom pregnancy romp – hunger pangs, self-body-shaming, mood swings, frantic spouses and midwives, the works – and admirably intricate meditation on grief, Jack’s struggle to reconcile his supposed victories at the agency’s helm with his recent losses often bubbling to the surface at the most inopportune but poignant moments. It’d be a truly tough tonal line for any author to straddle regardless of their chosen medium so that our resident scribe achieves as much despite this outing marking her first Main Range ‘baby’ is all the more astounding a feat.

The same unsurprisingly goes for John Barrowman too, who’s clearly having just as riotous a whale of a time here as he did with his headline-grabbing Doctor Who return last month, yet likewise manages to inject further layers beyond mere farce. On the one hand, his uncharacteristically emotionally distraught and oft-irritable take on the knocked-up Jack represents a welcome breath of fresh air, especially when compared to the Time Agent’s usual endless array of raunchy one-liners and / or stoic attempts at leadership; on the other, having Barrowman poignantly reveal the cracks in his long-running antihero’s exterior, the newfound hormones prompting distraught outbursts over Owen and Toshiko’s deaths with Ianto’s encouragement, proves equally effective in depicting yet more shades for this oft-comic relief-driven protagonist. A lot of actors would doubtless feel content to simply phone their performances in once a role has been as well-established as Jack, so it’s reassuring to know that Barrowman (amidst all his other work on pantos, Holby City, the Arrow-verse and the like) shows no sign of following suit – quite the opposite based on his remarkably versatile contribution here.

As ever, though, virtually no audio drama (one-handers aside perhaps) can survive solely on the basis of its leading thespian’s performance. Luckily Gareth David-Lloyd (whose role essentially amounts to an extended cameo this time around) and Aaron Anthony seem to wholly recognise as much, their respective takes on an increasingly infuriated Ianto as well as Jack’s bewildered midwife Jonty inducing ample laughs along the way as the pair react desperately to their knocked-up friend’s pleas for food, aesthetic compliments and hugs alike. There’s inevitably not quite as much attention paid to each player’s individual character development in Expectant as, say, more personal drama-heavy affairs like Broken and The Last Beacon have afforded Ianto in recent years, but the intentionally comedy-thriller-style tone of the piece moreso demands a balance of gung-ho resilience and gags which the two undoubtedly strike in good measure throughout.

By now you’re probably wondering who our heroes must face off against before reaching the play’s metaphorical finishing line. Well, there’s a reason why we hadn’t mentioned as much up until now – whereas Torchwood audio dramas (and indeed action dramas generally) usually feature a pretty transparent antagonist for the agent at hand to best, in Eve Chown’s script the threat moreso lies in the overall challenge at hand than any of the foes revealed as events progress as a conspicuous food clinic hotel in Act 3. It’s an approach which pays off for the most part in terms of allowing the heightened yet ever-developing core character dynamics breathe in a 1-hour runtime, albeit with the trade-off of the ‘true’ villains’ outing and motivations feeling somewhat rushed come the last 20 minutes or so as a result. How detrimental that aspect feels to your overall satisfaction with the play will, at the end of the day, largely depend on whether its storyline’s / performances’ banter-driven nature start to grate for you as a listener beforehand.

Regardless, the further that we move into the Torchwood Main Range’s more standalone, arc-detached output (notably the Committee don’t even get a mention here, perhaps signalling their end of days seeing as God Among Us wrapped up their ongoing story arc), the more confidences its wrights instil in leaving the show’s interconnected storylines to its yearly three-part ‘season’ boxsets. Releases as gloriously bonkers as Expectant continue to uphold the wide breadth of storylines which the TV series always offered on a weekly basis (contrast this with the haunting circus affair From Out of the Rain and it’s night and day), thereby demonstrating their sustained potency in the franchise’s audio-resurrected form. Would we necessarily want every instalment produced at Big Finish to take such an outrageous and laugh-laden direction? Probably not, but so long as Eve Chown’s back at the helm whenever the studio next opts for such a refreshing narrative approach, this reviewer will have no qualms whatsoever about coming along for the ride.

Starring Lalla Ward, Louise Jameson, and Seán Carlsen

Written By David Llewellyn, Lou Morgan, Helen Goldwyn

Directed By Scott Handcock

Executive Producer Jason Haigh-Ellery Nicholas Briggs

 

Released by Big Finish - February 2020

When we last left off on Gallifrey: Time War, Romana and Narvin were banished by the Time Lords and sent packing into the vortex in an old TARDIS (Romana was sentenced to death, but someone didn’t want her becoming a martyr), and despite their predicament, Romana decided the best course of action was to find their lost friend Leela. Their first stop (Hostiles) is a wreckage of a ship, upon which they find a Time Lord and an abominable being with time disruption powers that will kill them all to keep that one Time Lord alive and with him.  It’s a decent enough opener, as it has a good monster and some good Time War business.  

From there the duo end up on a rural planet, one in which the Time War has also begun to take effect as they deal with time folding in on itself.  If I am honest, this one is pretty forgettable. As I sat down to write this review it took me a few minutes to even remember what the details of this one’s plot were. The synopsis I found of Nevernor did not even remotely help me.  Finally...something of this story came back, but it just isn’t that great. It’s not a horrendous listen, because if nothing else Big Finish have tremendous production values...but I can’t sit here and pretend that they are infallible, and that they don’t occasionally have stories that can bore and confuse me, and then have the entire memory of the tale just float out of my brain.  

The big return of Leela happens in the third episode, Mother Tongue, in which she gets the full focus.  She has found herself jumping back and forth through time on a planet that is utterly peaceful with mysterious plants that take root around the whole world and somehow protect them from the outside universe.  As she bounces from the past to the future, she finds he has a son, and sees the different paths the world could take. It’s a solid premise and it is executed decently, even if I occasionally wasn’t able to keep up with where Leela was.  I also found another actress had a voice similar enough to Louise Jameson that it threw me off once or twice.  

The set concludes with Unity as Narvin and Romana finally meet up with Leela, find her living as a protector of a family on the planet Unity, but a guy trying to make a buck steals their TARDIS and lures the Daleks there to buy it (which as you already guessed doesn’t really pan out for him).  It all comes to a head with Romana deciding to sacrifice herself via the Chameleon Arch, become human and forget the dangerous knowledge she has to keep the planet hopefully safe from the Time Lords and the Daleks.  

But she also doesn’t do that. She decides it is cheating, and gives herself up to the Daleks believing she can maybe outwit them?  But while Narvin knows she changed her plans, they seem to feel it is best that Leela doesn’t know. To be honest, right now I am trying to figure out why Leela is so important to their plans.  Not that she isn't a fun character, but they seem to act like Leela MUST be saved and taken back to Gallifrey or help in the Time War cause or something...but she is just this Savage girl who could maybe be good on the front lines or something.  The whole ending just feels like it is concocted for a dramatic cliffhanger (the Daleks seemingly about to exterminate Romana), but doesn’t really make too much sense big picture to me.  

This set has decent episodes and is, as always, wonderfully produced, but I did feel it was missing something.  What I enjoyed about the Gallifrey series was the machinations on, well, Gallifrey. This set doesn’t have a single moment on the Time Lord’s home planet.  It doesn’t really continue the descent into madness and ramping up the Time War business, and how the Time Lords truly lost their way. Instead this just feels like an Eighth Doctor: Time War set.  Two characters bouncing around in an old TARDIS running into monsters and experiencing the effects the Time War is having on the universe. I like the Eighth Doctor sets, but this feels like they lost the identity that made the Gallifrey sets unique.  They were about the political intrigue that led to Gallifrey’s downfall. This is just adventures. It is worth a listen for fans, it’s just missing that key element.   

Written By: David Llewellyn
Directed By: Scott Handcock
Featuring: Murray Melvin (Bilis Manger), Timothy Blore (Piers), Maxine Evans (Rowena), Mali Ann Rhys (Zoe)

Released by Big Finish Productions – November 2019
Order from Amazon UK

“I know this music – what is it?”
“Beethoven. Do you like it?”
“Dunno, sounds it like should be in a horror film or something…”

Three doomed souls trapped aboard a potentially Hell-bound train, with the seemingly innocuous carriage guard Bilis Manager their sole companion – nothing says classic Torchwood chiller quite like a premise along those (railway) lines. Add to that the reliably sterling quality of Manger’s Big Finish appearances to date (his deliciously sinister tones elevating the Psycho-esque hotel horror Deadbeat Escape and Aliens Among Us’ own holiday romp “A Kill to a View” exponentially), as well as the general strength of playwright David Llewellyn’s audio output so far, and the stage seemed set for another winner in the Main Range’s thirty-third instalment Dead Man’s Switch. But have Llewellyn, Manger’s formidable vocal channel Murray Melvin, their three-strong supporting cast and the studio’s behind-the-scenes wizards found greatness once more, or have we finally – rather fittingly – reached the end of the line?

Certainly, Switch’s chosen narrative format should come as a welcome surprise to any late-20th century horror devotees, since we’re firmly in portmanteau (better known today in the Black Mirror and Inside No. 9 era as “anthology”) territory here. As the aforementioned track-trailing vessel progresses along its seemingly eternal path, each of its passengers gets their own segment in which to relate the haunting events which somehow landed them a ticket to this carriage-shaped purgatory. By far the play’s most valuable asset comes in its slow-burn, deeply unsettling generation of old-school suspense from here on out, its trio of chamber-house tales subtly piling on the tension to the point that the more dread-susceptible listeners among us might want to switch extra lights on if they’re courageously attempting a late-night playthrough. This palpable manipulation of our inner fears is achieved magnificently via a number of key contributory pillars involved with the release, many of which / whom are often all too easily overlooked when we’re busy heaping praise on Big Finish’s ever-accomplished audio dramas.

Case in point: the sound designers and composers whose taut deployment of understated aural effects and perfectly-timed musical cues over the course of the hour both work immensely in its favour. At some points it’ll only take the silence of a supposedly empty household to put us at unease, as an anxious woman fills the bathtub with the creeping sense that she’s not alone in the building; at others, more blatant jump scares do the trick marvellously, a man’s sudden encounter with roof-dwelling bats every inch as quake-inducing as any big-screen scare conjured up by today’s myriad horror remakes, sequels and soft reboots. As if these vividly realistic moments weren’t enough to worm their way under the skin, the fear factor only deepens towards the end of each narrator’s account with the deviously understated injection of classical Beethoven melodies, always ominously building to a thrilling crescendo as their fate becomes apparent in grisly, macabre fashion.

So too are Llewellyn and his concise quartet of performers clearly cognisant of the power with which dialogue (both in its scripting and tonal delivery) can reflect – and better yet enhance – the escalating terror of such supernatural (though metaphorically relatable) circumstances. The former’s carefully-paced script affords each tale ample space to breathe, allowing us sufficient time to understand the extent of auction-scammer Rowena’s conniving schemes before she’s forced to (literally) reflect upon herself in uncanny fashion; to shiver at ruthless estate agent Piers’ inhumanity when banishing doomed edifices’ residents before he realises these edifices’ secrets, and detect the harrowing backstory which fuels hair stylist Zoe’s efforts to deter drug addicts from ruining her homestead. As such, portrayers Maxine Evans, Timothy Blore and Mali Ann Rhys respectively have time aplenty too to nuancedly depict their constructs’ descent from (misplaced) moral righteousness to (not-at-all-misplaced) near-complete nervous breakdowns, leaving us (in The Great Gatsby’s words) “simultaneously enchanted and [moreso] repelled by the inexhaustible varieties of life” before those lives come startlingly close to extinguishment.

And what of the corporeal yet somehow transcendental watchman standing guard over our protagonists? Even in the wake of his turns in Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, Joel Schumacher’s The Phantom of the Opera film adaptation or his countless theatrical and Ken Russell-directed roles, Bilis Manger nonetheless seems the part which Murray Melvin was born to play – a sentiment that holds doubly true in Dead Man’s Switch. Manger’s deceptively kind voice of elderly wisdom of course belies the intricate emotional torment through which he’s dragging his unwitting victims, the unmistakable pride which manifests all the while behind his words a joy to behold for Torchwood fans (and doubtless for Melvin to express based on the sinister energy which he yet again brings to the table). The only inherent risk involved with reprising such an unashamedly malevolent and self-assured foil as Manger, though, is that of the audience’s growing sense of dramatic irony. Through no fault of Melvin's own, such has become our familiarity with the time-hopping schemer since his debut in Season One’s “Captain Jack Harkness” / “End of Days” that his modus operandi of twisting humans to his own (along with his godly master’s) ends risks rendering standalone storylines such as that presented in Switch as somewhat predictable if they’re all heading in the same fatal direction (as Deadbeat Escape and “A Kill to a View” did to a certain extent). Perhaps that’s also a by-product of the portmanteau / anthology horror format in fairness, with the aforementioned abundance of shows like Black Mirror in 2020 also setting us up to expect last-minute deadly twists from these affairs.

All the same, the extent to which Llewellyn, his cast and the wider sound design team deflect from any minor sense of déjà vu bears huge congratulations indeed – as does the seamless manner in which director Scott Handcock shepherds each vital contributory element. Releases like Dead Man’s Switch consequently enable us to better appreciate the painstaking time invested by everyone at Big Finish team to reward listeners for their commitment, thereby shining further light towards the end of the metaphorical train tunnel as we glimpse at what lies in store for Torchwood and its various agents going forward. Between run-ins with the Doctor’s wife (or one of them at least), old UNIT allies rearing their heads, Sir Michael Palin taking on recording duties and even Andy Davidson’s first encounter with Theta Sigma themselves, there’s no reason whatsoever to alight the train just yet.

Written By: James Goss
Directed By: Scott Handcock
Featuring: Eve Myles (Gwen Cooper); Omar Austin (Martyn); Dick Bradnum (Drillpak Manager); Helen Griffin (Rhian); Kezrena James (Elwyn)

Released by Big Finish Productions – October 2019
Order from Amazon UK

“Gwen! You look like you’ve had a rough night…”

Certain ideas hold such rich potential that, once conceived, they become impossible to ignore by their respective freethinkers, inevitably cascading into fruition from there. For Thomas Edison (as seen recently in Doctor Who’s “Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror”) the lightbulb moment came with, well, the lightbulb; for Steve Jobs, it was the iPod and its litany of successors/rivals; and for Russell T. Davies (thank goodness) in the early 21st century came the revival of a certain legendary British sci-fi series – at which point, in Torchwood terms, “everything changed”. In the case of James Goss and Eve Myles, however, evidently, the lightning-in-a-bottle concept for their next Big Finish collaboration took the form of having the ever-stoic, ever-determined, ever-painstakingly focused Gwen Cooper face off against legions of undead approximations…albeit horrendously inebriated all the while.

After all, that’s exactly where we find ourselves with Smashed, a Main Range entry whose initially familiar premise of investigating strange occurrences at a gas fracking-wrought town named Glynteg soon descends into far more gleefully uncharted territory. Newcomers unaware of the general plot synopsis might at first expect something along the lines of last April’s superb Jack-Jo Jones team-up adventure The Green Life, seeing as that instalment similarly saw the pair vying against corrupt chemical corporations ruthlessly wreaking havoc upon rural communities for monetary gain. Yet whereas Green Life balanced comedy and environmental pathos, Jack and Jo’s tempestuous dynamic contrasted with their situation’s all-too-pertinent real-world significance, Goss and Myles here opt for a decidedly black comic tone instead, their storyline merely the catalyst for the latter actress to experiment with her wilder side on the audio airwaves.

And experiment Ms. Myles most certainly does over the course of the hour running time, her performing versatility on laudable display throughout. Whether it’s a case of Gwen desperately struggling to maintain some semblance of her police force-imbued authoritative edge whilst slurring her words, racking her dysfunctional head around the pulp sci-fi effects of mined extraterrestrial substances upon Glynteg’s already-impoverished community or trading wits with the chillingly unrepentant Drilltek staff responsible, the Keeping Faith thespian effortlessly does so with such exuberant bravado that you can’t help but be convinced even amidst the most ridiculous circumstances. These days she’s rightly booked up with an all-manner of prestigious cultural gigs, but for as long as Myles remains open to Big Finish’s recording studios (not least for their legendary lunches), the Torchwood team would be utter fools to pass up any opportunity for such returns.

Admittedly whenever Myles next opts to take up the microphone in arguably her most culturally beloved role to date, it’d perhaps also further sweeten the deal if her co-stars had the simultaneous opportunity to sink their teeth into meatier dramatic/comedic material. Smashed by its very nature places Gwen front-and-centre whilst most of Glynteg’s residents either succumb mindlessly to the nearby fracking’s fantastical products or attempt to keep Cooper focused on / away from the mission at hand as it develops as a rollicking rate. Although Helen Griffin must’ve had a blast with playing the relentlessly heartless Rhian – loyal to Drillpak through-and-through as she oversees operations from Glynteg’s community centre (i.e. a shipping container) – for the most part she’s as much a shallow caricature of accountability-devoid business leaders as Rick Bradnum’s briefly-glimpsed slimy Drillpak Manager in the opening moments. Omar Austin’s crucial citizen bystander Martyn similarly lacks much chance to leave a meaningful impression as he’s mostly aghast at Gwen’s deteriorating condition and indeed that of the entire town – a costly omission in the script’s balancing act which frustratingly robs key moments in the play’s third act of much dramatic tension surrounding his survival odds.

Indeed, there’s a wider nagging sense at times in Smashed that the aforementioned potent plot premise might’ve been so (understandably) alluring from the outset to the scribe and star that less thought was given to the piece’s finer details as a result. Despite his occasional commentary on how towns like Glynteg become collateral damage when the oft-unmonitored activities of fracking firms cause environmental/economic chaos, and the plot unashamedly echoing Who’s Warriors of the Deep in its didactically nihilistic trajectory, much of that promising material is seemingly content to take a backseat to Gwen’s madcap drunken antics as they (and the threat facing her) escalate to peak bombastic insanity by journey’s end. Maybe the chance to hear Myles take an otherwise unshakably serious heroine to more light-hearted places will paper over the cracks so to speak for many listeners, but for this listener, the above-discussed glimpses of something deeper beneath the script’s surface were all the more vexing in their tantalising brevity.

Not every Torchwood storyline has to pack as much sociological weight or layered characterisation as the likes of Adrift or Children of Earth, however, and Goss’ latest contribution to the Main Range still houses more than enough entertaining elements to warrant a look; Eve’s supremely multi-faceted turn on Gwen Cooper at her most unhinged, the brief yet unmissable moments of cutting social/industrial satire and the play’s necessarily whirlwind pace collectively ensure that you’ll barely notice the hour having passed come its denouement. Might Goss and company benefit from fleshing out their supporting characters and underlying narrative themes when their next collaboration at Big Finish comes around? Quite possibly, though provided that the team continues to brainstorm narrative premises as creative and tonally innovative as that presented in Smashed almost five years on from the Torchwood range’s audio debut, there’s every reason to believe that said range will easily survive another half-decade or more on-air. See (or rather hear) for yourself whether the studio’s latest insatiable concoction tickles your taste-buds anyway, then maybe we’ll catch you down at the local pub to discuss as much furthermore – ideally with less cataclysmic results!

Writer: Alan Barnes
Director: Samuel Clemens

Featuring: Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, Jessica Martin

Big Finish Release (United Kingdom)

First Released: June 2019
Running Time: 2 hours

An Alien Werewolf in London is the final story in the Mags trilogy, following on from the previous months; The Moons of Vulpana. The Doctor and Mags venture to earth where Ace has encountered possible Alien activity in Camden. However, not everything is as it seems and they are soon drawn into a war between too factions of a dark society…

like the opening tale, The Monsters of Gokroth, the title is a very clear allusion to what is going on and there are several sequences which reference John Landis's 1982 classic An American Werewolf in London. Unfortunately, like Gokroth, this is not always to the stories benefit as it draws in numerous ‘horror’ elements which honestly made me roll my eyes more than anything. One, in particular, is a classic horror monster which I can only say has been overused in the Whoniverse and writer Alan Barnes has set himself an immense challenge by introducing them here. Sadly he is unable to take them in any new directions and the result is lacklustre villain. Like Vulpana, there is also a strong class element to the tale, with a lot of humour injected this time which certainly makes it a more engaging listen. There are also some great action sequences which push the story along at a good pace until we end up in a hospital and back in pastiche territory.

One of the biggest wasted opportunities in AAWIL is the stories setting. Now admittedly I’m a little biased as I LOVE Camden. Camden is one of the great indie centres of London, full of alternative theatre taking place in the attics of pubs and fantastic street entertainments. Unfortunately, Alan Barnes chooses to only set a small number of sequences here and instead we’re taken to the familiar Doctor Who settings of a sinister villains Mansion hideout. Other locations include a Hospital and the Doctors London flat, whilst the latter is certainly interesting on the whole it can’t help but feel like more could of been done. An issue that has not been helped by placing the location front and centre on the cover…

On the whole, AAAWIL is the best of the Mags trilogy with some fantastic action sequences and intriguing plot elements. However, on the whole, it’s still on the whole something of a let-down. One can’t help but feel like there was so much potential for this series, particularly given the high standard of the Kamelion stories a few months earlier. However once again a distinct lack of experimentation stops the Seventh Doctor’s monthly series from reaching the heights of his contemporaries. Whilst recent standalone adventures such as Warlocks Cross and Muse of Fire have been excellent in the extreme, his ongoing stories remain disappointing. One hopes that the move away from the trilogy format towards individual adventures will result in a greater desire to take risks.