This is the second boxset of adventures featuring the new generation of UNIT headed up by Jemma Redgrave as Kate Stewart and Ingrid Oliver as her scientist sidekick Osgood. As with the first box set, this story is set at an indeterminate time at some point before Osgood was killed in the TV series as all the signs point to the audio incarnation being the human version of the character who first appeared in The Day of the Doctor. One thing that can said with certainty is that this set follows on from Big Finish’s first foray into the New Series, UNIT – Extinction, and sees the return of new team members Warren Brown as international troubleshooter Sam Bishop and James Joyce as Captain Josh Carter. Josh in particular is an extremely likeable character whose continuing character arc proves central to this box set (although anyone who hasn’t heard Extinction may find themselves at a slight loss to understand his apparent super-strength whose origin is only fleetingly alluded to). As much as Joyce is at risk of becoming another member of the rep company of overused Big Finish actors, this reviewer is a self-confessed member of the club that would wish to see Captain Carter remain a regular feature of this ongoing spin-off series given Big Finish’s tendency to kill off some of their best loved original characters.

It would be remiss of this reviewer not to acknowledge the action-packed opening and closing themes composed by Howard Carter which are probably one of the most successful for any of Big Finish’s many Doctor Who spin-offs and will hopefully remain in place for all future UNIT series (as opposed to the frequently altered theme variations of the Bernice Summerfield range over the years).

The four-part story itself was written is another excellent collaboration between Matt Fitton who penned the opening and closing instalments and Andrew Smith who penned the middle two episodes. For this reviewer the highlight was probably the third episode, The Battle of the Tower in which Smith made great efficacy of the regular Tower of London setting for UNIT’s base of operations. By a quirk of fate, an exciting scene which saw a pursuit into Tower Hill underground station unfolded whilst this reviewer was actually travelling on the district line to that very station. This story manages to take a different path to the more traditional UNIT vs alien conquest of the planet story which was told in Extinction and not fall in the trap of allowing the series to get stuck in a repeated formula as is wont to happen with some Big Finish box sets (Survivors please take note). The conspiracy-thriller opening chapter introduces the story’s human antagonist Felicity Lyme, a ruthless businesswoman portrayed by former Borg Queen Alice Krige. The gradual realisation that Lyme was not in league with aliens and instead acting to secure her own business interests was a very pleasing development. In terms of the story’s alien characters, the ninja style warriors known as Tengobushi and their Comishi masters are generally well realised if a little uncomfortably close to human Samurai, especially when their leaders speak with Oriental accents which might be perceived as a racial stereotype. The Behind-the-scenes discs suggests that the inspiration was linked to the idea that ancient culture such as that of Japan could potentially have alien origins but these wasn’t drawn out especially clearly in the play itself. However, this is possibly nit-picking at what is otherwise another very fine box set and overall the decision to not include any recurring aliens from the television series has paid off and allowed more space for the development of both Kate’s and Osgood’s characters and their new team. It’s only a shame that a couple of the more promising characters in the story didn’t survive until the end but UNIT has always had a high mortality rate so perhaps unsurprising. In any case this reviewer will be looking forward to the team’s next outing this November, in  which they will encounter the Silence.

They say that all good things must come to an end, and nowhere will that oft-used idiom seem more apt in a month’s time than in the case of Big Finish’s monthly Torchwood range. In the space of just twelve months, producer James Goss and his merry band of audio playwrights have expanded the mythology of the eponymous TV series further than fans could possibly have imagined when this continuation was first envisioned. Together, they’ve introduced enigmatic foes like the Committee, unforgettable supporting characters like telesales operator Zeynep and the reclusive billionaire Neil Redmond, but most of all a plethora of exhilarating new storylines for classic Torchwood Three recruits like Captain Jack, Gwen and Ianto, all while convincing the actors who played them first time around to return for at least one instalment of their year-spanning pair of seasons.

All of those seismic achievements are of course reason enough to bemoan the range’s impending temporary conclusion with August’s Season Two finale, Made You Look, but if one hoped to find a primary means by which to justify imploring Big Finish to commission a third season as soon as possible, then they’ve certainly gotten it with this month’s long-awaited release. Dubbed Torchwood: Broken for reasons that become well apparent as its core plot progresses, the odds of this fifth and penultimate chapter in Season Two matching some of the range’s finest moments – TheConspiracy, UncannyValley as well as the more recent Zone10 foremost among them – seemed slim at best prior to its launch, making its triumphant success in this regard that much more of a remarkable feat on the parts of just about everyone involved.

As with any of the studio’s most critically acclaimed titles, Broken’s status as a captivating, award-worthy work of audio drama comes about thanks to a number of contributory factors, but no more so than thanks to the returns of both John Barrowman and Gareth David-Lloyd – for the first time since October 2015’s Fall to Earth in the latter’s case, no less – to the roles of their somehow ever-increasingly beloved pair of doomed romantics, Jack and Ianto. Not since Friends united Joey and Rachel has a fandom arguably rallied behind a couple as ardently as this immortal swashbuckler and his endearingly faithful butler; nor since James Cameron’s Titanic have viewers shed wetter tears at a relationship’s denouement as we all did in the penultimate chapter of 2007’s Children of Earth. As opposed to giving complacent performances due to assuming that fans would pick Broken up anyway, both esteemed thespians instantly remind listeners why they proved such a dual hit on-screen, with Barrowman perfectly balancing his consistently engaging swagger with a more reserved, empathetic portrayal as and when the script requires it, while David-Lloyd tugs at the heartstrings at every opportunity by rendering his lines with such pathos, such dramatic gravitas that even this reviewer found keeping his eyelids wholly dry a challenge at times.

Of course, without the right narrative material to work with, both players might have been forced to go through the motions, so thank goodness for Joseph Lidster, whose masterful script helps elevate his leads’ turns to unprecedented levels with a level of unmistakable ease that most playwrights would envy immensely. To divulge too much of the precise narrative that the man behind televised episodes like A Day in the Death has concocted here would be to spoil the fun, but suffice to say that in setting Broken just days after the events of the divisive but undoubtedly emotional Season One episode Cyberwoman, wherein Ianto’s original crush, Lisa, became a pseudo-Cyberman before finding herself gunned down by the rest of her boyfriend’s team, Lidster ensures that he’s got plenty of meaty dramatic material to dive headfirst into, exploring in depth the nature of psychological trauma involved with grieving a loved one’s demise, the inevitable self-reflection such a loss can provoke for the widow with regards to their own life choices, as well as how one’s perception of those who seemed to be their ‘allies’ prior to such heartbreaking events can change forevermore as a result. In the wrong hands, the integration of such topical issues – especially in an age where terrorist attacks are tragically taking so many real-world individuals’ loved ones on a daily basis – could have felt contrived or borderline disrespectful, particularly if they’d largely played second fiddle to a by-the-numbers sci-fi tale, yet this month’s scribe evidently knew better than to take that approach, instead only peppering in genre elements when absolutely necessary so as to allow this deeply satisfying investigation into Ianto’s psyche – not to mention the birth of his romantic attachment to the future Face of Boe – to take centre stage throughout.

Whilst Torchwood’s primary genre doesn’t substantially manifest itself here, though, those who followed the original TV programme more for its fantastical action and otherworldly antagonists plucked from the previously untapped regions of the Doctor Who universe will surely find enough to sink their teeth into thanks to the fleeting but memorable contribution of Ross Ford as the disconcertingly benevolent extra-terrestrial known as ‘the Saviour’ and, more importantly, Melanie Walters as Ianto’s resident barmaid, Mandy Aibiston. Again, how these two connect to the show’s wider universe is best left unsaid until more of you have had a chance to give this one a listen, although it’s not a spoiler in the slightest to say that with more airtime than Barrowman as well as just as much stage presence, Walters well and truly makes her mark on the audience over the course of the hour. Not only does she endow her character with just as much of a sympathetic, compassionate voice as is befitting of the woman who finds herself nursing – albeit via alcohol – Ianto out of his grief, but she equally making the infrequent heated exchanges between Mandy and Jack seem just as believable owing to the protective stance her construct takes over her latest regular.

The credits don’t stop there, either – in fact, between Scott Handcock’s exemplary direction of what must have been a rather daunting non-linear play to tackle, the inspired usage of Murray Gold’s “Captain Jack’s Theme” and “The Ballad of Ianto Jones” to aurally rouse the listener and break their heart respectively, and the narrative’s success where its predecessors failed in providing a compelling enough standalone yarn to compensate for the lack of mentions of the Committee, it’s difficult to know precisely where to draw the line with all of the warranted gushing in this instance. For fear of spending as long as Jack’s lifetime singing Broken’s praises, then, let’s end on this – here we have the most satisfying entry in the Torchwood range to date, a true masterpiece that combines nuanced performances with Oscar-worthy scripting to remind the world over what made Torchwood such a riotous success on TV and why it couldn’t have been in safer hands than those of Big Finish. All good things must come to an end, but on the basis of Season Two’s spectacular second-from-last entry, its masterminds would be utter fools to let August’s Made You Look or November’s team-up boxset Outbreak signal the dying days of their latest range; if anything, the story’s only just begun.

There’s always a slight sense of trepidation when approaching a release which has attracted as much interest in advance of its release as TheTwoMasters; inevitably there is a question mark as to whether it will live up to the promise of its central conceit or, like several multi-Doctor audio plays before it, end up feeling like an over-hyped disappointment? Well, this reviewer is pleased to say that overall this play has a lot to recommend it. John Dorney’s script proves to be an enjoyable conclusion to this rather unusual trilogy of adventures, especially when explaining how the events of the two previous plays are connected. To an extent, Dorney was working to a shopping list set up by script editor Alan Barnes and so despite this reviewer’s previous criticism of the opening play of this sequence, AndYouWillObeyMe, the explanations provided in this release offered a certain amount of retrospective appreciation for that play’s plotting by Barnes.

Without wanting to give too much away, unlike some previous releases from the earlier Big Finish years which were sold on the basis that they would bring multiple incarnations of the Doctor together only to renege on their promise, TheTwoMasters contains lots of scenes featuring both incarnations interacting together. Having possibly jumped the gun with my over-favourable assessment of Alex Macqueen’s performance in last month’s VampireoftheMind, it is Geoffrey Beevers’ turn in this release to appear to be having the most fun out of the two rather chalk and cheese personalities of the infamous renegade. Beevers also seems to get a lot of the best lines particularly when criticising his future self in a manner which recalls John Hurt’s wry observations about the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors in The Day of the Doctor. The references to the Master’s continuity are well used and the story is so Master-centric that Sylvester McCoy barely appears in the third episode. There is a nice performance by Lauren Crace as this month’s proto-companion Jemima, another new character with definite potential for future appearances. The only slight disappointment is that the Doctor reappears to save the day very much in the manner of a Deus-ex-machina, even though we all know he’s bound to do so, the ending has a feeling of possibly one too many resets being pressed.

Overall, however this is a very worthwhile listen. Whilst it doesn’t penetrate as deeply into the Master’s character as the 2003 classic Master did, it still shows that after forty-five years, the Doctor’s very own Moriarty still has a lot of mileage left in all of their incarnations.

In The Gallery Of Ghouls, we find the Doctor and Romana in Brighton, the year is 1833. They are there to visit the opening of the Brighton Pavilion, but unfortunately, the Randomiser made them materialise eighteen years too early.

From the off, the listener can tell that this story will be a somewhat lighthearted affair. The Doctor believes that seagulls are agents of the Black Guardian, and has issues with deck chairs, while Romana believes that eighteen years is 'the blink of a time tots eye', and is happy to while away the time touring Europe.

However, when they discover that Madam Tissot's Wax Exposition is in town, they both decide to take a look, after all, waxworks are the Doctor's 57th favorite thing.....or is that 58th?

The play on the name Tissot is, of curse quite purposeful. It turns out that Madam Tissot (the rather fantastic Celia Imrie) is a tad jealous of Madam Tussaud's fame, and feels a tad robbed of the limelight.

We join Madam Tissot and her son Noni (yes, Noni) at the Exposition, where Tissot is bemoaning a local rival Mr Goole (Nickolas Grace), who runs a similar attraction, Goole's Gallery of Ghouls on the other side of town. They discover the Doctor trying to put right a waxwork display depicting the death of Nelson. The Doctor insisting that he himself was present at the actual event, along with a Sea Devil. Things start to spiral out of control for the Doctor and Romana though as they discover that the head of Marie Antoinette has been stolen, and the finger of blame is of course pointing straight at the Doctor and Romana.

From here on in things descend into a dark farce. Who is the mysterious Mr Goole, and why does he seem to just melt away? Why are his waxworks so very lifelike? And are we really being invaded by aliens from the planet Slough? I'm sure you can see exactly where all of this is going.

The Tom Baker and Lalla Ward episodes always managed to squeeze in a lot of humour, and Gallery of Ghouls really drives that home. The comic timing between the pair are exquisite here, providing much comic relief after the previous two episodes of pretty hard sci-fi. The feel of this audio reminded me a lot of The Talons Of Weng-Chiang yes, it's dark, but there are a lot of funny moments. 

The cliffhanger to part one is expertly, and tightly constructed, and is also pure Who of the time. Our heroes are separated, The Doctor and Noni are trapped in Goole's Cellar Of Terror, where the lifelike waxworks, are seemingly coming alive. While outside Romana and Noni are trapped by an alien masquerading as a local policeman, welding Dick Turpin's blunderbuss.

Celia Imrie is a joy as the guileful Madam Tissot, whose claims all ring about as true as Walter Mitty. She speaks with a haughty French accent, which she loses in a moment of truthfulness, and is exposed as Mary Barnes, from Wolverhampton. Nickolas Grace is great as her much put upon son Noni. This audio is written by Alan Barnes, and directed by Ken Bentley.

K9/ John Leeson are absent from this audio, but much like the classic era in which this story is set, he is mentioned a lot (this usually happened when the terrain would have been a nightmare for the prop to negotiate).

All in all, there is a lot to recommend Gallery of Ghouls, I promise you that you will find it well worth a listen. Gallery of Ghouls is available from Big Finish now.

Every once in a while, Big Finish release a play which stands out from their large catalogue of Doctor Who releases as being something rather special. ThePeterlooMassacre, based on one of the darkest episodes of early nineteenth century British history, is the most recent example of such a play. Paul Magrs, who is better known for slightly less serious offerings to TheWorldsofDoctorWho, has produced a script which brilliantly captures the atmosphere of the tragic events of 16th August 1819. The massacre itself, a mass demonstration for reform by more than 60,000 people in St Peter’s Square, Manchester which was attacked by local militia, resulting in 15 fatalities and 654 casualties, is not a subject which would automatically lend itself to a Doctor Who story. However, sometimes it is worth remembering that events like the Peterloo Massacre actually happened and that real people were caught up in them.

By concentrating on a small number of fictionalised characters caught up in the massacre, Magrs is able to do what a pure historical story does best and concentrate on the human aspect. At the centre of this story is Nyssa’s relationship with Cathy, a maid who wants to speak up for workers’ rights only to find herself directly affected by the tragedy. Sarah Sutton is able to give Nyssa genuine compassion which particularly shines through in her scenes alongside Hayley Jayne Standing as Cathy, particularly when the human cost of the massacre becomes horrifically apparent. Peter Davison, meanwhile, gives one of his strongest performances to date as the Doctor realises far too late that he and his companions have arrived in Manchester on the eve of one of the darkest days in the city’s history. His growing anger as he seeks to protect his companions from the inevitability of the unfolding events is truly something to behold. This story really showcases the Fifth Doctor’s full performance range. Even Janet Fielding’s Tegan manages to be less abrasive than usual even when experiencing nineteenth century inequality towards women at first hand.

The only slight incongruity is that Nigel Fairs’ music score is occasionally a little intrusive but this really is a minor quibble in a story which otherwise delivers for its listeners in spades. Undoubtedly, ThePeterlooMassacre will be considered as one of the best audio releases of recent times and is certainly the highlight of the opening trilogy of plays for 2016. Echoing my concluding comment on February’s Aquitaine, we can hopefully look forward to many more stories featuring the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan. This reviewer is delighted by the confirmation at the time of writing that these three will be returning for next year’s opening trilogy of main range releases alongside Matthew Waterhouse as Adric. On the strength of these plays, roll on 2017!

The Paradox Planet opens with a lovely scene, in the TARDIS with the Doctor, Romana and K9. The Doctor has decided that it is time that he learns to play the violin (very badly) - his two companions are both trying desperately to convince him that he will never master it. It is the style of story opening that I remember this original era for. The comic timing of the three leads are truly excellent. I found myself chuckling during my listen on the walk to to work.

As the story quickly moves on, due to a collision in the time vortex, the Doctor and Romana are separated in time by one thousand years, and find themselves at either end of a battle that is being raged by the same race, on the same planet - but in two very different time zones. The Paradox Planet of the title is Aoris. With foreknowledge of extinction, the future faction are taking endangered species from the past, back with them to the future. The faction in the past are desperate to stop this, even if it might mean wiping out their own race in the future.

The story continues in LegacyOfDeath, which finds both factions able to time travel. The Doctor volunteers to travel back to the past as a peace envoy, in the hope of saving the people of Aoris from wiping each other out, but finds himself caught up in the paradox himself.

The two episodes are, as usual in this series of audios, both split into two parts - meaning that we have four twenty-five minute(ish) episodes, which is a treat in itself. Each cliffhanger is expertly written, if sometimes craftily resolved - but this doesn't detract from a very action packed and well written story that is pure science fiction. The paradoxes are all very well planned, and all pay off. John Leeson gets a lot of K9 time in both stories, in fact at times there are two K9s, along with two versions of the TARDIS. One of my favourite of the 'classic' stories is Logopolis, and there are some similarities here. I also noticed that other episodes had some great nods. The biggest being one of the resolutions to a cliffhanger, which is very reminiscent of The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang. Another episode that I felt heavily reminded of is The Face Of Evil.

The most fun to be had here are with the Doctor, Romana and K9 in the future Aoris, where they are essentially heralded as brave heroes, which when you find out as to why is very amusing indeed. 

The character of Machina is also a great reveal, which I didn't notice until I read them, but the credits to the story published by Big Finish give the identity of the character away (I have removed the offending credit here). If you can avoid reading the credits before listening, please try. Machina is essentially what seems to be a giant, old fashioned computer who is revered in the future. Romana's line upon stepping inside the giant computer is genius as she is disappointed that it is just a metal box with flashing lights on the outside for show.

Ultimately, both stories are tales of how a race can abuse a planet and it's resources without a thought for future generations. Yes it all gets a bit mind boggling, but at no point was I lost to any plot contrivances.

The cast are all excellent. Notables are Tom Chadbon as Emberry (Tom played Duggan from the classic City Of Death, he also featured in the 'not so classic' The Mysterious Planet). There is also Simon Rouse, who was originally in Kinda, here playing Drang.

Ultimately TheParadoxPlanet and Legacy of Death are both fun filled, intelligently written stories, which showcases Tom Baker in his absolute element. It is quite obvious that Lalla Ward and John Leeson also had great fun. These are a must for any fan of that classic era.