Infinite: Endless, continuing without termination. A noun that does seem to describe rather aptly the continuation of the Fourth Doctor’s resolve to go on a “holiday” with his companion Leela. However, that is not to say that the story is any less entertaining than those that have come before it in what could loosely be called a story arc.

This story in the Fourth Doctor Adventures range sees Leela and the Doctor land on the planet Delafoss, with the Time Lord stating that he recognises it by the trees. Nothing is quite as it seems, as demonstrated in a scene prior to their landing. We see a man identified as Larivan being transformed into a so-called “Infinite warrior” by an entity only known as “the Eminence”. When the Doctor and Leela eventually encounter him, he explains he was forced to take the “breath of forever”, which starts the transformation. However, he is unable to elaborate any further as he is wracked by pain. The Doctor and Leela seek help from a resistance group, engaged in a war with the Eminence and the forces it commands.

Leela’s father is again mentioned as seen in previous stories like The Evil One, in reference to supernatural forces being constructed around fear and misunderstanding. Just as Leela begins to speak, however, a patrol of Infinites discover the existence of the hideout. The Doctor, yet again being seen as a man with a very unclear plan as in previous stories, displays an air of almost new era glee as he makes the patrol believe they should turn back. Convincing the resistance group that they will be of use, the party resolves to go to “the construction pit” and provide photographic evidence of a new Eminence battleship, ironically named “The Infinite”.

After traversing a large and potentially deadly exhaust tunnel and coming out through a service exit, The Doctor, Leela, Sarla and Tillegat see vast lines of people entering the mammoth craft. As filming of the ship continues, it becomes clear through dialogue that the people are hostages. After being detected by Larivan, as well as beating a hasty retreat, the party split up to stand a better chance of escaping. When the Earth alliance ship arrives, a squad of Infinite warriors meet it with Tillegat sustaining a fatal wound. The scene then shifts to the commander of the Infinite warriors who, along with a comrade, witness the arrival of an Eminence casket. The episode resolves itself with a cliff-hanger implying that The Doctor must be captured, in a fashion not dissimilar to original Fourth Doctor TV offerings.

The second episode opens with Leela climbing reluctantly aboard the ship, but hijacking it using a Janus thorn whilst doing so. It turns out that both her and The Doctor both wish to return to the TARDIS, even though the evil that still enfolds the planet has not yet been vanquished. The Earth Alliance pilot and Sarla are both very confused, but this is all left unresolved as the ship is forced to flee from not only fire on the ground, but in the planet’s atmosphere as well.

A rather touching scene ensues with the Doctor attempting to reawaken the suppressed memories within their would be executioner, cut short by an outburst from the enraged man. A call from the commander of the Infinites, Zarith, halts the execution.

The Doctor and Leela then fight for separate goals – Leela to get back to the planet’s surface to be reunited with the Doctor, who ends up simply trying to stave off taking the “breath of forever”. Everything seems to go downhill from here in terms of an impending disaster, with both the Earth alliance and the Infinite warriors seeking to obliterate the opposition. Leela witnesses the stubborn controller of the Earth Alliance lose his nerve as he sees the annihilation of a large portion of his fleet, thus ordering them to turn tale and break off the attack.

The Doctor meets the Eminence for the first time, seemingly in an inescapable situation, whilst Leela convinces the controller of just how useful she can be in providing ideas for the war effort. This interesting overlap works well, as we see the Doctors potential peril coupled with Leela’s calm and cool tactical instincts. The stakes are raised even further when the Doctor, seemingly under the control of the Eminence, delivers a chilling message that, although unnerving the members of the Earth Alliance, only strengthens their resolve to continue the fight.

In an almost too obvious homage to Star Wars, A disguised Leela and the Earth Alliance forces engage in a last desperate attempt to attack the Infinite and rescue the Doctor, the outcomes and intricacies of which I will leave in ambiguity, open to interpretation.

The Doctor and Leela, as with the other stories this season, are played well by Baker and Jameson, accompanied by a well-fitting score appropriate to the military setting. However, the only criticism I feel worthy of note has to be the voices of the Infinite warriors, who do not, in my opinion live up to their cadaverous nature. However, in a sense their voices almost take on a retro quality, befitting of the era. The rest of the cast do a great job, with parallels almost present to the stereotypes of World War II RAF pilots, fighting for the right to freedom and even using humour just to get them through situations.

All in all, “Destroy the Infinite” leaves many interesting questions open, which gives rise to a Sixth Doctor audio sequel, The Seeds of War. With a cast, that for the most part, does a great job in spite of some slightly less impressive vocal manipulation, I think this story is one that’s definitely worth a listen and is interesting in the fact that it raises more questions than it solves. The score, acting and sound design are all to the usual high standard the majority of listeners will have come to expect, topping everything off with an adversary for the Time Lord who feels like something straight out of an original Tom Baker episode.

Tom Baker's Doctor has had something of a renaissance on audio since he belatedly signed up with Big Finish. The Fourth Doctor and Leela's relationship has flourished over a growing series of adventures designed to bridge Seasons Fourteen and Fifteen and evoke the spirit of '77.

Now, Philip Hinchcliffe, the producer that brought them together returns with a box set of two stories that recapture the feel of the tail-end of his era. Hinchcliffe's ideas are adapted here by Ghost Light and prolific BF scribe Marc Platt, stepping in to the shoes of Robert Holmes, evoking that era whilst bringing his own ideas to the party.

The first, The Ghosts of Gralstead is a triumph. It starts off in Victorian London, but not the familiar gaslit Ripper-in-the-fog setting that Doctor Who still does to this day - this has serious scope, and unfolds beautifully over six episodes. This goes off in different directions including Africa and back - a tale of the dead rising and dimensions opening, with faith healers, tribal warriors, grave-robbers, warring brothers, a ghost-whispering child-woman, and a grotesque 'elephant woman' with some very unsavoury appetites.

The cast is excellent. Baker is on fine, imperious form, and Jameson Leela gets not only a love interest in African hunter Abasi, but a villain she truly fears in Carolyn Seymour's deliciously evil Mordrega. Louise Jameson's performance is spot-on, the only criticism here is that her relationship with Abasi is too well-matched, considering we know she eventually chooses boring, wet Andred as a mate for no apparent reason!

The Devil's Armada is somehow less impressive. Putting the Doctor and Leela in Elizabethan times against the backdrop of the Spanish Armada, with a fanatical witchfinder, and a race of imp-like creatures stirring up the conflict.

It's a good idea, with some good dialog and performances, but it feels a little flat after Gralstead. Tom Baker is a bit more of a mixed bag here - his yokel impression in the first episode is a bit too glib and broad, but minutes later he's perhaps more furious than we ever saw him on TV and the effect is slightly jarring - Tom turned up to eleven. He's excellent when the Doctor realises he could lose the TARDIS though.

Overall, Philip Hinchcliffe Presents is a worthy experiment, here's hoping Mr Hinchcliffe has some more ideas up his sleeve.

“What’s more, as these [phonographs] become more popular, there might be a market for selling copies of the best acts ... Ha ha! Obviously those more suited to an auditory experience, dramatic recitations or even full cast drama – all delivered through the medium of sound!”


A year after Doctor Who triumphantly celebrated its golden anniversary, Big Finish (BF) is celebrating a milestone of its own – 15 years of entertaining fans with Doctor Who audio dramas. When BF first acquired the rights to producing audio Who in 1999, the TV program was on ice and its revival still another six years away. In that time, the company’s Doctor Who output now numbers hundreds of titles (well above the 190-plus releases in the so-called “main” range, if you add the Fourth and Eighth Doctor adventures, Companion Chronicles, Lost Stories and other special releases). In addition to producing numerous Doctor Who spin-offs that have explored popular and even obscure parts of the Whoniverse – eg Gallifrey, Jago & Litefoot, Counter-Measures, Dalek Empire, I, Davros, Iris Wyldthyme, Professor Bernice Summerfield and Vienna – the company has had the confidence to also secure the rights to other cult franchises and maintain a high level of quality and consistency that comes out of the deep affection, passion and dedication that the writers, producers, directors and performers have for their material.

Like its 50th anniversary counterpart The Light at the End last year, The Worlds of Doctor Who anthology is effectively Big Finish’s self-congratulatory pat on the back – as well as a gesture to the fans for their support over 15 years. Unfortunately, like The Light at the End, Worlds isn’t the most original or audacious of Doctor Who releases. Certainly there is an ambition to tell a broad story that threads its way through the rich, diverse tapestry of the Whoniverse, it’s just a great pity that the threat/villain of Worlds is so underwhelming and that the stories are for the most part so bland.

The villainous Rees, a Victorian era magician and hypnotist who subsequently defies human nature, is one-dimensional, both as a linking concept and as an antagonist. Without giving away too many spoilers, it’s tempting to say the character is a carbon copy of Dr Walter Simeon in the Doctor Who episode The Snowmen, even down to having a remote and brooding childhood and developing paranormal powers that take on a life of their own. Rees’s motives, particularly in the initial Jago & Litefoot instalment Mind Games are over-simplistic and sadistic. Indeed, because you are aware that the villain appears in all four instalments of the anthology, it practically removes all mystery and intrigue in the later stories. The Reesinger Process, the second instalment featuring the Counter-Measures Intrusion Group characters, provides some conjecture and conundrums in the course of the plot but little surprise at the climax. The title of the third serial - The Screaming Skull - is itself virtually a dead giveaway (pun intended!), although it is the most action-packed, entertaining and well written of this lot of serials. The final instalment Second Sight provides us with some insights into Rees’s back story and why he has become so powerful but aside from being a malevolent presence, the character remains grossly underdeveloped and unsophisticated. That said, Jamie Glover (who portrayed William Russell/Ian Chesterton in last year’s An Adventure in Space and Time) gives Rees charisma and authority for such a sketchy adversary.

Given Big Finish has set out to market its wares through this special release, then it will take some solace that it may lure in some curious listeners. The Jago & Litefoot and Counter-Measures instalments are virtual advertisements for those respective series, although you thankfully do not have to be an avid listener of them to enjoy Mind Games and The Reesinger Process. Justin Richards, who pens both episodes, makes them generic enough from the boxsets that you won’t be raising your eyebrows at allusions to other episodes (although no doubt if there are any, they are a payoff for avid listeners). You only need, of course, to be familiar with the characters from classic Who serials The Talons of Weng-Chiang and Remembrance of the Daleks (and even for modern series fans who won’t have seen them, those serials are readily accessible on DVD). Certainly Christopher Benjamin (Henry Gordon Jago) and Trevor Baxter (Professor George Litefoot) bring the memories flooding back with flawless portrayals of their very popular characters, and some of their dialogue, banter and comic timing is extremely well written by Justin Richards (Litefoot to Ellie Higson: “Then I shall be delighted to chaperone such a charming and refined companion!” Jago: “Oh, thank you Professor ¬─ and we’ll let Ellie come along too!”) It is just a pity that the episode in its own right is so weak.

The Counter-Measures team also scrub up well, considering that their characters in Remembrance of the Daleks were even less developed than those of Jago and Litefoot. Pamela Salem (Rachel Jensen), Simon Williams (Group Captain Gilmore) and Karen Gledhill (Alison Williams) reprise their roles effortlessly and Richards does an admirable job of fleshing out their characters and in particular their civil servant supervisor Sir Toby Kinsella (superbly played by Hugh Ross ─ “Rachel Jensen, you know I don’t do smug!”). Again, though, The Reesinger Process is little more than a framing device for this anthology and the big guest star names in Sinead Keenan (familiar to fans from appearances in modern Doctor Who and Only Human) and her real life brother Rory Keenan are wasted in their roles as sister and brother team Stephanie and James Wilton, the heads of the “mysterious” Reesinger Institute. Even The Screaming Skull is probably designed to encourage listeners to try out BF’s Doctor Who Companion Chronicles range, given that Jonathan Morris’ tale is partly a sequel to his offerings Tales from the Vault and Mastermind with American UNIT officers Ruth Matheson and Charlie Sato (the 1996 TV movie’s Daphne Ashbrook and Yee Jee Tso respectively). Having been compromised by the Master in their previous appearance, the two UNIT officers are given the opportunity to redeem themselves by returning to the Vault that stores extraterrestrial and supernatural artifacts recovered by the paramilitary organisation. Ashbrook and Tso’s enthusiasm for Doctor Who, despite their brief association with the program, is apparent not only in their performances but also in the “Behind the Scenes” CD in which they discuss their encounters with fans at Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary celebrations last year and their gratitude for being able to bring Matheson and Sato’s characters to life. Indeed, while Sato’s fanboy character in Mastermind irked this writer, his cheek in the face of danger in The Screaming Skull is memorable. Sato’s dialogue with the disembodied Rees, in which he goads the villain into revealing his plans before realising he is to go under the knife, is priceless and Tso injects plenty of humour into this exchange.

The Screaming Skull also nicely references Mind Games and The Reesinger Process and while this episode is a marked improvement on those chapters, this is down more to Morris’ strong writing, characterisation and tongue-in-cheek humour. Even then, the story is not without at least one irritant – the Terravore which stalks Matheson and Sato in the corridors of the Vault is a cross between a Dalek and the Skovox Blitzer which recently appeared on television in The Caretaker! (The Terravores debuted in the 2011 Sixth Doctor adventure The Crimes of Thomas Brewster.)

In another twist, The Screaming Skull also prominently features a reinstated Captain Mike Yates (Richard Franklin) who subsequently fills the “Brigadier” role when he recalls the Doctor (“ol’ Sixie” Colin Baker) to Earth for the final chapter Second Sight, written again by Richards in conjunction with Nick Wallace. While this tale also features Gallifrey regulars President Romana and Leela (Lalla Ward and Louise Jameson), it is more of a Sixth Doctor adventure than a Gallifrey tale and therefore unlikely to motivate casual listeners to investigate BF’s Gallifrey range. While they are as solid as you would expect, Ward and Jameson are horribly underused and Franklin is also rather superfluous to this instalment as Yates (he fares much better in The Screaming Skull). You could even argue the role of “ol’ Sixie” in this tale is symbolic – BF, after all, is largely credited with restoring the fortunes of the much maligned, lamented Sixth Doctor and the popularity of Colin Baker himself in the eyes of long-time Who fans. Certainly, the Sixth Doctor that we meet in Second Sight is Baker’s mellower, more likeable portrayal over the past 15 years and not the abrupt, impolite persona who graced our TV screens in 1984-85.

Although Second Sight explores the villain’s origins and how a character that starts as a common garden Victorian serial killer becomes a powerful menace to the wider cosmos, the final chapter is very dialogue-heavy and expository. Considering events in this serial should be drawing to a dramatic conclusion, the resolution is, if anything, dull and underwhelming. By establishing such a potent threat, Richards and Wallace set themselves up for a fall – they’re not able to devise a climax that is dramatic and nail-biting. At no point in this story do you feel that the Earth and the human race are truly under threat from the Rees malevolence. Not even the prospect that the malevolence could potentially infiltrate every aspect of our daily lives is as unsettling as it ought to be. You come away from this boxset feeling as if the story still requires closure.

Indeed, given the ambiguous ending to Second Sight and the anthology as a whole, it’s disappointing that popular archaeologist companion Bernice Summerfield was not included in the boxset to confront Rees in the 26th century, perhaps alongside Miles Richardson’s brilliant Irving Braxiatel. After all, as Lisa Bowerman points out in the CD extras, her involvement with BF stretches back to the inception of Bernice’s audio adventures ─ a year before the company obtained the Doctor Who licence. Nevertheless, Bowerman makes a dual contribution to The Worlds of Doctor Who - she is a director of the plays alongside Ken Bentley and she also plays cockney barmaid Ellie Higson, Jago and Litefoot’s impulsive, loyal friend.

As a cross-media promotion, The Worlds of Doctor Who may appeal to listeners who would like to sample the greater Doctor Who audio range and its numerous spin-offs. In turn, it’s a nice gesture for the company to be able to celebrate its output and pay back fans for their long term dedication and emotional and financial investment in its products. However, if you’re looking for something original, exciting and innovative, with substance and intrigue to boot, The Worlds of Doctor Who sadly isn’t it. You will get better examples by delving deeper into BF’s back catalogue.

If The Mega had been made in 1971, it could have been a classic season finale. There are so many strong Pertwee-era ingredients that it feels perfectly at home in Season Eight, the only thing missing is the presence of the Master. Here, it's lovingly nursed from a storyline by The Web Planet writer Bill Strutton by Simon Guerrier, and performed by Katy Manning and Richard Franklin.

The Mega deals with an attempt to force the West to disarm and put an end to war by Prince Cassie of the fictional nation Golbostan, backed by the alien Mega - beings of pure energy. The story begins with the Doctor, Jo, and Captain Yates heading through a sea of protesting youngsters to a demonstration of a horrific new weapon - a nerve gas which can choose its victims. A regular army General comments that the gas can be used on the protestors, much to the Doctor's outrage - at which point the General is assassinated by the Mega, and things begin to unravel. The Doctor and Jo are led to Cassie's castle in Golbostan by the Mega, whilst things get worse - the Prime Minister is the next target, live on TV, the Brigadier is placed under arrest, and Yates and Benton try to keep order when panic-stricken rioting breaks out amongst the public.

The story resonates with both period and modern concerns about war, protest, and the use of WMDs, and given Malcolm Hulke-like moral shades of grey. The whole conceit of the nerve gas that can pick its victims by their genetic make-up is very similar to the chilling Janus virus in Channel 4's recent Utopia. The murky concept of 'the greater good' also comes up, despite things having descended by episode six into borderline armageddon. In an echo of his apparent treachery in The Claws of Axos, the Doctor at one point seems to side with Cassie and the Mega's plot, and indeed is seen as a traitor by the top brass at home. He has to appear to co-operate to an extent to save lives - including Jo's, and is every bit the clever, resourceful, and flamboyant Third Doctor we remember - bursting with moral outrage.

The whole tale is carried beautifully by Katy Manning and Richard Franklin, with Derek Carlyle and Bo Poraj in supporting roles, and directed by Ken Bentley. Manning in particular deserves props for not only her note-perfect performance as Jo Grant, but managing to evoke Jon Pertwee in the lines she reads for the Doctor. It's not perfect, but it's a testament to her considerable skill with voices. Franklin plays basically all of UNIT. His own performance as Yates is as good as ever, and his Brigadier in places evokes Nicholas Courtney very well. As for Benton, he doesn't have so much to do - but Franklin leans perhaps a bit too hard on John Levene's West Country accent and makes him sound like he's auditioning for The Wurzels.

Nonetheless, this is an excellent story, and well worth three hours of your time.

Both a prequel and a sequel to 1977’s Fourth Doctor story, The Invisible Enemy, the latest adventure for the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) and Ace (Sophie Aldred) picks up where 2013’s Afterlife left off. Hex (Philip Olivier), now known as Hector, and in possession of an entirely new set of memories, has re-joined the TARDIS crew, and his relationship with Ace has grown more intimate. Unfortunately, his condition has also left him psychically vulnerable: in the opening minutes of the adventure Hector is infected by The Swarm – a telepathic virus with delusions of grandeur that has lain in wait inside the TARDIS for centuries, having previously been defeated by the Fourth Doctor and Leela.

What follows is a solid but somewhat by-the-numbers story involving return visits to two prominent locations from The Invisible Enemy: Titan Base and the Bi-Al Foundation (aka the Centre for Alien Biomorphology), though at different time periods from the original television story. And just as part three of The Invisible Enemy ventured into a new, albeit derivative location, so too does part three of Revenge of the Swarm. Instead of Bob Baker and Dave Martin’s pastiche of the Sixties SF film Fantastic Voyage, however, writer and stand-in script editor Jonathan Morris references a more recent film, 1982’s Tron, in this audio adventure.

Major scenes in parts three and four of Revenge of the Swarm take place inside the Hypernet: a galaxy-connecting virtual world whose visual representation doesn’t seem to have much evolved beyond William Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer, in which Gibson described cyberspace as: “A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.” In Revenge of the Swarm, Morris similarly and somewhat unimaginatively describes the Hypernet through the mouths of Ace and the Doctor as resembling “glowing green lines of numbers in the sky … square buildings and skyscrapers but as outlines… symbolic representations of blocks of memory”.

Morris’ predictable depiction of the Hypernet extends to his plotting as a whole; his attempt to echo the plot beats of The Invisible Enemy results in a story that is serviceable, but rarely exciting; and its appropriation of Eighties’ cultural touchstones such as Tron lack the inventive flourishes that made similar pastiches during the Holmes-Hinchcliffe years so memorable.

Performances too are sometimes lacking, particularly Olivier, who comes across as unnecessarily leaden, almost somnambulistic in the scenes where he is possessed by the Swarm (especially in comparison to Michael Sheard’s vibrant performance as a similarly-possessed Supervisor Lowe in The Invisible Enemy); even McCoy seems a little bored, rolling his R’s constantly as if trying to bring some life to the script. Thankfully John Leeson, returning after 37 years as the Nucleus of the Swarm, brings some much-needed flair to the production. Supporting characters are consistently well presented, especially Phyllida Nash as Professor Oksana Kilbraken, whose invention of a particular cloning technique plays a key role in both The Invisible Enemy and the first two episodes of this new adventure.

Given that Revenge of the Swarm is the first real adventure for this new version of Hex following his introduction in Afterlife, it’s also surprising that the story is one in which he is immediately possessed, a scenario which denies both Morris as writer, and Olivier as performer, the chance to explore more of what makes Hector unique. Nor does this plot device provide the opportunity to flesh out the changed dynamics between Hector, Ace and the Doctor. It remains to be seen whether Hector’s new personality and its ramifications for a TARDIS crew who’ve been traveling together for a decade will be more successfully explored in future audio adventures.

Another problematic aspect of the script highlights issues that current Big Finish writers face with Ace: her cultural touchstones suddenly include films outside her era, such as 1999’s The Matrix, suggesting her character has evolved in the years since Ace was last seen on television. This impression is later contradicted by her curious naiveté concerning the story’s technology (“What exactly does a neural interface helmet do,” she asks in episode three, as if its self-explanatory name would not be obvious to someone who’s travelled with the Doctor as long as Ace has) and especially by her unwavering loyalty to the Doctor, when she tells Hector in the final scenes of Revenge of the Swarm that: “The Doctor’s right; he’s always come through in the end, without fail.” Fans know that McCoy’s manipulative Seventh Doctor has let Ace down before; a conundrum that’s difficult to reconcile with earlier impressions that she’s grown as a character since 1989’s Survival.

On a positive note, the dynamic between Aldred and McCoy is as strong as ever; a scene in which Ace tells the Doctor, as he prepares to enter the Hypernet, that “You don’t think I’m letting you go in there on your own?” has the perfect mix of exasperation and camaraderie; a simple but charmingly effective summation of the well-established bond between these two iconic characters.

The Invisible Enemy memorably introduced a now much-loved new companion to Doctor Who in the form of K9, as well as heralding what was to become a progressively lighter tone to the series in subsequent seasons. It’s unlikely that this by-the-numbers Big Finish adventure will prove to be as significant, in hindsight, in another 37 years’ time.

The Brood of Erys packs a classic Doctor Who premise – arriving in a star system containing just a single planet and its accompanying moon, as well as an array of radio beacons lining its boundaries, the TARDIS intercepts a mysterious transmission informing its crew that their lives will be in jeopardy should they venture any further. Naturally, the Doctor and Flip (Lisa Greenwood) travel into the metaphorical heart of the danger zone, only to find themselves and their vessel latched onto by a family of “curious” extraterrestrial beings called the Drachee (think the Slitheen, but with subtler and less frequent expressions of gaseous exchange and, mercifully, far less slapstick humour).

There’s something charmingly innocent about the concept of a horde of alien toddlers exploring the deepest recesses of the TARDIS in order to simply learn more of the unknown (not least due to the high-pitched voice of their leader) – and something inherently hilarious about the characteristically melodramatic and agitated reaction offered by Colin Baker’s incarnation of the Doctor – yet as is virtually always the case in narratives taking place within the so-called Whoniverse, the situation turns sour in a matter of moments. Flip is taken hostage by those same individuals who claimed themselves to pose “no danger” whatsoever, while her self-appointed protector is forced to take refuge on a damaged space yacht – and, soon enough, the planet Asphya itself – with an amnesia-prone female humanoid who can’t remember her own name, let alone her dark history or the influence it’ll have on events to come.

In spite of the commendable sense of scale conveyed by these initial eventful set-pieces, Brood’s narrative comes to focus far more on psychological demons than it does physical antagonists, a rare attribute which previously worked to great effect in televised serials such as 42 and Midnight and which certainly doesn’t do the story any harm in terms of building the intrigue surrounding its constructs and the somehow-sentient moon of Erys. Central to writer Andrew Smith’s prolonged investigation of the inner workings of the mind is this notion of an intelligent planetoid and the ramifications its sudden (or gradual) metamorphosis could have for its inhabitants. Of course, as plot elements go, a sentient moon is by no means a completely original addition to the series’ lore (although one might argue that nearly fifty-one years on from November 23rd, 1963, it’s nigh-on impossible for today’s scribes to give birth to wholly unique antagonists) – The Doctor’s Wife’s House comes to mind as a recent example of how such a conceit can be implemented efficiently within the realms of modern science-fiction (and, indeed, modern Who) – so it’s a great relief to see Smith take such a contrasting approach to his predecessors, intertwining the arcs of the aforementioned amnesiac, the Drachee (who offer up an all manner of simultaneously humorous and quasi-philosophical insights into the current predicament facing Erys and the system as a whole) and the spherical landmass which gives this particular audio drama its name to such an extent that one can’t fail to be swept up by the mystery surrounding both of them.

That said, while Smith undoubtedly manages to subvert expectations of the traditional representation of adversaries who attack via the mind rather than through any physical manifestation, Brian Shelley’s voice work as the mental embodiment of Erys isn’t quite so successful in this regard. Sure, there’s genuine enthusiasm and vigour present in Shelley’s portrayal of one of the more abstract (and therefore challenging) forces conceived by the minds of Big Finish in recent years, but when it’s juxtaposed with Michael Sheen’s chilling vocal contribution to Neil Gaiman’s aforementioned 2011 TV story, it’s all but pointless to attempt to argue that the former performance is anywhere near as memorable or layered – instead, it comes off as rather derivative, as if Shelley has dedicated a considerable amount of his spare time to watching psychologically investigative serials like The Brain of Morbius in order to hone his contribution to the ever-expanding world of Doctor Who spin-offs (if such a term can even begin to do justice to the increasingly accomplished and ambitious work of Big Finish and its various writing teams) rather than focusing on putting his own engaging spin on the dialogue afforded to him in the notably generous script (that several scenes rely wholly on his ability to match and / or surpass Lisa Greenwood’s evident enduring passion and conviction doesn’t help matters either).

If Shelley is the play’s weakest link, then Baker and Greenwood are easily the two central components which (in tandem with the near-unparalleled intelligence of Smith’s delicately-structured and thematically subversive storyline) hold it all together. Both of these talented thespians have had more than enough time to develop their portrayals and to tailor them to cater for the preferences of Big Finish’s constantly expanding Doctor Who-orientated fandom and, unsurprisingly, they’ve done so with enviable ease, to the extent that they’re now seemingly able to transform even the most exposition-centric sequences into dramatically engaging exchanges that reward the attentive listener in unexpected ways regardless of whether or not they feed directly into the narrative’s denouement. The sixth Doctor in particular is taken completely and utterly out of his comfort zone as the situation at hand shifts out of his control and unseen forces manipulate proceedings in order to suit their own ends, instantly enabling Baker to flex his performing muscles as his character’s increasingly desperate attempts to rally against his newfound nemeses begin to seem more and more futile.

After months upon months of mediocrity, then, Big Finish’s Doctor Who audio dramas may well have found their footing once again with The Brood of Erys. Andrew Smith – unlike several of his esteemed predecessors - doesn’t rely on the series’ past tropes in order to strengthen the credibility of his tale, nor does he integrate needlessly contrived references to classic or modern serials in a similar vein to those scribes who fear that they’ll lose their listeners’ attention should they neglect to include such call-backs in the mix. There’s still room to improve in future sixth Doctor productions, of course – perhaps it’d be worth Smith becoming more involved with the casting process when it comes to selecting a truly accomplished voice actor to portray his next storyline’s central antagonist, since Brood’s brilliantly subversive script certainly more than warranted such talent – but to paraphrase John Hurt’s already-beloved War Doctor, for now, for this moment, this is the show we’ve come to know and love again.