Writer: Joseph Lidster, Jenny T Colgan, Matt Fitton

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

Big Finish
First Released: Tuesday 31st January 2017

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Night of the Stormcrow

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

Big Finish
First Released: Tuesday 31st December 2013!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Warlord Games
Released May 2017

Boasting that “an eternity of adventures awaits you” with this officially licensed miniatures game, “Doctor Who: Exterminate!” will undoubtedly take grown adults back to those heady days of running around the school playground screaming “ex-ter-min-ate” at one another, or more recent times when everyone was simply pounding the cement with their feet whilst shouting “delete”. Indeed, as far as capturing the frantic spirit of the BBC Television series goes, this boxed starter set genuinely seems to include everything any fan would ever need in order to recreate a classic clash of Daleks versus Cybermen; just without the need to risk an early coronary or pulled muscle by too much headlong rushing around within a confined play area…

For starters, the game contains no less than twelve unpainted plastic Time War Daleks, twelve Cyber Legion Cybermen and fourteen tiny Cybermats to help you quickly populate your battlefield and start rolling those dice. True, I personally didn’t find a few of Davros’ creations quite so easy to assemble as “Warlord Games” “easy-fit” instructions would suggest. But having scoured several other wargamers’ blogs and engaged in some forum-based dialogue on the subject, I sadly seem to be in a minority of one when it comes to this particular problem.

Fortunately, my apparent ‘fat fingers’ didn’t struggle to unfold the starter set’s double-sided 36" x 36" battlemat (which some have seen fit to later laminate) or to punch out the generous amount of card scenery which accompanies it within the box. These items are all incredibly well-illustrated and, amongst other items, includes a wonderful top-down illustration of the Tardis, a Dalek command console and death-defyingly deep mine shaft.

However, it is not until you read the game’s rules and gain an insight into its wonderful Adventure Card mechanic, that this product takes its owner from being simply a very eye-catching wargame between two of the Timelord’s greatest enemies and instead offers the potential to turn it into something far more akin to a special episode of our favourite science fiction programme.

Basic gameplay will undoubtedly cater for those people who simply want to set up Terry Nation’s creations against Dr. Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis’ finest, and subsequently, roll a fistful of dice over the space of a couple of hours in order to determine who is the victor. For those who want less of a wargame feel and more of a ‘televised serial’ atmosphere though, the aforementioned Adventure Cards can help factions suddenly call in reinforcements, develop additional sensory inputs to improve shot accuracy, score lucky hits, and even “reverse the polarity”; and always at the most opportune of moments when everything up until that point had looked lost.

Interestingly, “Doctor Who: Exterminate!” also contains plenty of statistics and cards for some of the Doctor’s other more prominent foes, such as the Zygons, Judoon and Silence, as well as those of the Tenth and Twelfth Doctors themselves. Such contents are clearly designed to encourage the series’ fandom to rush out and buy “Warlord Games” additional miniature expansion packs, and frankly, it’s worked with me.  Surely no-one can resist having David Tennant, armed with his sonic screwdriver and Tardis crew, tackling the Zygons, or how about the Judoon trying to thwart a Dalek invasion of the Moon..?

Doctor Who: Exterminate! is available from Amazon.

Written By: Christopher Cooper, Mac Rogers, Janine H Jones, Tim Foley
Directed By: Scott Handcock

Cast: John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness), Alexandria Riley (Ng), Paul Clayton (Mr Colchester), Sam Béart (Orr), Jonny Green (Tyler Steele), Kai Owen (Rhys Williams), Tom Price (Sgt. Andy Davidson), Eve Myles (Gwen Cooper), Murray Melvin (Bilis Manger), Rachel Atkins (Ro-Jedda), Ramon Tikaram (Colin Colchester-Price), Ewan Bailey (Duncan), Kerry Joy Stewart (Maddy), Diveen Henry (Sandra), Ellie Heydon (Andrea), Marilyn Le Conte (Patricia), Luke Rhodri (Rowan), Charlotte O'Leary (Poppy), Sacha Dhawan (Hasan), Sarah Annis (P.C. Nicki Owen), Rick Yale (Lorry Driver), Laura Dalgleish (Newsreader), Kristy Phillips (Stacey), Aly Cruickshank (Student), Richard Elfyn (Takeaway Man), Sanee Raval (Xander)

​Released by Big Finish Productions - October 2017

After an eclectic opening boxset pitting its titular team of ‘secret’ agents up against sentient hotels, vengeful brides, increasingly destructive terrorist cells and an extraterrestrial gangster newly appointed as Cardiff’s mayor, what could Big Finish possibly have up its sleeve next for their self-proclaimed fifth season of Torchwood? That’s a fair question, and with Aliens Among Us – Part 2 comes the adrenaline-fuelled, alien STD-carrying answer.

“Love Rat”:

If James Goss’ brilliantly-named sophomore instalment of Season Five, “Aliens & Sex & Chips & Gravy”, didn’t seem enough like a quintessential Torchwood outing, then “Love Rat” more than fits the bill. From its unashamedly risqué opening moments, involving Captain Jack’s not-so-romantic run-in with an unknown courter, to its hilariously absurd consequences witnessed throughout the hour, “Love Rat” is about as adult, gag-ridden and downright ridiculous as the show’s ever been under Big Finish’s stewardship.

As one would expect at this point, though, the play’s ever-delightfully energetic cast take the increasingly bonkers events depicted here in their stride, with John Barrowman naturally relishing the opportunity to transform Jack into the ultimate sexual provocateur for one hour only, while Eve Myles’ bemused Gwen and Jonny Green’s stern yet susceptible PR agent Tyler both suffer the consequences with gut-wrenchingly comedic results.

Those hoping for scribe Chris Cooper to push on with Season Five’s underlying secret invasion plot arc might need to take a chill pill here, since barring a cameo or two from Rachel Atkins’ still gloriously malevolent arch-foe Ro-Jedda, there’s little in the way of narrative substance or deep thematic exploration to be found amidst all the coital antics. But even so, complaining seems churlish when, by letting its hair down for once, one of Doctor Who’s darkest offshoots to date offers up such a constantly entertaining hour as this.

“A Kill to a View”:

That said, anyone concerned that Torchwood’s latest run might follow the traditional US TV model – and indeed arguably Miracle Day’s approach – of marginalising any major plot arcs until its final instalment, especially as we reach its halfway point, can breathe easy as they stick on Aliens Among Us’ sixth chapter. As teased by his familiar silhouette gracing Part 2’s cover, Season One antagonist Bilis Manger has returned to wreak havoc upon the lives of the Torchwood team, his intentions no less sinister than before.

Murray Melvin, true to form, once again injects this mysterious adversary with all the understated menace and enigmatic omniscience for which fans knew and loved him back in 2007. It’s thanks to his accomplished performance that as Bilis adopts the role of a kindly Caretaker at the tower block where Mr. Colchester and his partner have coincidentally moved in of late, listeners can’t help but perch themselves at the edge of their seat in nervous anticipation of the turbulent conflict and inevitable tragedies to come.

Placing Colchester centre-stage doesn’t do “Kill” any harm either, affording Paul Clayton’s constantly courageous yet endearingly vulnerable – and, thanks to his rather unique work-life balance, multi-faceted – civil servant with some much-needed development, as he realises to a harrowing extent the devastating personal consequences which come with taking the deadliest career path available to Welsh job-seekers. How this compelling character arc will resolve itself by season’s end remains to be seen, but we’re just as curious to see this develop as we are to discover what ominous teases of another old foe’s arrival portend for the second half of Season Five.

“Zero Hour”:

And what of Ro-Jedda’s doubtless sinister machinations behind-the-scenes? Evidently unwilling to allow Aliens Among Us to lose the gratifying plot momentum gained by Episode 6, Janine H. Jones dives headfirst into this mystery via a topical tale of exploitable employees forced to work inhumane hours just to earn a living. Enter Tyler Steele, whose work at the mayor’s office – and intrigue at noticing the peculiar habits of a delivery worker – sets him on a collision course with the unsettling truths behind Cardiff’s otherwise welcome upsurge in employment rates.

Just as Green’s undeniably flawed wannabe journalist served as our entryway back into the covert, casualty-laden world of Torchwood in the season premiere, “Changes Everything”, so too does “Zero Hour” offer listeners the opportunity to experience the latest weekly threat to the Welsh capital’s fragile sanctity from the perspective of a relative outsider, as Tyler soon finds himself in treacherous waters with little-to-no help available from Gwen while she tackles toddler troubles or Jack while he investigates matters further afield. Thus we’re afforded a far deeper insight into a morally complex rogue who’ll cross almost any line to survive, yet shows visible dismay at witnessing his city on the brink of societal collapse.

Meanwhile Gwen’s familial woes at home highlight another ongoing character arc which could so easily get forgotten amidst all of Part 2’s other hi-jinks – namely her possession by a still ambiguous alien entity driving Mrs. and Mr. Cooper further apart by the day. No doubt tensions will come to a head in the final four episodes of Season Five due for release next February, but it’s rather frustrating how frequently such a pivotal journey for one of the show’s longest standing protagonists ends up side-lined so as to allow other plot threads to breathe. At this rate, the true feisty heroine whom Myles usually portrays to great effect might not re-surface for most of the run, a crying shame given how Aliens Among Us supposedly marks Torchwood’s triumphant full-scale comeback.

“The Empty Hand”:

Last but by no means least, Aliens’ second mid-season finale takes the underlying political messages seeded within the previous seven episodes and amplifies them tenfold, namely by bringing ideas such as #BlackLivesMatter and hate crime to the fore as Sergeant Andy Davidson appears to gun down an innocuous immigrant worker in cold blood. As ever in a series whose mother show straddles the line between sci-fi and fantasy, there’s far more than meets the eye in this instance, but the increasingly relevant issues at hand lend “The Empty Hand” a greater sense of moral gravitas than most Torchwood romps can muster.

Writer Tim Foley admirably never trivialises his weighty subject matter, allowing his characters to discuss the implications of Andy’s actions at length and affording Tom Price’s oft-befuddled police officer a long overdue extra layer of moral nuance in the process. Thankfully, though, he’s similarly aware that such intricate discussion points can scarcely receive closure over the course of a single one-hour drama, his focus primarily on how the Torchwood team’s struggle to resolve what soon becomes a citywide crisis feeds into Ro-Jedda’s long-term game-plan, and – after a belated intervention from the eternal Time Agent – the lengths to which Jack will go to protect humanity at all costs.

Any fan will attest that the latter thematic strand has often proved a narrative goldmine for the series, particularly as Children of Earth drove the man who’d bested gas-mask zombies, Daleks and the son of Satan himself to take the life of his own grandson in the process. Similar to how that fateful decision carried major ramifications for Jack’s role in Miracle Day, so too do the actions taken here by the once and future Face of Boe indicate that life at the Hub might never truly be the same again. Of course, anyone who’s finished the boxset will know a further crucial reason why Part 3 promises to potentially uproot our understanding of Torchwood’s past, presence and future, and anyone who hasn’t will need to pick Part 2 up to discover as much for themselves.

Speaking of which, in case it’s not already glaringly obvious by now, Aliens Among Us is fast shaping up as one of Torchwood’s finest hours to date, making the series a must-listen for any devotees who’ve longed for the show’s return to TV. It’s safe to say that Season Five has a hell of a lot of dangling plot threads to tie up in Part 3, from Gwen and Rhys’ fractured relationship to Ro-Jedda’s endgame to that plot twist awaiting listeners at the end of “Empty Hand”, but based on the opening two-thirds of Season Five, finding out how events reach their climax will doubtless prove one of the biggest early highlights of next year. February 2018 is apparently where everything changes, and we’re certainly ready.

Written By: Marc Platt
Directed By: Ken Bentley

Cast

Tom Baker (The Doctor), Lalla Ward (Romana),
Joannah Tincey (Sartia), Alan Cox (Eamonn Orensky),
 Kieran Hodgson (Klick Chervain),
Des McAleer (Blujaw Skaldson),
Alex Wyndham (Linnis Skaldson), Jamie Newall (Greygul), Jane Slavin(Frithra), John Banks (The Sleek).

Romana has been cruelly abandoned by her old Time Lady friend, and the Doctor is left, to not only clear up a mess with the furious locals of the planet Funderell that concerns the 'accidental' killing of their God, but also to try to deduce what the Time Lords have done to the fascinating planet....Oh yes, and the TARDIS has been lost, absorbed by the ever moving liquid skin of the planet's surface......things are looking grim.....

The Thief Who Stole Time is essentially parts three and four of the previous story, The Skin of the Sleek - and starts, in true classic Doctor Who style, by quickly and efficiently resolving the cliffhanger from the previous episode. As with the the first two parts of this story, not only is the story telling first rate but the world building is fantastic and quite dazzling.

I felt that the only (very slight) let down is that new Time Lady Sartia (Joannah Tincey) descends into a moustachioed twirling villain far too quickly, readily explaining her dastardly plans to anyone who will listen - but this is quite fun in a way, and harks back to the time of simpler writing. It didn't detract from my enjoyment of this story as a classically staged four parter.

The standout performance for me was Tom Baker himself, who seems to be reaching new levels with the character through Big Finish, and is just an absolute joy to listen to for anyone who enjoyed his era, particularly the later years. I actually laughed out loud at a number of his one liners - yes they are expertly written by Marc Platt, but Tom absolutely owns every word by the manner in which he delivers them. Lalla Ward is also excellent of course and delivers some real gravitas to the scenes between her and Sartia, when she struggling to understand why someone who she thought of as a friend, should actually despise and resent her.

The Skin of Sleek and The Thief Who Stole Time are essential listening to any fan of the Baker era. Not to be missed.

Both stories are available now from Big Finish as a digital download or an audio CD. 

Written By: Nicholas Briggs, Andrew Smith
Directed By: Nicholas Briggs
Producer: David Richardson

Cast: Tim Treloar (The Doctor), Katy Manning (Jo Grant), George Watkins (Delralis), John Banks (Jickster), Amy Newton (Elaquon), Robin Weaver (Arianda), Iain Batchelor (Adam Rigg), Robert Hands (Major Hardy / Crewman), Richard Derrington (Commander Burton), Ian Cunningham (Sinko / Ronson / Lieutenant), Jake Dudman (UNIT Radio Operator) and Nicholas Briggs (The Daleks)

Released by Big Finish Productions - August 2017

With much of Big Finish’s annual Doctor Who content becoming inevitably geared around taking advantage of their recently-acquired New Series licence, from The Lives of Captain Jack to The Diary of River Song to UNIT: Assembled in the past year alone, classic fans of the TV series – and indeed its accompanying audio storylines – might reasonably begin to worry whether the 1963-1989 Doctors will plummet down the agenda, to the point of them rarely warranting a look-in beyond the odd multi-Doctor crossover.

Quite to the contrary, however, as well as continuing the escapades of Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy’s incarnations via their Main Range along with William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton’s in the Early Adventures saga, the studio has reaffirmed its commitment to Jon Pertwee’s ever-wise, ever-courageous and ever-defiant version of Theta Sigma this Summer. Enter The Third Doctor Adventures Volume 3, the latest edition in an ongoing series of boxsets showcasing the incandescent Tim Treloar’s captivating take on the character in the late and great Pertwee’s absence.

This time around listeners can expect both a flavour of the new and the familiar from scribes Nick Briggs and Andrew Smith, their dual, standalone four-part serials combining shades of Who’s recent and distant past with innovative new conceits to form a potent concoction of wonder and adrenaline-fuelled action. While certainly not without its notable blemishes, particularly in the first half, Volume 3 is all but guaranteed to sate the appetites of long-running Pertwee aficionados as well as diverting its path just far enough from the beaten track of nostalgia to avoid intimidating newcomers either…

“The Conquest of Far”:

If we consider the two serials presented here as a wedded couple of sorts, their marital ceremony spanning the set’s sizable 5-hour runtime and the presents offered up at the reception conforming to that age-old saying of “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue”, then Briggs’ opening salvo unquestionably fills the first and third of those criterions. Much as he avoided plumping for the traditional “…of the Daleks” syntactical structure when titling the piece, the man best known for voicing Skaro’s finest in the New Series has crafted a classic invasion story centred on Davros’ creations to kick off proceedings, one set just moments after Series 10’s Planet of the Daleks (1973) to boot.

En route back from giving their archenemies a rather frosty reception on Spiridon, the Doctor (Treloar) and Jo Grant (Katy Manning, as bumbling but endearing as ever throughout Volume 3) soon find themselves inadvertently tumbling to the planet Far instead, ready to face another onslaught from the Kaleds’ final mutations with the Earth Alliance’s begrudging assistance. If nothing else, it’s certainly a premise which would’ve felt right at home in Series 10 as surely was Briggs’ intent, as would the motley band of human and alien resistance fighters with whom they work and vie to ascertain the likelihood of their – and indeed any Far resident’s – survival against the near-insurmountable odds of liberating a near-fatally weakened planetoid.

Unfortunately though, while “Far” gets off to a compelling enough start, soon splitting up our intrepid time travellers – as has so often been the case in the great Who serials – to meet the various factions living under Dalek tyranny on Far and teasing the Daleks’ nefarious purpose for the long since conquered world, events soon become rather predictable, leading to the same inevitable sacrifices and pyrrhic counter-plays for which the show’s invasion sub-genre has become so irreversibly known over the last 54 years. Try as they might to reinvigorate proceedings with their energetic, psychologically tormented takes on the wearied, warring rebels tasked with overthrowing the Dalek regime, supporting stars like George Watkins, John Banks and Amy Newton – among others – struggle to bring much depth to one-note players, each of whom’s sole purpose is seemingly to progress the rather mundane plot above all else rather than undergoing any thematic personal journey.

Even Briggs himself sounds as if he’s on auto-pilot as he voices Who’s most iconic foes, a fault again perhaps of his own creation given how little his script experiments with them – surely episodes like Dalek, Asylum of the Daleks and Into the Dalek have proven it’s possible to break the invasion, base-under-siege or interplanetary scheme mould? If Big Finish plans to continue rolling out stories featuring the Thals’ mortal enemies with such rapidity – between The War Doctor, The Churchill Years and Order of the Daleks in recent months, we’ve had more than our fair share of overblown, galaxy-threatening plots – then they’d best consider how to innovate upon such tired narrative structures for the characters, or perhaps give them a well-earned break as Steven Moffat did in the 2011 TV run.

Thank goodness for Treloar and Manning then, both of whom ensure what’s otherwise a disappointingly by-the-books first half for Volume 3 remains thoroughly entertaining listening regardless. Whether it’s the former channelling Pertwee’s immense authority and unyielding sense of hope, even in the gravest of circumstances where all chances of success appear lost, or Manning endowing Jo with an admirable aura of bravery, even when inside she’s clearly as terrified by the events of “Far” as any other player, the two wholly capable lead stars sizzle both when they’re sparring off one another and when they’re desperately attempting to ensure their quest to rid a planet of Dalek tyranny once more brings the least possible collateral damage.

“Far” marks an uneven start to the boxset, then, one which stays afloat thanks to its lead performers’ stunning turns – not that we should be surprised by this point, admittedly – but doesn’t come anywhere close to matching Third Doctor classics like The Time Warrior or Carnival of Monsters owing to its near-complete lack of imagination and narrative innovation.

“Storm of the Horofax”:

Whereas Briggs opted to draft the safer – ironically, given its scale and its surprisingly inferior quality – of the two serials comprising Volume 3, Andrew Smith takes anything but a conventional route, rounding out the boxset with the far more understated yet resultantly far more successful “Storm of the Horofax”. Not dissimilar to “Far”, this riveting four-parter does pay homage to story elements from past Who serials both classic and modern, withInferno, The Time Meddler and even the cracks in time arc from Steven Moffat and Matt Smith’s first televised run of the series in 2010 springing to mind on various occasions.

But if “Far” struggled to surprise, simply imitating what had come before without innovating upon the achievements of its hallowed predecessors, then Smith’s Earth-bound tale presents a model template for Briggs to follow should he hope to avoid making similar mistakes next time around. Every instalment of “Horofax” presents one of the aforementioned past conceits in a refreshing light which reinvigorates the serial at precisely the right time, with the story serving at once as a mystery, an invasion-driven thriller and an intimate personal drama but never seeming tonally disparate either thanks to the subtle yet elegant manner with which Smith weaves together his divergent plot threads.

Just as key to its success beyond the constantly subversive script, though, are Manning and Counter-Measures star Robin Weaver, the latter of whom plays a time-travelling psychic whose powers and hidden secrets threaten to play havoc with the Earth in both its physical and evolving temporal states. “Horofax” sees the pair strike up a refreshingly unpredictable dynamic, developing from sympathy to spite to supreme terror for reasons this reviewer shan’t spoil, not least since half of the joy of experiencing a brilliant romp like this is doing so with all of the major surprises intact. Better yet, Manning doesn’t need Weaver to play off in order to tug at the listener’s heartstrings either, some of her fraught exchanges with Treloar’s Doctor towards the latter stages of the play transporting Jo through a powerful emotional gamut unlike almost anything we saw the character experience on-screen in the 1970s.

As ever, all this isn’t to say that Smith doesn’t have scope to improve his Who contributions further should he return for Volume 4 or indeed as he presumably continues to write for Big Finish’s various other ranges. While Weaver’s at first tantalisingly restrained quasi-antagonist grabs our attention within just moments of her debut, once her true intentions become clear towards the second half, Arianda’s motivations for her actions seem difficult to trace, with the about-turn she performs of course inevitable – every serial needs its threat, after all – but also lacking the beneficial psychological context or backstory which might have lent her the depth of classic villains like Davros, the Family of Blood or the Master. Listeners won’t soon forget Arianda, that’s for sure, yet it’s tough to envision the Doctor truly fearing the prospect of her potential return either.

But tossing its minor characterisation issues aside, “Horofax” nevertheless excels at providing both the quintessential Third Doctor experience that fans of Pertwee’s early ‘70s era will have come for as well as the revitalising shocks in which “Far” came up so sorely lacking. Despite “Far” getting proceedings off to a disappointingly unambitious start, with “Horofax” Smith has ensured that both diehard Pertwee devotees and newcomers looking to explore the Third Doctor’s era should come out satisfied, ready for another slice of 1970s – or should that be 1980s? – action in the not-too-distant future.

Oh, and one more thing: stop, don't move!