Starring Lalla Ward, Louise Jameson, and Seán Carlsen

Written By David Llewellyn, Lou Morgan, Helen Goldwyn

Directed By Scott Handcock

Executive Producer Jason Haigh-Ellery Nicholas Briggs

 

Released by Big Finish - February 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Writer: Jody Houser
Artist: Roberta Ingranata
Colourist: Enrica Eren Angiolini

35 Pages

Published by Titan Comics February 2020

Issue 2 of the Thirteenth Doctor's second year as a Titan Comic book maintains the quality from the opening episode.  Still in London 1969 and trying to figure out why the TARDIS would risk a paradox by bringing them to the same time and place as when the Tenth Doctor and Martha were trapped there without the TARDIS, things begin to build momentum as Martha finds the shop she works at has been robbed, and her coworker has gone missing...and then discovers the Thirteenth Doctor watching her. 

Martha confronts her, and she decides to come clean and admit she is the future incarnation of her friend.  This obviously puzzles Martha, but she seems to at least buy it a little.  She and the Doctor then decide to investigate all these missing people. 

The rest of the gang are trailing the Tenth Doctor, and his machine that goes ding begins to work, and they notice he may be heading towards the TARDIS. Their TARDIS.  If he finds it, he may believe it is his and then they would be stranded in 1969.  Yaz takes the bold measure of trying to confront the Doctor.  She pretends she is a Time Agent (believable cover story based on previous adventures in these comics), but the Tenth Doctor is able to easily blow that cover story...but before the three of them can manage to distract him from the TARDIS, he warns them to turn around...and try not to blink. The Angels are in 1969! 

This was a solid issue.  I thought it was well paced, I enjoyed both the Thirteenth/Martha sections and the Tenth/Trio bits.  I also felt it had a great little cliffhanger. If they manage to have an ending that doesn't feel like it is racing to the finish line, this will be the strongest effort of this book so far.

Written by Scott Gray, Alan Barnes, Gareth Roberts, Gary Russell, Sean Longcroft

Artwork by Martin Geraghty, Adrian Salmon, Sean Longcroft

Paperback: 132 Pages

Publisher: Panini UK LTD

Much like 2018's Land of the Blind, Ground Zero is a collection of different Doctor-lead strips from the 90s, which were all released in the gap between the ending of the Seventh Doctor era, and the start of the Eighth Doctor era.  Unlike that previous collection, there is an actual arc hidden within these stories, which culminates in the big finale of the collection's namesake "Ground Zero." This arc also played a role in the early adventures of the Eighth Doctor, as the main villains, The Threshold, would go on to be the major antagonist for the Eighth Doctor's first group of adventures (collected together in Endgame). This book has adventures featuring the Fifth, First, Third, Fourth, and Seventh Doctors and the grand return of the Seventh Doctor to the strip also marks one of the long-running strips most controversial moves in it's entire history.  

The opening of the book stars the Fifth Doctor and Peri, as they take on an Osiron Robot, similar to the ones from Pyramids of Mars.  It involves a Hollywood director attempting to use a Hollywood studio to perform an Egyptian ceremony that will release an ancient God of Locusts and gain power himself (using a studio set as the commotion will likely be ignored as filming). The Doctor, of course, foils this plan. While I didn’t find Alan Barnes’ story to be that exciting or interesting, it was lovely to see Martin Geraghty’s (who was the lead artist for the bulk of the Eighth Doctor run) beautiful black and white again. That made it worthwhile to me.

We then find the First Doctor and Susan have an adventure in London that takes place before the discovery of the TARDIS by Ian and Barbara in the series first episode, An Unearhtly Child. While the TARDIS is hiding in a junkyard, Susan and the Doctor stumble into an adventure with an alien attempting to turn humans into his own kind in order to help work his ship and escape Earth. The Doctor thwarts his efforts, as you’d expect. I found this story didn’t really work for me in any way. It was just too bland to get drawn into.

Up next was a shorter story starring the Third Doctor, one of the only stories in the set that doesn't have a connection to the finale.  Unlike the bulk of the book, this story is only one part and was drawn by Adrian Salmon, as opposed to Geraghty.  Overall this one is short and light, but I enjoyed it.  When it comes to classic Doctor strips, I want them to feel like they could easily fit into the era they come from.  The First Doctor story in this book doesn’t get tht right at all, but this is a perfect Third Doctor mini-adventure.  

We then travel to 2086 with the Fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane, and Harry as they fight off Russian Zombies and a man who goes full-on nuclear.  It’s one of the stronger stories in the book. I liked the visuals Geraghty brought to this one, and Gary Russell’s story is pretty solid.  I don’t have a lot to say on this one, mostly because it is just a fairly good read, not too many critiques to expand upon that. The Fourth Doctor also reappears in the final story of the book, which is a goofy strip in which the writer put himself into the strip, and it's a fourth-wall-breaking joke about the strip itself...one that served as the final random Doctor tale before the Eighth Doctor took over in the next issue. 

Really, it all culminates in "Ground Zero," which saw the Seventh Doctor return to the pages of the strip for the first time in two years.  His time on the strip had always been a bit rocky.  It started off shaky with little stories that were often hit or miss, then finally found a voice when the show was cancelled and the TV writers began to continue the journey on the strip itself, but then lost its way again when the Virgin New Adventures novel series began and the strip was forced to play second fiddle to the books. Communication between the folks behind the Virgin series and the folks at Doctor Who Magazine wasn’t always in order, and their synergy didn’t always work.  A comic strip that relies on you having read two novels doesn’t work…and if you are reading both the strip and the novels, having two similar Silurian stories printed around the same time isn’t helpful either.  

So Gary Russell, who at the time was editor of the magazine, just decided to end the Seventh Doctor entirely.  When the TV Movie came out and they were going to get the rights to have the Eighth Doctor, who was essentially a clean slate and a chance to start fresh and with a bit of direction again, they decided that they ought to have one final adventure for the Seventh Doctor, to finally give him a proper send-off from the strip.  And they really went for it.  

The strip totally breaks continuity with the Virgin books, gives the comics their own conclusion for the Seventh Doctor and Ace, and the path it set up was the spark that fueled the DWM strip for years to come. Instead of the older, edgier, darker version of Ace that had developed in the novels, the strip returned her to a state closer to how she had been when the TV series ended.  And then the strip did something majorly bold.  If you don’t want SPOILERS, then beware, I am about to get into them.  

The story involves the Threshold (who also serve as the antagonists in the early days of hte Eighth Doctor), and how they work for some monsters who live in the collective unconscious of humans and want to escape to the physical plane and destroy mankind.  In the process, the Threshold take three companions from the Doctor’s past (Peri during her adventure in the opening story, Susan from the second, and Sarah from the preceding adventure), and use them to lure the Doctor in. Susan, it turns out, can’t actually head into this other dimension, as it would destroy her mind, just as it would the Doctor. But the human companions can handle it.  The Doctor finds a way in, which nearly destroys the TARDIS (setting up his remodel seen in the TV movie), and he manages to stop the monsters…but not without dire consequences: the death of Ace.  Killing Ace was controversial to say the least, particularly as it drew a clear line in the sand as to where the comics now stood in terms of continuity with the novels.  

Going forward, the Eighth Doctor strips were excellent, especially when it came to building up their arcs and expanding upon what came before…and a major seed for that excellent era of Doctor Who Magazine comics is right here.  Ground Zero is a pivotal moment in the history of Doctor Who comics.  It was a bold statement that set the strips apart from the Virgin novel line, and the plot was important to the early days of the Eighth Doctor (though you can easily read the Eighth Doctor strips without having read "Ground Zero," as I did when it was reprinted years ago, but it is nice to get that background finally).  

As a whole package, the stories are slightly uneven.  The Third Doctor entry “Target Practice” doesn’t play into the overall story (though it is fun), and the other three Doctor tales are only tangentially connected to the final epic conclusion (and the First Doctor adventure is decidedly bland)…but that conclusion is something else. Even if you don’t agree with what the strip did in that moment, you have to give it props for being interesting.  It’s a good story too, regardless of the controversial elements.  And that finale makes this whole book worth it.