Downtime

Years after leaving the Doctor, Victoria Waterfield is drawn back to the Det-Sen Monastary in Tibet where she encounters a dark presence from the past. In 1995 she becomes the vice-chancellor of New World Univeristy, set up using the money her father left behind. New World follows the Det-Sen principles of learning and meditation, but to achieve their goals they require a missing locus. Journalist Sarah Jane Smith is hired to investigate on behalf of New World but when her path of investigation points towards retired Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, she realizes that something more sinister is at work, something that could put the whole world at the mercy of the Great Intelligence. And without the Doctor, they are on their own.

Downtime has the interesting distinction of being the series' only "retcon" piece; retcon being short for retroactive continuity. Originally it was made as a video production by ReelTime pictures using characters that were not copyrighted to the BBC, but shortly after it was officially embraced as lore with a novelized and greatly expanded edition in the Virgin Missing Adventures range. The expanded version featured the second Doctor for a few pages, and the third towards the end, and K9 appeared with Sarah (he does not in the video but it is obvious that Sarah is communicating with him) as well as the inclusion of UNIT personnel Brigadier Chricton (who was a colonel in the opening minutes of The Five Doctors) and a colonel Bambera, who would feature in the seventh Doctor adventure Battlefield.

Having been posessed by the Intelligence twice already has made Victoria an easy target for its powers, so its hold over her is so firm that we're not really seeing "our" Victoria for the better part of the adventure. (I often wonder if Janet Fielding could be convinced to be Tegan again to look at her life after the Mara). Victoria and Sarah share a few scenes without actually realizing that they have the Doctor as a common link; that bond is reserved for Sarah's eventual reuniting with the Brigadier, who at this point is still teaching at Brendan school some years after the events depicted in Mawdryn Undead. There's also a new character to add to the mix: Kate Lehtbridge-Stewart, the Brigadier's daughter from his failed first marriage. Kate hasn't spoken to her father in years - so long that he doesn't know he has a grandson, but she becomes a target of harassment by the New World university student body - the Chillies (short for Children) - when they connect her to the Brigadier, and the Brigadier to the last locus that binds the Great Intelligence to Earth. Acting as the de-facto chorgeous of the piece is New World's resident DJ, played by John Leeson (original voice of K9), who broadcasts daily from the school until he realizes that his program is nothing more than propaganda. And in the last little bit of star casting is Jack Watling as Professor Travers once more, kept alive as a puppet of the Intelligence until it can escape its bonds.

And yes, there are Yeti again. Lots and lots of Yeti. Okay well in the video there are just three but in the book there are a lot more. They've been redesigned again, probably due to budgetary reasons, and are smaller than before, and for some reason their fur is auburn now, not grey. And that's not just because they're in colour at last.

As it was the first video in a while, of course Jay and I reconvened to watch it, with a supplemtary viewing of the surviving episodes of The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear to provide a refresher on the backstory. Our opinion? Not as scary as the 60's episodes, and slightly melodramatic. The parade of companions was fun, and the subtle references here and there to the Doctor were clever, even with the Brigadier believeing he was encountering a regenerated Doctor at one point. Some of the acting is pretty wooden and the production values although different from the actual BBC episodes in style were still a bit.... limp. Everything was done on location, and as a result the sound in some places is just awful.

To put it into a fan's perspective, by the time this came out we hadn't had any substantial new Doctor Who on television since 1989. True there was a Children In Need special in 1993, but it was far too quick to really mean anything (the review of that is coming, but we're still a ways off) and the FOX movie I have referenced before was still two years away. This was as close as we got to new Doctor Who on screen, and in its context it really is something quite special to see the companions left behind carrying on the Doctor's work for him and keeping Earth safe, and having that bond between them that only adventures in time and space can make. The Doctor touches lives and changes them, and also leaves something of himself behind when he goes; the sense of duty to protect and defend. Downtime may not be brilliant on its own, but as a part of something bigger, it's a brilliant piece of the tapestry that is Earth's future history (or at least at the time it was... years later anything 90s is very much the past). Even without the Doctor in the show it is firmly anchored to other adventures, including an upcoming novel called Millenial Rites.

So that's the break over. While Earth has been saved again, the Doctor and Evelyn have been busy doing the same thing, and running into an old enemy in the process...

NEXT EPISODE : JUBILEE

Real Time

Cybermen. The mere mention of them sends the Doctor to the planet Chronos where a temporal wave has decimated an archaeological expedition. With Evelyn in tow he realizes that the Cybermen are indeed active on the planet, as well as a new breed of Cyberman made flesh by a nanovirus. The Cybermen have conquered the Earth in the past a result of a temporal anomoly, and unless the Doctor can figure out how to restore the timeline, both Human and Cybermen face extinction.

Real Time marked a real turning point for Doctor Who; originally it was not a Big Finish audio release but designed exclusively as a flash-animated webcast on the official BBC website. Until this point the series had covered all mediums except for the webcast, and here it was at last. There was something more to it though; this was the first BBC-commissioned Doctor Who production since the ill-fated eighth Doctor premiere movie shown on FOX television in 1996. The BBC were showing signs of taking Doctor Who seriously again, even if it was starting out small and relatively inexpensive, and the reaction from fans spurred two further webcasts before the series finally came back on the air in 2005.

As for the story itself, it's pretty simple, not very complicated, and could have been done without the Cybermen. It doesn't do much for their history, seeing as the Cybermen here are temporal anomolies. Their voice processing is kept on par with the last few television appearances they made, which is at odds with their sound in The Gathering and The Reaping. And this is the first time a Cyberman is made to sound distinctly male or female; their conversion process at this point is sloppy and only half-arsed, with only so many spare parts handy to turn humans into Cybermen. Evelyn comes close to breaking through Cyber conditioning and by asking the Cybermen questions, and then narrowly escapes being converted into one herself.

As the cover illustration shows, the Doctor undergoes a bit of a modification in appearance, with his wildly coloured coat being replaced by a blue one that would have been better suited to the blue outfits of Necros back in Revelation of the Daleks. The blue attire sticks around for a while after this point (insofar as clothing matters much in an audio) and it's probably more of a comment on Evelyn's presence with her being able to talk to him and even provide him with some guidance in their travels.

Now it's time for a break from the audios. This long stretch of Colin Baker audio material is cool but there's something to be said for the visual side of things in Doctor Who. There is still a lot of material to go before Colin Baker's sixth Doctor makes his exit, mind you, in audio and novel form, but here's a video to use as a halfway point. It's not Doctor Who per se, but it takes place within the Doctor's universe and although he is not in it, his presence is felt not only thematically, but in the presence of the other cast members - the companions he has left behind...

NEXT EPISODE : DOWNTIME

The Sandman

The Galyari are a race of reptilian bipeds on a constant journey across the stars to find a new home. Once warlike conquerers they have been reduced to nomads, their home a cluster of starships known as the Clutch. This fall in stature is the work of one being: an entity called the Sandman, who stalks the Galyari and kills their young, tearing away their skins and adding them to his own patchwork cloak. When the Doctor and Evelyn arrive in the midst of the Clutch, Evelyn comes to a shocking realization: the Doctor is the Sandman, and he's not sorry.

The Doctor as the monster. This is something that has been referenced before amongst other aliens he has defeated - most notably the Daleks - but here in The Sandman we get the other side of the story. The Galyari believe he is immortal, having encountered him repeatedly over the years and he has not changed (hinting that while the Doctor was travelling alone between companions he was keeping an eye on this species). Such is their fear of him they cannot even look at him. All of this comes as a shock to Evelyn, especially the sudden change of personality that overcomes the Doctor when he arrives with the Galyari; he is more like his post-regeneration self with Peri - condescending, rude, threatening, and very very loud. It isn't the same venom he evokes for Daleks or Cybermen or even, in certain circumstances, the Time Lords; it's not so much disgust as it is an act to terrify and keep them in check.

We all know the Doctor isn't that kind of monster. Wiping out Dalek fleets is one thing, but systematically murdering the Galyari children we all know is not his cup of tea; in fact when he learns that there have been recent killings he falters a bit before resuming his facade. Something else is at work within the Clutch, capitalizing on the Doctor's reputation and striking fear into the Galyari like no-one else can.

Recognize any of the voices in this one? Anneke Wills, Polly from the Hartnell and Troughton years, makes a return as one of the Galyari, her voice altered by the hi tech of Big Finish to be hostile and furious, a big difference from the skilled and gentle receptionist that we know her to play.

I liked it a lot. It's not all nasty and grit; there's this bit with the Doctor playing with the Galyari command chair that smacks of Dr Evil of the Austin Powers films, even if the sight of their Sandman at leisure is just as frightening to the Galyari as him killing their young. But in the end, there's some healing between the Doctor and the Galyari; he is a good guy after all, once they have seen the error of their ways.

NEXT EPISODE : REAL TIME

Project Twilight

Stopping in London for a spot of fine dining, the Doctor and Evelyn encounter a backstreet illegal casino and brothel run by gangsters - gangsters who turn out to be vampires. Unlike their classical counterparts, these vampires are bred in a laboratory known as the Forge, and they have escaped only to be hunted by the ruthless Nimrod. The leader of the vampires, Amelia, claims to be searching for a cure for the twilight virus which infected them, but Nimrod's mission is to destroy the runaways before they cause mass destruction, and anything that gets in his way is disposable, even the Doctor and Evelyn...

This one in parts almost smacks of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with its violence and grit, although Nimrod is no blonde from Sunnydale by any stretch. He's big. He's mean. He's armed to the teeth with hi tech vampire hunting equipment including protective body armour made of polycarbide - a substance the Doctor knows as the outer casing of a Dalek. The resources of the Forge stretch beyond conventional science and into alien technology gathered in the wake of invasion attempts. The whole tone of the tale is very dark, very gritty - a lot of the usual light moments between the Doctor and Evelyn are toned down in favour of more grim dialogue, with Evelyn taking one of the casino girls, Cassie, under her wing. There's an intersting moment where the Doctor quietly sings himself an old Galifreyan song:

Zagreus sits inside your head

Zagreus lives among the dead

Zagreus sees you in your bed

And eats you when you're sleeping

At the moment this means nothing, but further down the road it will be crucial, moreso to the Doctor's eighth self. The release order of the Big Finish audios though, had Project Twilight coming out very close to Zagreus; the way I am looking at the episodes here puts them literally years apart, and the reference will be lost in all liklihood. Or maybe not. f it's the year 2009 and I am still doing this blog, check the posts for the Zagreus listing and peek ahead - it's okay.

Encountering vampires raises the Doctor's usual ire about destroying them, as the Time Lords are sworn to do so, but he finds himelf torn as the vampires are not the spawn of the Great Vampires. Doesn't mean their intentions are pure, though.

As the slaughter of the vampires begins their true intentions come to light, but not before Cassie is infected by the twilight virus. Evelyn's motherly interest in Cassie causes her gret pain, and the girl is saved and taken to Sweden to hide out while the Doctor works on a cure for the virus, something he knows will take time. Cassie leaves tha TARDIS to await the Doctor's return, setting the series up for a sequel somewhere down the line, but not for a while.

NEXT EPISODE : THE SANDMAN

Bloodtide

Milions of years in the past, a Silurian scientist is exiled from his community for unethical experiments. As the Earth is ravaged by rapidly dropping temperatures, he and his creations are left to die. Millions of years later, the Doctor and Evelyn arrive on the Galapagos Islands and encounter none other than Charles Darwin and the crew of The Beagle on the expedition that will give Darwin his insights into his theories of evolution. The small colony also on the island have been experiencing some trouble, though; it seems that some of the residents have been driven mad, and claim to have sighted monsters in the caves nearby...

At LAST. After the sham that was Warriors of the Deep it is a great relief to see the Silurians treated with some respect. And to have them pitted against the sixth Doctor himself - wonderful. And dear Evelyn - she's getting a real treat as a companion, meeting all the classic monsters right away.

The pairing of a Silurian story with Charles Darwin is a fantastic idea given that the whole Silurian story from the start followed the entire evolutionary argument, even if humankind's ancestors were slightly differently portrayed. Artistic license, one supposes. And we get a proper explaination of what the Myrka is; even though we don't actually see it in this episode, it comes across as more credible in audio than it did staggering around the sets of SeaBase 1 back in 1984. I question the whole suspension of disbelief when it comes to Darwin not mentioning his encounter with the Silurians, though; he'd be reporting on giant tortoises and all manner of strange birds and plants, but how he'd leave giant reptile people out of the equation just because the Doctor says so is hard to swallow.

How do our Silurians stack up against their predecessors? They're more akin to the Silurians of 1970 with their voices and with their general disposition. There is dissent amongst their ranks about how to handle the humans that have now claimed the Earth as their own, but in an unoriginal moment they decide that maybe a plague is the best way to wipe them out. Ho hum. I seem to remember that not working once before, although they admittedly had modern antibiotics to work with at that time. An epidemic in the 1800's would have a much different outcome. And as always now that an old monster has been brought back for the audio, now comes the burning question of when they will return to the screen in the new series. Ice Warriors first, though!

NEXT EPISODE : PROJECT TWILIGHT

The Apocalypse Element

The first temporal conference has attracted delegates from every major temporal engineering race, with delegates from Gallifrey attending as well. The Doctor's arrival with Evelyn spurs suspicion amongst the other races present, but suspicion is relaced with outright fear when the Daleks arrive with an agenda of their own. Having held Romana prisoner for years, the Daleks aim not only to destroy the conference but plunder the time technologies of the attending races before they set the galaxy on fire with the Apocalypse Element...

Oh yes. Finally, Colin Baker gets a Dalek story to be excited about - and with Lalla Ward returning as Romana, the President of the High Council of Time Lords. This is the first time Lalla ward returns to the role and it's like she's never been gone; it's still very much in her to be Romana. And she's almost a perfect match for the sixth Doctor, both of them clever and blunt, neither one suffering fools gladly. It's good to have her back, and she'll be back again. She even does well with Evelyn, who gets her offical seal as a new companion, the rite of passage being an encounter with the Daleks (at least, in my mind it should be). Actually, who never met the Daleks ... Dodo, Liz Shaw, Leela, K9 (although rumour has it that changes in 2008), Adric, Erimem, and maybe one or two still to come. Before anyone says Nyssa, she met them through Big Finish's adventures.

Also among the cast is Vansell, a crafty Time Lord who will feature prominently in the heirarchy of Gallifrey in further adventures. The action moves fast, there are hoardes of Daleks and firefights galore (turn down the volume on your headphones if you're listening to it on an iPod or a WalkMan!), and then comes the unthinkable: the Daleks invade Gallifrey.

Gallifrey's invulnerability has only really been compromised once before, in The Invasion of Time, when the Doctor appeared to sell the Time Lords out to the Vardans, and in the new series Gallifrey is long gone as a result of the Time war against the Daleks. Gallifrey does not so much fall as it is penetrated by a small force of Daleks, but it's enough to cause mayhem and a lot of death. And more shooting. And more things going BOOM. The real purpose to their invasion, though, is not to conquer so much as it is to aid their other aims, and the resolution sets the stage for Big Finish's first proper spin-off project, Dalek Empire.

No-one really wins this one. The Daleks get what they want. Oh sure the day is saved, but there's the dark menace of the Daleks and their new empire right on Gallifrey's doorstep, and so many dead in the wake of the disaster. But Romana pledges to be vigilant, and the Doctor knows she is good as her word. And he'll meet her again, in a while.

NEXT EPISODE : BLOODTIDE

The Spectre of Lanyon Moor

The Doctor and Evelyn return to present-day Earth and encounter an amateur archaeological dig on the moors. The moors are an old place, supposedly haunted by a vile spectre, small and evil, but the legends are enough to have attracted the attention of UNIT, and one Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart (semi-retired) is on site to keep an eye on developments. The Doctor realizes that the powers gathering on the moor are not so much ancient as they are alien, and an evil presence abandoned centuries ago is about to awake and exact its revenge.

There's a certain formula to adventures like this: local legend, lingering powers from aliens who visited a long time ago, annoyed locals, opinionated scientists, people making deals with the darkness to gain power. Yeah, it sounds a lot like The Daemons doesn't it? Yes, they were even aware of that when they wrote the script, with the Doctor and the Brigadier making reference to knowing all about buried spaceships.

Oh right, it's the first time the sixth Doctor meets the Brigadier. The reunion is quick, the Brigadier has seen new Doctors so often he's always on the lookout for the newest face, or the newest companion. As far as chronology goes, The Spectre of Lanyon Moor would be a bit farther into the future, after the seventh Doctor episode Battlefield but probably prior to the fifth Doctor novel The King of Terror. Seeing as the Brigadier was never on screen during the sixth Doctor's short tenure, there has always been this mad clambering to write the official first encounter between them, which has resulted in this episode plus two novels: The Shadow in the Glass and Business Unusual. For my own purposes here I am going to accept Spectre as the real tale of their first encounter, totally ignore Shadow and deal with Business a little later, as it serves a dual purpose.

Is our Spectre scary? He is. A creature capabale of manipulating a psionic field in his sleep can't be a good thing. And it's pissed at being left behind on Earth by its brother. The locals mostly fear it and keep away, aside from the few it makes its deals with - most notedly a local busybody with her pack of dogs. By now of course we all know these deals are never what they seem, and we just get to watch as characters slide down the slope to their own demise. Or in this case, listen.

Interesting observation: Colin Baker obviously had a cold when he recorded this, a fact that is so obvious that it gets written into the script rather than glossed over or ignored (like Jon Pertwee's tattoos).

That's all.

NEXT EPISODE : THE APOCALYPSE ELEMENT

The Marian Conspiracy

Tracking down a nexus point where time threatens to skew off its normal course, the Doctor meets one Dr. Evelyn Smythe - a history professor specializing in the Tudor period. Evelyn claims to be the descendant of one of Elizabeth the First's trusted aides, but the Doctor has no recollection of the ancestor she names. With Evelyn's very existance threatened by the divergance in history, the Doctor takes her back in time to the court of Queen Mary, while Elizabeth languishes under house arrest, only to discover a plot of kill Mary and put Elizabeth on the throne - a plot that will not only wipe Evelyn out of time but rewrite history.

As a story The Marian Conspiracy doesn't actually break any new ground for Doctor Who; we've been back in time on loads of occasions and seen plans to change history thwarted left and right, the Doctor has rubbed shoulders with royalty and saved the day and the companions have caused a stir with their modern ways and bizarre dress sense. All those ingredients are here, so we are treated to a traditional historical Docor Who adventure devoid of lurking alien hoardes or sly renegade Time Lords.

So what makes it exceptional?

Evelyn Smythe.

Ever since the start the Doctor has surrounded himself with the younger set when it came to companions; I daresay that nobody who stepped through the doors of that old police box on a regular basis was a day over 25 (although one must point out that the seventh Doctor would travel with a more mature set in the forms of thirtysomething Bernice Summerfield and fortysomething Roz Forrester). Evelyn, however, is somewhere in her fifties, a career woman who knits in her spare time, and has a particular addiction to chocolate. She's smart, she's well respected, and she's almost a motherly figure for the Doctor. Their interplay does not follow the usual "What's going on Doctor?" question sessions, and it is even more easily avoided when placing Evelyn in an adventure where she already knows a lot of about the time period, even if she almost gets herself killed for an innocent act of spoken treason. The obvious parellels between Evelyn and history teacher Barbara Wright are all there, although Barbara specialized in the Aztecs as opposed to Evelyn's fascination with the Tudors, and Barbara's usual student set was some years younger than Evelyn's. The new companion's of sly humour when dealing with the Doctor almost evokes some of Peri's more clever attempts at breaking the ice, but they do not set off the usual firestorm of yelling that they might have before; has the Doctor mellowed even more, or has his separation from Peri made him more sensitive to the way humans behave? Or is he, in fact, nostalgic about Barbara in some way?

I found myself enjoying this adventure a bit more than I did the first time I listened to it many years ago, and I credit that to having at the time just finished watching The Tudors and having more or less been given a crash course in the years just before The Marian Conspiracy takes place. Of course there is so slim muscled King Henry at this point, and we are just privy to the schemes and plans of his daughter, but it's a fun look at history regardless.

And Evelyn is saved. The show goes on. The Doctor promises her a trip to the Galapagos Islands. And they get there. Eventually.

NEXT EPISODE : THE SPECTRE OF LANYON MOOR

I.D. and Urgent Calls

Information is valuable in the future; so valuable that there is a black market in stolen and recovered data, and people are prepared to kill to protect their claims. The Doctor arrives on a planet where hulking Scandroids patrol the wrecking yards in search of any scraps of data they can salvage from old computer systems, but one of the droids comes across more than anyone bargained for in the form of an invasive virus that not only spreads through the Scandroids, but can also spread to humans with hardware upgrades to their brains. And in the far future, that could mean everybody.

I.D. is actually only a three part adventure, and it benefits from that shorter length by being more tightly directed, the plot cleared of a lot of backstory that might or might not add to the overall picture. Colin Baker is, as always, magnificent in his ongoing portrayal of the Doctor, once again with no regular companions at his side. The cast of characters he does come into contact with are the usual mix of skeptics, crooks, and victims, all forced to exist together under a condition of seige, plus the usual mad scientist perpetuating himself through a computer system. And the Scandroids, just these big wandering things, information forklifts if they're anything. Cool voices though. Cool voices don't make the story stand out though; it's okay but nothing I'm going to run around telling everyone they must hear.

As part of an experiment at Big Finish (they're really into those as you've seen) I.D. comes paired with a single episode adventure called Urban Myths, where a young woman's phone connects her to the Doctor seemingly by accident at first but more and more by design as the days go by. The young woman, Lauren, becomes a temporary companion even if she never actually meets the Doctor in person, but he saves her life, she bails him out of jail, and along it goes. This story is best suited to a shorter format, as a sustained 90 minute adventure of nothing but telephone conversations would really get stale, and by the end I found myself getting tired of it as it was. But it was different, which is something Doctor Who always has the scope to be. My beef with it though is Lauren's attachment to the Doctor as their adventure carries on; she starts having these notions of going on holiday together and meeting and being friends much like a lot of lonely people on chat lines do with other voices they hear in times of need (usually those are late at night when single people are at their neediest). The Doctor is strangely sympathetic to her and lets her down easily, as opposed to the sort of cut and dry response he might normally give. Perhaps travelling alone is softening him?

Now the last thing to say is about the "bonus" material. I didn't listen to any of it, not really, but my question is: does anyone? If you're going to slap a bonus interview onto a Big Finish disc, make it with someone we actually want to hear from. Interview Colin Baker on how he feels he's been able to expand on the role! Ask him how he feels some of these stories would have translated to television! Ask him what he had for breakfast! Stupid.

NEXT EPISODE : THE MARIAN CONSPIRACY

The Holy Terror

The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Frobisher to a forboding castle during a time of religious upheaval. The living god, the king, has commited the ultimate heracy and has died. His wife is deposed as a false goddess, and his first son put on the throne much to the distaste of his bastard half brother. The ligitimate heir does not want the throne, he knows he is no god, and is prepared to die when he cannot produce a miracle to satisfy his people, but what could be more miraclulous than the sudden arrival of a large blue box and a big talking bird? Now embroiled in the ascention rituals, the Doctor and Frobisher are not only at the mercy of scheming would-be royals, but of an evil force growing deep beneath the castle itself.

HYSTERICAL. It is rare that Doctor Who is played strictly for laughs, and maybe The Holy Terror is not exclusively a comedy, but here is a script that made me laugh out loud while listening to it. The first time I ever heard it was in 2002 on board a plane coming home from California; I was tired and giddy and sniggering to myself the whole way back to Toronto - attracting nervous looks from fellow passengers who may have suspected I was going to blow up my shoes. When I listened to it again recently, same result. Without the plane. I was on a subway and people ignore each other on there.

Anyways. The resignation to their fate shown by the royal family actually borders on boredom; the queen languishes in the dungeon at the mercy of the new queen who is entitled to beat her predecessor to a bloody pulp, and the new king just wants to be loved. The bastard son proudly admits to having an evil agenda, more or less because he has nothing else to do with his time but be evil. Frobisher laps up the attention of the adoring public, assuming the mantle of a god and attempting to stop the killings of the previous royals despite the scribe's warning that tradition is to be observed, and what has happened before will certainly happen again. The Doctor suspects that this may not be exclusively about the regular purging of the royals but of the deeper menace growing beyond sight - a child kept in the dark for years with no knowledge of speech or love, yet immensely powerful and dangerous.

Side by side with The Maltese Penguin this episode starts to feel as if it were one of the comic strips from the late 80's where Frobisher and the Doctor made their monthly appearances, as if the audio series is taking a side route somewhere just to experiment with the wackiness of the dynamic between a Time Lord and his Whifferdill buddy. Big Finish have to date not brought Frobisher back to the range, but he did go on for some time in the comic strip being there with the sixth Doctor and Peri, and eventually parting ways with the seventh Doctor after foiling a plot by rogue Ice Warriors to freeze a tropical paradise planet solid. The comic strips had their own wicked way with continuity from time to time, as one can see.

But for the sake of the audios, let's assume that the Doctor and Frobisher did part ways eventually, leaving the Doctor on his own again for a time; on his own in the face of a deadly new threat...

NEXT EPISODE : I.D.

The Maltese Penguin

A gorgeous dame looking for help. A mystery to be solved. A private eye who looks looks like a penguin who could use the work. And a traveller in time and space called the Doctor. All in a night's work.

The Maltese Penguin is another Big Finish freebie made available to subscribers, and this time we get to meet Frobisher, another of the sixth Doctor's non-television companions. Frobisher first made his appearance in the comics of Doctor Who Magazine, where it was a lot easier to realize a shape-shifting companion who chose the guise of an emperor penguin as a body than it would be on television (in the late 80s it would have been hard for anyone, but imagine the BBC's version... oh no...). It was only a matter of time before Frobisher made the jump to the Big Finish range, complete with put-on New York accent, much the same as future companion Bernice Summerfield will move from the pages of the New Adventures into audio.

Penguin joins Frobisher's story after he has been separated from the Doctor for some time; there's no real introduction made but most people in fandom who are buying the Big Finish discs will know Frobisher already, but to the uninitaited, he is one of a species known as a Whifferdill, and they can change shape at a whim. The Doctor arrives to offer Frobisher a chance to rejoin him in the TARDIS, but Frobisher remains firm that he needs a break, although he adopts the Doctor's form when going undercover to investigate the mystery he is hired for. At first it feels like New York and Frobisher has been dropped back in time as a semi-famous gumshoe, but when the characters do not show surprise that he's a penguin, and the boss of the city turns out to be a giant bullfrog, we ain't in NYC no more.

It's a comedy. How could it not be. Colin Baker gets to put on his own over-the-top Bronx accent when Frobisher imitates the Doctor's form, and you can tell it was played strictly for laughs, right down to the lonely saxaphone rendering of the Doctor Who theme (at least it sort of sounds like it).

And it's not a one-off for Frobisher. He's got another adventure.

NEXT EPISODE : THE HOLY TERROR

Excelis Rising

Long after his first visit to Arteris, the Doctor returns. The TARDIS delivers him to a museum in the city at the foot of Mount Excelis just as someone attempts to steal a religious artefact known as "the Relic". Knowing that this can only mean trouble, the Doctor becomes involved in the investigation, but finds a familiar face on the scene - one he thought died during his last visit. Greyvorn, now wearing the guise of Maupassant, is very much alive, and still schemes to get his hands on the Relic for his own purposes.

So here we are again on Arteris, without Iris along for the ride this time. This is Big Finish's first attempt at their own multi-Doctor umbrella theme, aside from the loosely-bound Dalek Empire adventures that encompass all Doctors from the fifth to the eighth.

Does the Excelis experiment stand up? It certainly does. Anthony Stewart Head delivers a very calm performance as Maupassant with hints of Greyvorn seething under the surface, but with the personality of the Mother Superior bound to him as a result of his first encounter with the Relic, he wants to be free. She herself does not emerge with the same prominence as before.

Again, the sixth Doctor on his own, and it's all good. You can feel how comfortable Colin Baker is with this role, able to play off anyone he is paired with. As more of these solo trips pile up it's easy to question the need for a companion with this Doctor; he's far more independent, not as lonley as others, quite content to do what needs to be done and get out at the end. Sure he got along with Peri, as he will with future companions, but the sixth Doctor could go either way.

No sooner have I said this, though, than we will join the Doctor with a new companion; perhaps the most unusual one to date...

NEXT EPISODE : THE MALTESE PENGUIN

Her Final Flight

The TARDIS crash lands and when the Doctor recovers consciousness he is amazed to find himself with Peri once more. Years after she was left on Thoros Beta with Yrcanos, Peri is on her own and stranded on the same planet as the Doctor. The TARDIS is taken by the local inhabitants and worshipped as a god; the impact of the crash has cracked the ship's outer plasmic shell and the temporal energies inside are bleeding out, healing the wounds of some and bringing horrible death to others who get too close. As the population is ravaged by the spilling energies, the Doctor realizes that his only choice is to finish the TARDIS off and save everyone from destruction, and in the end condemning himself to life on one planet for the rest of his days.

Her Final Flight is another of those freebie CDs that Big Finish give to subscribers, as was the case with Cryptobiosis several entries back. Once more the production team picked the pair of Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant to reprise their roles and the result is pretty good, even if we are told that several years have passed since their characters parted ways halfway through The Trial of a Time Lord. And the result of this reunion? Peri has let go of whatever anger and rage she might have had for the Doctor, seeing as she never saw him as "himself" again, her last impressions of the Doctor being that he turned on her and left her to die on Sil's home planet. Odd that; I'd be royally peeved. To put it mildly.

The cast around them argue back and forth over the TARDIS's god status, while a mysterious Agent employs a third party to observe everything the Doctor does, arousing the cusiosity of the listener as to how much of this is real, and how much of it is just a sham to get the Doctor to destroy the TARDIS. Hallucinations? An implant in the Doctor's head to make him think he's in the company of an old friend, to push him towards killing another? Intertesting.

As it's a special release the adventure runs only half the length of a regular CD, but I never got the feeling of being rushed or of being cheated out of a logical plot progression for the sake of saving time and money. No, it holds together quite well, and in the end makes sense. As much sense as any adventure does, that is.

NEXT EPISODE : EXCELIS RISING

The Wormery

Alone once more and reflective again, the Doctor arrives at Bianca's; a watering hole for lost souls, broken hearts, and trans-temporal aliens, although as far as anyone knows the speakeasy is located in a backstreet in Berlin. And just as the Doctor finds himself somewhere where he can be alone, in comes the boozy brassy Time Lady herself, Iris Wildthyme, convinced that she is hearing voices when she gets loaded. Bianca's is not what it seems, though, and Bianca herself has more secrets than anyone can guess at - and all is revealed on a series of recorded tapes from that last fateful night at the club...

If there was ever a proper foil for Iris Wildthyme, it would have to be Colin Baker's sixth Doctor. Unlike Peter Davison's fifth Doctor, this one is not patient with Iris and her obsessive ways and spares none of her feelings putting her straight - something Iris reads as playing even harder to get and thus she tries harder. Despite the danger around them within the club, and the strange voices that Iris is hearing, the two play off each other magnificently. Katy Mannings' gravelly protrayal of Iris is a delight, especially when she's bombed, or singing on stage in Bianca's place, or even going nose to nose with the heavily-accented and mysterious Bianca herself.

This is exactly the sort of thing that Doctor Who needs every now and again - the Doctor on his own and having a guest star companion for an adventure, just to keep things fresh and interesting. It's a shame that there were no future encounters between the Doctor and Iris in the Big Finish universe (although the range is still going on, so who can say), and she makes a few appearances in BBC novels with the third and eighth Doctors, but I am not sure how well her loud ways would go off against the more brooding seventh Doctor.

At the end, everyone goes their separate ways, even a mysterious stranger with the audio tapes, and the sixth Doctor continues on his solitary way... for now.

NEXT EPISODE : HER FINAL FLIGHT

Killing Ground

The Doctor takes Grant back to his home planet of Agora to find that the Cybermen have taken over and are using the planet as a breeding ground for new stock. The Doctor's reputation precedes him, though, and the Overseers of the colony are ready, and he is captured and put in a cell to await the arrival of the Cybermen on their next visit. Grant joins up with a rebel faction, but on a world where the leaders have embraced the life that the Cybermen offer, is there much hope of success?

Another tale by Steve Lyons, Killing Ground follows the adventures of the Doctor and Grant for the last time in print. This isn't Grant's final chapter, mind you, as he appears in some short fiction and a comic I believe, but as far as the printed adventures brought by Virgin's Missing Adventures range, this is it for the duo. I never got a feeling of a close bond between the two, although I'll admit I don't remember a great deal of this novel (it was published in 1996), but I will maintain that the Doctor is best left to have a female companion in a one-to-one situation. Remember the fourth Doctor travelling alone with Adric? We sat there waiting for someone new to come along. The only time it really ever worked was with the second Doctor and Jamie. Grant's not a bad companion per se, just not one of the best. Good try, though, for the first companion outside of the televised series.

Why am I dwelling on this point? Because I can't remember much else. I do recall that the tale didn't do a great deal for the furthering of the Cyber-race and I was disappointed that there were not a lot of them in it, nor were they in it a great deal to start with. There are references to the expanded universe of the Cybermen as envisioned by David Banks, the man who played the Cyberleaders in four televised adventures and then who penned the ArcHives tales of the Cybermen, so some strings of non-canon material are drawn into the framework of the novel series (which themselves are not exactly regarded as canon but the fact that they were okayed brings them a lot closer than other material out there).

Let's move on.

NEXT EPISODE : THE WORMERY