100

Here's an interesting little diddy. In another experiment, Big Finish gathered four writers and took a one-episode script from each, all with the theme of 100, and celebrated their 100th Doctor Who release with the compilation called 100.

They're all good. Who said the short format couldn't work for Doctor Who? The seeds of the idea were already planted with tales like Urgent Calls tacked onto 3-episode stories as standalone episodes, so why not a collection of them? We go from 101 BC to the days of Mozart, ahead to modern times, and then across time and space in the final chapter.

My favourite? 101 BC is a contender as it is worked as a comedy, even though there is the grave matter of the Doctor's first real conflict with Evelyn over the ethics of attempting to change history. Why the Doctor didn't lay it on the line as he had to with Barbara in The Aztecs I'll never know. But I think my real fave was My Own Private Wolfgang, a tale of the future of Mozart (and I am not just saying that because author Robert Shearman commented on my thoughts on Jubilee). Bedtime Story I enjoyed as well, a tale of a family curse being handed down generation after generation (and incidentally the third time a Doctor Who story has had the same name as a track from Madonna's Bedtime Story album; the other two being Survival and Human Nature) but when it came to The 100 Days of the Doctor by Paul Cornell I couldn't help but feel it was a bit gratuitous in its leaps about through the Doctor's time stream, havig the sixth Doctor comment on his past and future selves, although the wistfulness he has about Erimem leaves me wondering what fate has in store for her (for at the time of writing this review, she has yet to have her final moment).

Also to be mentioned at the time of writing this, there are no further adventures with the sixth Doctor and Evelyn Smythe. Evelyn has not left the Doctor yet, although we know that eventually she must, to make way for a successor, one the Doctor is destined to meet no matter how hard he tries to avoid it...

NEXT EPISODE : BUSINESS UNUSUAL