Bang Bang A Boom!

The Doctor and Mel arrive on Dark Space 8, a once famous and bustling space station now a semi-forgotten corner of the galaxy. In a case of mistaken identity, the Doctor assumes the guise of the station's new Commander just as the Galactic Song Contest is about to begin on board. The contestants are from all over the galaxy, including worlds who are currently attending a peace conference on another station. But the politics of the peace conference are alive and well at the competition, and someone is going to become a murderer.

Another comedy. You can tell from the get go as the chief medical officer makes a melodramatic log entry with orchestral fanfare in the background. The obvious satirical target here is Star Trek : Deep Space Nine but it feels more like Babylon 5 as we get to know more of the characters and their political relations with each other. The Doctor steps in easily to cover for the real commander, who was murdered in his shuttle, and Melanie takes the guise of his pilot. The characters come fast and furious, most notable being Angvia, the psuedo-Viking songstress with designs on the Doctor ("The universe can vait! I am a voman!") and flash-in-the-pan Earth pop sensation Nicky Newman who seeks solace with Mel because she is nonplussed at his stardom. Throw in a gaseous gestalt entity and a nervous gerbil-like Pakhar, along with the station's floundering medical officer ("I feel so.. helpless,") and there's the main players in the drama.

Although season 24 was on the whole played for a lot of laughs and without very heavy undertones, Big Finish's audios of the time seem to raise the bar on the humour a bit through more clever writing than what we were actually given in 1987. Not that the season was totally totally wrong, but there was a lot of room for improvement in production and even in the regular cast's performances (which get better with each Big Finish, as though they were reinventing their characters). I find myself liking McCoy's amiable chap seventh Doctor a lot more than some of his moodier and brooding sides that are to come when presented this way. He does quite well opposite Patricia Quinn (Magenta from Rocky Horror Picture Show) in their scenes together, and they're a marked contrast (style-wise) from when they worked together in the 1987 season finale, Dragonfire. It's always fun when someone famous is part of the show, isn't it?

I don't really have much else to say. It was fun. It was not the best but it never tried to be. As soon as you get anything written by Gareth Roberts it's a given it's not going to be the most serious script ever penned, but it will be interesting.

NEXT EPISODE : DELTA AND THE BANNERMEN