Thicker Than Water

On a whim, the Doctor decides to take Mel to visit his old friend and former companion, Evelyn Smythe. Happily married to her old flame Justice Rossiter, Evelyn is now an influential figure in the political theatre on the planet Vilag during its reconstruction after the Killoran invasion. Protests to destroy all machinery and devices left from the war are now the hot topic, the loudest voice being Evelyn's new stepdaughter, Sophia. The day the Doctor and Mel arrive violence breaks out, and Vilag is once more on the brink of destruction, this time from within, with Evelyn caught in the middle.

Evelyn, as you may have noticed by now, never had a farewell scene or story. Clever Big Finish; they've given her a happy ending of sorts here with her new life with Rossiter, complete with a flashback to when she actually did leave the Doctor. Her departure hurts him, you can tell by the tone his voice takes when she says she is going to stay with Rossiter, but by an interesting switch of circumstance when the Doctor and Mel come face to face with Evelyn there's an awkward pause and even a slight bit of tension between the two companions. Why Evelyn should feel anything about the Doctor having a new companion travelling with him is hard to say, considering she did leave him. If anyone should be upset, it should be the Doctor at having been so casually discarded.

Political situations on Vilag have not gotten any better after the invasion; all three nations are now united as one but the internal strife over what to do with the Killoran remnants is causing friction on all levels. And somewhere in there, someone has their own agenda just to suit themself. Where the temptation would be to have a second invasion attempt seeing as this is a sequel, thankfully it is not the case; the struggle of the world to put itself back together and carry on is far more interesting, especially with an old "friend" like Evelyn enmeshed in it.

I liked this one. A lot. I liked it a lot better than a novel called Instruments of Darkness, a BBC novel by Gary Russell which also features the first meeting between Evelyn and Mel, but under very different circumstances. All I really enjoyed about Instruments was the Doctor's rant early in the adventure when chided by Mel to return a "borrowed" Volkswagen beetle (the writers trying so hard to be trendy back then - the eighth Doctor actually had one as a sad replacement attempt for Bessie); he insists that Grant would let him keep the car (the last time we hear that name to date) and then muses that Evelyn would as well, and would make him a chocolate cake while she was at it.

What else did I like? The story just felt more real, and the whole feel of Vilag was recreated through the characters who survived the invasion, and the mention of those who were not so fortunate like the lovestruck couple the Doctor and Evelyn befriended on their first adventure there. It's also got a bit of a harder edge to it with the abduction of Evelyn and Mel, and Mel getting smacked around a bit (and you might not think she deserves it, as she is being better written in audio than she was on television, but just wait... you won't like her after a few season 24 episodes), and the terrible truth of what's going on behind the scenes on Vilag. And to close off the whole Evelyn storyline, she receives a surprise visit by the seventh Doctor with some news from her past and his future to share. Clever, though; with no definitive final Evelyn story, Big Finish can go back and pair her with the sixth Doctor as long as they continue producing episodes on CD.

So there's not much more time left for the sixth Doctor and Melanie. Change is coming. Just a few more adventures.

NEXT EPISODES : THE WISHING BEAST and THE VANITY BOX

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

The Nowhere Place

It's 2197; Earth's empire is expanding and the military are on a heightened state of alert, and suspicion. At the edge of human space, a carrier group begins to experience breakdowns amongst the crew, the affected members claiming to hear a bell. The Doctor and Evelyn hear the bell in the TARDIS and track it to the carrier, and a doorway set into its hull that predates all known Earth history. The bell sounds, the door opens, and more people are lured through into... nowhere.

Okay things are looking up. The last two audios were not up to snuff as far as I was concerned, for different reasons each time. The Nowhere Place may not be a perfect remedy, but it is a step in the right direction, with a mysterious unknown steeped in the surreal threatening everyone and ultimately everything with destruction. Much more like the Doctor Who we know.

The constantly diminishing cast is made up of the regulars of the series plus the crew of the carrier, the most memorable being the increasingly frantic Oswin, unable to save her ship or her crew she continues to yell out orders even if there are fewer people to obey them every time the door opens. How she actually made it in the military is a mystery if her reactions to the unknown and stress are like this. Her solutions to some problems like the Doctor and Evelyn and just about anyone who she hasn't got time to deal with in the immediate time is to literally put them on ice and freeze them until she has time to deal. Not that it happens, of course, but it would make for an interesting plot device somewhere in a future adventure.

The Nowhere Place does its fair share of jumping about in time, taking the Doctor back to a train in the past where an idle doodle on a scrap of paper could change the future of the human race - a future someone has a vested interest in aborting if they can. How it unfolds, mind you, gets a bit tricky. Are we to believe that there have been infinite races developing on Earth over time and heading for the stars, but not leaving any evidence of their civilzations behind? Silurians? Hello?

Ah well. There's that air of creepiness about this one that doesn't go away - not as chilling as others have been in the past, mind you. Certainly I enjoyed it more than the previous two tales.

Let's have some more.

NEXT EPISODE : 100

Pier Pressure

It's Brighton in 1936 and the Doctor brings Evelyn to the seaside holiday town for a break from their adventures. Too late for chicken in a basket at the local pub, the Doctor is in time to meet local performer Max Miller and learn about the strange goings-on of the pier and a supposed curse that sours the town. Knowing that all is never as it seems, the Doctor discovers a supposed long dead performer named Professor Talbot is in tune with a presence that seethes beneath the pier - an alien presence of pure evil that wants to kill. And kill. And kill.

Or something like that.

Maybe I listen to too many of these things in too close proximity these days but I find that as with Medicinal Purposes this one isn't quite as good as others. I didn't really get the funny musical cues, and some of the dialogue seemed like it was going on far too long. As if it were just filling up time. And the threat... well it wasn't really threatening. Talbot as an agent of evil is hard to swallow, especially when he feels he can switch sides as he pleases and not suffer any fallout. And so he talks to himself in two voices. Big deal. Tegan doing it in Snakedance was scarier.

Cute references to The Nightmare Fair, though, with the Doctor declining a trip to Blackpool based on his last visit there. And entirely coincidental, right when I was listening to this, the spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures was featuring a storyline about a tragic fall from a seaside pier.

Please let the next one be better.

NEXT EPISODE : THE NOWHERE PLACE

Medicinal Purposes

It's 1827, it's Edinburgh, and there's blood in the streets. When the Doctor and Evelyn realize where they are, the Doctor wants to meet the infamous duo of Burke and Hare, who snatched bodies and robbed graves and aided progress in medical science. But nobody knows who Burke is. And a certain Dr Robert Knox is taking a much greater interest in what's going on that he should.

So back we go into history with this one. I've actually had it sitting on the shelf waiting to be enjoyed for the better part of two years now. Yes, I'm a bit of a freak that way, waiting until it came along in the cycle to listen to it rather than leap ahead. I'm sure at times Jay only tolerates my observations where continuity are concerned; he'd gladly go ahead and take in disjointed adventures left and right. Not me, though.

Was it worth the wait, then? I suppose so. Historical characters are all around here, even Daft Jamie, played by current tenth Doctor David Tennant. But honestly? I didn't get a great sense of the threat here. Okay Knox is an interesting character and a threatening adversary, but I never really got him as a proper menace to the Doctor. Or to anyone, really. There'sa moment or two when you think he may be more than he seems, erhaps even an old enemy back for another go, but no. He's kinda boring really.

The whole thing is kinda boring, really. It's dialogue-heavy, but that's not the issue as there have been others with a lot more chat than implied action (and seeing as it's an audio we're not getting a whole lot more unless we make finger puppets for ourselves) but somehow... it just didn't work for me here. Maybe I listen to too many of these. But hey one clunker after so many god ones, that's not so bad...

NEXT EPISODE : PIER PRESSURE

Arrangements for War

After escaping from the Forge, the relationship between the Doctor and Evelyn is strained. Evelyn cannot understand the Doctor's casual acceptance of Cassie's death and feels she needs some time to be on her own to come to terms with it. The Doctor takes them to Vilag, where an arranged marriage between two warring kingdoms will bring about a truce that will repel an alien invasion in the future, but the presence of the TARDIS travellers moves events in a different direction. Embroiled even further than they ever have been before, the Doctor and Evelyn struggle to save a planet from destruction.

Hm. Arranged marriages always have the same thing going for them: neither party involved is really into the idea, especially when they're doing it for political reasons. Where's the love? What's the point without it? Can ones love of ones people really make someone sideline their own life? Princess Krizstyna doesn't want to do it - she wants to marry Reid, a lowly infantry trooper - but she's going to go through with it for the greater good, no matter how many pieces her heart breaks into. That is, until Evelyn tells her that love is worth fighting for, right around the same time the Doctor bumps into young Reid and tells him the same thing. And then things get tricky.

The Doctor becomes the Princess's advisor, and Evelyn becomes a political consultant for the third party state that is hosting the wedding while falling in (love?) with Governor Rossiter. Separated over the course of a month, the Doctor and Evelyn keep track of each other when they spot the other in the media in their new roles - a far cry from the peace and quiet the Doctor had promised Evelyn. Mind you, Evelyn doesn't seem to be too upset about getting involved despite her earlier complaints. It's only when things start to crumble and the war begins to brew again that she wants back out, even going so far as to leap off a speeding train to avoid extradition to a hostile state. The Doctor gets himself on the bad side of a sadistic security guard and gets kicked around once or twice for it. And all the time neither can reveal why the war must cease, for warning the fighting nations about the impending invasion (and it does come) is one of those revealing the future clauses that we usually see only in historical adventures on Earth.

Good cast. Good dialogue. Good things going BOOM in episode four. Is being plunged into a war the best medicine for the rift between the Doctor and Evelyn? Seems to work, and Evelyn gets herself an offer she barely refuses to stay behind and marry Rossiter. But is she ready to stop travelling with the Doctor yet? Time will tell.

NEXT EPISODE : MEDICINAL PURPOSES

Project Lazarus : parts 1 and 2

The Doctor finally has a breakthrough with the Twilight virus, and true to his word sets the TARDIS on course to collect young Cassie and hopefully cure her. The ship overshoots and comes to land some months later after Cassie has been forced to once more go on the run from Nimrod, the chief enforcer of the Forge. All is not as it seems, though, and Cassie has become another pawn in the Forge's game to collect alien technology and capture visting species for their own ends. And doesn't the Doctor just happen to be an alien.

Why only episodes 1 and 2? Because the story moves very fast at this point, so fast that the segment concerning the sixth Doctor and Evelyn is resolved by the end of the second episode, leaving the two time travellers somewhat estranged from each other ater the horrors of the Forge. The other two episodes feature the seventh Doctor, and they will be covered later.

This story is very much about the Forge and its evils, and with two Doctors making an appearance at separate instances they are more like guest stars. The Forge have moved on from the Twillight virus and have embarked on the Lazarus project, named for the man who would not die - which is in fact a planned study of the Doctor's ability to regenerate. By forcing him to do so they want to discover the process and use it to imbibe soldiers with immortality in effect, so they set about electrocuting the Doctor. Ah torture. And man can Colin Baker wail when he needs to sell the pain.

The parallels between the Forge and the new series, Torchwood, can't be missed, although it is unlikely one affected or influenced the creation of the other. As far as suspension of disbelief goes, so long as there is UNIT there would be a secret more sinister counterpart organization somewhere, skimming off their secrets and trying to use them to their own advantage. The Forge has something that the Torchwood team do not: they act with no sense of morals and thus killing anyone in their way is not a problem.

The Doctor and Evelyn get out with their lives, but Cassie does not, and the Doctor's almost casual acceptance of her death throws Evelyn into a fit of resentment, making her wonder if maybe it's time to end this association and go home...

NEXT EPISODE : ARRANGEMENTS FOR WAR

Doctor Who and the Pirates!

ARRRRRRRRRR! Ahoy mates! Gather round for a tale of spirited adventures on the high seas! The Doctor and Evelyn arrive on the good ship Sea Eagle just as she is raided and plundered by the feared Red Jasper - the scourge of the seven seas! Jasper is on the hunt for the fabled Ruby Islands where unimaginable treasure awaits, and he doesn't care who has to walk the plank for him to get his hooks on the map. It's a classic tale of rattling cutlasses, high drama, daring escapes, cannonballs, land hooooooo! and .... a musical number?

Hysterical! The odd time Big Finish will play a scene for laughs here and there but The Pirates is total pantomime bliss for the ears. The tale unfolds as Evelyn, eventually joined by the Doctor, returns to see a struggling student of hers and tells a tale of the adventures that ensue once the TARDIS materializes below decks on the Sea Eagle. There seems little point to Evelyn doing this at first, as the story doesn't affect or involve her student, but eventually the logic is there, and I am not going to ruin it with a spoiler.

So there I sat at the Laundry Express at the corner of Davisville Avenue and Yonge Street listening to this as my whites tumbled about in sudsy bliss, and I was in stitches, particularly at the opening of episode three when the Doctor breaks into song. Yes, it's almost Pirates of Penzance but with a Gallifreyan slant, and Evelyn's horror at the Doctor warming his vocal chords is just fantastic. Pure fan bliss!

And there's no underlying theme to delve into here. There is no moral of the story. There is, like I said, a simple point to why the story is told like this, but aside from that it's a story for its own sake, just to be listened to and enjoyed and laughed with. Oh clever clever clever.

NEXT EPISODE : PROJECT LAZARUS - Episodes 1 and 2

Jubilee

It's the year 2003 and the glorious English Empire is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the day they defeated the Daleks. Aided by the Doctor and Evelyn, the English people wiped out the Dalek invasion fleet and used the technology they captured to take the world. And today, in 2003, they are going to celebrate their victory in style and execute the last Dalek survivor from the war.

Brutal. Who would ever feel sorry for a Dalek? As fans we have a love - hate relationship with them; delighted when they return and loving to hate them, but here it's different. The last Dalek is brutally punished and tortured but its human captors, its outer casing smashed and dented, its weapon removed. Defenceless and in agony, the last Dalek is ready to die, but the arrival of the Doctor sends it towards the edge of a complete mental breakdown. In desperation it forges a bond with Evelyn Smythe, refusing to kill her when it has a chance because after all the years of conditioning it can't handle having a choice again.

The people of the English Empire have become a brutal, obsessed race. They have trivialized the Dalek threat with all manner of Dalek themed merchandise in their stores, movies about the Daleks where the Doctor reduces them to quivering wrecks. And they are obsessed with killing the last one to such an extent that without the hatred, they would no longer have an identity.

The Doctor knows that the timeline is wrong, and somehow the TARDIS managed to materialize in both 1903 and 2003 and place both him and Evelyn in a time paradox. At times the differential threatens to overcome him, and he can just hold it back. Almost. But he sees the choice the people of Earth have made and how their evil has replaced that of the Daleks; the Daleks, after all, were engineered to hate, to conquer, to enslave... they had no choice. Humanity did, and it became the biger monster, with crowds gathered and screaming "Exterminate!" on the Jubilee day.

This is actually powerful stuff. Who knew that a story with only one Dalek in it could be one of the best Dalek tales out there. And to have Colin Baker's sixth Doctor (who is fast becoming one of my favourites) as the star.... close to perfection.

What is not perfect is how in 2005 the new production crew decided to get writer Rob Shearman to pretty much self-plagirize his story and re-tell it as Dalek. Skip ahead to the entry and see for yourself how similar the tales are. Here's where the new series starts raping the old, or at least having their way with the non-canon tales brought out by Big Finish, which to me smacks of disrespect. And it happens more than once.

But enough. Time for sme adventure on the high seas...

NEXT EPISODE : DOCTOR WHO AND THE PIRATES!

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