GODS AND MONSTERS by Mike Maddox and Alan Barnes

Big Finish Productions, CD £14.99, Download £12.99

Reviewed by Matthew Johns

This is the last of the Doctor Who series featuring the black and white Tardises (Tardii?), and brings the epic series to a satisfying conclusion.

Whilst on their mission to rescue The Doctor, Ace, Hex, Sally and Lysandra find themselves in a very strange place.  Surrounded by warriors dead and alive, they find themselves drawn deeper and deeper into a deadly game orchestrated by The Doctor’s old foe, Fenric, portrayed here by the excellent John Standing (known to many as Jon Arryn in HBO’s Game of Thrones series).

Big Finish have created yet another masterpiece for Doctor Who fans young and old alike.  Whether you’ve never seen an episode with Sylvester McCoy as The Doctor, or like this reviewer grew up glued to every episode of every incarnation available, this is a treat for the ears.

Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor finds himself at the borders of insanity, but then battles back to be the strong-willed, determined character that viewers will recognise.  His voice is music to the ears, with his dulcet tones and perfect enunciation bringing life to the script.  The companions are all strong players, with Philip Olivier’s performance deserving a special mention as Hex.

BLACK AND WHITE by Matt Fitton

Big Finish Productions, CD £14.99, Download £12.99

Reviewed by Matthew Johns

This continues on from Protect and Survive, where Ace and Hex escape from a nuclear nightmare, straight into another.  They find themselves in Denmark, where Beowolf is about to fight and defeat the monster Grendel, or at least that’s what the popular tale had you think happened…

As in the previous episode, Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor is reduced to a supporting part, while the very able Sophie Aldred and Philip Olivier take the spotlight as Ace and Hex, respectively.  Both are accomplished actors, and along with the rest of the cast, including Maggie O’Neill as Lysandra Aristedes and Amy Pemberton as Sally Morgan, two alternate companions to The Doctor, make this compulsive listening.

All Big Finish audio dramas have the same, exacting standards and are easily some of the best produced, audio books I have enjoyed.  If you’re a fan of Doctor Who, these are an absolute must have – Big Finish do an incredible job of bringing everyone’s favourite Gallifreyan and his companions to life.

WAR AGAINST THE LAAN by Nicholas Briggs

Big Finish, CD £10.99, download £8.99,

Reviewed by Chris Limb

“Sorry, Doctor but it seems I don’t need you after all!”

Cuthbert, ruthless CEO of the ubiquitous Corporation, is determined to find out what the swarm of alien Laan are doing on Earth and whether he can make use of them – not to mention getting revenge on them for wrecking one of his precious experiments… Even allying themselves with Earth President Moorkurk is no guarantee that the Doctor and Romana will be able to stop him – Cuthbert has fingers in many important pies and is unafraid to do whatever it takes to succeed. Unfortunately if he does it may wipe out billions of innocent Laan – and spell the end of all life on Earth…

War Against the Laan continues directly on from the preceding story in the series, The Sands of Life, wasting no time in moving the story along from the cliff-hanger at the end of the latter and raising the stakes. There is a palpable sense of relief when the TARDIS crew gain the trust of President Moorkurk, a relief that is short-lived when it becomes clear just how little control she really has over the errant Cuthbert and his lackeys.

Hayley Atwell’s President is given more of a spotlight here than in the previous story and she gives a credible performance as the newly elected Head of State – vulnerable and unsure but intelligent and thoughtful, willing to make tough decisions when the situation demands it (even if they may sometimes be the wrong ones). David Warner’s Cuthbert is as magnificently callous as he was in the previous instalment – and the hints dropped that this isn’t the last we’ve seen of the character are welcome. Mention should also be made of his obsequious sidekick Mr Dorrick who is skilfully portrayed by Toby Hadoke.

The regular cast also get their moments to shine – Tom Baker does what he does best taking his Fourth Doctor from humour to seriousness and then on to convincingly righteous fury in a heartsbeat, whilst Mary Tamm’s Romana is as calm and collected in a crisis as she ever was on screen, despite the wringer her character is put through in the story when she experiences the pain of a member of the Laan being experimented upon.

War Against the Laan does what Doctor Who often does best; using an alien protagonist (or in this case protagonists –Romana is from Gallifrey too) to illustrate that aside from being indomitable, Homo sapiens is often capable of giving the monsters a run for their money in the villainy stakes.

As with the previous story, the sound design and music is first class; strongly evoking the atmosphere of the TV show in 1979.

DR WHO AND THE DALEKS

Director Gordon Flemyng             

Script: Milton Subotsky & David Whitaker

Starring: Peter Cushing, Roy Castle, Jennie Linden Roberta Tovey

Certificate: U            

Running Time: 82 Mins     

DALEKS — INVASION EARTH 2150 A.D.

Director Gordon Flemyng             

Script Milton Subotsky & David Whitaker

Starring: Peter Cushing, Bernard Cribbins, Roberta Tovey, Jill Curzon

Certificate: U            

Running Time: 84 Mins

AVAILABLE ON REGION B BLU-RAY (INDIVIDUALLY OR AS A COMBINED SET) AND REGION 2 DVD.

Release Date: 27th May

Reviewed by Guy Adams

I’m not sure it’s possible to condense my entire childhood onto a shiny disc, if it were this is certainly as close as someone could get.

Milton Subotsky and Milton J. Rosenberg, the founders of Amicus Films, were quick to see potential in the BBC’s DOCTOR WHO, most particularly the stories featuring the Daleks. Taking Terry Nation’s script for the second serial (which introduced the iconic villains) and turning it into a brash, colourful, big screen adventure seemed a certain way to make a bit of cash. And Subotsky and Rosenberg were always on the lookout for cash, as devotees of their output (and I am one of them) are aware, they rarely seemed to have any.

William Hartnell’s TV Timelord becomes Peter Cushing as a cuddly, human eccentric Dr Who (Who, rather endearingly becoming his surname) who has built a time and space machine in his back garden. When affable buffoon, Roy Castle pops round to visit Jennie Linden as Peter Who’s granddaughter, he manages to send them all to an alien planet because he never met a massive control lever he couldn’t fall into.

Cue: seventy minutes of mucking about in the brightest alien jungle and Dalek city a small, sixties budget can buy.

The film was such a success, a second was immediately rushed into production taking Terry Nation’s second Dalek script, wherein the little tin racists invade Earth, and bringing us the informatively titled: DALEKS — INVASION EARTH 2150 A.D.

Castle was busy this time. I like to think he took Barbara Who on a second date where he accidentally brought the dead to life via Jazz (c.f. his other Amicus appearance in DR TERROR’S HOUSE OF HORROR). So we now have Bernard Cribbins bumping into things and Jill Curzon as Cushing’s niece.

They’re simply lovely films. Most people of my age were able to see them on what seemed a fortnightly basis on BBC 2 as they grew up.

DR WHO AND THE DALEKS is, perhaps, a little dull (in plot, certainly not palette) which would seem surprising given that it’s a cutdown version of a serial that ran twice the movie’s length. One can also poke fun at the lava lamps in the Daleks’ control room and the fact that their entire city seems to be delineated by a judicious use of shower curtains but you’d have to be a soulless old sod to let that get in the way of your enjoyment. For all my nitpicking it’s a very fun way to spend eighty minutes.

DALEKS — INVASION EARTH 2150 A.D. however may just be the best film ever made. I mean, obviously, it can’t be… but while I’m watching it I’m hard pressed to think of one I love more. Just look at the cast of rebels: Andrew Keir, a year away from being our finest cinematic Quatermass, gives us a wonderfully gruff Wyler, Ray Brooks as a laconic, knife-throwing David, Godfrey Quigley as the wheelchair-bound Dortmun. And did anyone ever manage to distill ‘bastard’ onscreen so effectively as Phillip Madoc as the untrustworthy smuggler, Brockley?

Cribbins is always wonderful, never more so in the book-end sections when he confronts a smash and grab raid on a jewelers.

Roberta Tovey even manages to not be annoying as the young Susan Who, spraining her ankle and babysitting Andrew Keir (though I’m sure he thinks it’s the other way around).

None of which even mentions Peter Cushing. 2013 marks his centenary (as well as the fiftieth anniversary of DOCTOR WHO) and it can’t be made clear often enough: he was one of the finest actors we ever had. He is charming, funny and heroic, utterly, utterly wonderful as the cinematic regeneration of this much-loved character. There isn’t a single film that hasn’t been made better by his presence and, let’s be honest, many of them needed all the help they could get. But not these. To dismiss them as frothy kid’s fun is to shoot yourself in the foot. Find a grim Sunday afternoon to screen them in, fill it with cake and tea. Treat yourself.

StudioCanal have treated them with the respect they deserve, the HD restoration on both films offers definitive, beautiful versions. They look glorious.

Special features include: a commentary from Tovey and Linden on the first movie; some short interviews with Bernard Cribbins and film scholar Gareth Owens; a pair of featurettes on the restoration work and finally, DALEKMANIA, the hour-long documentary from director Kevin Davies that has been a regular and welcome bolt-on to releases of these films since it was produced in 1995.

Reeltime Pictures are pleased to announce a new drama production for release on DVD to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of Doctor Who.

White Witch of Devil’s End is a spin-off from the highly regarded Jon Pertwee Doctor Who story The Daemons and will star Damaris Hayman reprising her role as Miss Hawthorne.

At the grand age of 84 (in June this year), you’d expect Damaris would be happy to be enjoying retirement quietly in her Cheltenham home … but no! When approached by producer Keith Barnfather about the idea she jumped at the chance. “I shall retire, I think, in my coffin!  Miss Hawthorne was my all-time favourite role and I was enchanted by the thought of being her again for a little while.”

“I was amazed and delighted that, as an octogenarian, Damaris was prepared to take this on,” says Keith. “We had recently recorded an interview with her for our Myth Makers series profiling actors who had appeared in Doctor Who and I already knew she still had a hunger to act. But I really didn’t expect her to be so keen.”

Although eager to take the project on, Damaris knew she had to pace herself, so in an innovative move, director Anastasia Stylianou decided to film the drama in a “talking head” style – adding dramatic cutaway material to bring Damaris’s words to life!

Says Anastasia; “I knew it would be a challenge. We needed to film a 50 minute drama at least, so I decided to make an asset out of a limitation.”

Primary filming has already taken place at a cottage near Damaris’s home. The crew collected and returned Damaris each day – allowing her to return home each evening to recover and study the next day’s script!

“We used autocue to help Damaris,” says Keith. “It was an impossible task for any actor to learn so much dialogue. Damaris was a true professional and took to it instantly.”

With a planned release date of 31^st October, which is appropriately also Halloween, Anastasia hopes to have the project completed for the 50^th anniversary celebrations. “It’s just getting all the dramatic cutaway material ‘in the can’ that is crucial. The drama is really an anthology – a set of connecting stories about Olive’s life told, as it were, in her own words.”

When considering who to approach to write these stories which would exist within an overall theme, Keith immediately thought to contact old friend David J Howe at Telos Publishing. “I thought it would be fantastic to ask individual writers knowledgeable in the occult and magic to write each story and David, through Telos, knew so many of the best young talent in the country.”

“I was delighted when Keith got in touch,” says David Howe, “and immediately started to think of who might be a good fit for the project. Along with my partner, the award-winning author Sam Stone, we contacted several authors who we felt would be sympathetic to the material and were pleased to get them all on board for the project.”

“I took on the task of outlining the whole story,” says Sam Stone, “and then asked the writers to come up with ideas which fitted that framework. We needed to tell stories at different points in Olive Hawthorne’s life, and the writers rose to the challenge and delivered scripts which exceeded all my expectations. I then worked with them to refine the scripts into the completed screenplay.”

The writers involved in the project are, as well as David J Howe and Sam Stone, Raven Dane, Debbie Bennett, Jan Edwards and Suzanne J Barbieri, with a final script-polish from Big Finish writer Matt Fitton. All have brought a unique perspective on Olive’s life, and the end result is an anthology of tales which will surprise, entertain and hopefully move the viewer.

Does Damaris have any regrets about throwing herself into such a big commitment? “Definitely not! I was enchanted to work with Anastasia and Keith again, who are great friends anyway. After a lot of working together consulting over the scripts, I’d subsequently never enjoyed filming more – and I can’t wait now to see the final result.”

The DVD can be pre-ordered from Galaxy 4 HERE

THE SANDS OF LIFE by Nicholas Briggs

Big Finish, CD £10.99, download £8.99

Reviewed by Chris Limb

“Why are humans always so aggressive?”
“Because they’re often so very afraid…”

Sheridan Moorkurk may very well have just been elected President of Earth, but soon discovers that even the President can finds it difficult to say no to Cuthbert, CEO of the all pervasive Corporation.  Nearby the Doctor, Romana and K9 are startled to discover a space-going swarm of aliens, the Laan who number in their billions, heading for the SaharaDesert, nearly destroying one of the Corporation’s space platforms on the way in and disrupting one of Cuthbert’s experiments.

What are the aliens’ intentions?  The TARDIS crew are caught in the crossfire of what could be the beginning of all out war between the Humans and the Laan…

Before the video recorder became commonplace the only way you could experience the show again was to place a tape recorder in front of the TV speaker and record the soundtrack. 1979, when this story slots into the real-world timeline of the programme, was a year in which portable tape recorders were commonplace. This lends the experience of listening to The Sands of Life without being able to see what’s going on a delicious extra kick of verisimilitude for Doctor Who fans of a certain generation, adding an extra layer of enjoyment to what is already a very fine recreation of the time.

This recreation is aided and abetted by a very fine incidental music score (by author Nicholas Briggs) which successfully generates the atmosphere and sound of the works of 70s Who composer Dudley Simpson.

The story itself plays to the strengths of the series in this era, with echoes of the late great Robert Holmes in its plotting and situations, although the medium of audio of course allows for far more impressive locations – such as a helicopter trip across the deserts of North Africa – than the production team in the late seventies would have been able to recreate.

The guest cast is impressive, especially David Warner whose genre credentials and excellent voice make his portrayal of Cuthbert a memorable one; a bluff, no-nonsense businessman (who can easily be imagined starring in this century’s version of the Apprentice) who is more dangerous than you might give him credit for. His arrogance makes him the perfect target for the Doctor’s scorn, a balance of anger and ridicule that Tom Baker recaptures in his performance.

Once more Mary Tamm’s Romana takes charge, holding her own in a story which once more sees her separated from the Doctor, and after an absence from the preceding story it’s good to hear John Leeson as K9 again.

The Sands of Life turns out to be the first part of a longer story, the cliff-hanger upon which it ends making the listener all the more eager for the next instalment.

THE AUNTIE MATTER by Jonathan Morris

Big Finish, CD £10.99, download £8.99,

Reviewed by Chris Limb

“He might at least have killed us before losing all interest!”

Having denied him the Key to Time, the Doctor and Romana are on the run from the Black Guardian. Sending the TARDIS off on remote control to flit around a couple of thousand worlds at random to throw their hunter off the scent, the two Time Lords take refuge in “one of the three great periods in Earth history” – London, England during the roaring twenties.

Leaving the Doctor tinkering with a home made etheric field disturbance detector, Romana pops out to browse bookshops in Bloomsbury. But each of them unbeknownst to the other is drawn into an investigation of the alien incursion in Hampshire. It appears that there is more to gormless toff Reggie Bassett’s Aunt Florence than might at first meet the eye…

This story is set during the period where on TV producer Graham Williams and script editor Douglas Adams put their own distinctive mark on the series, and as such the script is written with just the right balance of humour and action (plus a couple of mostly harmless references to Adams’s more notorious works).

The atmosphere of the story itself feels wonderfully like Douglas Adams’s spiritual predecessor, PG Wodehouse. The 1920s is an era little explored by Doctor Who on television but is one that suits Tom Baker’s fourth Doctor down to the ground and he recaptures perfectly the slightly defensive attitude the Doctor displayed at this time when dealing with a companion who graduated from Time LordAcademy with a far higher grade than he did.

Mary Tamm’s performance here is pitch-perfect, recollecting the confidence and poise of Romana’s first incarnation, a strong character who could fly the TARDIS better than the Doctor – it is good to hear more from her than the one season in which she appeared on TV. One of the cleverest parts of the story is the way that she and the Doctor are separated for most of the action and yet both have a hand in defeating Julia Mackenzie’s Aunt Florence in parallel, each of them picking up a human sidekick along the way.

The experience of listening to this play (and its successors in this second season of Fourth Doctor Adventures) is lent an unavoidable melancholic atmosphere by the knowledge that Mary Tamm died shortly after completing this series of audios. The tribute to her by Tom Baker in the additional material at the close of the disc is moving and appropriate.

THE OSEIDON ADVENTURE by Alan Barnes

Big Finish, CD £10.99, download £8.99

Reviewed by Chris Limb

“Now there’s a face only a mother could love…”

Having been outwitted at the eleventh hour, the Doctor and Leela can only watch in horror as the Master’s scheme appears to succeed and his new allies – the Kraals – arrive through the wormhole to begin their invasion of Earth.

However, this turns out to be an uneasy alliance. Can the Master really trust Marshal Grinmal and the Second Kraal Army and can either of them trust their human ally, the “feeble minded reactionary” Colonel Spindleton? Things are not what they seem and when the Doctor is taken prisoner and locked up on the Krall’s home-planet Oseidon, it is up to Leela to take charge…

Following directly on from the cliff-hanger at the end of the previous audio adventure, Trail of the White Worm, The Oseidon Adventure feels more like the last two parts of a four part story, the change of gear and scene something common to the era of Doctor Who in which it is set.  Retaining the same central cast with the added threat of the Kraals allows Barnes to up the ante and leave the listener guessing right up until the end. Furthermore, the inclusion of three distinct camps on the villains’ side (counting Spindelton as having his own Rabid Right agenda) allows the Doctor and Leela to play them off against each other in a very satisfactory manner.

The decision to reuse the Kraals – one hit wonders from 1975’s The Android Invasion – seems odd at first but they do make perfect comedic villains for the Graham Williams era in which this story is nominally set and besides, their technological specialities established on TV provide this story with some of its more unexpected twists and turns.

The Master’s ultimate plan is once again very much within his familiar method of working, but such are the character’s strengths and Geoffrey Beevers’s performance that this doesn’t matter. As in Trail of the White Worm his interaction with Tom Baker’s Doctor is highly enjoyable, the humour with which it is injected a welcome contrast to the more sombre encounters between the Fourth Doctor and the Master on television. Louise Jameson puts in a fantastic performance as Leela takes charge, facing down enemies with both courage and passion.

This story brings the first “season” of Fourth Doctor adventures produced by Big Finish to a close. Given their quality the good news is that both a second (featuring the late Mary Tamm as Romana) and third season (once more featuring Louise Jameson as Leela) are on the way.

TRAIL OF THE WHITE WORM by Alan Barnes

Big Finish, CD £10.99, download £8.99

Reviewed by Chris Limb

“You’re looking well… Putrescence has cleared up nicely!”

Arriving in the DarkPeak in Derbyshire in 1979, the Doctor and Leela stumble feet first into the middle of a frantic search for a girl who’s gone missing. The panicky locals fear that the You Know What, a legendary Great White Worm that has haunted the area since Roman times, stealing cattle and terrorising the populace, has taken her. The Doctor isn’t so sure. Whilst the worm itself may turn out to be very real, there is something else at work here and it comes as no surprise when he discovers that some of the strings are being pulled by the decaying hands of his old nemesis the Master.

Considering the multiple experiences of both his predecessor and successor, the Fourth Doctor only encountered his archenemy and fellow Time Lord the Master on two occasions on screen (The Deadly Assassin and The Keeper of Traken/Logopolis). Big Finish here redress the balance, giving the two old rivals another chance to lock horns.

Barnes’s plot does what Doctor Who always did well on-screen – taking a pre-existing myth or legend and building a science fiction plot around it. In this case   the story adapted is the legend of the Lambton Worm, a colourful piece of folklore from the north east of England which it cleverly combines with the thought that if there are wormholes in space what must the worms be like? The Master’s attempted use of the worm to further his own ends is very much within the character’s traditional modus operandi and as such feels true to form, with the listener genuinely being given cause to wonder whether the Doctor will manage to save the day this time…

The standout performance here is Geoffrey Beevers’s Master. Only having had the opportunity to play the “Doctor’s Moriarty” once on screen (in The Keeper of Traken), Beevers is obviously relishing his return to the role, his voice exuding a silken eloquent malevolence far more frightening than any amount of ranting and raving might have been. He is well matched here by Tom Baker and on this occasion their sparring has more of a humorous tone about it than people may be used to, which makes a refreshing change.

Other characters worthy of note here are from the upper classes of DarkPeak society – Rachael Stirling’s batty eccentric Demesne Furze and Michael Cochrane’s blustering Colonel Spindleton, both of whom have far more to them than first meet the ear…

DOCTOR WHO: PROTECT AND SURVIVE by Jonathan Morris

Big Finish Productions, CD £14.99, download £12.99

Reviewed by Matthew Johns

Another of Big Finish Productions’ excellent audio dramas, this features the seventh Doctor – Sylvester McCoy.  McCoy was definitely a ‘Marmite’ kind of Doctor – you either loved him or hated him, but his crisp enunciation and dulcet tones definitely bring the Doctor to life.

However, the Doctor is not the star of this story – as he only appears in flashbacks and as a hologram, that accolade must go to his companions, Ace and Hex.  They awaken in the Tardis, to find it out of control and the Doctor missing.  They manage to land it and find themselves in a remote part of Northern England, where Peggy and Albert Marsden, an elderly couple are preparing for a nuclear war.

At times reminiscent of Raymond Briggs’ “When the Wind Blows”, this is by far the bleakest Doctor Who audio book I’ve ever heard.  In the aftermath of the nuclear bomb, Peggy, Albert, Hex and Ace slowly succumb to radiation poisoning.

This is a haunting tale, and Sophie Aldred’s portrayal of Ace is superb – emotionally powerful, but Philip Olivier’s Hex really does steal the show.

Unusually for an audio drama, this ends on a cliff-hanger, so tune into the next episode to find out what happens to Ace and Hex…