Domain of the Voord is the first of Big Finish’s ‘Early Adventures’ range. When BF announced a (temporary) end to the Companion Chronicles and the end of the Lost Stories range, they soon after revealed plans to start a new range featuring early era actors such as Carole Ann Ford and Frazer Hines. These were to be the Early Adventures which would be ‘full cast’ original stories. Not lost scripts, not one/two voice audiobooks; full cast stories featuring the 1st and 2nd Doctors.

It was an idea that intrigued me but limited funds mean I can’t sample every range Big Finish has to offer (and we all know, those ranges seem to be expanding at an exponential rate). However, courtesy of a friend of mine, I managed to borrow this first entry of the series, neatly adding into the Voordiverse seen inThe Keys of Marinus, The World Shapers and Daleks vs Voord, among other stories.

Domain of the Voord is set 100 years or so after The Keys of Marinus and finds the TARDIS crew pitching up on Waterworld (the very Nationy-named planet, Hydra) to find the Voord have already conquered the planet. The story is simple – the Doctor and friends set about liberating the Hydrans from Voord rule. What author Andrew Smith has done here is use a simple plot – fitting for the era this is supposedly part of – to explore and develop an underwritten alien race.

Many of the alien races introduced after the Daleks entered a world of publicity trying to recreate the popularity of the Skarosian mutants. The Voord, being Nation creations, must have seemed like a prime candidate. Newspapers published pictures of Carole Ann Ford being menaced by a rubber-suited denizen and the Voord appeared in the first Doctor Who annual. However, aside from the Dalek vs Voord cigarette cards, they failed to return to the world of Doctor Who until the aforementioned World Shapers (where they were linked with a far more successful Doctor Who monster). The Voord didn’t set the world on fire.

From their TV appearance it isn’t hard to see why. They hardly appear in The Keys of Marinus; only in the opening and closing episodes. They are more or less presented simply as men in rubber suits, the implication being that they are protection against the acid seas surrounding the island. The strange antennae on their masks seem mere decoration and they are terribly ungainly flopping around in their flippered feet. They are defeated rather easily.

Smith takes a badly-realised alien and makes them threatening, sinister, horrific and credible. He even manages to suggest that The World Shapers continuity-shattering evolution revelation may well be true. The Voord have already won when the story begins. Survivors sail the watery planet in a flotilla of ships providing some vivid, and relatively unusual, opening images – the crew aboard a boat doesn’t happen often (Enlightenment, Carnival of Monsters is all I can think of – even including Big Finish I can only add Transit of Venus). The Voord are now a credible threat. When Smith goes on to add details about the mask we enter the world of horror. The Voord ‘convert’ people to their race but only if they are willing. They are given a choice of becoming a Voord or slavery. Anyone taking the mask out of a desire to avoid slavery is killed by the mask. They must truly want to wear it! There are ‘pure’ Voord (of the ‘blood tree’) but they seem few and far between. This element of conversion ties them in with the Cybermen providing a neat link to The World Shapers – I cannot believe this is coincidental ; Smith is a fan and is probably aware of the comic strip. Having people willingly join the Voord adds some moral drama to proceedings and Smith also gives the Voord the power of telepathy.

At four episodes, Domain of the Voord is exactly the right length. In trying to emulate this era of Doctor Who, six episode stories seem more common (The Masters of Luxor, Farewell, Great Macedon, The Dark Planet). I know these are ‘lost’ stories based on original scripts and submissions but six episodes can often seem too much and didn’t always produce the most thrilling of stories on TV either. Had Domain of the Voord be stretched over six episodes it would have been a bit dull. For starters the plot is, as I’ve said, fairly simple, but with the added fact that the Doctor and Barbara are removed from the story for most of the episodes 2 and 3, it would have seemed silly if they’d been gone for even longer.

Historically it is stated this is 100 years after The Keys of Marinus and explicit reference is made to Yartek’s group and their mission. As I’ve said, the extrapolation of the Voord race fits neatly in between Keys and The World Shapers. The Early Adventures are a combination of full cast and narration. The absence of Hartnell and Hill makes full cast impossible and I’m not sure this format works completely in covering those key roles. The Companion Chronicles work because they are single voice (more or less). Lost Stories work because we invest in the half and half approach because we know there is no other way of bringing us these stories. I’m not 100% convinced that writing brand new adventures for actors who are no longer with us and requiring those who are to ‘impersonate’ them really works as well.

However, it was an enjoyable story and I really liked the way the Voord were developed as a race.