Next we journey later down Eight’s life for his adventures in the Doom Coalition saga. After To the Death, the Eighth Doctor Adventures shifted from single releases told as a series to instead four box sets under one title which are used to represent a single storyline where each adventure is tied together by a single overarching plot. The first of these was Dark Eyes which showed the Eighth Doctor caught up in a pre Time War conflict between the Daleks and the Time Lords as they were trying to erase one another from history. Once that saga ended we then got the Doom Coalition saga, which centred on a plot to destroy the universe being orchestrated by a secret Time Lord cult that glimpsed into the matrix and saw Gallifrey’s future destruction in all timelines bar one where they were the only lifeforms in existence (gee, I wonder what this catastrophe could be!)

The real triumph of Doom Coalition was the introduction of it’s main villain and one of Big Finish’s best original villains, this being a Time Lord called the Eleven. Voiced by Mark Bonnar, the Eleven is a Time Lord who suffers from a rare mental condition where unlike most Time Lords, when his previous incarnations die they don’t cease to exist or go to sleep in the back of his mind, instead they carry on existing, speaking through him and on rare occasions possessing his body. Basically think Smeagol from Lord of the Rings if he had ten Gollums inside his head, most of whom being insane and homicidal. As such, the Eleven isn’t even his proper name, it just signifies his current incarnation, and all his other selves have their own distinct personalities and vary as much as the Doctors. We get the Nine, a kleptomaniac, the Six, a sadistic blood hungry animal, the Eight, an actual good incarnation who tries to help the Doctor but is always being abused by his other selves, the Ten, an almost mind controlling hypnotist and so on. And since the character’s introduction we’ve had physical depictions of the Nine, the Eight, the Twelve, the Two and the Union (the last incarnation).

The Doom Coalition begins with the Eleven, years after being imprisoned by the Seventh Doctor escape from Gallifrey and now the Doctor and his companion Liv Chenka (a med tech from Kaldor ala The Robots of Death) have to pursue him and find out what he’s up to. Which leads into the saga’s second story The Red Lady, a story that mostly serves as an introduction to Helen. Their pursuit leads them to a museum in 1963 where a mysterious art collection spanning various formats, cultures and time periods has been donated by the friend of a deceased art collector against his wishes. However, the different works of art are connected by one factor which is the out of place appearance a strange red lady who appears off in the distance but what the Doctor and Liv soon discover is that the lady seems to get closer every time she’s looked at and is slowly removing her mask.

Now yes on the surface this sounds like a rip-off of the Weeping Angels in presenting a creature that moves closer whenever you turn away and look back but as I listened to this for the first time, all my cynicism instantly fell away and I ended up walking away with one of the most spine chilling and breath-taking Big Finish stories in the last decade. The scenes involving the Red Lady are just so tense and hair-raising to listen to, if anything she reminds me more of the entity from Midnight for the simple reason of one key detail that makes the Red Lady a terrifying monster, there’s no explanation for her. Everything about what the Lady is, where she comes from, what is the nature behind her powers, it’s all left unexplained (at least until the end of the saga), which works perfectly in the context of a horror story. I always find that the less you know about a malevolent entity the more frightening they are. Which is well reflected by the fear from the Doctor and friends as all they can do is think fast on their feet to find a way of stopping the Red Lady from escaping her artwork and killing them.

The Red Lady is an astounding story and one that can easily be enjoyed without the wider context of the saga, a top recommendation.