Alright, Whispers of Terror. This is both mine and Big Finish's first audio story with the Sixth Doctor. I've been looking forward to getting into Colin Baker's audio stories for a few reasons. One of them is that I've heard Six's stories are some of the best in the MR, but more importantly because I have some... well mixed feelings on the Sixth Doctor and how he was portrayed in his TV run. I really like the concept behind him; a loud and theatrical character who is confident about speaking truth to power. I think Six, in his TV run at least, is at his best when he gets to stand up to corruption and establishment (i.e his speech to the Time Lords in The Ultimate Foe). However I don't think this concept is often executed particularly well. Especially in season 22, it feels like in an effort to make the doctor more confrontational they end up making him feel more mean spirited and aggressive. He acts so arrogant to the point of lacking respect or even compassion for anyone other than himself. The way he treats Peri I find particularly uncomfortable as she is the victim of a lot of unrequited aggression from somebody who is supposed to be her friend. However I have heard from numerous people that these character issues are fixed and that his character got reworked for the audios, emphasising the Doctor’s more compassionate side while still maintaining his self confidence. So going into this audio the one thing I am expecting is more mellow characterisation of the Doctor and a more friendly dynamic between him and Peri.

Unfortunately, however, I don’t really feel like this was fulfilled. I didn’t end up liking the story all that much and this is one of the main reasons. Their dynamic is not as bad as in some S22 stories but it still rubs me the wrong way. Six starts off this story by yelling at her about how unnecessary yelling is. I don’t find this lack of self awareness funny, I find it arrogant and annoying. From what I gather though this seems to be pretty common consensus and the ‘reworking’ of Six’s character really starts with The Marian Conspiracy. A story which I’ve heard a lot of good things about so I will reserve judgement until then

Finally, on the story itself, it was… fine? I guess. Conceptually it’s amazing. The idea of having audio related villains for an audio format seems quite obvious but it’s still a very interesting concept. I do like some of the mystery elements in the story and the stuff where they play around with audio editing but overall this story just doesn’t come together as an enjoyable experience for me. This is because I just do not think the execution is there at all. The worldbuilding here is practically non existent. I know that Pernell wants to overthrow democracy but I have no idea as to why exactly or what democracy even looks like in this society. She’s just given the most typical wannabe dictator characterisation imaginable and we’ll call it there. The rest of the cast are just as one note which is impressive given that this entire story is set in one place and we only meet a few people. I’m ragging on this story quite a bit but it is a moderately more enjoyable experience than Phantasmagoria. I gave that a 5/10 but I don’t feel like this is deserving of a 6/10 so I’ll give it a 5.5/10 and since that has no equivalent on the star system I’ll just round it down to 2 1⁄2 stars.