Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time! 

“BIRTHRIGHT: INSECTS, CULTS AND COLIN BAKER IN A FAUX RUSSIAN ACCENT”

Birthright marks the middle chapter of Big Finish’s Time Ring Trilogy, a bold adaptation of the Virgin New Adventures novel by Nigel Robinson. Originally a Seventh Doctor story with Ace and Benny, this audio version cleverly swaps Ace for Jason Kane, since Big Finish hadn’t secured the Doctor Who licence yet. As a result, the story stands apart from its origins while still carrying the distinctive hallmarks of the New Adventures: big ideas, darker tones, and layered storytelling.

Picking up right after Walking to Babylon, the time paths are shattered, and Benny and Jason are stranded across different times and places. Benny finds herself in grimy 1909 London, while Jason ends up on a dead, alien world under the watchful gaze of a demanding insectoid queen. Both must survive separately, with the ticking time bomb of needing their Time Rings together to return home.

SPRINGHEELED JACK AND DEAD EARTH

The split storytelling is one of Birthright's strongest assets. Benny’s half is easily the more compelling, throwing her into a murky murder mystery in a vividly realised Edwardian London. Here, the murders are linked to the urban legend of Springheeled Jack – an inspired touch that initially teases a Jack the Ripper-style horror before leaning into more obscure English folklore.

The sound design does wonders here, painting the bustling, sooty London streets in atmospheric detail. Benny pairs up with the gruff but good-hearted Russian detective Mikhail Popov, whose secret weapon is none other than Colin Baker in glorious disguise. Baker’s performance is so different – thick accent and all – that it takes a keen ear (or a glance at the credits) to spot him. It’s a masterclass in range from the Sixth Doctor himself.

Jason’s plot, meanwhile, struggles under the weight of slower pacing. His ordeal on the alien world feels repetitive: obey or be eaten. Still, some juicy twists land – notably, the revelation that the dead world is actually a future Earth, and that the Charrl (those aforementioned giant insects) have been harvesting humans for survival.

CHARLLS, CULTS, AND COLONISATION

The two timelines converge when Benny uncovers a cult in 1909 who worship the Charrl and plan to help them colonise early Earth in exchange for promises of utopia. It’s a classic sci-fi twist, evoking earlier Doctor Who tales like Invasion of the Dinosaurs with its misplaced faith in remaking humanity’s future.

Though the premise is familiar, it's engagingly executed, and there’s a genuine thrill as Benny pieces together the truth. The environmental message – that humans are ultimately doomed to ruin their own planet, no matter the timeline – gives the story an underlying melancholy bite.

However, while the setup is strong, the second half does lose some momentum. Long dialogue scenes, particularly between Benny and cult leader Jared Khan, slow things down considerably. The Charrl’s mantra of survival and rebirth becomes increasingly repetitive, and poor Mikhail is sadly sidelined for large chunks of the action.

VOICES IN THE DARK

Voice performances are mostly excellent. Lisa Bowerman and Stephen Fewell continue to excel as Benny and Jason, carrying much of the emotional weight. Jane Shakespeare’s Queen Ch’tizz, however, is a bit grating, and the early Big Finish alien voice filters don’t help matters. On the plus side, John Wadmore’s Jared Khan is deliciously sinister, while Jonathan Reason’s youthful Chief Inspector brings a refreshing touch of humanity to the London setting.

The comparison to Tractators is a clever mental image – it’s easy to picture the Charrl as similarly lumbering, creepy insectoids. The casual dehumanisation of Jason (“mammal!”) is a small but effective detail that adds texture to the alien threat, even if some of the more interesting philosophical angles, like dissent within the Charrl ranks, aren't fully explored.

CLOSING THE TIME PATH

As the story barrels towards its climax, Benny channels her inner Doctor, attempting to broker peace between humans and Charrl. It’s a noble effort that predictably falls apart when the police charge in guns blazing, resulting in bloodshed and the need to close the time path before the timeline collapses. It's a classic New Adventures ending – hopeful, tragic, and messy in equal measure.

The seamless transition into the trilogy’s final story is handled deftly, maintaining momentum even as Birthright wraps up its own narrative threads. The Time Ring device feels obviously lifted from its original Doctor Who context, but it still works well enough here, anchoring Benny and Jason’s desperate need to reunite.

📝VERDICT: 6.9/10

Birthright is a solid, atmospheric entry in the Time Ring Trilogy, bolstered by strong performances, rich worldbuilding, and a thoughtful (if familiar) plot. Benny’s murder mystery half is the standout, thanks in part to a delightful turn from Colin Baker as Detective Mikhail Popov. Jason’s side of the story drags somewhat, and the Charrl plot repeats itself more than it should, but overall this is a straightforward and engaging audio drama. It captures the spirit of the New Adventures while adapting itself neatly into Big Finish’s early landscape, and it sets the stage nicely for the trilogy’s conclusion.

Yup, this is just kinda 'fine´.

There are a few Things, which I do like here, such as the Coda(?) Lafayette's Character. The Beginning is quite a good Tone setter and Benny is brilliant as always, sadly this Story just didn't grip me as much as I would have hoped for. Having Colin here is great, his Character is quite a lot of fun. He does pull off the Accent quite well, even if it's a bit 'odd' hearing him like that (after doing plenty of his other Audios with his regular Voice), but this is hardly a Point of Criticism and mainly just an Observation to add here.

The Story itself is fine enough. I do have some Respect for the Story, considering how professional it all feels like, but the Story itself just kinda leaves me a bit cold.

12.10.2022

Yeah, passable. The series converges on its main elements more or less, creating a sort of formula for itself. It gets stale.
I don't know why, I just can't stand bugs as villains. I hate the concept. Can't do anything with myself. I wouldn't let it affect the score, but it has to be said. Not that they do anything interesting with it anyway.

Procedural and more of the same. 2.5/5

Birthright is the second part of the Time Ring Trilogy released by Big Finish during their very early days before they were granted the Doctor Who licence.  It, like the previous three releases, is an adaptation of a New Adventure.  Birthright, though, is unusual in that the original novel was released as part of the Virgin range when it still featured the Doctor.  Birthright, though, was unusual in that it was an example of a Doctor-lite story and was released alongside the novel, Iceberg.  This novel featured the Doctor solo, whilst Birthright featured only Bernice and Ace.  Adapting this as a Doctor-less audio then was not too difficult and I assume it was relatively easy to replace Ace’s role with Jason.

In this audio trilogy Birthright has been adapted to follow on directly from Walking to Babylon, which I reviewed here.  The original novel has Bernice and Ace deposited in their disparate time zones by a disintegrating TARDIS.  In this audio, it is an exploding time corridor which sends Bernice and Jason their separate ways after leaving Babylon.  Bernice ends up in London 1909 and Jason on the planet Antykhon.  As Bernice is the main character (and Jason travels to this time zone at the end of the adventure) I have decided to place this story here in the early 20th Century part of my marathon.

When I listened to Walking to Babylon, the first part of this trilogy, I was impressed by how professional the audio sounded and commented on how it is clear, on the strength of that product, why Big Finish was granted the Doctor Who licence.  It’s odd then, that I found Birthright to be a little disappointing in terms of production.  There was something about the sound design, in particular, which seemed a little rough around the edges.  The music too seemed sparser and there were sections where it sounded very much like two people in booths talking into microphones.  The script is falls foul a little of the main pitfall of audio drama – having characters describe what they can see.  I suppose in an adaptation of a novel this is going to be more difficult to avoid as the story was originally written for a different medium.  Big Finish, nowadays, manage to avoid this problem through having huge experience in what works on audio and what doesn’t but it’s a little more obvious here that lessons are still being used.

That’s not to say it isn’t an entertaining ride.  Front and centre are Lisa Bowerman and Stephen Fewell as Bernice and Jason.  Both are, as usual, superb and carry the two plotlines well.  What’s particularly good is that Jason’s plotline doesn’t seem secondary to Bernice’s.  Both have interesting things happening and whilst the ‘mystery’ of what links the two time zones is fairly obvious (although this may be due to already having read the book and heard this audio a couple of times previously) the slow drawing together of the two stories works well.

The leads are ably supported by a good guest cast which features John Wadmore, a BBV stalwart who actually appeared in a surprisingly low number of Big Finish audios, and one Colin Baker.  A canny piece of marketing from Big Finish in those early days was to include Doctor Who alumni in their casts as an obvious selling point.  The first Bernice Summerfield releases featured Nicholas Courtney, Anneke Wills, Sophie Aldred and Elisabeth Sladen.   I was particularly impressed by Colin in this story.  He plays Mikhail Popov, a Russian police detective in London on the trail of a serial killer.  He gives a performance very different from the 6th Doctor and he manages to maintain a pretty good Russian accent throughout meaning he doesn’t even sound like the Doctor for the majority of the play.  Mikhail makes a good ‘companion’ for Bernice and it would be huge fun if Bernice was to revisit this time zone in a future Bernice release.  I mean, it’s not like Colin is averse to working for Big Finish.

The story involving the Charrl and the truth of Antykhon is a good one although it is solved a little through technobabble and I’m not sure how much Jared Khan, their human agent, adds to the story (although his role was much larger in the original novel).

Historically, this story is a bit of an oddfish.  Having left the Victorian era behind and focussing my marathon on the global exploits of Indiana Jones, it’s quite strange being back in London and have characters discussing Jack the Ripper and Spring Heeled Jack.  This story feels incredibly ‘Victorian London’, despite being set in the Edwardian era, with pubs and prostitutes, cockney scallywags and strange foreigners.  The plot wouldn’t look out of place in a Jago and Litefoot audio.  Birthright is a story set in the literary London of dark alleyways, monstrous hooded creatures and secret organisations.

The Time Ring trilogy was a strong set of audios for so early in Big Finish’s work and whilst I think Birthright is possibly the weaker of the three, it doesn’t feel like it is treading water before the final section.