📝9/10

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A TALE OF TWO DOCTORS: VAMPIRES, THE FORGE, AND TWISTS IN TIME

Big Finish follows Project: Twilight with Project: Lazarus, a dark and complex multi-Doctor story by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright. This gripping adventure sees the Sixth Doctor and Evelyn on a vampire hunt, reuniting with Cassie, the woman they left behind in Norway, to offer her a cure for the vampire virus. However, they soon find themselves entangled in a sinister plot involving vampiric murders, scientific experimentation, and the mysterious Forge organisation.

A Grim Start:

Part 1 sets the stage with chilling ease, establishing the atmosphere and reintroducing key players like the manipulative Nimrod and the tragic Cassie. By Part 2, the focus shifts to the Forge’s experiments—using alien DNA to enable vampires to stun rather than kill their victims. While the Doctor investigates the Forge’s dark plans, Evelyn reconnects with Cassie, whose transformation into a vampire has made her bitter and angry. Evelyn’s own heart condition is a subtle yet poignant reminder of her vulnerability, adding layers to her character.

The tension escalates dramatically when the Doctor is lured into a trap—Nimrod needs Time Lord regeneration knowledge for his experiments. In one harrowing scene, the Doctor endures immense pain as part of Nimrod's attempts to force him to regenerate. The conclusion of Part 2 is both shocking and sombre, as Cassie sacrifices herself to save the Doctor and Evelyn, leading to a gut-wrenching moment where Evelyn is left weeping alone in the TARDIS.

A Twist in Time:

Part 3 introduces an unexpected twist: the Seventh Doctor arrives at the Forge, only to discover the Sixth Doctor working for the organisation as their scientific advisor. This unusual take on a multi-Doctor story is fascinating. The Seventh Doctor is appalled by his predecessor’s apparent betrayal, while Six insists he’s trying to reform the Forge and prevent an invasion of Earth (an oddly underdeveloped subplot).

The tension between the two incarnations is palpable, with Baker delivering a strikingly different performance. His version of Six is cowardly and conniving, raising doubts about his true identity. The reveal in Part 4—that this “Doctor” is a genetically engineered clone, one of many—adds a surreal and thrilling layer to the narrative. McCoy also excels as the Seventh Doctor, unleashing his manipulative side while uncovering the truth about his predecessor’s replacement.

Dramatic Climax and Themes:

The final act pulls together the narrative threads as Nimrod faces rebellion from his own organisation, with the Forge itself turning against him. While the techno-babble in the second half dilutes some of the earlier drama, the contrasting approaches of the two Doctors in dealing with the Huldrans keep the tension alive. The mystery of Evelyn’s whereabouts adds intrigue, though it frustratingly remains unresolved.

Cassie’s arc is the story’s emotional heart. Rose Cavaliero shines as the now-vengeful Cassie (or Artemis), exploring her anger, newfound power, and tragic brainwashing to forget her son. Her journey raises weighty questions about the consequences of the Doctor’s actions.

The supporting cast is a mixed bag. Stephen Chance commands attention as Nimrod, particularly in his confrontations with Baker and McCoy, while the Forge scientists are more one-dimensional, though Dr Crumpton’s rebellion against Nimrod adds a spark. Vidar Magnussen is memorable as Professor Harket, capturing the essence of scientific passion rooted in folklore, but his early death in Part 1 feels like a missed opportunity.

Atmosphere and Sound:

The Norwegian setting, with its dark, wintry November backdrop, builds a chilling and eerie atmosphere, perfectly complemented by the dramatic score and stellar sound design. These elements heighten the story’s most intense moments, keeping listeners on edge throughout.

Final Thoughts:

Project: Lazarus is an ambitious, thought-provoking tale that expertly weaves character drama with political intrigue and moral dilemmas. While its complex narrative occasionally stumbles, it offers a bold and compelling continuation of the Forge saga. The performances, particularly from Baker, Stables, and Cavaliero, elevate the story, delivering both emotional depth and gripping tension.

A daring, multi-layered story that challenges its characters—and its audience—with haunting themes and clever twists.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• Finland and Sweden are mentioned in passing - this makes me happy!

This is part of a series of reviews of Doctor Who in chronological timeline order.

Previous Story: Doctor Who and the Pirates

Better than Project: Twilight, but that's not saying much. It certainly has a lot less of the things I despised about it's predecessor but it's not without flaws. I'll start by talking about the first two parts. It picks up where we left off in Project: Twilight with the Doctor going back to meet up with Cassie only he overshot it so that this story could have a reason to exist. Long story short Cassie's evil now and it turns out everyone's favourite edgelord Nimrod is back. He's somehow an expert on Time Lords now. I get that there's an explanation for it, but it feels like a cheap attempt to artificially increase how much of a threat the Forge actually are. It was my main issue in the last story, that this new villain who's come out of nowhere is suddenly one of the Doctor's greatest enemies and is hyper-competent. To make this work though, they also had to make the Doctor rather incompetent.

There's a gratuitous torture scene for the Doctor (because why not) and then Cassie dies and everyone escapes. Now I will say something positive, Maggie Stables' performance here is fantastic, maybe one of her best ones and she really sells just how utterly distraught Evelyn is at knowing Cassie is dead. The way she responds to 6's callousness is also fantastic and I'm glad to hear it gets picked up on in the next story.

Now we get to the Seventh Doctor. Because I'm doing this in timeline order, this is my first ever experience of 7. Ever. From this, I really like Sylvester Mccoy, his performance is great here and I'm glad that he isn't portrayed as absolutely useless like 6 was earlier. He meets up with what is presumably the Sixth Doctor, I quite like their chemistry and it's fun to have that classic multi-doc banter.

7 uncovers the mystery behind 6's appearance here and it turns out he's a disposable clone. Previous 6 clones have died of a heart attack, had their throat slit and now had their arm ripped off (I'm beginning to think the writers don't like 6). 7 gets out of there but not before shutting them down and saving some aliens who feel rather out of place. And then we get a teaser that the Forge have survived because the writers just can't kill off their little pet organisation.

All in all, the gore is toned down, which might seem ridiculous considering some of the things I described are already fairly rough. I think it could have done with just being a 7 story, the prequel stuff with 6 feels really tacked on and means we have two under-baked stories when we could have had one really solid complete one. Colin Baker, Maggie Stables and Sylvester Mccoy are giving this story everything they've got which is way more than this story deserves but at the very least it helps to make it a lot less dull.

Next Story: Arrangements for War

The Monthly Adventures #045 - “Project: Lazarus" by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright

It’s the second instalment of the Forge Arc that begins to bear its ugly underbelly. Project: Lazarus marks Cavan Scott and Mark Wright’s sudden veer into melodrama, going from the dark, depressing and brilliant Project: Twilight to three stumbles of the world’s strangest Bond film, full of camp villains and ridiculous set pieces. This’ll be the trend for the rest of this arc and, unfortunately, the rest of this duo’s scripts, excluding a couple I haven’t listened to yet, culminating in the aggressively bombastic Project: Destiny. But we have a long, long way to go until then, and for now, we have Nimrod’s next big plan to contend with.

Finally having a cure to the Twilight Virus, the Doctor returns to Norway to cure Cassandra Schofield of her infliction. But a bug in the TARDIS lands them years too late, where they find the situation to have escalated and the Forge to have taken control.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

I think this is probably the first direct sequel of the Main Range, so how about we begin by recapping. The story opens back in Norway, with the Doctor and Evelyn trying to find Cassie Schofield and cure her of the twilight virus. Instantly, another dark setting with vampires running about in it, seems like the natural follow-up to Project: Twilight, but strangely enough, it isn’t. There are some distinctly disturbing moments in Project: Lazarus, sure, but for the most part, this takes a much different, much stranger cadence. It’s more a schlocky spy-caper than anything, with cartoonish secret organisations and dream logic thought up by an over-imaginative child. I don’t hate it per say (and it will get a whole lot worse in later stories) but it’s a weird departure from its predecessor. The whole thing is very over the top, which makes it strange when it suddenly decides to drop some of Big Finish’s best character work so far on you. The end to Part Two is absolutely the highlight of the story and what it chooses to do with Evelyn is just sublime. The raw emotion and humanity with which Scott and Wright portray Evelyn is probably the best execution of her character as of now, though it will be perfected in Arrangements for War, and I think it makes for the best part of Project: Lazarus. The fallout from Cassie’s murder is easily some of the best acting I’ve seen out of the Main Range, it made an average scene one of the greatest. As for the story, I have my issues with it but I do have to say the choice for it to switch to a Seventh Doctor story halfway through is inspired, that it is a really fun idea that I think they handle well. And of course, multi-doctor shenanigans are always a good time, even if it’s technically not multi-doctor. But at the end of the day, it’s fun. That’s Project: Lazarus’ greatest attribute, it’s a fun story. Not amazing by any means, hell, I think good can be a stretch at points, but you won’t be bored and you won’t be let down, it’s Doctor Who’s action adventure, quick and fast and in the end, enjoyable.

And yet, Project: Lazarus is one of those stories that is fun to experience but not great to analyse. For one, I think the plot, whilst novel, is messy. The story being split into two is a fun idea but I don’t think it’s executed well, since neither half is long enough for the story to be impactful; they both go so quickly. The first half especially, since Part One feels like an entirely different audio, set in Norway running around with a cryptid hunter. And then there’s the melodrama; look, you can be as self-aware as you like but acknowledging bad writing doesn’t make it better, and it doesn’t make this script any less melodramatic. The dialogue especially is awful, ripped directly from some low-budget 80s action movie, full of one-liners and completely unnatural sentences that no human would ever say. It’s not excruciatingly bad but it takes a lot of tension out of the more climactic scenes. And then there’s the logic, which is just insulting half the time. Cassie breaking out of deep rooted mind control because Evelyn shouted at her about her son for two minutes. Or the Doctor clone for some reason being able to mimic voices for plot convenience. And back to that whole brainwashing thing, I hate it when a story tries to kill a character, or does a twist reveal that they’re working for the opposite side, and then only go halfway with it. Like here, the Doctor’s mistake can’t have pushed Cassie into the manipulations of Nimrod. No, she had to be mind controlled. Wouldn’t it hit harder if she actually was taken in by the Forge?

All in all, Project: Lazarus was disappointing. Not terrible - it was an enjoyable listen - but it’s simply messy. Bad logic and an underworked story with some genuinely admirable things hidden in there. It’s also somewhat of a disappointment as a follow up to Project: Twilight. I’ve seen worse, but I’ve seen much better.

6/10

Pros:

+ Evelyn’s best episode yet, with a fantastic performance from Maggie Stables

+ Ending to Part 2 is utterly traumatic

+ Great multi-doctor shenanigans in second half

+ At the end of the day, incredibly fun

Cons:

- Incredibly messy story that never finds time to settle

- Dialogue is completely ridiculous

- Runs with the same logic as a below-average spy caper

19.09.2022

A very interesting concept that unfortunately didn't make a full-size story. So instead they slapped an underwhelming prequel to it, that was supposed to tie up some sequel-bait from e23: "Project: Twilight". Instead we have an amalgamation of two undercooked stories with underdeveloped characters that could've each been great both on its own and combined.

Artemis was such a Chibnall character in this one. She had a proper name and everything, but I can't remember it a few minutes after the play. And she is a returning character.

Nimrod is a very bleak villain. The Doctor keeps giving him the benefit of the doubt despite ranting about how evil he is at the same time.
Hilariously abrupt. At least we have a Seven story in his late TV-movie years. 2/5

MR 045: Project Lazarus

I did it. I made it through the story. I'm free. I did not care for Project: Twilight. It was very emo, very Hot Topic, very violent and gorey for no real reason and had no real point to make at all. Kind of like a bad B horror movie in that way. It was the last story I would have wanted to get a sequel and yet here we are.

This one is slightly better. But only slightly. It's still violent and gorey for no reason and still has no point to it, but at least the story is slightly more interesting. When the Doctor finds the cure for vampirism, he goes back to Cassie, but because he's an idiot he lets the TARDIS land years after leaving her in Scandinavia. Evelyn even says that they should go back to the moment when they first found her. It's just an excuse to have them be late and it doesn't work particularly well when you have a time machine and can not do that before you even set out the door. But it's fine to kick start the story.

They meet Cassie and a researcher who is researching a myth in the area. And then Cassie brutally murders him and calls herself Artemis working for the Forge. And none of that matters at all in the slightest nor do we really get any reason why she does it. The Forge is investigating weird slime and they want to see the effect of the weird slime on humans. Whatever, it's irrelevant to the story. We're basically just wasting time before revealing that Cassie is evil and edgy now. She does the thing that the original story did as well, trying to act all jaded and sarcastic while she kills him. It's just immature, poorly written dialogue. There's a lot of that in this story, particularly from Cassie, now Artemis, and Nimrod himself.

They take the Doctor and Evelyn to the Forge where Nimrod proceeds to take the Doctor's DNA by trying to induce regeneration. He's trying to capture the power of regeneration to use it in an army, which is definitely pretty horrifying. Evelyn tries to talk to Cassie and gets her to remember her son and turn her against Nimrod after all her programming. And then she rescues the Doctor and gets killed. Leading to Evelyn crying and being rather depressed about her death. Probably viewing her as a daughter figure.

It's just... not very good and extremely blunt. We can compare it to a much better story just a couple stories back, Doctor Who and the Pirates in which a similar thing happens. Someone who Evelyn sees as a surrogate child figure dies and she gets depressed. But that story is much stronger with its nuances and intricacies. Her trying to cover up her grief with comedy, but ultimately finding it useless. Here it's just very in your face showing a pretty great contrast between the writers. I don't trust the writers of this story to be able to handle grief and they don't, really. I'm wondering if and how the next story with Evelyn will address it. This could make a very strong jumping off point for a better writer in Evelyn's relationship with the Doctor.

The second half is also not great. The Seventh Doctor arrives at the Forge as they're investigating a portal in which aliens comes through. This is also completely irrelevant to the story. The main thing going on here is that Nimrod has cloned the Doctor and we get to have Colin and Sylvester play off each other. That is fun, for sure, just because the actors are so strong. But the dialogue still isn't that great. This is probably the only real redeeming feature.

The Seventh Doctor opens up the portal and lets the aliens in who attack the clone Doctor in retaliation for whatever horrific thing Nimrod has done and the clone Doctor loses an arm. Which makes the Doctor believe that he's not actually him. And then we find out there are a lot more clones constantly being killed to try to induce regeneration and the clone Doctor initiates the big red self-destruct button.

It's just all very pointless and dark and edgy for the sake of it, just like its predecessor. I'm not a fan really. If they had scaled back and controlled themselves a little, they could have ended up with their own version of Torchwood controlled by an especially evil man, Nimrod. But it's just too unpleasant and not at all fun to listen to. Not to mention all the completely irrelevant plot lines like the professor at the beginning and the aliens coming through the portal. There's a very good reason only three of these things were in the main range and the third isn't for a long time from now, thank goodness. Get me out of these terrible scripts.