One of my first audios from big finish, it starts really good and interesting, the R101 is a great setting and the rest of the cast are also entertaining but the story starts to drag a bit for the second half until the airship is about to crash where it picks up again, my favourite parts about these are obviously Charley and 8th, Part 1 and the closing scene of the pair flying with Ramsey

15.05.2022

McGann is a wonderful Doctor. A wimsy fairytale character is what you get with this incarnation (at least the earlier stages). Unfortunately, the rest of the play leaves you desiring better material.

The new companion Charley is very bare-bones. The arc they setup is not about who Charleу is, but about what Charley is (see The Impossible Girl, The Hybrid, The Timeless Child). The story itself with the Triskele is way less smart than it thinks it is, with very plain almost-not metaphors. It's the kind of paradigm you find captivating at 9 years old. 1.5/5

MR 016: Storm Warning

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Oh, um, excuse me. That's just me fangirling. Enter Paul McGann and India Fisher! This was so nostalgic, oh my god. This is BF's main line, current era team and it's amazing to hear it. The Eighth Doctor was such a blank slate in the tv movie that now BF basically gets to invent his personality and what a great personality it is. Yes, BF have already invented a new companion character in Evelyn and she is amazing, but this is the first time BF basically get to invent a new Doctor.

And what a Doctor he is. Paul McGann is a legend for a reason. His banter and sharp witted responses are hilarious even here. As are his scatter brained responses when he first meets Charley, which I will post below, another legendary first meeting like Six and Evelyn. His lust for life is evident even in this first story and Charley is the perfect companion for him. She, too, has a lust for life. She boards the R101 disguised as a steward just because she can, because she wants to see the world. I'm so excited to hear all their adventures again, I'm pretty sure I was starting to tear up with how nostalgic this was for me.
Now the actual story. The R101, an airship that historically crashed tragically is on its way to India, but it is on a secret mission. To return a crashed alien pilot and possibly steal the spaceship that the alien is from. The aliens turn out to have divided their personalities into logic, instinct, and free will. The engineers, the uncreators, and the lawgiver. There is only one lawgiver that has lived for a very long time and has dictated what the engineers and uncreators do, but it is dying and it needs a replacement. The man who brought the R101 here to steal the alien ship stays as the new uncreators are free from the lawgiver's dictates, but are scared off by everyone roaring because they've never seen a predator before. One of the people from the R101 steals an alien gun and in an act to keep it accidentally destroys the gas bags holding up the airship which then crashes tragically.

The Doctor and Charley then fly off on a vortisaur, a predator that lives in the time vortex, back to where the TARDIS has crash landed. There's an interesting hook, here, for BF's ongoing series with Charley. She's a time anomaly of some sort. The Doctor considers putting her back onto the R101 and letting her die because history is going to change with her alive, which would be horrible. Does he know who he is? But he can't do it. Just as he can't not let Charley keep the Vortisaur, which Charley names Ramsey.

It's a cute story, but it's an especially amazing one. The real strength in this story is hearing Paul McGann's first real story outside of the tv movie, of course, and seeing Charley's first story. They already work so well together and have fantastic chemistry. I remember adoring these two and I can't wait to hear more of them. Which, of course, I will because the Eighth Doctor stories in the early main range are in blocks, so the next three will all be Eighth Doctor. Look forward to that!

Interesting start for the Eight Doctor. Not a big fan of the eight doctor yet, but it was interesting enough for me to want to continue. The alien voices were quite annoying though. But I am interested in the plot development of the Doctor taking Charley out of her time and cheating her death.

The Monthly Adventures #016 - "Storm Warning" by Alan Barnes

The Main Range’s original mission statement seemed to be stand-alone, classic-who adventures with familiar faces. There were a few plot threads, Seven and Ace had stories that took place one after another, Five and Nyssa referenced some previous stories they had together and Six got a whole new companion to play around with. Storm Warning is a notable story as it is the first instance of truly serialised audios, being the debut story with Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor and India Fisher in her role as beloved companion Charley Pollard. This is the beginning of one of Big Finish’s most iconic runs, that boasts some of its most iconic stories. But every tale must have a beginning, so where did this one start?

The R101: His Majesty’s glorious airship, ready to pave the way for a new technological golden age for Britain. But there are secrets aboard the R101: spies, runaways, time lords and a mysterious passenger in Cabin 43. The voyagers of the R101 have a very deadly plan, one that could end the entire galaxy.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Let’s get it out of the way, we have to talk about Charley Pollard. There is going to be a lot of stuff about Charley in the coming reviews, she is easily the most popular companion from the Main Range and possibly the most popular companion from the entire Expanded Universe, the only person I think could compete with her in terms of popularity would be Bernice Summerfield. I think Charley is… fine. I think she is on the lower end of companions from the Main Range, especially when Hex and Eveleyn are right there, but I do like her. I don’t always love India Fisher’s vocal performance but 90% of it’s fine, I just find her to not be the most narratively complex. You know the revival template that has been forced upon every companion in the last 19 years of TV? Plucky young girl that smiles whilst handing the Doctor his test tubes. She’s basically just that but from the Edwardian era rather than contemporary England, which I personally don’t love. However, I will acknowledge that Charley is great here - she has a good amount of agency, Fisher does a good job right out the gate and the story introduces her well, I feel I know the character by the end. But, Charley isn’t the only thing going on in this story, we have a whole plot to expand the British Empire via spaceships going on. The R101 is a fantastic setting: I adore the imagery of an airship on a stormy night filled with the bourgeoisie throwing back champagne to the tune of a UFO’s descent. It makes for a great atmosphere and I wildly prefer it over the spaceship we get later on, which is a lot less interesting by comparison. What also helps the sections in the airship is that we have a genuinely interesting and rather fleshed out sidecast; none of the characters felt one note and I can actually remember their names for once. And topping off our cast is of course, the Doctor, this being the first appearance of his Eighth incarnation on audio. McGann’s performance will either be brilliant or falling asleep depending on how much he likes the script but I’m glad to say he knocks out of the park for his debut, Eight immediately puts himself up there with the more popular and well known Doctors.

However, no story is perfect and this is no exception. Barnes is a writer who I have a slightly tenuous relationship with, I feel a lot of his stories can fall flat in the nuance department and Storm Warning certainly misses a few marks. Our alien race for this story - the Triskeli - are a species that have split themselves into three factions: the engineers, the intuition of the species, the uncreators, the instinct, and the lawgiver, a single Triskeli who acts as free will, turning the entire species into a construct similar to that of a brain. This idea is incredibly cool, but in the end, that’s all it ends up being. The Triskeli never feel like a real species, they never feel like an element of the world, they feel like Alan Barnes’ idea, they feel like a concept and most of the time we spend with them is exposition as to how they work. This causes most of my interest in their plotline to become tainted, as I am just not immersed by their existence. And frankly, when it comes to the climax, it’s more of an anticlimax. What happens is the uncreators trick the violent South African spy Rathbone (who has the most atrocious fake south african accent I’ve ever heard by the way) into killing the Lawgiver, allowing the uncreators to take over and wage destruction on the cosmos. They are defeated within five minutes by around twenty people shouting loudly at them because fear is an instinct or something, it doesn’t make them out to be too big of a threat and the visual is just silly. And before you condemn me as a fun sponge for saying that, I’ll have you know that the story takes it completely seriously. 20 full grown men roaring at mutated aliens is not something you play straight, but this story does and it does it a lot. The tone feels like it should be more playful, a lot of the dialogue reflects this too, which feels clunky because it seems out of place with the rest of the audio. You have colourful characters, a unique setting and a climax like that, you really should be leaning into it but Barnes doesn’t, and it makes a lot of Storm Warning feel oddly forced.

Storm Warning is the beginning of an era, one of the most important audios and the start of The Monthly Adventures’ most iconic series. A great pilot with wonderful characters and a memorable setting that mishandles the intricate parts of the script, causing an imbalance in tone and a focus on concept rather than narrative. Still, a very good time and it is only the beginning after all.

7/10

Pros:

+ Charley instantly proves herself as a companion

+ The storm-ridden airship was wonderfully evocative setting

+ McGann gives a fantastic debut audio performance

+ Well developed and interesting side-cast

Cons:

- The Triskelions felt more like an idea than a fleshed out species

- The climax left a lot to be desired

- Tonally inconsistent

- Clunky and forced dialogue