Almost immediately, listening to The Scapegoat was like a breath of fresh Doctor Who air. Paul McGann as the Doctor and Sheridan Smith as Lucie Miller are easily one of Big Finish’s best Doctor/companion duo’s and the opening scenes of this story are an absolute delight as they bounce off each other on their way to the Moulin Rouge in 1899 (with Lucie hoping to meet Ewan MacGregor – despite him not actually being alive in 1899!) .

As it is, though, an alien device drags them down to Earth, narrowly avoiding a nasty crash, and they realise they are in Paris but not in 1899, but rather the occupied Paris of 1942.

I had forgotten this story was set in Paris, the same place and time – more or less – as the Torchwood audio story, The Dying Room. It involves some of the same elements but this story is very different in tone to that one – although just as gruesome. In places, it also reminded me of the TV Torchwood episode Immortal Sins.

This is a tale of Grand Guignol. Horrific, gory entertainment for the masses was hugely popular in Paris from the late 19th century through to the 1960s. A theatre actually called Du Theatre Grand-Guignol of Paris specialised in this type of show and the Theatre des Baroque is, essentially, the same place. The twist is, of course, that the troupe running the theatre and performing are actually goat-headed aliens.

The Scapegoat is most definitely a ‘horror-comedy’. Some of the visuals are stomach-churning but this is balanced by the hilarious scenes of Lucie ending up as one of the actors and ad-libbing her way through the scenes. Sheridan Smith’s performance of Lucie’s performance as a posh French aristocrat watching her love be guillotined is brilliant only brought into sharp, horrific relief when Lucie realises the actor, Max, has actually had his head severed from his body!

Meanwhile, the Doctor is giving the Nazis the runaround and this is a story which present the Nazis as a more comedic than a story such as The Dying Room does, despite being ostensibly based on similar premises. There are also elements of The Instruments of War with the Doctor effectively allying himself with the Germans against the aliens. It is less overt than in that comic strip but it draws an interesting parallel between both stories’ approach to the Doctor’s relationship and attitude towards Nazis.

The cast for this (and many of the 8th Doctor stories) is phenomenal. As the aliens we have Samantha (Mrs Wormwood) Bond and Christopher (Flatline) Fairbank. Both are clearly revelling in their hyperbolic roles and not so much nibbling the scenery as getting their nasty goat mouths around it and chewing it into oblivion. Paul Rhys – an unfamiliar name maybe but a face that has been all over British and US shows for a couple of decades rounds out the aliens as the unfortunate scapegoat himself, Max.

The concept of the scapegoat is a fascinating take on an alien society where all the society’s violent emotions are targetted at one individual rather than causing the culture to wipe itself out. Using alien technology they are able to, effectively, reverse time and bring Max back to life every time he dies (in a series of gruesome manners).

The Nazis are headed by Clifford (Warrior’s Gate) Rose. It’s a canny piece of casting with Rose being known for his portrayal of Gestapo officer, Kessler, in Secret Army. He brings a civilitude to the role and has some great interplay with McGann. Much like The Instruments of War, is sometimes feels slightly uncomfortable having a Nazi not be in the role of antagonist and clearly a lot less ‘bad’ than the violent, amoral goat aliens but I think, balance-wise, it manages it better than The Instruments of War – probably because we have a performance to back up the dialogue and Rose does it very well.

The Scapegoat is a wonderful story – it’s a great example of how well the 45-50 minute format can work to deliver a tight, funny, scary and exciting script. The cast are note perfect and it’s one of the 8th Doctor and Lucie’s best outings together.

Well that was huge fun. A silly little exercise in tying together what we knew of the Time Lords up until Season 22 courtesy of fanwanker extraordinaire, Gary Russell. Alongside the references to The Three Doctors and Arc of Infinity, Russell also manages to wrangle The Two Doctors, Image of the Fendahl, The Deadly Assassin, The Invasion of Time, the Black and White Guardians and the Key to Time, Terror of the Autons, The Mark of the Rani, The Web of Feat, The War Games AND Shada!

There are some lovely bits of tying things together and then there's Rassilon creating the Black and White Guardians (seems fandom collectively forgot/ignored that little gem)! There's some fun additions too such as more details about why Morbius was executed and the revelation that Thalia and Zorac, High Council members in Arc of Infinity, got sent to investigate the Death Zone ahead of the events of The Five Doctors and ended up getting killed by some of those zappy lightning bolts which nearly did for the Master.

This is very much the approach to 'lore' that Russell, and others like Craig Hinton, would apply to their novels when the Missing and Past Doctor Adventures arrived on the scene - abundant references to any and every story and character that takes their fancy and fits, however tortuously, into the narrative (it's quite something to have one paragraph start with the events of The Two Doctors and end with a reference to Image of the Fendahl).

One can only imagine the fun Russell would have had tying in Hell Bent, The Timeless Children, The Power of the Doctor and The Reality War into his narrative machinations.

Our first Christmassy adventure is, to be fair, not particularly Christmassy. I've been holding off listening to this Bernice box set due to it being set during the season of 'Advent' on the planet Legion (which is where Benny and her friends currently reside), thinking it might be fun to listen to it during our own season of advent.

A Handful of Dust finds Bernice and her new friends, Ruth and Jack heading off on an errand for a millionaire. On route they pick up a distress signal from a supposedly dead planet. On the planet Ruth and Benny find a young man and woman living in an isolated dome, whilst Jack meets the galaxy's equivalent of Most Haunted's Yvette Fielding.

It's a fun adventure with a good central mystery. The scenes on the deserted planet are effective, especially as Benny solves the riddle of the planet and its reputation for being haunted. However, what doesn't work so well is the errand Benny is carrying out before receiving the distress signal. It is presented as a subplot, but all of it, save for travelling on a rubbish ship, happens off screen. There's some stuff about the mysterious millionaire actually wanting Benny, Ruth and Jack to spy on his employees but it doesn't really add up, doesn't go anywhere and gets wrapped up with some rather simplistic dialogue (which more or less amounts to 'he changed his mind'). It only seems to be there to set up the final reveal which feels totally unnecessary because there are tonnes of other ways that could have been achieved.

The regulars are brilliant as always and Ayesha Antoine's Ruth and David Ames' Jack are great additions to the Bernice Summerfield cast. Jack's slippery, egotistic, selfish impishness bounces well off Benny and Ruth is effective in what is, basically, the companion role to Benny's 'Doctor'. The guest cast, on the other hand, are a little underwhelming and a couple don't quite sound comfortable with the dialogue. Ellen Salisbury, though, is fun as Vonna Byzantium although I'm not sure why she's played as so obviously Welsh and her constant 'beloveds' get a little wearing after a while.

But, all in all, a strong start to this box set

The second story in this 'advent' box set sees Benny, Jack and Peter head off to investigate a spate of missing spacecraft. After some spacey shenanigans they find themselves at a dockyard where there is only one ship, hundreds of life signs but no one around and one lone, terrified man, handcuffed in a room.

This is a Christmassy 'ghost story' with zombies. It involves an ancient race (doesn't it always) that inhabit inherently good artefacts to preserve them. Benny knows of this race and credits them as keeping relics safe for archaeologists to discover. There's some good detective work on the part of all three regulars (although Peter seems to know a lot about 20th century ships for a half-Killoran boy from the 27th century) and overall it's quite a satisfying adventure if, again, not particularly Christmassy.

Well here's one for long time fans of the series! Fenman is the woman who swopped bodies with Bernice, got herself pregnant with Adrian Wall and then swopped out again leaving Benny to give birth to Peter. This all happened in the novel The Squire's Crystal which I haven't actually read - but enough of the story is filled in for the listener (as Benny needs to explain it for the benefit of Jack, Ruth and Peter). Fenman is after 'her' son and has, apparently, been manipulating our regulars for a long time, using mysterious crystals to swop in and out of various bodies, watching through her subjects eyes and controlling their actions where necessary.

Set on Legion's equivalent of Christmas Day, this is a story with only a very slight plot as it is more concerned with various flashbacks for Ruth, Jack and Irving Braxiatel explaining how Fenman has manipulated them and how they all ended up on Legion. It also fills in a little bit more background to the Epoch box set that kicked off this new era of Benny adventures. These flashbacks are a lot of fun. I particularly liked the revelations about Ruth. Jack's segment is a little less convincing as it requires David Ames to play not only Jack, but also two of his brothers and his father. It becomes a bit weird having four very similarly sounding characters in the same scene all played by the same actor. The story also ties up the loose ends surrounding Peter's mysteriously invisible boyfriend, Antonio and those scenes are very satisfying.

Being absent from the first two stories, Irving is given a lot more focus and it's interesting to see how this version of Brax differs from the manipulator from before the 'box set' era. This is a Brax from another universe, forced into this one and having to deal with the repurcussions of his other self's actions and attitudes. It's interesting and kind of made me want to go and re-listen to all of Brax's stuff in 'chronological' order (including his Gallifrey appearances) to get a better handle on the character and his machinations.

Ultimately it's Irving's underlying nature that saves the day and sends Fenman on her way and Benny's new family set about reconciling their pasts with their current situation.

A strong end to a fun box set.

The second prequel minisode to The Snowmen continues to establish the three members of the Paternoster Gang.  The focus here is, very much, on Vastra and Jenny.  Strax is, in fact, hardly in it.  Although this is titled ‘Vastra Investigates’, the Silurian crime fighter actually does very little investigating.  We start the short sequence as a criminal is taken away by Strax whilst Vastra and Jenny have a conversation with Inspector Gregson.  He mentions aspects of the case – identical twins, undetectable poison and an ancient Egyptian curse; tantalising us with elements of the unseen adventure.  Vastra gets to be condescending and then proceeds to shock the Inspector with the revelation that she and Jenny are an item.  The story concludes with Jenny and Vastra travelling by cab through the snow – snow which concerns Vastra, as there is not a cloud in the sky.

The influence of Sherlock Holmes is even more obvious here than in the previous minisode.  Firstly, we have Inspector Gregson who is actually a character from the original Sherlock Holmes stories, appearing in stories such as A Study in Scarlet.  Apparently, in those stories, he is presented as quite a clever person, almost matching Holmes’ intellectual capacity.  However, the  Gregson in this prequel is very much in the mould of those inspectors we are used to in Holmesian stories where the ‘Great Detective’ condescends, patronises and generally belittles the detective skills of the local police force.  This version of Gregson actually gets to reappear later in the series in Deep Breath.

Part of the teasing of Gregson comes in the form of emphasising the relationship between Jenny and Vastra.  After some dialogue about Strax being Turkish and Vastra’s  ‘skin condition’, Vastra reveals that she is in love with Jenny.  Gregson, is true Victorian stiff-collaredness, swallows hard and seems lost for words as Jenny and Vastra flounce off arm in arm.  I think I’ve mentioned before my difficulty with the Vastra/Jenny relationship – not not that – come on, it’s the 21st century for crying out loud. No, my issue is with the way Vastra treats Jenny like a servant, even when they are not around other people.  It seems a very unbalanced relationship.  That said, here, in the prequel, it seems much more as if they are equals and it seems odd, that in later, fuller, appearances, this imbalance is introduced.  I like the Paternoster Gang (and I know they aren’t popular with a vocal minority of fandom (but then some fans seem to hate writers inserting anything, you know, fun, into their precious show)) but of the three, Vastra is probably my least favourite and that’s mainly due to her arrogance and superiority.  Here it is evident in her treatment of Gregson, although that, as I say, has its roots in the Holmesian pastiche, but in later episodes it is her treatment of Jenny which riles.

The Stuff of Legend Live was an amazing experience.  To see and hear Paul McGann and India Fisher recreate the Doctor and Charley in a brand new adventure with Alex McQueen's Master and Nick Briggs' Daleks was simply brilliant.

It's events like this which remind you what is so great about being a fan.  Cadogan Hall, full to the brim with enthusiasm and excitement and a shared experience isn't something that can ever translate to online fan communities.  A truly memorable day.

I’m pleased to say that I enjoyed the second instalment of this story far more.  Whether it’s because more is explained satisfactorily in this part or because I  made a concerted effort to pay closer attention I’m not sure.

My problems with the first part still affect the second.  The acting is still of variable quality, although the addition of Caroline Burns-Cooke as Lolita improves proceedings greatly (even if she does borderline scenery chew).  The sound effects are still a bit indistinct.  There is a very long fight sequence between Eliza, D’eon and Sandwich and the automaton army which relies a lot of the sounds of swords and grunts from the actors without giving a real picture of what is going on.

What I did enjoy about this story was the extrapolation of events referred to in The Talons of Weng-Chiang.  Whilst these stories still skirt around actual references to Doctor Who, enough is given for the listener in the know to piece together.  The army of Peking, led one presumes by Magnus Greel, had 12 ‘commanders’.  These were automatons, or rather homunculi, with the cerebral cortexes of the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac.  The one with the brain of a pig (Mr Sin) went missing but the other 11 are present in 18th century London as part of Lolita’s plan to disrupt established history and take control of this era.

This is the sort of extrapolation from Doctor Who stories that I find fun.  The idea that Mr Sin was one of 12 and that each of the other homunculi have the traits of the other animals of the zodiac – the snake is sly, the ox is huge etc – is absolutely fascinating.  I’d love to know exactly what the rabbit was like though – not the most battle-worthy of creatures!Also hinted at is the fact that Lolita and Mary Culver (or rather Compassion) are TARDISes (and that Sabbath is being turned into one also).  I’ve not actually read the BBC novels which chart Compassion’s conversion but know enough to be intrigued by the concept.  It is a concept Miles introduced in his first BBC novel, Alien Bodies and one which I think shows that, if nothing else, he is a good ‘ideas man’.

The story climaxes with Justine being tried by a court of representatives of the Great Houses (i.e. the Time Lords) in the place of Grandfather Paradox (who’s shadow she carries).  This makes it clear that this run of BBV audios is really one long story, beginning with The Eleven Day Empire and The Shadow Play (where Justine is given the Grandfather’s shadow) and ending with the final 2 parts Movers and A Labyrinth of Histories – at the end, Justine has been transported to prison to carry out the Grandfather’s sentence.  As such, maybe it has been unfair of me to judge these stories as isolated episodes, but then that is the nature of my marathon.

Extra historical details are few and far between as this story focusses more on the Automaton army (even Sabbath’s storyline takes a back seat).  There is mention of Queen Charlotte (who’s place Lolita has assumed), George III’s madness (which is implied to have been instigated by Lolita in her masquerade as Charlotte – altering George’s perception so he sees he only as Charlotte) and a final parting shot where Eliza tells Lord Sandwich his main contribution to the history books will not be the fierce battle with an army of hundreds of automatons but the fact he likes a bread and beef snack from time to time…

I know that Faction Paradox is very popular with some sections of Doctor Who fandom.  Unfortunately I can’t quite see the appeal.  I like some of the extrapolations from Doctor Who, but equally some of the veiled references are frustrating.  Overall, I just don’t find the central concepts as fascinating as some of the finer details (like the homunculi).

Cards on the table (if you’ll excuse the pre-emptive pun), I’m not a massive fan of Faction Paradox.  It’s not that I think it’s a bad idea, it’s just that I don’t see why it has gained the popularity it has.  I really only see fans raving about it.  I find it wilfully obscure.  I think it’s the frustrating nature of its links to Doctor Who which became non-copyright allusions once the Faction began appearing in spin-offs – i.e. the Time Lords become the Great Houses.  Now, I’m aware that it isn’t as simple as all that because, much like the Stranger series of videos started off being a bit like Doctor Who but eventually developed their own mythos, Faction Paradox is now its own entity with its own ‘background’.  But when it insists on including things like Compassion, the Sontarans or Sutekh in its stories, I can’t help but think it needs to decide if it is one thing or the other.

Sabbath Dei is really the third part of a series, The Faction Paradox Protocols which began in The Eleven Day Empire.  I have listened to the first two parts a number of times and quite like them – the presence of the Sontarans helps enormously in The Shadow Play – and I actually quite like the conceit of the Eleven Day Empire.  Faction Paradox purchased the 11 days that were lost from the calendar in 1752 when we changed from the Julian to Gregorian calendar (effectively one day was the 2nd September and then the next was the 14th).  This is a historical event I came across a few years ago in a book of ‘Millenium’ short stories for children.  One story was about the riots which apparently occurred from some poorer parts of society who wanted their 11 days returned, feeling they had been robbed in some way.  Apparently, these riots are an urban myth and are unlikely to have actually happened, but it made for an interesting short story all the same.

Sabbath Dei is set after the Eleven Day Empire has been ‘eaten’ and Lolita, a strange being, has taken over and is threatening the Homeworld of the Houses.  The two survivors of the Empire, Cousins Eliza and Justine have escaped in a time machine to 1762, an era well known to the Faction (the 18th century being where the Empire itself had first come from).  Here, they are hiding out with the Order of St Francis (better known as the Hellfire Club), biding their time.  Now, here I admit to having lost the plot somewhat.  This is partly because a few of the characters (notably Lord Sandwich and Sabbath) sound quite similar meaning I got confused as to who was allied with who for some of the play.  Basically, the secret service of King George III have secret plans afoot involving a homunculi army (yes, like the Peking Homunculus in The Talons of Weng-Chiang), a woman called Mary Culver is really in charge of the Order of St Francis and has been waiting for Eliza and Justine, and an agent of the service, Sabbath, is making contact with forces beyond our world by cutting himself in various patterns.

BBV’s audios are of varying quality.  As you may have seen in my earlier reviews of The Green Man and A Quality of Mercy, production and acting are often of variable quality.  Sabbath Dei benefits from good sound design and music (the chamber music in the first part of the story adds tremendously to the 18th century atmosphere – something which has been lacking in the Big Finish audios set in this era) but the acting is variable, from bad to wooden to fairly good.  Susanne Proctor as Cousin Justine is fairly wooden throughout, Emma Kilbey as Cousin Eliza is fine, but sounds slightly out of place due to her being originally from the 20th century (I believe) and so her speech patterns clash with those of the 18th century residents.    Saul Jaffe as Sabbath is also a bit flat and, as I said, sounds too similar to Michael Chance as Sandwich making it difficult in the early scenes to differentiate the two, although Chance is good as Lord Sandwich.  Mark Grieg as the Earl of Bute seems to have a very odd accent and Eric Maclennan as King George III is clearly trying to do ‘going mad’ acting but ends up with an odd high pitched delivery.  Jackie Skarvellis has fun as Mary Culver but does have a slightly mannered performance.  Jo Castleton, a BBV regular (she’s is the lead in the Auton series of videos and in Cyberon), plays the Sieur D’eon, an androgynous French spy.  She has an outrageous French accent and, despite the fact that D’eon is apparently a man, albeit one who passed as a woman for many years, sounds like a woman for the entire length of the play!

Also, although the music is great, the sound effects are a bit indistinct meaning some of the time it is difficult to tell what is going on – and this does lead to some poor dialogue with characters describing what they are seeing ; the eternal pitfall of audio drama.

I’m not a big fan of Lawrence Miles, either, so that doesn’t help.  I thought Alien Bodies was great but Interference, his two part BBC novel, was overblown and self-indulgent.  His Bernice Summerfield novel, Down, is alright but I can’t even remember what his debut Christmas on a Rational Planet was about (apart from also being set in the 18th century I think).  I have actually met Lawrence Miles at a fan get together and he is an odd man.  I think he has great ideas (I can see why Faction Paradox is a good idea), but can be very self-indulgent and clever for the sake of being clever.

One positive about this play, certainly compared to the other stories set in this century, is the amount of historical detail.  Not only do we have real life figures such as the Earl of Sandwich (yes, him of the sandwich invention), King George III and his Prime Minister, the Earl of Bute, but also D’eon is based on a real person – Chevalier D’eon (who apparently lived half his life as a man and then ‘became’ a woman) and there are numerous mentions of Sir Francis Dashwood, the infamous founder of the Order of St Francis (or as it is more commonly known, the Hellfire Club).

The story is full of gambling (echoing Phantasmagoria), high society balls, spies, secret organisations, salacious gossip, shadowy caves and rumours of human sacrifice.  There is even a scene where Eliza describes the peculiar arrangement of bushes outside the house, in the ornamental garden – initially I thought she meant they looked like a rooster…

A sure sign that this play struggled to hold my interest is that I had to listen to the end three times having fall asleep twice!  I rarely listen to audio without doing something else (washing up, walking to work etc) but happened to just be sitting down waiting for my daughter to go to sleep.

What I had forgotten in planning this marathon was that Sabbath Dei is actually the first part of a 2 part story ending with In the Year of the Cat.  Consequently, the next review in my marathon will be of the second part, also set in 1762 (I had been under the misapprehension that, due to the presence of Mr Sin’s brethren, the action moved to the 51st century).

The Swords of Kali/Okti was huge fun. Loved the split time periods and really enjoyed Clara and the guest characters. I’m even liking 12 in comic strip form

Also the vibrancy of these story’s art really stands out against 10 and 11’s stories.

8/10 even if the ending was a bit 'ghosts solve the problem with very little explanation'.

Oh and I loved the idea of 4 having an unseen companion in Tiger Maratha - would love to see some of their adventures.

Some thoughts on David Troughton's reading of the novelisation of this story:

* The novelisation also makes more out of the Doctor and Jo escaping the TARDIS before it topples down the mountain with Jo getting down on her hands and knees and crawling out of the doors. And the climb up is described a bit differently too.

* I always dismiss reading/listening to the novelisations because I forget how fascinating the little changes here and there are. I should do this more often.

* David Troughton’s Izlyr is an odd choice - it’s very deep and rumbling and more akin to Ssorg than Alan Bennion’s lighter tones as Izlyr.

* Troughton has Geoffrey Toone’s (Hepesh) delivery down pat.

* The chapters based on Episode 2 don't add much to the story beyond what is seen on screen - although the mentions of an alliance between Earth and Peladon through the possibility of KIng Peladon marrying the Earth princess Josephine get a tiny bit more attention in the scene after Arcturus’s fake attack.

* The book gives Peladon’s mother a name - Allua (not sure of the spelling). It’s a tiny detail but a nice touch. I’m also not sure about the emphasis put on Peladon thinking about how much Jo reminds him of his mother, particularly when thinking about marrying her!

* The lead up to the fight between the Doctor and Grun is given a number of scenes rather than just jumping straight to it (as in the TV story).

• First, Jo and Grun have a scene together when Jo sees the armour that Grun will wear for the fight.
• Then the Doctor and Ssorg have a scene where Ssorg worries about the Doctor’s chances.
• And then, most intriguingly, is a scene where King Peladon goes to the temple of Aggedor and promises Aggedor’s spirit (which he confesses to not really believing in) that if the Doctor dies, he will remove all images of Aggedor from the palace, renouncing all worship of him; whereas if the Doctor lives - even at the cost of Grun’s life - he will celebrate and worship Aggedor. All this is overheard by Hepesh. It really adds another dimension to the cliffhanger of the episode where the traitors are revealed - almost as if Peladon’s declaration, forces their hand.

Overall, it was quite enjoyable.  I tend to dismiss the novelisations nowadays, despite them being my meat and drink in my burgeoning fandom when every single story being available at the touch of a button was a sci-fi marvel worthy of the show itself. The ending is a bit different and even skips the kiss between Jo and Peladon.

The Snowmen is possibly my favourite of the Christmas specials.  I certainly remember getting to the end of its original airing with an immense feeling of satisfaction.  It has a lot of great elements; Matt Smith on form as always; the Paternoster Gang; a return of an old enemy; scary monsters and a great debut (or re-debut) of the new companion (sort-of).

When I settled down to watch this for my marathon, though, I don’t think I’ve been in the right frame of mind.  I got about halfway through my first watch and decided I wasn’t giving it my full attention so stopped and tried again a few nights later.  The second time I made it to the end, but found myself rewinding various sections because my attention had wandered.  I’m not blaming the story at all.  I purely think my brain wanted to be doing things other than watching Doctor Who.

So, a third attempt was made.

There is a lot I like about this story but the main thing is probably Jenna Coleman (or Jenna-Louise, as she was then).  She is wonderful as Clara.  Her first appearance in full-on Nancy from Oliver mode sets a high bar which she manages to maintain throughout the episode.   Clara’s determination to get mixed up in the Doctor’s world, whether he wants her to or not, is fun.  I like when she transforms into the governess and throws on the airs and graces.  Her interaction throughout the episode with all the different characters from Vastra to the maid, from  the children to the Doctor himself, is spot on and really well-scripted by Moffat.  I know some fans don’t like her because she is too knowing; too meta – but DWM did a similar sort of thing yonks ago with Izzy S in the comic strips – a character who would say things like  ‘Cool!  Robot Monsters!’ when confronted with the Daleks for the first time.  This is what Clara is like – in all her various incarnations.  To be honest, with my dislike for Capaldi in the earlier part of the season, it was my affection for Clara that helped me engage in the stories.  I prefer her to Amy (although not to Rory – never to Rory).

One of Clara’s best scenes in atop the house being pursued by the Ice Governess when she works out that the Doctor has a plan and she cooly pulls down the TARDIS’ ladder with the umbrella and later realises that the Doctor meant her to follow him because only she would have needed the umbrella, being much shorter than the Doctor himself.

Matt Smith continues to delight me.  Potentially this is a version of the Doctor I wouldn’t like – the grumpiness and detachment which has been turned up to the nth degree for Capaldi is here in the first scenes.  However, it doesn’t last long and the scenes with Strax quickly dispense any doubts that this is a long term situation.  By the time of the Punch and Judy sonic scene, the 11th Doctor is back and twirling around.  I love it!  I also really like the way the Doctor is introduced out of focus and walking through the shot.  It is a complete contrast to the usual arrival in the TARDIS, arms flung open, breathing in a new atmosphere (particularly from the 11th Doctor).

The Paternoster Gang are also on top form.  It’s quite difficult to remember that this was their first full appearance as a trio after being introduced in A Good Man Goes to War.  Doing the marathon in the way I have means I have already had their relationships and modus operandi established in The Crystal Throne and The Devil in the Smoke (as well as the two prequels to this story).  All three are confident and feel like they’ve been part of the Doctor’s world forever.  My personal favourite will always be Strax.  Dan Starkey is a genius and the memory worm scene is a Doctor Who comedy classic.  I know a section of fandom doesn’t like how Strax has lead to Sontarans being written as a comedy race of aliens (Big Finish have picked up on it a little in some of their releases, notably Heroes of Sontar) but I really like his character and I think its good to show a bit of diversity within alien races rather than some homegenous mass of terrifying killers.  The groundwork was laid for Strax’s character in A Good Man Goes to War so everything has followed fairly naturally (aside from his surprise resurrection which is obliquely referred to here (the minisode ‘explaining’ it wasn’t actually released until after this episode had aired).

To be honest, I’m not a massive fan of Vastra – I find her arrogance a little off-putting; but at least her relationship with Jenny, in this story, isn’t written as badly as it is by the time of Deep Breath.  I can’t remember how it is portrayed in the gang’s next outing, The Crimson Horror, but as that’s next up in my marathon, I’ll soon be able to comment.

It’s also fun having an old enemy back in the fold for a Christmas special.  A return for the Great Intelligence was something I don’t think many were expecting and it’s perfect for the new series.  There isn’t a need to appease fans with the creature design (like with the Ice Warriors or Zygons) because it’s a disembodied intelligence.  The instruments of its plans can be whatever the scriptwriter decides.  Yes, in previous encounters (including the Reeltime spin-off Downtime) they are ‘Yeti’ but they look different each time anyway and wouldn’t fit into the Victorian setting of this story at all.  The Snowmen are a natural extrapolation of the original stories (even though this is technically a prequel).

Ian McKellen is wonderful as the voice – it’s a shame he isn’t actually on screen because I imagine he would be phenomenal.  Richard E Grant does really well too as Dr Simeon, the Padmasambhava/Sergeant Arnold of this story.  He is chilling and restrained and when he finally goes full-on possessed at the end he must have been having a huge amount of fun.  I was never particularly enamoured by Grant’s ‘Shalka’ Doctor performance, but Dr Simeon is the perfect role for him.

There are a whole host of beautiful images and set pieces in this story.  The Ice Governess is a good piece of CGI and I adore the spiral staircase leading to the cloud (including the cheeky ‘taller on the inside’ line).  I love the idea of the Doctor isolating himself on a cloud.  The Great Intelligence’s sphere is a great creation (and looks good close-up too; I’ve seen it at the Cardiff exhibition).  The whole concept of alien snow is great and fits into the ‘traditional’ Victorian idyll which has already been referenced visually in The Next Doctor and The Unquiet Dead.

Historically we are still firmly entrenched in the cobbled, snow-laden streets and foggy, gaslit alleys of a filmic Victorian world.  Real historical characters are not required in this sort of world and there are just the references to Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes.  Fan lore would have it that this story states that Vastra is the real Sherlock Holmes but, actually, the dialogue is much less definite than that.  Dr Simeon tells Vastra that Doyle is ‘almost certainly’ basing the exploits of Holmes on a woman (he avoids commenting on her reptilian features).  Simeon is taunting Vastra; pointing out the absurdity of her life.  He is suggesting that her efforts are so ridiculous that an author is using them as a starting point for fanciful detective stories.  I think we can reasonably assume that Conan Doyle is not basing his stories on Vastra and that the potential issues this throws up for whether Holmes is real or not (as per All-Consuming Fire; Happy Ending; Jago and Litefoot) are not really a problem.

Despite a number of false starts on this story (which were more to do with my mental attitude at the moment to my marathon rather than any failings in the episode) I really do like this one and think it is one of the strongest Christmas specials.  The ending is a little abrupt with the Doctor dashing off to find ‘the impossible girl’ and I’m not entirely sure the ‘tears at Christmas Eve’ resolution is convincing (although it definitely fits into the magical/fairy tale world Moffat prefers for his version of Doctor Who; one which I am mostly on board with as I’ve always seen Doctor Who as science fantasy rather than science fiction (a debate for another time, methinks).  However, I remember enjoying this immensely on first broadcast and it didn’t disappoint this time round.

The Poison of Peladon is a step up from The Ordeal of Peladon. Maybe it’s the fact it’s basically The Curse of Peladon but with River Song and Alpha Centauri as the Doctor and Jo, but it was huge fun. It was great having a new delegate from Arcturus and he was perfectly recreated both in voice and sound effects. Jane Goddard is a worthy successor to Ysanne Churchman and embues Alpha with some real chutzpah which is a welcome development from the ineffectual character that emerged in Monster. It’s a shame Nina Thomas isn’t back as Thalira, but Deborah Findlay is a good replacement and is a believable older Thalira.

The plot is a simple ‘who is plotting a political coup’ but there are some lovely twists and turns and the atmosphere is spot on.

The theme tune for this box set is absolutely perfect - and just right for this time of year. Indeed, there is a cosy, fireside atmosphere to this box set which lends itself to Christmas time.

It's sat on my shelf for years, so I thought I’d have a listen to Jon Pertwee reading the abridged novelisation (although I ended up streaming it on Spotify).

I’m so glad I did. It is so wonderful listening to Pertwee telling the story. Some random thoughts whilst listening to this:

* His voices for Alpha Centauri and Arcturus are glorious.

* There is a music sting used in the first 15 minutes or so which is lifted from an 80s story and I can’t place it yet and it’s bugging me. I’ll have to see if it is used again or rewind and make sure I identify it.

* I was surprised when the story jumped from the throne room scene where all the characters first meet to the attack on Arcturus where his servo-unit is removed.

* Also, the scene where Jo first takes on the role of Princess Josephine of TARDIS doesn’t play as well on the page and is clearly lifted in the performance of Manning. We also lose the great gag about her inefficient pilot.

* Pertwee gives good Ice Lord too.

* Episode 2 is basically covered by Arcturus being attacked and the Doctor being lead into the tunnels by Grun to be tricked into desecrating the Temple of Aggedor.

* Just after Ssorg goes to see if Jo really has seen Aggedor in the corridor, the theme music crashed in. Odd place for a cliffhanger I thought to myself, why is it here?

* And then I remembered. This was originally on a single cassette - that would have been where you would take it out and turn the tape round to play the other side. I miss those days!

* It covers both episodes 3 and 4 in just 30 minutes!

* It does the job but it does take some liberties with the story. The main one which leapt out at me was the reason for Izlyr deciding to help the Doctor when he is under the threat of death. In the original he states it is because the Doctor saved his life from the falling statue. But that cliffhanger was cut from this version so Izlyr’s reason is because the Doctor saved Arcturus’s life. It doesn’t really work though because Izlyr earlier states he was never actually in danger because the servo-unit removal only induced a metabolic coma - uncomfortable but not life-threatening.

* It also skips the fake out of thinking Ssorg is shooting the Doctor at the climax of Episode 3, going straight to him obliterating Arcturus.

* Pertwee does a good Earth Delegate voice for Amazonia.

* I think I’ve placed the music stings they use for this one too - I think they’re from Vengeance on Varos. It’s definitely an 80s story.

A fun if unnecessary listen.

The four short children’s books about K9 written by Dave Martin are one of those things which very few people know about and if they do, don’t spend a lot of time thinking about.

It is a little bit wonderful that K9 has had so many different spin-offs dedicated to him and its clear both Bob Baker and Dave Martin were more than happy to exploit their little tin mutt as much as possible. What with K9 and Company, the K9 annual, these books, the Australian children’s TV show and the aborted K9 vs Omega film, there is plenty to suggest they believed, with all their heart, that K9 was capable of carrying his own series.

I’m not sure they’ve ever been proved right.

K9 and the Time Trap sees K9 come up against Bob Baker and Dave Martin’s other iconic creation. No, not Drax. Not the Mandrels. Not even Axos. Omega, of course!

K9 working for the Rigelians, heads off in his little spaceship K-Nel to investigate the disappearance of numerous ships. He discovers it is the work of Omega who is taking them to create his own battle fleet which he plans to use to attack Gallifrey.

It has to be said that Martin doesn’t really seem to remember (or care) much about what was established about Omega in The Three Doctors. This book was published three years before Arc of Infinity and the year before K9 and Company so is the first reappearance of both its stars.

Here Omega exists within a crimson bubble and clearly can’t create things with his mind anymore, relying on kidnapping various spaceships to create his battle fleet. He can easily cross from his bubble to the rest of space and very nearly succeeds in getting his fleet to Gallifrey were it not for K9’s intervention.

K9 also seems to have close contact with the Time Lords but his loyalty is to the Rigelians who give him a new spaceship (he blows up the original to defeat Omega) with go-faster racing stripes!

Omega’s depiction here is far less impressive than in either of his classic TV appearances (but is infinitely superior to ‘skull monster Omega’ from The Reality War. He does at least retain the helmet and cloak look even if the colour scheme is a little, brash, shall we say.

Weirdly, Omega apparently knows all about K9 because of him belonging to the Doctor suggesting Omega has been keeping tabs on the Doctor since the events of The Three Doctors.

To be honest, Omega here is simply ‘Time Lord out for revenge’ with none of the nuance of either Thorne or Collier’s versions. Reference is made to him being an engineer, creating time travel and being banished but it reads a bit like a wiki entry rather than proper motivation.

Also, in the original book he is called Omegon, not Omega (although in the audiobook version read by John Leeson, he is referred to as Omega).

All told this is a simple, linear children’s book that is far more about painting K9 as a hero in his own right with Omega a camp villain who’s not dissimilar to those seen in cartoons of this era such as Venger in Dungeons and Dragons or Zoltar in Battle of the Planets.

It’s not enjoyable for what it is and, actually, is a much better concept for a K9 spin-off than sticking him in rural England or surrounding him with a bunch of kids in ‘London’. Space, spaceships, robots and aliens just feels more like the sort of thing that works for a supercomputer robotic dog.

The audio version is, slightly disappointingly, a word for word lift from comic strip to audio. With the comic being a hugely visual thing, it does mean there is quite a lot of descriptive narration which can be a little clunky, but the spirit of the piece is wonderful and everyone is clearly putting their all into it. The actors playing Oxirgi, Malika and Kyril are all great but at the centre of it all is, of course, the inimitable Brian Blessed as Omega.

He is marvellous and actually helps to bring Omega to the forefront of the whole story by making his appearances in Oxirgi’s mind at the beginning more striking than they were in comic strip form.

The sound design and music is excellent and there is a lovely touch at the end in the scene where the Gel Guard is forming where they have included the sound effect the Gel Guards make in The Three Doctors.

A short interview with Blessed at the end reveals how enthusiastic he was to take part in the project and how well he understands the character of Omega. And that really comes across in his characterisation.

I became a fan during the Wilderness Years. This was a time when various fans kept the flame of Doctor Who alive through various spin offs, usually on audio or video. Because the rights to actual Doctor Who were off-limits (at least until Big Finish got their hands on them) these enterprising creators would approach the estates of various writers to license monsters and characters that they owned the copyright to rather than the BBC - the Sontarans, the Zygons, the Rani and the Autons among others. What were these monsters getting up to when the Doctor wasn’t around?

Cutaway Comics range of spin-off comics feel like a nostalgic throwback to those days. Set in the worlds of Doctor Who created by writers like Stephen Wyatt and Bob Baker, they explore places like Paradise Towers and characters like Omega and Sutekh.

Omega: Vengance is a sort of prequel to The Three Doctors detailing a previous attempt by Omega to escape his prison on the other side of a black hole. It’s a lovely run of four comics which manages to include elements of The Three Doctors and Arc of Infinity whilst also bringing in Underworld (another Bob Baker and Dave Martin story) and little hints of the original Three Doctors script, Deathworld.

Omega has made contact with a native of Minyos, telepathically communicating with him. It echoes Omega using Hedin in Arc of Infinity. Omega’s servant, Oxirgi, is attempting to overthrow the royal family of Minyos, allow Omega to mind control the Minyans and create enough power for him to escape the anti-matter universe.

Battling against Oxirgi is the last Minyan princess Malika. She teams up with a reprogrammed battle android and a old hermit with impressive mental powers. Taking its lead from Underworld, Malika has the ability of cellular renewal, bestowed on her by the Minyan gods. They are never named, but the gods are obviously supposed to be the Time Lords and their design echoes that seen in the old DWM comic strips of the 80s (which is unsurprising as the art for this comic is by the legendary John Ridgeway).

The old hermit, Kyril enters into a mind wrestling match with Oxirgi like we see in The Three Doctors but this is probably more akin to the battle between Merlin and Madam Mim in Disney’s The Sword in the Stone with each of them taking on increasingly weird forms in an attempt to defeat the other. It’s a great comic strip sequence.

Eventually, Malika defeats Oxirgi and proceeds to travel through the black hole to confront Omega (on a giant space bug!).

This part of the story has some echoes of Deathworld. That story was very focussed on the three Doctors fighting various mythical creatures like Medusa, Cyclops and Death itself. Here, Omega takes on various forms including a minotaur, a hydra and an angel. He is also seen to create an entire civilisation through the power of his mind but, emphasising his god-like status, his creations end up rebelling against him and, to escape his vengeance, head back into Malika’s universe aboard the space bug.

I really enjoyed this comic even if, ultimately the story doesn’t really go very far and Omega himself is very much a background character until the final issue of the four. The art is lovely (and another factor in the nostalgia of this comic, evoking, as it does, Ridgeway’s artwork for things like Voyager and The World Shapers).

Oxirgi was a fun villain and Malika an interesting hero. I would have liked a bit more exploration of the Minyan society and probably a bit more Omega himself, but overall it is a worthy addition to Omega’s story. The part towards the end where Omega starts to create a Gel Guard is a lovely tie in to The Three Doctors.

The Silent Scream finds the 4th Doctor, Romana and K9 in 1930s Hollywood and I’ll be honest – it isn’t the best fit.

As with many of the two-episode 4th Doctor adventures, the listener is thrown straight into the story with the TARDIS team already wandering around Hollywoodland apparently on a mission to meet a faded film star, Loretta Waldorf (played by Doctor Who legend, Pamela Salem).

Elsewhere, film stars are losing their voices – literally having them stolen.

The Doctor has his voice stolen and after a bit of jiggery-pokery with the sonic screwdriver all is well again.

That summary may be doing the story a bit of a disservice but that is the impression I came away with. There is a villain – Dr Julius – but he made very little impact on me whilst listening. There’s also a ‘monster’ – celluloid based lifeforms. These, and Dr Julius, are explained as being products of the 22nd century and Julius has time travelled back to gather merchandise from the era of the silver screen – I think. I confess to losing interest around the time the script decided to dump some explanations into the story.

But why do I think it isn’t the best fit for this team of regulars? I had wondered if it was just me and I hadn’t got into the vibe or atmosphere of this story (which is only exacerbated by it’s brevity) but I thought I’d check out the review from Doc Oho of nearby parts to see what he thought and straight off from the bat he was saying exactly what I had been feeling.

This story is supposedly set during Season 18 but Tom Baker isn’t playing that version, the sombre, time-weary one, of the 4th Doctor. He’s playing the overly-eccentric 4th Doctor that tends to tip over into Tom Baker’s own – tiresome – ‘wacky’ persona. I’ve probably mentioned before how his ‘real life’ personality grates on me and made listening to the Nest Cottage audios quite an ordeal. This performance isn’t as bad as those but it is teetering on the brink.

But it isn’t only that. In an era, even back in Season 17, that was all about exotic alien planets and futuristic spacecraft – with only the odd trip here and there to modern-day Earth, a story set in 1930s Hollywood seems oddly out of place.

But in a programme like Doctor Who where the TARDIS can land anywhere and anywhen, why should this be a problem? And bearing in mind the last story in my marathon also featured the same TARDIS team having adventures in 1930, why did it bother me here?

In The English Way of Death, is set in 1930 but it is also set in England. The eccentric 4th Doctor, the glamorous and intelligent Romana and even the quirky robot dog, K9, fit into that world far more comfortably than they do here. Romana hooking up with a blustering ex-military man and the Doctor romping around with novelists and Bertie Wooster types just fits their style.

From the first scene featuring the Doctor in The Silent Scream, I didn’t buy it. He’s tracked down a former film star, Loretta, and is apparently her biggest fan. This is often done in Who – the 9th Doctor being a Dickens’ fan for example – but it’s usually done with a figure familiar to the audience; a real person. Here, Loretta is fictional and so I found if difficult to believe in the Doctor’s enthusiasm for her or her films. Baker also overplays their first meeting something chronic and it all just sounds very very silly.

Romana’s role in the story is fairly perfunctory and she doesn’t do a huge amount aside from take a cab ride and explore Julius’ surgery. The image of Romana and K9 hailing a cab also feels out of place for some reason and the idea that a 1930s cab driver would accept K9 as some sort of mechanical Sat Nav just didn’t work for me.

I spent a lot of the audio feeling like the script and setting better suited a different TARDIS team – the 6th Doctor and Peri or the 8th Doctor and Charley for example. I think the character beats and situations given to the Doctor and Romana would have suited both of those Doctor/companion pairings far more – can you imagine the 6th Doctor losing his voice, for example. It seems more in tune with that incarnation’s verbosity.

The plot, what there is of it, is wrapped up with a quick wave of the sonic screwdriver and the interview extras betray a difference of opinion where the leads are concerned. Tom Baker opens by praising the complexity of the script whereas Lalla Ward refers to this as a simple tale harking back to her time on TV. I don’t think either is completely correct but it’s harder to agree with Baker’s assertion of it’s complexity than Ward’s description of its simplicity.

I think another issue is that I didn’t really get any sense of time or place. The scenes in the deserted studio where the Doctor and guest character Lulu Hammerstein are threatened by the celluloid monsters is probably the best but beyond that I didn’t have a sense of 1930s Hollywoodland which is a real shame as maybe with a longer story and a larger cast this would have been communicated more effectively.

Although it’s fun to imagine the Doctor, Romana and K9 loitered in England at the end of The English Way of Death and then popped over to Los Angeles after watching one of Loretta’s films at the cinema to seek her out, this was a disappointing visit to this era of history.

I was looking forward to Other Lives coming up in my marathon.  I remember enjoying the story but was also intrigued as I could also remember feeling the whole thing a little inconseqential and wanted to refresh my memory as to what issues, if any, I had with the story.  Thankfully, this turned out to be one minor niggle which is explained by the style of the piece and therefore I can forgive in what is a thoroughly enjoyable story.  There was one other aspect which I had a problem with this time around, but I will explain later what that was.

Other Lives sees the Doctor, Charley and (in his first History of the Universe marathon appearance) C’Rizz arrive at the Great Exhiibition at the Crystal Palace in 1851.  What ensues is, to all intents and purposes, a Doctor Who version of a Charles Dickens’ novel.

Dickens wrote novels which were full of coincidences and Other Lives’ plot hinges on many of these.  It is also chock full of Dickens-style character names – Fazackerly, Dimplesqueeze, Crackles; which help add to the tone of the story.

Other Lives sees the Doctor ‘mistaken’ for a long-lost husband; Charley mistaken for a prostitute and a French diplomat and C’Rizz treated as a freak in a travelling show.  The catalyst for this is the Great Exhibition and two of its visitors, French diplomats – Monsieur and Madame de Roche.  When the TARDIS arrives, the Doctor and Charley set off to explore the Exhibition whilst poor Eutermesan C’Rizz is forced to remain in the TARDIS lest his alien, reptilian looks upset the sensitive Victorians.  An assassination attempt on the French diplomats leads to C’Rizz being forced into a freak show, Charley ending up on the streets of London and the Doctor losing the TARDIS when it dematerialises with the de Roche’s aboard!

Other Lives rattles along at breakneck speed, but it is difficult to shake the feeling that little of actual consequence occurs throughout the story.  The blurb on the CD exclaims “What begins as an attempt to prevent murder quickly becomes a desperate race to avert revolution.” which oversells the ‘Charley and C’Rizz pretend to be French – badly’ storyline somewhat.  It’s all very quick, but it’s also very gentle.  C’Rizz probably gets the rawest deal in the freak show, but even his treatment at the hands of Crackles never feels as dramatic as it could.  This makes the darkest scene of the whole story – C’Rizz’s blinding of Crackles in revenge – seem out of place.  Of course, this scene is more a product of the ongoing character arc for C’Rizz – where he hears voices; is a murderer several times over; and ultimately will descend into psychopathic madness.  Whether that arc ever worked is a discussion for a different review as it is such a minor part of this storyline as to be negligible (although it was brave of Big Finish to at least attempt something a bit different with a companion).  C’Rizz’s anger isn’t helped by Conrad Westmaas’ performance either.  I love Conrad and think when he’s being ‘nice’ C’Rizz he is wonderful and has a great rapport with other characters, particularly India Fisher’s Charley.  When he is required to do psychopathic insane killer stuff, though, he just doesn’t convince.

And that is the one other slightly odd aspect of the story.  It is blatantly obvious from the start that Westmaas and Fisher are playing the Monsier and Madame de Roche and although, in a story hinging on coincidences, you expect some comment to be made that they bear a passing resemblance (as much as a French diplomat can look like an alien from another dimension).  Nothing is made of it until C’Rizz and Charley have to pose as the diplomats and even then it is under copious makeup wigs and costume.  It just feels odd – as if something it going to be made of the fact they are playing both roles and then nothing actually is.

The other performances are brilliant.  Paul McGann and India Fisher are great as the Doctor and Charley and their respective interplays with Francesca Hunt (as Georgina Marlow) and Ron Moody (as Wellington) are immense fun.  Ron Moody is absolutely superb as the Duke of Wellington and every scene featuring him is a joy.  His aide, Fazackerly, is played with oily, jobsworthy petulance by Michael Hobbs and the hilarious scenes where his hidden desire to be some sort of costumier is let loose on C’Rizz add another dimension.  Francesca Hunt embues Georgina with the right balance of desperation, sadness and manipulation as she uses the Doctor to prevent herself and her sons from becoming homeless.  I was under the impression that she was related to India Fisher and thought her voice was incredibly close to India’s in some scenes, but it turns out they are merely stepsisters rather than blood relations so it’s a little odd that occasionally her speech patterns sound so reminiscent of India.  Mike Holloway (of The Tomorrow People fame) plays Crackles well, although for much of the first couple of episodes his role doesn’t amount to much more than touting business for his freak show.

The sound design is very good and the interior of the Crystal Palace hustles and bustles with the energy of all those Victorian visitors.

Historically we have the Duke of Wellington and the Great Exhibition.  References are made to Wellington’s time as Prime Minister, his military career and his nickname, the Iron Duke.

Other Lives is a brilliant audio.  It stands out due to its purely historical nature and they way it borrows from the work of Dickens.  I love the way C’Rizz, Charley and the Doctor just fall into the other lives that , with the disappearance of the TARDIS, seem like they may become their only lives.  I particularly love anything involving Charley and Wellington and it’s a good use of C’Rizz who is a character that some writers seem to struggle to incorporate successfully.

This is what I’m expecting to see a lot more of from Victorian set stories – it’s a period of ‘big names’ (Victoria, Dickens, Brunel); major innovations; cultural impact on the way Britain is now (moral values; Christmas traditions); and mythical legacies which continue to linger (Spring Heeled Jack; Jack the Ripper; Sweeney Todd).  Other Lives gives us a gentler side to Victorian life without the more horrific or seedy aspects we often associate with it (the freak show excepted), but it is by no means less effective and an audio I will happily revisit one day.

The last 8th Doctor novel I read prior to this one was The Shadows of Avalon and I did not enjoy it. With a little trepidation, I approached the next in the sequence, The Fall of Yquatine, wondering how the revelation of Compassion’s transformation into a TARDIS would be developed.

Fortunately, Nick Walters doesn’t do too bad a job. The Fall of Yquatine is a pretty straightforward story. The Doctor, Fitz and Compassion arrive on a planet which is quickly subjected to a horrific attack from space which wipes out the entire world. The Doctor, Fitz and Compassion manage to escape but Fitz is thrown back in time to before the attack, Compassion is trapped in the vortex and the Doctor is with the survivors of the disaster trying to prevent the rest of the local star system falling victim to the same rain of death that fell on Yquatine.

Each character’s thread is well written. Fitz, in particular, gets a lot of good stuff as he struggles to survive knowing what is coming on the planet but unable to do anything to prevent or change it. Fitz being Fitz, he gets involved with a woman which, naturally, goes completely pear-shaped for him.

The Doctor is perfect 8th Doctor – desperately trying to find a peaceful solution to a horrific situation and battling against the petty rivalries and foibles of humans, humanoids, reptilians and spinning, floating crystals.

Compassion, never the easiest companion to like, takes a distinctly dark turn. The Doctor, keen to avoid the Time Lords tracking Compassion down, fits her with a black market randomiser. It causes her immense pain and she is thrown into the vortex. It takes her years to track down Fitz, and even then she attempts to kill him. Eventually reconciling with the Doctor and Fitz, Compassion is actually the solution to the tensions within the star system. However, this does see her use her chameleon circuit to impersonate various other characters. It’s a logical way of using a human TARDIS, but it does raise the question as to if this is a bit of a cop-out. Will this get over-used in future novels? I hope not. It also echoes a previous companion of the Doctor who could impersonate other humans….let’s hope Compassion doesn’t become another Kamelion (because hiding her away inside herself could cause some weird dimensional issues).

The guest characters are a clearly drawn and an interesting bunch – President Vargeld and his girlfriend Arielle in particular. I’m not completely sold on the reptilian Anthuark, the principal villains of the piece at first suspected of raining death on Yquatine until it is found to be an intelligent weapon gone haywire – the Omnethoth. The Anthuark are a bit cliched and reminded me of previous alien races such as the Chelonians, the Ice Warriors and numerous other reptilian humanoids. The Omnethoth – a black cloud of acid – is, ironically, more interesting. I’m a bit of a sucker for disaster movies and the destruction delivered on Yquatine by the Omnethoth is horrific. Unfortunately, it’s also a bit short. I know that sounds a bit morbid, but the scenes of destruction are often my favourite bit of a disaster movie. The Fall of Yquatine is a disaster movie filtered through Doctor Who, but the actual disaster bit is over and done with very quickly, pretty early on in the novel, and the rest spends possibly a bit too long getting to the resolution.

If anything, The Fall of Yquatine is possible a bit too straightforward. Despite Fitz’s throwback in time it is still quite a linear story. There aren’t a huge number of surprises in the plot but it was a pleasant read, even if, at times, it started to feel a little like it was treading water. It changes locations enough to keep it interesting, though, and the characters are engaging enough to make you care. The three regulars are well depicted and all in all, this is a solid novel and certainly one of Walters’ strongest efforts.

The Shadows of Avalon is one of those books that are ‘turning points’ in the Doctor Who range. I had gleaned various titbits of information over the years – I knew it featured the Brigadier; I knew Compassion became a TARDIS; I knew a future incarnation of Romana appeared.

On Gallifrey Base, I was once in a discussion that had involved another fan asserting that Cornell ‘forces’ his ideas of continuity on to everyone else (mainly in terms of a certain renegade Time Lord’s incarnations). This novel did crop up in the discussion but, as I hadn’t read it at that point, I found it difficult to defend. However, I did refute the idea that a writer ‘forces’ their ideas on to Doctor Who. As another poster on GB once wrote, what one irate fan calls ‘forcing ideas’ everyone else calls ‘telling a story’.

But then I read The Shadows of Avalon and whilst I still don’t subscribe to the ‘forcing’ terminology, I do sort of see where the other side of the debate may be coming from.

I didn’t enjoy The Shadows of Avalon very much. It took me a very long time to read it because I wasn’t particularly inspired to pick it up of an evening. When I did read it, it felt like it was going around and around in circles with nothing much actually happening of interest meaning I rarely read more than one chapter at a time because I was getting quite bored.

The story involves a gateway opening to another dimension. A dimension where magic and dragons are real and that was set up by Time Lords during the Roman invasion of the Celts. The descendants of the Celts who escaped to this dimension live there still but, when the rift between their world and ours opens, are forced into a war.

The TARDIS is destroyed by the rift opening leaving the Doctor, Fitz and Compassion stranded there. The Brigadier arrives as a UNIT representative. He is mourning the death of Doris. Odd things are happening to Compassion. And there are Silurians in this dimension too!
There is a lot in this which could have been fun to read about. Unfortunately, Cornell seems obsessed with exploring the Brigadier’s grief. And it goes on and on and on. The Brigadier is suicidal; determined to join Doris in death. All of this is awful to read because its terribly depressing.
The war between the Celtic tribes, the Silurian tribes and the UNIT humans is interminable and dull.

Unfortunately, these two aspects dominate the book pushing the three regulars to the sidelines. I really like the 8th Doctor and he is usually a joy to read in print, even in the less engaging books that I’ve recently read, such as Frontier Worlds and Parallel 59. Here though, with the emphasis squarely on the Brigadier, his character isn’t given enough to do. There is a very artificial divide formed between the Doctor and Brigadier over the war where I never quite understood why they had fallen out as friends.

Compassion is turning into a TARDIS – now apparently this has been foreshadowed in the previous books but it has been so subtle that aside from a bit of ‘something odd is happening to Compassion’ I didn’t really have an inkling from the text that anything was happening. In this book, though, it means that Compassion acts out of character for the most part and never really feels like she is doing anything.

Fitz fares even worse and does practically nothing of note throughout the entire book. This is a crying shame because Fitz is one of my favourite companions, particularly in the books.

Cornell is obsessed with telling us about the Brigadier and how much he misses his wife. The point is laboured over and over again. It got to the stage where I didn’t actually like the Brigadier any more and his sudden change of heart towards the end of the book really didn’t affect me the way I think it should have.

There are some nice touches. The Celtic court involves lots of echoes of Time Lord society. There is fun to be had with two Time Lord agents who are stirring up the war and intend on forcing Compassion into becoming a TARDIS. The character of Queen Mab is good and, as much as I came to loathe what was being done with the Brigadier, her interplay with him was quite fun.

The climax is also quite entertaining as it sees the Doctor become more proactive, the Brigadier is out of the doldrums and there is some exciting action confronting the Time Lord agents. But this was too little, too late.  And then Romana turns up. Although I knew she featured in the book, I had, by this point, forgotten she was supposed to be in it. I was surprised by her eleventh hour appearance and then disappointed when I realised she was there for little more than exposition about Compassion’s transformation and to push the Doctor off on to his next story arc – escaping with Fitz aboard Compassion – now a fully-fledged TARDIS. Romana could have been absolutely any other Time Lord as the fact she is Romana, albeit a future incarnation, has no bearing on her role in the story.

One interesting aspect was the depiction of the Silurians. About halfway through the book I realised I had been imagining them as the new series versions rather than the classic, which is of course what Cornell would have had in mind when writing the book, published as it was, long before the new series appeared. Something about the way they were written seemed more tuned to the sleeker, more feminine version of the Silurians.

By the time I finished this book I was wondering what the point of it was. It’s examination of grief was heavy-handed and repetitive. It’s use of the regulars was appalling and it’s central plot was incredibly dull. It’s only real purpose to the ongoing narrative of the novels was to facilitate Compassion’s final transformation.

The run of stories leading up to this in the EDAs have been a bit lacklustre but have generally had a plot which has kept my attention. This is easily one of my least favourite Doctor Who novels ever because it’s plot is dull; it spends far too much time on the Brigadier’s grief and interminable battle scenes; and the regulars are side-lined far too much.

A huge disappointment.

This Sixth Doctor and Mel audio is a story I don’t remember enjoying much on first listen.  I remembered that Mel was thrown back in time and that the Doctor and her uncle went to rescue her, but not much more.  A second listen has made me appreciate it a little more but, as a whole, it still lacks something.

The Doctor and Mel visit Mel’s uncle, John Hallam at the National Foundation for Scientific Research (which is based in the family home of Hallam Hall).  Through a combination of the TARDIS’ telepathic circuits and a special metal alloy created by John, Mel is thrown back in time to the 18th century.  Dazed and confused, she ends up spending six months shut away in the attic of Henry Hallam, her ancestor, until the Doctor and John finally catch up with her.

At the core of this story is a time paradox.  Mel learns of the existence of the mysterious Eleanor Hallam from her uncle’s research into their family history.  On being sent back in time, Mel becomes Eleanor Hallam and, for a paradox to be avoided, the Doctor believes, initially, that Mel must live out her days in the 18th century until Eleanor’s reported death in 1811.

However, unlike Evelyn’s family-related time paradox in The Marian Conspiracy, Catch-1782 is a far more gentle and leisurely affair.  Central to the story is the idea of the ‘mad woman in the attic’ – a common 18th/19th century element of fiction (Jane Eyre, for example).  This is history at a family, personal level.  In a way, this is family genealogy written as a vaguely science fiction adventure.  Mel gets to meet her ancestor and solve a family mystery, whilst becoming part of her family’s murky past herself.

Overall, it is an enjoyable story but it lacks urgency and pace.  The cliffhangers are oddly placed (something which I sometimes find with Big Finish) and there are some frustrating character beats (most notably, the Doctor discovering Mel, who has just suffered six months of drug-induced confusion and is incredibly distraught, and then leaving her locked in the attic whilst he goes and sorts stuff out).

The performances are all very good; particularly Keith (Time-Flight) Drinkel as Henry Hallam – a sensitive and subtle portrayal of a man sent mad with grief and desperately clinging on to any scrap of love he can manufacture for himself.  Derek Benfield is a lot of fun as John Hallam and complements the Doctor nicely as his temporary companion in Mel’s absence.

This is another audio too which cements Bonnie Langford’s ability as an actress.  I’ve always considered Langford unfairly maligned by fandom.  Stereotyped by fans and scriptwriters alike in the 1980s, Big Finish have allowed her to prove she is a consummate actress and capable of delivering a believable character (particularly in this story where she is called upon to deliver some pretty extreme emotions.  At no point does her performance seem strained or over the top). What many fans never seemed to understand is that the ‘pantomime’ aspect they were so scared by (which isn’t really present in Doctor Who truly) reflects a strand of theatre which is incredibly hard work and to be good actually requires actors to be at the top of their game – something evidenced by the recent flurry of names such as Sir Ian McKellen stepping into pantomime during the Christmas season.

Of course, Catch-1782 is as far from pantomime as it is possible to get (have a listen to The One Doctor if you want to hear pantomimic Doctor Who done incredibly well) but I am eternally grateful to Big Finish for rehabilitating Melanie and Bonnie in the eyes of fandom – and to Bonnie for agreeing to return to the role.

One thing about Catch-1782 I find odd is the cover of the CD.  I’ve never been able to work out what/who the figure standing is supposed to be.  Even on second listen I’m not entirely sure.  I assume it is meant to be a ghostly version of ‘Eleanor Hallam’ who’s voice is heard in Episode 1 (although this bleed-through from the past is never really explained later in the story, it’s a reasonable assumption that this is Mel crying out for help after being stranded in 1782).  That said, the open locket with images of the Doctor and Mel is a nice reflection of the romantic angle although maybe a picture of Henry Hallam instead of the Doctor would have made more sense, story-wise.

We continue our journey through the universe with the television adventure, The Masque of Mandragora. Always a favourite of mine, I was looking forward to watching my newly purchased DVD of this serial and, fortunately, I wasn’t disappointed and didn’t have a case of the memory cheating me.

That said, one thing I’ve noticed in this marathon is that I’m paying less attention to the TV stories I am rewatching than the audio or comic strips. I think the familiarity is, if not breeding contempt, certainly allowing for a slightly lacksadaisical approach to viewing the stories. I made a concerted effort to watch Episode 4 without distraction having only half watched the previous 3 instalments (doing work, using my laptop etc). I also watched the final episode with my 3 year old son. He is very much a David Tennant fan (my Doctor, as he says) and hasn’t really seen any classic Who but did seem engrossed in Mandragora’s attempt to take control of Renaissance Italy. He was perturbed however at the lack of sonic screwdriver use.

The Masque of Mandragora starts strongly with the introduction of the ‘secondary’ control room (although the ‘Come to think of it, this was the old one’ line from the Doctor has always jarred with the ‘anal-fan’ me as Tom Baker picks up a distinctly Pertwee-style ruffled shirt suggesting that this was a console room used by the earlier Doctor which of course, they didn’t. Then again, maybe at some point prior to this story, the Doctor travelled with Jimi Hendrix and the shirt belongs to him.)

This wood-panelled delight is the first in a series of strong sets for the entire story. Renaissance Italy is recreated with painstaking detail (Barry Newbery used a contemporary painting for the design of Hieronymous’ study) and the studio work is complemented by the location work carried out at Portmerion.

Portmerion is a place I visited many years ago and very excited I was too to be visiting the location of this story. It was a family holiday which also saw us take in the long gone Llangollen Doctor Who Exhibition, the home of Dapol, and so was a bit of a Doctor Who pilgrimage for me (much to my family’s dismay I’m sure). It is a beautiful, if slightly odd place. When I visited I hadn’t yet seen The Prisoner (although I have done since) but did immediately recognise some of the key Mandragora locations – particularly the balcony Federico stands on for the Doctor’s near-beheading and the passageway Guiliano leads the Doctor and Sarah down on their way to the catacombs. Somewhere I have photos of me standing in these places.

Talking of the Doctor’s execution, it occurred to me whilst watching this scene that this might be the first occasion, in my marathon, of the Doctor facing execution by beheading, but then on checking my spreadsheet, I realised he faced a similar fate in The Time Warrior, at the hands of Irongron and Linx’s robot. With the 1666 set The Visitation soon to crop up, the Fifth Doctor’s line of ‘not again’ at the close of Part 2 (I think) will have extra irony. I’ll be keeping an ‘execution watch’ throughout the rest of this part of the marathon as we travel through periods of time when beheading was all the rage for disposing of unwanted and troublesome people.

The performances in The Masque of Mandragora are uniformly superb if, in the cases of Count Federico and Hieronymous, a little fruity. Jon Laurimore and Norman Jones are clearly having a whale of time plotting and scheming (and Laurimore features in the DVD extras commenting on what fun it was to play such a melodramatic villain). Gareth Armstrong and Tim Piggot-Smith present believable ‘goodies’ even if Giuiliano sometimes comes across a little wet. The relationship between the two has been retconned by 21st century fandom into a gay affair, but the on screen performances and dialogue don’t really suggest anything more than a particularly close bromance. Indeed, the novelisation (of which more later) makes pains to suggest an attraction between Giuiliano and Sarah.

Accompanying the superb sets and performances are a plethora of beautiful costumes. There are a large number of extras in this story, both on location and in studio and they are decked out in a variety of colourful and intricate doublets, dresses, tights, masks, glorious hats and bewigged left, right and centre. Particularly effective is the scarlet and gold livery of the various soldiers.

Historically, there is little that is grounded in fact – there are no true historical characters (Leonardo da Vinci is mentioned but never seen) or events – but set, as this story is, at the dawn of scientific reasoning, much is made of the conflict between the superstition and science. Hieronymous’ religious fervour and astrological predictions contrasts with Giuiliano’s passion for science, with Federico’s political ambitions providing a third strand to an intelligent script. There is also the presence of a Roman cult, but the Cult of Demnos is, as far as I can tell, a work of fiction for the purposes of the story.

The eponymous masque in episode 4 is a lot of fun (until the killing starts) and, although restricted slightly by the studio set, has some wonderful costumes and masks along with the entertainers, music and dancing (although Elisabeth Sladen overacts Sarah’s reactions to the fire-eater/jester a little, as if Sarah would never have seen such a spectacle before). The novelisation also describes an enormous feast.

Contrasting with this opulence, is a streak of violence which strikes the audience from the very first scene set in San Martino. The slaughter of the peasants by Federico’s soldiers is very violent and quite gruesome and the Helix-destroyed bodies are only saved from being stomach-churning by being blue (another detail the novelisation changes allowing the reader/listener’s mind to envision even more horrific injuries). The torture of Marco is also quite harrowing, thanks to the performance of Tim Piggot-Smith – as they don’t actually show any torture on screen. (The novelisation has Marco, and latterly Giuiliano, Sarah and the Doctor tied to racks as oppose to hung from the walls as they are on screen).

One minor niggle I have about the story is the section involving the hypnosis of Sarah by Hieronymous and the Doctor’s subsequent explanation for how he knew something was up.

Sarah asking how she understood Italian always struck me as a blooming good question. Surely any one of the companions (and for that matter the viewing audience) before or since would have asked the question (and indeed Rose does in the ‘new’ series – I say new, but of course The End of the World was shown SEVEN years ago!). I can only presume that the ‘Time Lord gift’ the Doctor mentions not only allows his companions to understand any language but also prevents them from being aware of this influence. Otherwise I can see no reason why Sarah asking the question would immediately allow the Doctor to realise she was under the ‘fluence’.

The only other issue I have with the story is the Mandragora Helix itself. I find non-corporeal entities as antagonists a little frustrating. Hieronymous, especially in his golden mask, makes a suitably chilling mouthpiece for the Helix and, fortunately, we also have the scenery-chewing villainy of Count Federico, but I can’t shake the vague feeling that a solid, central threat is missing from the story. It’s interesting that, although the Mandragora Helix was never revisited on television, despite the Doctor’s revelation that it would cause trouble for the late 20th century, it has been featured in the Seventh Doctor/Ace/UNIT comic strip, The Mark of Mandragora; the Tenth Doctor/Donna/Wilf novel Beautiful Chaos; and, apparently, there is strong implication that the entity defeated in the First Doctor/Ian/Barbara/Vicki PDA, The Eleventh Tiger, is the Helix (although this contradicts the Doctor’s assertion of trouble in the late 20th century, set as it is, in the 19th century). I haven’t yet read the two novels, but the comic strip I remember being a lot of fun and a good extrapolation from the events of this story.

All through this review I have mentioned the novelisation. In the last few years, Audiogo have been releasing audiobook readings of the Target novelisations. I own a complete collection of the novelisations themselves and, for many of my early teenage years, read these magical adventures in a world of Doctor Who which wasn’t yet available to me on VHS or DVD. The Masque of Mandragora was one I do remember reading, mainly because of the rather odd cover showing the Doctor’s face surrounded by Hieronymous’ golden mask. I haven’t been purchasing the audiobook versions as I didn’t really see the point of having a third hand version of a story I could watch on DVD/VHS. Also, I find single voice audio quite hard to listen to as I find my mind wanders very easily (especially if it is one with little or no additional music or sound effects). But, my local library had a copy of The Masque of Mandragora audio book read by Tim Piggot-Smith and so, for the purposes of this marathon, I thought I’d give it a go.

I’m not going to be rushing out to buy the back catalogue of these releases, but it did hold my attention a little more than I thought it would. That said, by Disc 4 I was really just carrying on through a desire to finish it now I had started rather than a passion to hear the story itself. Tim Piggot-Smith does a very good reading and his voices for some of the characters are very similar to their television counterparts. I particularly liked his Hieronymous and actually his Doctor did, in some parts, sound remarkably like Tom Baker. It goes without saying that his Marco was pretty good too! The music and sound effects added another layer to the story but whilst it was interesting to hear the differences between the novelisation and the television serial (the TARDIS lands in a vineyard for example ( detail from the original script), and Marco is consistently described as being blond rather than Tim Piggot-Smith’s natural redhead), I can read the book itself for that and there wasn’t anything about the audiobook that made me feel it was an indispensable addition to the enormous world of Doctor Who merchandise. I appreciate that these are very well produced but I think I’ll be sticking to Big Finish’s original audio adventures and leave the audiobooks to the odd visit to the library (probably to coincide with future TV stories of my marathon – I know my local library has copies of The Dinosaur Invasion, The Green Death, Pyramids of Mars and the Giant Robot at least).

The Masque of Mandragora was an enjoyable, and fairly unique, trip to not just another time but another part of the world. Doctor Who didn’t do sumptuousness like this often, but when it did, it did it very well indeed.

The last of these I read, as part of my one-book-per-Doctor 50th Anniversary marathon, was Frontier Worlds.  Set on an alien world with corporate goings-on and dark secrets hidden by those in power, it wasn’t a book I fell in love with.  Parallel 59 is a very similar story and I had a very similar reaction to it.

It sees the Doctor, Fitz and Compassion embroiled in the political machinations of yet another bland planet.  The one interesting aspect, involving Fitz, is ruined somewhat by the twist of where he is, and the Doctor and Compassion’s adventures involve a whole collection of indistinguishable characters who I couldn’t muster any affection for because I spent half of the book not understanding who was who, how they knew each other, what they did on the planet and what their motivations were for their actions.

Let’s be positive for a moment.  The Doctor and Compassion are well-written, although I still find it hard to warm to Compassion as a companion (although that is kind of the point, I am aware – she isn’t supposed to be particularly likeable, sort of like a female version of Turlough).  She resents the fact she is coming to rely on the Doctor and there is some (very subtle) foreshadowing of what will happen to her in the next book, The Shadows of Avalon.  The Doctor feels like Paul McGann/the 8th Doctor and however much I like or dislike any particular EDA I don’t think I’ve ever felt the various authors haven’t captured the essence of the 8th Doctor.

By far my favourite part of the book were the sections involving Fitz.  Fitz is separated from the Doctor and Compassion even before the book has started and awakes to find himself in a place called Mechta.  Here, he begins to establish relationships with a whole range of people – mainly women – and becomes involved in a rebellion.  Mechta is a very closely controlled place with any disturbances quietly dealt with by the Correctioners.  As Fitz’s segments of the story play out, he (and the reader) becomes increasingly uneasy about what exactly is going on in Mechta.  People are awaiting return to their home colony (even though they cannot actually remember it) and when their papers arrive they are taken away in a red car.

It transpires that the whole world of Mechta is a shared illusion and these people, including Fitz, are floating in space, in capsules.  This is actually a bit of an anti-climax as I was rather enjoying the ‘1984-ish’ aspects of this world.  To find out none of it is real undercut the drama somewhat, although the final part where Fitz thinks he is escaping a dying world by hitching a ride behind a red car is quite tense as, by this time, the reader knows that being ‘red-carred’ is actually when the people in the capsules die.

Fitz is easily my favourite 8th Doctor book companion so far, after the rather formless Sam and the currently difficult to love Compassion, and he ranks highly in my ‘expanded universe’ companion rankings along with Benny, Chris Cwej, Evelyn and Charley.  Despite a bit of a damp squib ending to his story in this book, he still gives a lot of value for money.

The rest of the story, though, as I’ve said, is populated with a bunch of characters I was continually confused by.  Working out who was who was very difficult as well as how they were linked to each other.  When one character eventually deposes another in command, or when a different character turns out to sort of be working with the rebels only she isn’t, and when another character who seemed to be in relationships with two other characters, I just spent the book wondering why I should be caring about a rather faceless bunch.

The climax also involves an alien menace suddenly arriving from somewhere else (literally with about 4 short chapters to go in the book).  The characters of Skale, the planet this is set on, had referred to Haltiel (the menace that arrives) throughout the book but the writing had made me assume they were a made up menace which was all part of the political machinations of the characters on the planet.  Consequently, when they did turn up, in a fairly faceless way, I wasn’t that bothered when they started killing people on the planet below (especially as a large chunk of their victims were from an area of the planet that the story had never referenced or visited in the narrative).

The terrible irony of my not enjoying very much of this book is that I have an autographed copy.  I went through a period in my teens and twenties where I attended a lot of signings and conventions.  As a result, I have copious autographs from actors, directors and writers (among many others).  One such writer is Stephen Cole.  He has signed my copy of Parallel 59 with legend ‘Natalie wrote the bits you didn’t like’.  Eek!  By that logic, Stephen wrote the Mechta bits and Natalie wrote everything else (which is easily at least two thirds of the book).  He really was tempting fate with that comment!

I once had a routine for how to choose the books I would read.  I alternated between an EDA, a PDA, a New Series book and a Bernice Summerfield New Adventure (this was after I had completed the New Adventure and Missing Adventures many moons ago).   I actually had to look online to check which book came before Frontier Worlds in the order (The Taking of Planet 5) because I couldn’t remember the last one I had read.  So picking up Frontier Worlds was a slightly strange experience as, unlike with the Past Doctor novels, there are running themes and character arcs which are developed across the various novels.  The principal one of the run of books Frontier Worlds is part of is all about Compassion.  Fortunately, as I’m reading this book in isolation, the themes are not too strong and it doesn’t lead to a confusing read.

The Doctor, Fitz and Compassion arrive on the planet Drebnar and become embroiled in scientific experiments and company politics stemming from an alien plant called a Raab.  It has landed on the planet and is stranded.  The locals are exploiting the plant and using it to improve crops, defeat the competition and ultimately change their own DNA.  Fitz and Compassion manage to infiltrate one of the main companies, Frontier Worlds, whilst the Doctor flits between them and their rivals, Reddenblak, working behind the scenes to expose the truth.

I found Frontier Worlds to be a bit of a slog.  It isn’t badly written, far from it, and there are some good authorial choices and exciting set pieces, but I found I was taking a long time to finish the book and my lasting impression was one of drabness and a little lack of vitality.  I think part of the issue may be with the character of Compassion.  She is, in contrast to her name, so dispassionate about events that I found it difficult to care.  Fitz, on the other hand, is a character I have liked in many of his previous novels.  He has some fun in this book, working under the pseudonym Frank Sinatra, but ultimately he spends a little too much of the book reacting to Compassion and trying to understand her, which is a fairly fruitless task.  When he isn’t doing this, he is agonising over his relationship with a local woman, who is then murdered, which leads to him agonising over her death instead.  The Doctor is very much in the background of the book and, as I rather like the novel 8th Doctor, this was a little frustrating.

There are some great set pieces though: Compassion and Fitz’s trek through the jungle; the Doctor crashing a flyer into the corporation building’s foyer and then confronting the villain of the piece whilst the employees look on aghast; Compassion’s virtual rifle through the company’s files; the Doctor’s various encounters with a robot defending a weather control platform.

I also liked the conceit of Fitz recounting the story.  Initially it just seems to be Anghelides choice to write in the first person which is fine, and not unusual in these novels, particularly for the character of Fitz for whom we often get an internal monologue.  But here, Anghelides gives it a little twist when, in the last third of the book, we find that all the first person point of view from Fitz is him recounting to the Doctor what has happened whilst the Doctor has been away doing his bit to solve the mystery.  It’s a clever conceit and did make me smile.

The parallels between this story and The Seeds of Doom are quite apparent, possibly too much so, but Anghelides doesn’t dwell too much on the body horror aspect of humans becoming like plants, and spends more time on the internal and external company politics.  Maybe this is another reason why I find it all a little uninvolving as politics, of any kind, tends to leave me cold.

Not the greatest of the books I’ve read but a solid adventure with enough happening to hold the interest.  I’ll be interested to see how Compassion’s character is developed (I know what is coming) but as a character I still find her distance and lack of empathy a little irritating and frustrating.