Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, Jemma Churchill, Andy Secombe, Allison McKenzie, Janet Henfrey, Jessica Knappett, Paul Panting, Anjella Mackintosh, Phil Mulryne, Johnny Gibbon, Toby Fountain.

There are times when Big Finish pulls something rather terrific out of the bag and what the listener hears is the culmination of endeavour, love and devotion mixed with the art of excellent story telling. There are many full length stories that fall into the category, some with so much ease that they feel as though the writer has had the moment of divine interpretation placed between their ears. On the rarer occasion, it falls to four separate writers to bring out the special in the speciality in providing a voice for the much loved Time Lord.

The four short stories, one shot episodes in audio form that make up Breaking Bubbles and Other Stories are amongst the very best that Big Finish have offered in this format and the only galling thing for the fan base would be that at least three of the tales would have made excellent full length two hours dramas.

Colin Baker is always a delight to listen to; regardless of whether it is in public at one of the many conventions he attends, on stage, where his distinctive voice fills the auditorium with resonance, meaning and affection or indeed for Big Finish.  Big Finish, as has been mentioned many times before, has allowed Mr. Baker to become the Doctor that the B.B.C. shamefully prevented him from being. His gravitas in the role is one of the main highs in the monthly output provided by the audio drama company and this remarkable state of affairs is no different in Breaking Bubbles and Other Stories. Four great tales in which Colin Baker is reunited with Nicola Bryant, four tales that only serves notice that the way the script writers and the B.B.C. ended both characters time on the programme still leaves a raw undisguised feeling of dread that such an abomination could happen again.

Four stories in which The Doctor is confronted by the decision in which to help a political prisoner, the effects of living through scattered moments of his own chronological time, the outstanding and Peri led Agatha Christie like look at murder in an all-women’s University college at the outbreak of World War Two and the finest homage to The Curious Incident of the Dog in The Night-Time imaginable.

There is something very heartening about being one of Colin’s companions, he instinctively seems to bring out the very best in all the companions but this seems especially true in the hands of Nicola Bryant’s Peri, who alongside Evelyn Smythe, played by the redoubtable Maggie Stables and Charley Pollard, played by the tremendous India Fisher. It is not just the companions who come so much to life being paired opposite the most colourful of Doctors, even Davros, played by the incredible talent of Terry Malloy rises even higher in his company and perhaps arguably becomes even more of frightening proposition to deal with in the audience’s imagination.

It is with Nicola Bryant’s Peri Brown though that the sixth Doctor is most keenly associated with and in these short stories, that relationship is given the utmost respectful treatment by L. M. Myles, the superb Mark Ravenhill, Una McCormack and Nev Fountain.

Breaking Bubbles, Of Chaos Time , the outstanding An Eye For Murder and The Curious incident of the Doctor in the Night Time all add to the outstanding work that places Colin Baker’s interpretation of the Doctor  alongside that of Paul McGann’s incarnation.  Doctor Who: Breaking Bubbles and Other Stories is a set of stories that stoke the fire of inspiration and inventive prose that should be in the collection and much cared for.

Doctor Who: Breaking Bubbles and Other Stories is available to purchase from Worlds Apart on Lime Street, Liverpool.

Ian D. Hall