Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Peter Capaldi, Alex Kingston, Matt Lucas, Greg Davis, Philip Rhys, Rowan Polonski, Robert Curtis, Anthony Cozens, Chris Lew Kim Hoi, Nicolle Smarrt,
Christmas is a time for surprises, for meeting up with those dearest to you and for sharing a laugh or two, perhaps even share an escapade and a kiss with; thankfully The Doctor is attendance to make all these happen, after all he has a lot to lose as one of The Husbands of River Song.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Christopher Benjamin, Trevor Baxter, Louise Jameson, Conrad Asquith, Lisa Bowerman, Elizabeth Counsell, Matt Addis, Christopher Beeny, Mike Grady, Colin Baker.
After the final events of Series Three’s Chronoclasm, it would be understandable if Jago and Litefoot, Victorian London’s pre-eminent Detectives, were to think of taking it easy for a while. The nerves shattered, the lives of those around them changed and their long standing friendship with Leela pushed to a limit which thankfully did not break, who would blame them for getting back to the normality of London life?
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Hermione Norris, Samuel Anderson, Ellis George, Tony Osoba, Phil Nice, Christopher Dane.
Space for so long has been a conversation of banality to many, the interest in what lurks, glides and happens beyond our own atmospheric layer is not as awed as it was during the great Space Race or during the early use of the Space Shuttle programme. The Sun and The Moon seemingly as remote now as it was to ancestors who prayed to them as deities.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Samuel Anderson, Remi Gooding, Robert Goodman, Kiran Shah.
Listen, the biggest secret of them all, the one that is always hidden in plain sight but never quite shows itself; does the Doctor know fear?
It is a question that seems to be skirted round, passed over or answered in such a way that it makes the very action in which The Doctor resolves the problem is one of false bravado. It makes the loyal viewer, the unremitting fan, feel better about themselves because no matter what The Doctor has the answers.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Geoffrey Beevers, Michael Keating, Gareth Armstrong, Nicholas Briggs.
If everything you knew about your life turned out to be a lie, how would you feel? If you had found out that all you held dear about yourself, the untold truths, the minutest detail of your very existence an elaborate lie placed in your mind by a master hypnotist who had somehow conveniently not reversed the flow of information to you and in doing so had turned you into a being so malevolent, would it be better to find out the truth?
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Cast: Tom Baker, Mary Tamm, John Leeson, David Warner, Toby Hadoke, Dominic Mafham, Jane Slavin, Nicholas Briggs, John Dorney.
It is rightly considered one of the classic moments of Doctor Who ever; faced with the opportunity to eradicate the evil of The Daleks forever, Tom Baker’s incarnation of the man from Gallifrey chose to set them back 1,000 years in their evolution rather than commit genocide of the most hated race and feared in the universe.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Christopher Benjamin, Trevor Baxter, Lisa Bowerman, Janet Henfrey, Lex Shrapnel, John Ainsworth.
The third instalment of Jago and Litefoot’s adventures in the dark world that shrouds the Victorian era takes a spiritual turn in the Jonathan Morris’ The Spirit Trap.
This penultimate story of Series One sees a slightly reduced cast from the previous two episodes tackle the Victorian world of spiritualism that has been captured in everything from romance, crime, even Victorian Lesbian drama and whilst not hitting the heights of the opening couple of tales in which Gordon Henry Jago and Professor George Litefoot have become institutions to the world of Doctor Who, is an interesting take on the field and one that is enjoyable and worth being involved in the initial series.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Mark Strickson, Sarah Sutton, Anthony Howell, Abigail Thaw, Rachel Atkins, Catherine Grose, Kieran Bew, Stephen Critchlow.
Not everything gets recorded in time, somewhere along the line events get muddled, facts get lost in rumour and legend and gaps appear in history. These gaps, although maddening for academics that have to hazard a guess at what could have happened to certain individuals in antiquity are for writers of science fiction and historical dramas pure gold. The journey they can take people on makes for a fascinating story and in Paul Magrs tale of long forgotten Queens of pre-English History, the absorbing The Lady Of Mercia, Big Finish’s Doctor Who series does what the series does best, it gets deep down and dirty in the historical stories of Humankind.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Matt Smith, Jenna-Louise Coleman, Warwick Davis, Tazmin Outhwaite, Eve de Leon Allen, Kassius Carey Johnson, Jason Watkins, Eloise Joseph, Will Merrick, Clavin Dean, Zahra Ahmadi, Aiden Cook, Nicolas Briggs.
The Doctor is never better when he is the only lunatic in the room, the mad man completely outside of his box fighting against himself, for there really can be no victor, the Timelord is not triumphant and in the penultimate episode of the series, Nightmare in Silver, that rage that he keeps well hidden is finally able to come out and play for a while.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Matt Smith, Jenna-Louise Coleman, Dame Diana Rigg, Rachael Stirling, Neve McIntosh, Cartrin Stewart, Dan Starkey, Eve de Leon Allen, Kassius Carey Johnson, Brendan Patricks, Graham Turner, Olivia Vinall, Michelle Tate, Scott Stevenson, Jack Oliver Hudson.
The Crimson Horror, the type of tale that would make readers of Victorian melodrama and penny dreadful salivates with the expectation of a reader enjoying Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for the first time, transpose this expectation to the type of Doctor Who-lite story, add a splash of immense acting royalty from Dame Diana Rigg and her superb daughter, the incredible Rachael Stirling and it becomes not just Doctor-lite but extra-lite, no additives, no fat, just a wonderful story that was edging on the macabre that writer Mark Gatiss obviously enjoys.