Tag Archives: John Dorney

Big Finish. Jenny – The Doctor’s Daughter. Audio Drama Box Set Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Georgia Tennant, Adèle Anderson, Sean Biggerstaff, Anthony Calf, Silas Carson, Siân Phillips, Clare Corbett, Paul Courtenay, Olivia Darnley, John Dorney, Sara Houghton, Arina II, Rosalyn Landor, Pik-Sen Lim, Stuart Milligan, Siân Phillips, Arabella Weir, Sarah Woodward.

Like father, like daughter. One though has the advantage of having had all of time and space to explore for thousands of years, the other, well she has barely scratched the surface of her own place in the Universe, let alone following on in her dad’s footsteps and carrying on the family tradition.

Doctor Who: The War Doctor Begins – Forged In Fire. Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Jonathon Carley, Adele Anderson, Anna Andresen, Nicholas Briggs, John Dorney, Amy Downham, Helen Goldwyn, Chris Jarman, Marilyn Nnadebe, Veronica Roberts, Tracy Wiles, Kit Young.

We cannot judge the actions of the final act of a person’s life unless we truly understand what led them to the battle, the rage of conflict in the first place.

Doctor Who: The Labyrinth Of Buda Castle. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Tom Baker, Lalla Ward, Kate Bracen, Mark Bonnar, Peter Barrett, John Dorney, Anjella Mackintosh.

The key is information, how we translate the data supplied is down to the individual and how it is acted upon could arguably seen as a form of control. Information and secrets, the ingredients to winning a war, without either in your arsenal the battle is surely lost and as the Doctor prepares to fight a foe who makes much of how information is gathered, then the web he finds himself in under the foundations of Buda’s grand castle is enough to bite deep into the resolve of unravelling the facts of The Labyrinth Of Buda Castle.

Doctor Who: Dark Eyes 4. Audio Drama Review, Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Paul McGann, Nicola Walker, Barnaby Kay, Beth Chalmers, Charlie Norfolk, Derek Hutchinson, Dan Starkey, Camilla Power, John Dorney, Rachael Stirling, Alex Wyndham, Blake Ritson, Nicholas Briggs, Alex MacQueen, Sorcha Cusack, Susannah Harker, David Sibley.

Arguably one of the most involved, most deliberately, and it has to be said wonderfully elaborately written endeavours undertaken by Big Finish finally comes to an end as the saga of Dark Eyes sees the Eighth incarnation battle not only the Eminence, The Master and the Daleks but also Time itself. It is a battle that sees the foreshadowing of what is to come, of the ache that will grip the Doctor as the Time War sets out to destroy all and in which the very soul of the Time Lord is challenged.

Terry Nation’s Survivors: Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Caroline Langrishe, John Banks, Chase Masterson, Terry Malloy, Adrian Lukis, Camilla Power, Louise Jameson, Sinead Keenan, San Shella, Lucy Fleming, Ian McCulloch, Carolyn Seymour, Phil Mulryne, John Dorney, Lisa Bowerman.

For those that remember with fondness or indeed with a tightening grip of fear Terry Nation’s 1970s apocalyptic serial Survivors, the frightening aspect of a civilisation falling apart very quickly is one that is perhaps the most powerful and enduring images of its time and is probably matched only by the television film Threads a decade later. To see it happen on screen as part of a drama is one thing but to have it re-recorded by audio drama specialists Big Finish, already the guardians of the legacy of Doctor Who in audio form as well as establishing a great following with their episodes of the likes of The Avengers, Sapphire and Steel and Blake’s 7, is quite a different proposition.

The Avengers: The Lost Episodes Volume 2. Ashes Of Roses. Audio Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Anthony Howell, Julian Wadham, Lucy Briggs-Owen, Terry Malloy, Rachel Atkins, Emily Woodward, Nicholas Briggs, Derek Carlyle, Anna Lukis, Penelope Rawlins, Richard Hope, Dan Starkey, Cameron Stewart, Francesca Hunt, Martin Hudson.

 

Who could ever foresee that hairdressing was such a risky business?  The shampoo set that could go wrong, the gossip that turns to grudges being held, the heated dryer rigged to give a nasty surprise, arson! All these are par for the course as John Steed and Dr. David Keel return for the second set of classic The Avengers stories to be adapted by John Dorney and Big Finish starting with the tale, Ashes Of Roses.

Doctor Who: Revenge Of The Swarm. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, Philip Olivier, John Leeson, Mandi Symonds, Maggie Service, John Heffernan, Phyllida Nash, Siobhan Redmond, John Dorney, Paul Panting.

Revenge is a dish best served cold, preferably being poured from a bucket with ice cubes the size of Norwegian glacier formation and over the head of someone you don’t like whilst they are sunbathing. Failing that, to be mastered in the form that Science Fiction adores, with plenty of back story and with an enemy that doesn’t quite fit the top echelons of master criminals or war mongering civilisations.

Doctor Who: The Crooked Man. Audio Drama Review, 3.3. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Sarah Smart, Robin Pearce, Richard Earl, Neil Stuke, Lizzie Roper.

Whoever said reading was good for you had never came across the fear that radiates the characters in novels that never get read, the terror that appears when The Crooked Man comes a calling.

Doctor Who: Dark Eyes 2. Audio Drama Review, Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Paul McGann, Nicola Walker, Ruth Bradley, Alex Macqueen, Chris Porter, David Dobson, John Dorney, Nicholas Briggs, Brian Shelley, Ian Brooker, Adrian Mackinder, Andrew Knott, Joseph Radcliffe, David Silby, Jo Castleton, Ian Hallard, Jacqueline King, Natalie Burt, David Shaw-Parker, Frank Skinner.

Doctor Who: 1963: The Assassination Games. Audio Drama 180. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, Simon Williams, Pamela Salem, Karen Gledhill, Hugh Ross, Oliver Cotton, Gemma Saunders, Gerald Kyd, Alisdair Simpson.

No matter where The Doctor goes in time and space, it seems there is a small part of that is drawn like a moth to wibbly wobbly ball of flame to the events circulating around the year 1963. Of course it is a natural time period to write about as well as being the birth of the television programme that would go on to be a world-wide phenomenon.