Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 71/2/10
Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Gareth Thomas, Jane Goddard, John Voce, Jessica Martin, Blake Ritson.
The last of any species is one that surely deserves to be preserved for as long as possible, especially when they are the cause of the extinction of their entire race.
The Doctor and Leela arrive on the planet Colophos, a dead, seemingly barren world which is just dust and sand. The chance to relax is offered but there is something deadly lurking in the background and the Doctor and Leela, along with the crew of the survey ship The Oligarch have to fight for their lives against an enemy who revels in being unseen.
It is a rare pleasure to have the great Gareth Thomas appear in something other than Blake’s 7, the chance to be able to relish the talent of someone who thrilled a whole generation of young science fiction fans as leader of the team of The Liberator, Rog Blake, as someone so purely evil, so blinded by his eternal hatred and scheming is one that makes Jonathan Morris’ Last of the Colophon such a wicked piece of indulgence. This is one particular audio drama that wouldn’t have been out of place in Tom Baker’s tenure as The Doctor on television and would have slotted perfectly alongside stories such as The Horror of Fang Rock and The Talons of Weng-Chiang.
The company is deliberately small to keep the suspense and feeling of claustrophobia heightened and Gareth Thomas does much as the evil-deranged scientist Morax to imply the sense of impending danger throughout. The parallels between Morax and Skaro’s own Davros are there to be drawn upon but it is the nature of invisibility which draws the listener in further than perhaps they expect to go. The question of keeping a person’s opinions under wraps, denying them a voice making them only feeling more alienated from their peers and other members of the Human race a real danger in a world where boundaries are shifted quickly and opinions dismissed just because we don’t like them. The feeling of estrangement and division festers in the soul and turns the so called weak into potential monsters all too eager to fire the first bullet.
With Jessica Martin as Deputy Surveyor Sutton making a welcome appearance in a Big Finish audio, the cast is one of accomplished delight and is a noteworthy high in the third series of Big Finish audio plays starring Tom Baker and Louise Jameson. To have two of the 1970s heavy weights of the Science Fiction world hand in hand and seeing eye to eye so to speak four decades on is an instance of aural gratification.
Last of the Colophon is available to purchase from Worlds Apart on Lime Street, Liverpool.
Ian D. Hall