Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: David Tennant, Jane Slavin, Joe Sims, Juliet Aubrey, Nicholas Briggs, Maria Teresa Creasey, Mark Gatiss, Chris Jarman, Kevin McNally, Gemma Whelen.
Time has a habit of bringing us back to that place we think we have left behind forever.
The Doctor, especially in his tenth incarnation, has lived through the emotional turmoil of losing companions, his people, and at times, his own perspective on the Universe; pushed through time and sometimes not able to withstand the pressure facing him from all sides. He might win, he might save the day, but it feels like a loss, a devastating failure in which his actions to save Gallifrey in a previous life still echo around him like marbles in a tin can.
Save for the fourth incarnation in the guise of Tom Baker, David Tennant’s version of the mad man in a blue box’s continued fight for the Universe against the evil, the unrelenting hate of The Daleks, is the building blocks of legend, and whilst the actor has returned to the role for Big Finish since his departure on screen, nothing perhaps has kept the listening audience more pumped and intrigued than the prospect of the huge arc that encompasses the Dalek Universe.
Following on from the events in the one-shot Dalek Universe: The Dalek Protocol, which saw the fourth Doctor tangle with Anya Kingdom and Mark Seven in a battle of trust and misadventures, so the three continuous tales that make up this first package of this new terrifying realm, Buying Time, The Wrong Woman and The House of Kingdom, are greeted with the knowing smile of a fans who see this an opportunity to revel in the dichotomy of the tenth Doctor, one who is like the morning star, steeped in good, charm, brilliance, but who can also be the raging tempest, the epitome of the oncoming storm, the fire and ice, as a young former school boy turned reluctant soldier once said on the battlefields of France.
Whilst Buying Time and The Wrong Woman are excellent set ups, the illuminating re-introduction of Ten, and written with sparkling edge that the effervescent John Dorney always supplies Big Finish with his scripts, it is perhaps the telling, almost Shakespearean inspired, The House of Kingdom, written by Andrew Smith, that steals the boxset and gives the forthcoming adventures a serious challenge in how to top such a delicious and demanding tale of family discord in the face of an overwhelming threat to existence.
Whilst David Tennant is the undisputed star of the series, there is much to be found in the performances of Kevin McNally as Merrick Kingdom, Jane Slavin as his granddaughter Anya, and the delightful Gemma Whelen who captivates as the strange newcomer in Mr. Dorney’s The Wrong Woman.
Whilst the Daleks are yet to make their true intentions clear and the long-awaited entrance in this terrifying world, the prelude to the discovery is one of expected good humour, a performance masking pain, and the welcome return to the role of arguably one of the finest actors to inhabit the role, and indeed the Whoniverse.
The Daleks are coming, but for now the world has at least the tenth Doctor to ride the storms with.
Ian D. Hall