Category Archives: Audio Drama/Radio Plays

Doctor Who: We Are The Daleks. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

Cast: Sylvester McCoy, Bonnie Langford, Nicholas Briggs, Kirsty Bestermamn, Angus Wright, Mary Conlon, Robbie Stevens, Ashley Zhangazha, Lizzie Roper, Dominic Thornburn.

Every human on Earth has the capacity to become something they detest, something that lingers in the dark realms and festers, seething with hatred, jealousy, rage and revulsion, a creature to whom the simple pleasures enjoyed by others become something of ridicule because they are not like us. This trait is something we overpower every day, something we must steer away from lest the terrifying notion of Fascism looks up and sees an opening in the crack and crawls like a demented pregnant Black Widow Spider, one filled with insanity and corrupted thought into the lives of everyone it touches. It is the Dalek that lingers in us all and appears without hesitation if pushed.

Doctor Who: We Are The Daleks. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(472 words, estimated 1:53 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: The Fate of Krelos/Return To Telos. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, John Leeson, Frazer Hines, Michael Cochrane, Veronica Roberts, Bernard Holley, Nicholas Briggs.

The name Telos is enough to have long term fans of Doctor Who reaching for the nearest bottle of glee and asking their friends and neighbours to pour it all over them without hesitation or complaint. Telos, the stuff of legends, it’s up there with Mondas and St. Paul’s Cathedral in terms of iconic homes for the Cybermen.

Revisiting Telos though is problematic for The Doctor, for a start getting in the way of a previous incarnation is always going to stir up agitation.

Doctor Who: The Fate of Krelos/Return To Telos. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(506 words, estimated 2:01 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: The Cloisters Of Terror. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Rowena Cooper, Richenda Carey, Claudia Grant, Allison McKenzie, Jane Slavin.

When young women start go missing from St. Matilda’s College in Oxford, the police are to be summoned to help explain the disappearance; help arrives but not in the way it was expected, and neither is the sense of the problem at hand.

Doctor Who: The Cloisters Of Terror. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(376 words, estimated 1:30 mins reading time)

The Avengers Lost Episodes Volume 4: Hunt The Man Down. Audio Drama Review, Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Anthony Howell, Julian Wadham, Lucy Briggs-Owen, Tim Treloar, Elizabeth Morton, Mark Bonnar, Robbie Stevens.

Prison is not a place where the unknown stays hidden for long and yet for Frank Preston, serving Time for the stealing £100,000 pounds, the exact location of his ill-gotten gains has remained a complete mystery to everybody but him.

The Avengers Lost Episodes Volume 4: Hunt The Man Down. Audio Drama Review, Big Finish. full post

(406 words, estimated 1:37 mins reading time)

The Avengers: The Lost Episodes Volume 4 Box Set, A Change Of Bait. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Anthony Howell, Julian Wadham, Lucy Briggs-Owen, Oliver Cotton, Philip Bretherton, Andrew Dickens, Daniel O’Meara, Dan Starkey, Karina Fernandez, Michael Chance.

The insurance business, like any other involving risk and money, is always one that has both its admirers and its detractors. To some who feel as though they have been placed into a corner and had their livelihoods threatened by such practices, the steepness of premiums, of the loss that could be potentially involved is something that rankles with the fury of a volcano but to which hardly can ever be done; after all everybody needs insuring for something.

The Avengers: The Lost Episodes Volume 4 Box Set, A Change Of Bait. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(411 words, estimated 1:39 mins reading time)

The Avengers: The Lost Episodes Volume 4. Kill The King. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Julian Wadham, Anthony Howell, Lucy Briggs-Owen, Dan Starkey. Lobo Chan, Richard Cordery, Ozzie Yue, Lourdes Faberes, Karina Fernandez, Adrian Lukis, Elizabeth Morton, Matthew Cottle.

 

Heavy is the head that wears the crown, especially when it is the prime target for an assassination attempt on British soil of a foreign head of state.

The fourth box set of the highly popular adaptations of The Avengers lost episodes series sees both Dr. Keel and John Steed take a bit of a back seat in the opening chapter and one that with all the best will in the world feels as though it is still feeling the after effects of the falling out between the two characters at the end of Volume Three.

The Avengers: The Lost Episodes Volume 4. Kill The King. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(453 words, estimated 1:49 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: Suburban Hell. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish Audio.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Annette Badland, Katy Wix, Alix Dunmore, Raymond Coulthard, David Ricardo-Pearce.

 

There is surely one place and one set of foes more terrifying than a fleet of Daleks rampaging from the torment that is Skaro, the Cybermen climbing out of their icy wombs, the spiders of Metabelis 3 or the arch devil himself himself The Master burnt to a crisp and finding the best way to groom a beard and that is the nightmare that would make them all quiver in fright, the suburban middle-class themed party, the fear that dominates the Suburban Hell.

Doctor Who: Suburban Hell. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish Audio. full post

(463 words, estimated 1:51 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: Last Of The Cybermen. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Colin Baker, Frazer Hines, Wendy Padbury, Lucy Liemann, Kieran Hodgson, Nicholas Farrell, Nicholas Briggs.

The Cybermen are never more dangerous than when completely and utterly defeated. Time and Time again from the edge of extinction, from the void between realities and the darkness of space they have survived, regrouped and in some cases have even nearly rivalled the Daleks for their natural predisposition to conquer and enslave; for they are a monster that never quite knows when to finally give up.

Doctor Who: Last Of The Cybermen. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(570 words, estimated 2:17 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: The Secret History, Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Peter Davison, Maureen O’Brien, Peter Purves, Graeme Garden, Lysette Anthony, Tony Millan, Giles Watling, Tim Wallers, Sarah Woodward, Nicolas Briggs, Elizabeth Morton, John Banks, Barnaby Edwards.

 

Doctor Who: The Secret History, Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(575 words, estimated 2:18 mins reading time)

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.

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

(464 words, estimated 1:51 mins reading time)