Category Archives: Audio Drama/Radio Plays

The Avengers: The Yellow Needle. The Lost Episodes Volume 3, Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Anthony Howell, Julian Wadham, Lucy Briggs-Owen, Geff Francis, Maggie Service, Derek Ezenagu, Robert Duncan, Jacqueline Boatswain, Geoffrey Breton, Jessica Martin, Nick Hendrix, Mark Goldthorp, Nicholas Briggs, Angus Wright.

 

The art of political assassination is one that still holds the weight of intrigue in the modern world, perhaps more so than at any point since the 1960s and the deaths of two of the Kennedy brothers, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King and countless others hit the headlines and stunned the world over.

The Avengers: The Yellow Needle. The Lost Episodes Volume 3, Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(442 words, estimated 1:46 mins reading time)

The Avengers: The Lost Episodes Volume 3, The Springers. Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

Cast: Anthony Howell, Julian Wadham, Dan Starkey, Miranda Raison, Peter Barrett, Derek Hutchinson, Emily Joyce, Sarah Lark, Mark Goldthorp, Geoffrey Breton, Philip Pope, Nicholas Briggs, Nick Hendrix, Angus Wright.

The third volume of stories from Big Finish concerning The Avengers team of Dr. David keel and John Stead starts with the premise of a prison break out. It is a premise that has been done before the 1960s series first aired and has been done perhaps more successfully since, notably in one of the best films ever in the Shawshank Redemption and in the highly popular Prison Break television series, and yet there is something nostalgic and homely about revisiting an idea when you take away the modern bells and whistles attached to a story.

The Avengers: The Lost Episodes Volume 3, The Springers. Audio Drama Review. full post

(520 words, estimated 2:05 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: Equilibrium, Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton, Mark Strickland, Annette Badland, Nickolas Grace, Joanna Kirkland, John Albasiny, Ella Kenion.

E-Space has ensnared The Doctor. Thanks to the mechanical, mathematic genius mind of the now dead Adric, the Doctor in his fifth incarnation and his three young companions are cut adrift from the Universe and with little hope of finding their way back, it seems as though their stay in E-Space will become a lengthy and unbalanced one.

Doctor Who: Equilibrium, Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(545 words, estimated 2:11 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: The Darkness of Glass. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Mark Lewis Jones, Julian Wadham, Sinead Keenan, Rory Keenan, Nicholas Briggs.

The glass is never half full for the Doctor. There should be a point in the Doctor’s life where someone sits him down and examines in depth, just what would happen if boredom ever got the better of him! For even in the smallest detail of finding himself cut off from his Tardis on a stretch of lonely beach, there is always a house on an island in which the allusion to an Agatha Christie novel will appear.

Doctor Who: The Darkness of Glass. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(421 words, estimated 1:41 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: Mistfall. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton, Mark Strickson, Jemma Redgrave, Nigel Carrington, Emily Woodward, Paul Panting, Matthew Carter.

Even with Adric having been dead for quite a while, his sphere of influence over the affairs over The Doctor nevertheless continues to compound the web of time and the lives of his companions.

Andrew Smith’s Mistfall sees the Doctor, Tegan, Turlough and Nyssa dragged through a pocket of Time and into a different universe. It is the result of Adric’s mathematical genius mind that the Doctor finds himself back within the complexity of E-Space and all the dangers that are found within.

Doctor Who: Mistfall. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

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

Doctor Who: The Exxilons. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, John Leeson, Daisy Dunlop, Jacqueline King, Hugh Ross, Tim Treloar.

How far does humanity as a collective have the right to impose its culture and future upon any as yet untouched civilisations? The morality to ask those who have the honour to guide themselves to the point where if they want to share the same path that they should do it with a helping hand, not be forced to do so or supply their lives in the profit not of their making.

Doctor Who: The Exxilons. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(532 words, estimated 2:08 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: The Rani Elite. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, Siobhan Redmond, Andrew Bone, Becky Wright, Mike Noble, Charlie Morton.

In the saddest of circumstances comes lightness, it just may take a while for the listener to see it for what it truly is.

When a much loved actor from a television programme passes on it can be hard to imagine anyone playing their character again. In the world of soap-operas they could, if they so desired perhaps get away with an actor coming in a year or two later having had facial surgery or recovering from a major operation. In others, the character would just be allowed to be retired and thought of with ceremonial fondness every now and then. In science fiction though, the sheer possibilities are endless and enjoyable.

Doctor Who: The Rani Elite. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(677 words, estimated 2:42 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: Philip Hinchcliffe Presents, The Devil’s Armada. Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Jamie Newall, Nigel Carrington, Alix Dunsmore, Joe Jameson, Beth Chalmers, Philip Bretherton, Ben Porter, Tim Bentinck.

 

The world of Doctor Who is seemingly entrenched into two distinct realms of story-telling themes, the historical, whether that comes down to the gothic fancy, the accurate, with the only that those writing about The Doctor can employ a good science-fiction twist too or the warning from the past in which holds a mirror to the present day audience or the category that is so steeped into invention that the monsters come from out of nowhere and place themselves at the very heart of Humanity’s future. Both are equally enthralling, both as enjoyable as its counterpart and yet rarely do the mix well.

Doctor Who: Philip Hinchcliffe Presents, The Devil’s Armada. Audio Drama Review. full post

(515 words, estimated 2:04 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: Philip Hinchcliffe Presents… The Ghosts of Gralstead. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Carolyn Seymour, Gethin Anthony, Martin Hutson, Emerald O’ Hanrahan, Alan Cox, Ivanno Jeremiah, Andy Secombe, Sean Carlsen, Andrew French, Mandi Symonds.

The fourth Doctor was arguably never better than when thrust into the tale of the Gothic persuasion. It was a running theme throughout his tenure in the shoes of the Timelord that the Gothic, in one shape or another would feature heavily and the macabre would be accompanying with relish.

Doctor Who: Philip Hinchcliffe Presents… The Ghosts of Gralstead. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

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

Doctor Who: Masters Of Earth. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, Tracy Wiles, Brian McCardie, Sean Biggerstaff, Hugh Ross, Damian Lynch, Nicholas Briggs.

It can be a staggering thought at times, that even after over 50 years of storytelling, filmed adventures and audio escapades, that there is still moments in which to find a large, near timeless thrill in a new tale set in the world of Doctor Who. Masters of Earth is one of those audio dramas so beloved of its makers Big Finish, that it allows the listener to sit back, relax, to a point and remember why they might have fallen in love with Doctor Who in the beginning.

Doctor Who: Masters Of Earth. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(620 words, estimated 2:29 mins reading time)