Category Archives: Audio Drama/Radio Plays

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

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Sylvester McCoy, Katy Manning, Richard Franklin, Neil Roberts, Barnaby Edwards, David Graham, Rachel Bavidge, Jez Fielder.

One of the more interesting factors about Doctor Who is the ability to mix things up once in a while and play a different type of game, a game in which nobody except the writer really knows what’s going on and in which the vagueness, the small hints, of it all can be tantalising and fruitful. It can of course go horribly wrong or at best come out of the Tardis like a mixed blessing.

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

(564 words, estimated 2:15 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: Death Match. Audio Drama Review, Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, John Leeson, Geoffrey Beevers, Susan Brown, Damien Lynch, Andy Secombe, Chris Porter.

Death has always walked side by side with The Doctor that at times its hard to see where the join might be. One such clue is where the rotting shell of The Master is, Death surely is playing a more dangerous game with him than with the Doctor.

Following on directly from John Dorney’s Requiem For The Space Men, Death Match is a suitable sequel in which Big Finish asks the pertinent questions of what it means to be entertained.

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

(493 words, estimated 1:58 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: The Entropy Plague, Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton, Mark Strickson, Alastair Mackenzie, Catherine Skinner, Robert Duncan, John Voce, Chris Finney.

Decay is a state of mind for which even The Doctor struggles to hold back at times, the sheer weight of history acting as a melancholic anchor for him to grasp hold of when all is against him. His collection of travellers past and present, those he has lost, those he has loved, all acting as the living embodiments of the Memento Mori he carries around with him in his little blue box; decay is something he runs from, never looking back, never going back for old companions in case he sees the futility of life. Entropy in the end is the toughest enemy The Doctor has and one that he cannot hope to defeat forever.

Doctor Who: The Entropy Plague, Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

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

Doctor Who: Requiem For The Rocket Men. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, John Leeson, Geoffrey Beevers, Mark Frost, Olivia Poulet, Damian Lynch, Pat Ruins.

The renegade Timelord from Gallifrey is fighting for his life in a trap. Considered to be lethal, dangerous and with a personality that can be abrasive and charming, the Universe’s greatest bounty hunters are in for a slice of the reward money placed temptingly before them, for after all would rank so high in the list of most wanted criminals than The Master.

Doctor Who: Requiem For The Rocket Men. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(447 words, estimated 1:47 mins reading time)

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)