Category Archives: Audio Drama/Radio Plays

Charlotte Pollard, The Shadow At The End Of The World. Audio Drama Review, Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: India Fisher, Jacqueline King, Abigail McKern, Nicola Weeks, Lucy May Barker, Nicholas Briggs, Michael Maloney, James Joyce.

Charlotte Pollard, adventuress, traveller in space and time and once close friend and confident of The Doctor, a woman born on the day that the S.S. Titanic sank and who, as history will have it, died on the Airship 101, a woman who it seems was born to be a magnet for trouble and exploits, especially when cornered at The Shadow at the End of the World.

Charlotte Pollard, The Shadow At The End Of The World. Audio Drama Review, Big Finish. full post

(554 words, estimated 2:13 mins reading time)

Charlotte Pollard, The Lamentation Cipher. Series One. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: India Fisher, Michael Maloney, James Joyce, Nicholas Briggs.

The feeling of rarity is quite uncommon when it comes to listening to the return of Charlotte Pollard.

Arguably the finest of all the audio companions introduced since Big Finish took the job on of bringing The Doctor back into the main stream consciousness of the British public, and before the B.B.C. finally saw sense in the folly of having let one of their most loved programmes go to waste, Charlotte Pollard, Charley to her friends, has travelled with two Doctors, been in an abundance of adventures with both and has captured the ideal of what it means to be a companion in the Tardis. To question, to investigate and not get become a quivering wreck in the face of adversity or under the sometimes withering gaze of The Doctor.

Charlotte Pollard, The Lamentation Cipher. Series One. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(641 words, estimated 2:34 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: Dark Eyes 3. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Paul McGann, Alex MacQueen, Ruth Bradley, Nicola Walker, Sean Carlsen, David Sibley, Georgie Fuller, Geoffrey Breton, Natalie Burt, Sacha Dhawan, Sarah Mowat, Laura Riseborough, John Banks, Jonathan Forbes, Beth Chalmers, Georgia Moffett.

 

The Doctor and The Master, a tale of perpetual war and distrust between two titans of Gallifrey and all those caught between them. Whether it is Jo Grant, The Cybermen, Tegan Jovanka’s aunt, the citizens of Logopolis or even Adric, nobody and no one benefits in this private war and certainly not the woman who has become the latest buffer between the former friends, Molly O’ Sullivan.

Doctor Who: Dark Eyes 3. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(680 words, estimated 2:43 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: The Widow’s Assassin. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, Tim Chipping, John Banks, Andrew Dickens, Fiona Sheehan, Glynn Sweet.

A year seems far too long to wait for the dulcet, attention-grabbing tones of Colin Baker’s incarnation of The Doctor to play with the listener’s ears in a way that would have cat’s purring contentedly and theatre audience’s gripped. Even in the calmest moments, the time between time, the resonance of his delivery is nothing short of exquisite and somehow it still rankles that the B.B.C. at the time were so short sighted in their appraisal of his era in Doctor Who.

Doctor Who: The Widow’s Assassin. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(656 words, estimated 2:37 mins reading time)

Hancock’s Half Hour: The Matador. The Lost Episodes. 2014 Re-Recording.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Kevin McNally, Kevin Eldon, Simon Greenall, Robin Sebastian, Susy Kane.

As arguably one of the finest British comedies to grace both radio and television celebrates the 60th Anniversary of the first episode, The First Night Party, being aired to the nation; Hancock’s Half Hour has suffered from the short sightedness of the time that many programmes and serials had placed upon them, the constraints of not being recorded and documented for future posterity.

Hancock’s Half Hour: The Matador. The Lost Episodes. 2014 Re-Recording. full post

(624 words, estimated 2:30 mins reading time)

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

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton, Matthew Waterhouse, Robert Whitelock, Phil Mulryne, Camilla Power, Bethan Walker.

We are made up so many different facets in our genetic and mental make-up that it somewhat surprising that more is not made of the split personality within the world of Science Fiction. For The Doctor, the many personalities that have lived and also have the potential to do so hides perhaps a frightening question, does the Doctor ever really know himself, even he meets parts of him in someone else?

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

(603 words, estimated 2:25 mins reading time)

Terry Nation’s Survivors: Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Caroline Langrishe, John Banks, Chase Masterson, Terry Malloy, Adrian Lukis, Camilla Power, Louise Jameson, Sinead Keenan, San Shella, Lucy Fleming, Ian McCulloch, Carolyn Seymour, Phil Mulryne, John Dorney, Lisa Bowerman.

For those that remember with fondness or indeed with a tightening grip of fear Terry Nation’s 1970s apocalyptic serial Survivors, the frightening aspect of a civilisation falling apart very quickly is one that is perhaps the most powerful and enduring images of its time and is probably matched only by the television film Threads a decade later. To see it happen on screen as part of a drama is one thing but to have it re-recorded by audio drama specialists Big Finish, already the guardians of the legacy of Doctor Who in audio form as well as establishing a great following with their episodes of the likes of The Avengers, Sapphire and Steel and Blake’s 7, is quite a different proposition.

Terry Nation’s Survivors: Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

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

Doctor Who: Signs And Wonders. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, Philip Olivier, Amy Pemberton, Jessica Martin, Warren Brown, Jemma Churchill, Rory Keenan.

There are times, admittedly as rare as a Gallifryian rocking horse needing to excuse itself to go to the toilet, when the most manipulative of all the incarnations of The Doctor is just that little too calculating for his own good, that’s when the listener knows that they are in for a really decent ride of a story line with the Seventh Doctor and perhaps it is fitting that long standing writer Matt Fitton is the deliverer of all the problems heaped upon Hector, The Doctor and Ace in the very cool audio drama, Signs and Wonders.

Doctor Who: Signs And Wonders. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(656 words, estimated 2:37 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: The Mask Of Tragedy. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, Philip Olivier, Samuel West, Alisdair Simpson, Russell Bentley, Tim Treloar, Emily Tucker.

Heroes, true heroes, those that seek no recompense for their actions in saving someone’s life and see no honour in reminding others what they have done for them in the past are so rare, so infrequent; that it is hardly surprising that tales of epic valour seems to be steeped in antiquity and legend. For those in ancient Greece, tales of heroes were what gave the collection of disparate nations and its people hope in times of war, pestilence and the invention of Greek comedy and one of its Godfathers, Aristophanes.

Doctor Who: The Mask Of Tragedy. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(508 words, estimated 2:02 mins reading time)

The Avengers: The Lost Episodes, Dance With Death. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Anthony Howell, Julian Wadham, Lucy Briggs-Owen, Jaqueline King, Dan Starkey, Cameron Stewart, Anjella Mackintosh, Gemma Whelan, Derek Carlyle, Martin Hutson, Francesca Hunt, Penelope Rawlins, Terry Malloy, Michael Hrycek-Robinson.

There is nothing quite like the dance floor to bring out the murderer in the dark heart of the criminal mastermind, the quick step or the rumba to get the killer in the mood for a spot of the gamble and the gambol whilst they search for riches, no matter who gets in their way.

The Avengers: The Lost Episodes, Dance With Death. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(436 words, estimated 1:45 mins reading time)