Category Archives: Audio Drama/Radio Plays

The Avengers: The Lost Episodes Volume 2. Ashes Of Roses. Audio Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Anthony Howell, Julian Wadham, Lucy Briggs-Owen, Terry Malloy, Rachel Atkins, Emily Woodward, Nicholas Briggs, Derek Carlyle, Anna Lukis, Penelope Rawlins, Richard Hope, Dan Starkey, Cameron Stewart, Francesca Hunt, Martin Hudson.

 

Who could ever foresee that hairdressing was such a risky business?  The shampoo set that could go wrong, the gossip that turns to grudges being held, the heated dryer rigged to give a nasty surprise, arson! All these are par for the course as John Steed and Dr. David Keel return for the second set of classic The Avengers stories to be adapted by John Dorney and Big Finish starting with the tale, Ashes Of Roses.

The Avengers: The Lost Episodes Volume 2. Ashes Of Roses. Audio Review. Big Finish. full post

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

Doctor Who: Revenge Of The Swarm. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, Philip Olivier, John Leeson, Mandi Symonds, Maggie Service, John Heffernan, Phyllida Nash, Siobhan Redmond, John Dorney, Paul Panting.

Revenge is a dish best served cold, preferably being poured from a bucket with ice cubes the size of Norwegian glacier formation and over the head of someone you don’t like whilst they are sunbathing. Failing that, to be mastered in the form that Science Fiction adores, with plenty of back story and with an enemy that doesn’t quite fit the top echelons of master criminals or war mongering civilisations.

Doctor Who: Revenge Of The Swarm. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(651 words, estimated 2:36 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: Breaking Bubbles And Other Stories. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, Jemma Churchill, Andy Secombe, Allison McKenzie, Janet Henfrey, Jessica Knappett, Paul Panting, Anjella Mackintosh, Phil Mulryne, Johnny Gibbon, Toby Fountain.

 

There are times when Big Finish pulls something rather terrific out of the bag and what the listener hears is the culmination of endeavour, love and devotion mixed with the art of excellent story telling. There are many full length stories that fall into the category, some with so much ease that they feel as though the writer has had the moment of divine interpretation placed between their ears. On the rarer occasion, it falls to four separate writers to bring out the special in the speciality in providing a voice for the much loved Time Lord.

Doctor Who: Breaking Bubbles And Other Stories. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

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

Doctor Who: Zygon Hunt. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Michael Maloney, Gillian Kearney, James George, Steven Alexander, Nicholas Briggs.

It only takes one of the finest creations from the classic television series and all seems well within the Tom Baker range of audio dramas from Big Finish.

Doctor Who: Zygon Hunt. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(657 words, estimated 2:38 mins reading time)

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

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Stephanie Cole, Mandi Symonds, Andy Snowball, Nigel Fairs.

Imagination is the strongest, most potent weapon that humanity possesses. The ability to imagine the best and prepare for the worst, sometimes of our own species making and volition; to see the innate beauty in a single word, to have the ability to conjure up an imaginary best friend that sees you through the loneliness of childhood or to take the inventiveness, the sheer creative splendour, and turn into something that last for hundreds of years. Sometimes though imagination can, as to paraphrase Julius Robert    Oppenheimer, can be the destroyer of worlds.

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

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

Doctor Who: Destroy The Infinite. Audio Drama Review, Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, David Selby, Michael Felton Stevens, Hywel Morgan, Clive Mantle, Christine Roberts, Ian Hallard.

There is a new villain in town, Earth and its associated planets are under threat from a despicable evil and only one man can save them, one man, a savage of impeccable understanding and loyalty and a strange Blue Box who never takes the Doctor where he wants to go but always where he is needed.

Doctor Who: Destroy The Infinite. Audio Drama Review, Big Finish. full post

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

Doctor Who: Tomb Ship. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish Productions.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * *

Cast: Peter Davison, Sarah Sutton, Eve Karpf, Amy Ewbank, James Hayward, Jonathan Forbes, Ben Porter, Phil Mulryne, Francesca Hunt.

It is worth remembering that Big Finish have been producing Doctor Who audio dramas now for almost 15 years, nearly 200 separate adventures in the main canon as well as the plethora of spin offs involving the very best of companions, so occasionally you listen to a story, in this case Tomb Ship, and you nod your head with great understanding that it didn’t just miss the mark, it hit the larger target next to it and disturbed all the arrows that seemed firmly in place.

Doctor Who: Tomb Ship. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish Productions. full post

(480 words, estimated 1:55 mins reading time)

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

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 71/2/10

Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Gareth Thomas, Jane Goddard, John Voce, Jessica Martin, Blake Ritson.

The last of any species is one that surely deserves to be preserved for as long as possible, especially when they are the cause of the extinction of their entire race.

The Doctor and Leela arrive on the planet Colophos, a dead, seemingly barren world which is just dust and sand. The chance to relax is offered but there is something deadly lurking in the background and the Doctor and Leela, along with the crew of the survey ship The Oligarch have to fight for their lives against an enemy who revels in being unseen.

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

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

Doctor Who: The Evil One. Big Finish Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Geoffrey Beevers, Michael Keating, Gareth Armstrong, Nicholas Briggs.

If everything you knew about your life turned out to be a lie, how would you feel? If you had found out that all you held dear about yourself, the untold truths, the minutest detail of your very existence an elaborate lie placed in your mind by a master hypnotist who had somehow conveniently not reversed the flow of information to you and in doing so had turned you into a being so malevolent, would it be better to find out the truth?

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

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

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

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Peter Davison, Sarah Sutton, Tim Bentinck, Rosanna Miles, John Banks, Francesca Hunt, Hugh Fraser, Geoffrey Barton.

There are many precious stones that lay on the floor unnoticed, some that have fallen from the stars and lay undisturbed until the right pair of eyes gazes upon them and sees something extraordinary in its shape and form. Scratch beneath the surface though and not all stones are what they seem and instead can hold a hidden danger that once woken becomes a hunter, a hunter in which only The Doctor can hope to stop in Mark Morris’ latest audio drama for Big Finish, Moonflesh.

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

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