Category Archives: Audio Drama/Radio Plays

Blake’s 7: The Liberator Chronicles. The Turing Test. Audio Drama Review, Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Paul Darrow, Michael Keating.

With its distinctive theme tune and great stories, it is no wonder that Blake’s 7, like Sapphire and Steel and Space 1999 became interwoven into the fabric of British society in the 1970s. Televised Science Fiction was having its golden era, alongside the only programme of the day to carry on into the 21st Century, Doctor Who. This was a halcyon time for anybody who regarded the genre as essential viewing and who would make time into their busy lives to see what happened next to the likes of Johanna Lumley and David McCallum in Sapphire and Steel,  Space 1999’s Martin Landau, Barbara Bain and Catherine Schell and Blake’s 7, Paul Darrow, Gareth Thomas, Michael Keating and Sally Knyvette.

Blake’s 7: The Liberator Chronicles. The Turing Test. Audio Drama Review, Big Finish. full post

(668 words, estimated 2:40 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: Afterlife. Audio Drama 181, Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, Philip Olivier, Amy Pemberton, Jean Boht, Mandi Symonds, Jonathan Forbes, Andrew Dickens.

It depends on your point of view, but what if there really is life after death? How could you be sure that whatever higher power, what god or demon has had you in their charge whilst your memory has begun to fade in the minds you left behind, that they won’t have cheated you in yet another cosmic joke.

Doctor Who: Afterlife. Audio Drama 181, Big Finish. full post

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

Doctor Who: 1963: The Assassination Games. Audio Drama 180. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, Simon Williams, Pamela Salem, Karen Gledhill, Hugh Ross, Oliver Cotton, Gemma Saunders, Gerald Kyd, Alisdair Simpson.

No matter where The Doctor goes in time and space, it seems there is a small part of that is drawn like a moth to wibbly wobbly ball of flame to the events circulating around the year 1963. Of course it is a natural time period to write about as well as being the birth of the television programme that would go on to be a world-wide phenomenon.

Doctor Who: 1963: The Assassination Games. Audio Drama 180. Big Finish. full post

(531 words, estimated 2:07 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: The Companion Chronicles. The Beginning. Big Finish Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Carole Ann Ford, Terry Molloy.

There is nothing like returning to the start of the story to realise just how much has been left unsaid and just how much more is there even before the commencement of the adventure actually began.

Doctor Who: The Companion Chronicles. The Beginning. Big Finish Audio Drama Review. full post

(489 words, estimated 1:57 mins reading time)

Trail Of A Timelord: Volume 1, Audio Book Review. B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Lynda Bellingham, Colin Baker.

In the wake of the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who which has seen the special programme being watched simultaneously around the world by the type of television audience normally reserved for F.A. Cup finals and Royal weddings, it seems almost ludicrous now that there was a time in which the very survival of the programme was in doubt as certain people at the B.B.C. finally saw the chance to take the long running science fiction programme off the air.

Trail Of A Timelord: Volume 1, Audio Book Review. B.B.C. full post

(477 words, estimated 1:54 mins reading time)

Solitaire, Companion Chronicles. Audio Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: India Fisher, David Ballie.

Of all the companions to have stepped foot inside the Tardis, arguably one of the most much loved is Charlotte Elspeth Pollard. Having travelled with Paul McGann’s eighth Doctor incarnation from their first meeting in the excellent Storm Warning, through adventures such as Invaders From Mars, the sublime The Chimes of Midnight and to the fitting finale with her time with eighth Doctor The Girl Who Never Was, fans of Big Finish recognised something in her make-up, the way she handled herself when times were grave that placed her with the likes of Jamie, Tegan and Sarah Jane in terms of most admired and valued companions.

Solitaire, Companion Chronicles. Audio Review. Big Finish. full post

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

Doctor Who: 1963: The Space Race. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish 179.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, Karen Henson, David Shaw-Parker, Tom Alexander, Stuart Denman, Samantha Beart.

If the end of the 1960s was the supposed era of free love, enlightened thinking, ugly military intervention and the culmination of the space race between the Soviet Union and The United States then the beginning of the decade could be viewed as calculated insanity, a planet being taken to the absolute brink, musical genius, a steel nerve by undoubtedly the finest President in 20th Century America and the start of the sprint to be on the moon first.

Doctor Who: 1963: The Space Race. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish 179. full post

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

Doctor Who: The Light At The End. Big Finish Audio Drama.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Paul McGann, Louise Jameson, Sarah Sutton, Nicola Bryant, Sophie Aldred, India Fisher, Geoffrey Beevers, Carole Ann Ford, William Russell, Frazer Hines, Peter Purves, Maureen O’Brien, Jean Marsh, Anneka Wills, Wendy Padbury, Katy Manning, Janet Fielding, Mark Strickson, Benedict Briggs, Nicholas Briggs, Oliver Hume, John Dorney.

Doctor Who: The Light At The End. Big Finish Audio Drama. full post

(830 words, estimated 3:19 mins reading time)

Jago & Litefoot: Chronoclasm. Series Three, Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Christopher Benjamin, Trevor Baxter, Louise Jameson, Conrad Asquith, Lisa Bowerman, Philip Bretherton, Duncan Wisbey, Joanna Munro, Wendy Padbury.

Some crimes, especially the ones involving the laws of time are either caused by a megalomaniac hell bent on destruction of a certain race of people or species or due to greed, the powerful and sickening so called aphrodisiac that prays on the weak and gluttonous. Sometimes these two overlap and then the devastation is even harder to bear. Occasionally though the reason is a lot more pure and it is just the way it was devised and carried out that makes the plan hard to stomach. Such is Elliot Payne’s reason to change time, to end his own misery and loss. It doesn’t make it right but it is a lot more understandable that selling out and destroying an entire species for a pot of gold.

Jago & Litefoot: Chronoclasm. Series Three, Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(526 words, estimated 2:06 mins reading time)

Jago & Litefoot: Swan Song. Series Three, Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Ration 9/10

Cast: Christopher Benjamin, Trevor Baxter, Louise Jameson, Conrad Asquith, Lisa Bowerman, Abigail Hollick, Hywel Morgan, Andrew Westfield, Philip Bretherton.

The power of a performance, the emotional resonance that bleeds across the stage from the actor to the audience and out in the open world as word of mouth and newspaper columns declare the genius of the words spoken, not only get stuck in the minds of those that see it, they also bleed through the walls of the theatre as if being used as a storage device; feeding and growing until it can take no more. Such is the theory that a building can hold the echoes of the past; it is the premise that sees Jago and Litefoot’s latest adventure in series three take on the voices and images of a story that could be their Swan Song.

Jago & Litefoot: Swan Song. Series Three, Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(527 words, estimated 2:06 mins reading time)