Released June 2010 The first season of Big Finish’s The Lost Stories concludes this approximation of an alternative season twenty-three with ‘The Macros,’ a story written by the legendary Ingrid Pitt. As the TARDIS materializes aboard the disintegrating USS Eldridge following the ill-fated Philadelphia Experiment, the Doctor soon realizes that the problem is stemming from the planet Capron in another dimension, one with a tyrranical ruler whose horizons and intentions are significantly expanded as the Doctor arrives to explain the situation. Unfortunately, ‘The Macros’ is a decidedly average story in just about every way, unable to make the most of the real-life mystery behind the ship that forever vanished following an invisibility experiment and failing even to explain the nature of the title which is not mentioned once throughout the entirety of the story. There are semblances of some very clever ideas in play, and the notion of the ship being wedged between two dimensions is a strong basis for a Doctor Who story and certainly carries far more intrigue than the official story of the ship being renamed and given to the Greek Navy. With the smaller universe drawing upon the energy reserves of the larger universe through an…

Aired 24 June 2017 SOME SPOILERS FOLLOW As with all opening instalments of Doctor Who’s multi-part stories, ‘World Enough and Time’ is charged with providing the exposition and plot developments that will hopefully pay off in the upcoming series ten finale, ‘The Doctor Falls.’ However, as has been controversially heavily publicized, there is more than enough intrigue as the original Mondasian Cybermen return to the screen for the first time in over fifty years and John Simm’s Master reappears to cross paths with Michelle Gomez’s Missy. Fortunately, rather than reveling in pure spectacle, ‘World Enough and Time’ is an episode brimming with clever ideas and superb atmosphere and imagery as the dark story of a 400-mile-long colony ship experiencing differing rates of passing time because of a nearby black hole’s gravitational distortion unfolds. With generations passing at the bottom of the ship as only days pass at the top, the story does well with presenting a world so diseased and decrepit that the alternative of upgrading to a cybernetic being seems viable. Many Cybermen stories over the years have been rather explicit with the body horror that the conversion process entails, but the sight of isolated, cloth-wrapped individuals in a…

Released May 2010 ‘The Song of Megaptera,’ originally titled ‘The Song of the Space Whale,’ has one of the longest and most intriguing journeys of a Doctor Who script to ever make it to production in any form. Originally written for Tom Baker, rewritten for Peter Davison, and rewritten once more for Colin Baker, this story from the pen of Pat Mills never managed to make it to screen for any number of reasons, budgetary constraint given the fantastic setting likely a major one. Nonetheless, Big Finish has finally allowed the well-traveled and oft-rewritten script to come to life as an adaptation of the Colin Baker version of the Doctor and his companion trying to stop the pursuit of miles-long space whales throughout the cosmos, unhindered by the original revisions script editor Eric Saward had suggested for the time. With that in mind, it’s perhaps unsurprising that ‘The Song of Megaptera’ is hardly subtle about its ecological and anti-whaling viewpoints. And while the story does take a very whimsical turn midway through, this is absolutely a story that could have worked just as effectively upon Earth’s oceans given just how overt that message is. Nonetheless, in a time when ecological…

Released June 2017 SOME SPOILERS FOLLOW The TARDIS materializes deep beneath the surface of an alien world, one in which the inhabitants live aboard giant burrowing Drill-Town machines while endlessly hunting for fuel and resources to survive. But as a Drill-Town engulfs the TARDIS with the Doctor and Romana aboard, they soon find that even the largest of machines can become prey to the Silex. As with the best two-part stories, writer Jonathan Morris expertly fleshes out the history of this world and the war of attrition against the relentless Silex that together form the crux of ‘Subterranea.’ With an initial premise that evokes elements of Journey to the Center of the Earth, Morris probably wisely instead chooses to go down a slightly more whimsical route with its sometimes larger-than-life cast of characters and the steampunk cybernetic Silex seeking to assimilate those who run afoul of them. At the same time, though, the Silex become one of the most distracting elements of the story, and that is simply down to just how very reminiscent of the Cybermen they are. The backstory of the foes is incredibly powerful and certainly helps to imbue them with a heightened sense of menace, but…

Released June 2017 SOME SPOILERS FOLLOW Big Finish’s Doctor Who Monthly Range sequence of double two-part releases comes to a close with ‘Shadow Planet’ and ‘World Apart,’ traversing back upon the Seventh Doctor’s timeline to a time when Hex was still fairly new aboard the TARDIS and still had flirtatious and romantic feelings for Ace. With both stories exploring the intricacies of Ace and Hex as individuals and using the planets as much more than simply generic settings, the secrets and unknown mysteries of these worlds rival those of even the Doctor’s most enigmatic incarnation. AK Benedict’s ‘Shadow Planet’ opens the release with Ace choosing to visit the planet Unity, a planet of psychic potential where one can confront and come to terms with one’s hidden, shadow self. However, as the promised safety of the Unity Corporation breaks down, an engrossing story of hidden motivations and deceit quickly unfolds as the shadows step into the light. Doppelgangers are certainly nothing new to Doctor Who, but the very concept of bringing out the aspects of characters they most try to hide allows for a fascinating duality during a very personal investigation of those involved, Ace and Hex in particular. ‘Shadow Planet’…

Released April 2010 The sixth entry in The Lost Stories is ‘Point of Entry,’ a script adapted by Marc Platt from an outline by ‘Enlightenment’ writer Barbara Clegg. Expertly blending history and pseudo-history, the tale of the Doctor and Peri landing in Elizabethan England after avoiding a rogue asteroid in space dovetails wonderfully with playwright Kit Marlowe’s attempts to write Doctor Faustus as the cadaverous Spaniard Velez searches for an Aztec stone blade and the ominous Omnim’s point of entry approaches. Christopher Marlowe is practically the perfect character to include in Doctor Who, his interest in the occult and his possible work as a British spy creating the perfect backdrop for a rich tapestry of charcterization, and Matt Addis brings out the internal conflict of this fascinatingly complex individual exceedingly well. Fortunately, Platt also manages to bring the supernatural facets of the corpselike Velez to life just as successfully, his plan to reunite the mysterious ancient blade and hilt always imbued with gravelly menace and mysticism while allowing a more grandiose and bombastic personality to occasionally peek through. Of course, the brilliant ideas that form the basis of this story help the strong performances shine even more, and beginning the…

Aired 17 June 2017 SOME SPOILERS FOLLOW With ‘The Eaters of Light,’ Rona Munro becomes the first writer to have penned for both the classic and revived Doctor Who series. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, there’s something of a more deliberate feel to this episode, focusing on world-building and its supporting cast while hinting at the mystery of the Doctor and relying on the companion to drive the narrative forward. While those latter two aspects can certainly be attributed to any number of modern episodes, few classic episodes indicated that seemingly-inevitable change in direction of the franchise as well as Munro’s original script, ‘Survival.’ Doctor Who has always been at its best when it juxtaposes the utterly bizarre with the commonplace, and perhaps no era of classic Doctor Who did this more successfully than the final two years of Sylvester McCoy’s run as more modern and recognizable settings took precedence. And although Scotland at the time of the Picts and Romans is hardly modern, it lends an incredibly distinctive atmosphere to the story that is further anchored by the juxtaposition of a dimensional gate within a cairn and the notion of crows speaking the name of a Pict warrior for all time…

Released March 2010 After dabbling with the notion of the lost season twenty-three to begin The Lost Stories, Big Finish turns to ‘Paradise 5,’ a story originally intended to be part of The Trial of a Time Lord, to give a glimpse of an alternative season twenty-three. While this script having been dropped in favour of ‘Terror of the Vervoids’ is not necessarily a ringing endorsement for what may have been, Andy Lane has managed to craft a genuinely entertaining story based off of PJ Hammond’s incomplete original, replacing the original trial scenes with greater plot development and placing Peri by the Doctor’s side due to Bonnie Langford’s unavailability at the time. The Doctor and Peri land on Targos Delta to visit the Doctor’s old friend, Professor Albrecht Thompson, but they soon find that he has not been seen since his departure to the leisure resort of Paradise 5. As they begin to undertake their investigation, though, they realize that they must do so furtively, for this version of paradise holds a terrible secret beneath its shiny veneer, a secret about which the mute and enslaved Cherubs know all too much. Whether intentional or not, the very concept of this…

Released February 2010 By no means the fault of Big Finish, The Lost Stories range is invariably going to be one with a wide range in the overall quality of stories produced. After all, these early stories were completed for the television medium, and though necessary changes need to be made when adapting for the audio medium, the overall spirit and context of the overall story must remain as truthful as possible to the source material. Yet while the highly visual nature of a story such as ‘Leviathan’ excels within the audio medium due to the immense intrigue and ambience that heighten the imagery, ‘The Hollows of Time’ does not have that same atmosphere and would essentially need a complete rewrite to transfer its visuals to audio without the necessity of an overabundance of descriptive dialogue that unfortunately plagues this release. Full credit must be given to original writer and audio adpater Christopher H Bidmead for crafting a logical story that is anything but straightforward, and ‘The Hollows of Time’ will certainly challenge even the most avid fans as they piece together what is happening. Unfortunately, there is no real flow to events, and the plot largely consists of characters…

Released January 2010 SOME SPOILERS FOLLOW Following two adaptations of well-known scripts featuring returning foes to begin its The Lost Stories range, Big Finish turns to a lesser-known story with a completely novel and satisfyingly complex plot as ‘Leviathan’ finally sees the light of day. As the Doctor and Peri arrive in a mediaeval society where nobody lives to old age or dares break with tradition, the mystery behind Herne the Hunter and the local baron’s cullings slowly takes prominence and leads to an entirely unexpected truth. ‘Leviathan’ is unquestionably a tale of immense scope, and it’s difficult to believe that a production such as this could have been realistically realized on the limited BBC budget of its intended time. Nonetheless, within the confines of the audio medium, it comes to life spectacularly from the very beginning as the mythological skull-faced and antlered figure of Herne is seen pursuing youngsters through the forest. Although ‘Leviathan’ ultimately plays out as a story of two distinct halves, which again proves to be the wise approach given the individual episodes’ prolonged running time and the availability of only one cliffhanger, the mysteries that engulf the events of the opening half are truly superb…