Over the last two weeks, I've listened to three box sets from Big Finish and I'll talk about the third one next time.
I think that The Master of Callous has been the best Big Finish box set so far this year. There's also a medley of Masters coming up in the final Ravenous box set in October. How did the first collection of solo adventures for the malign Mistress- Michelle Gomez -compare?
Roy Gill's A Spoonful of Mayhem is a Mary Poppins parody ,predictably enough. It features a genie-like being and an adventure on the early London Underground. The annoying children with their modern Brexit accents are very annoying - one is the daughter of Alex Kingston- and Gomez uses a bizarrely forrrrced Glaswegian accent. Doctor Who shouldn't do magical realism. 1/5
In Divorced, Beheaded, Regenerated, by John Dorney, Missy marries the Meddling Monk, who is impersonating Henry VIII.("Do the song!") Although the story was pretty thin, I enjoyed the relationship between this pair of squabbling Time Lords 3/5 Talmars
The Dirk Zodiac true crime show in Nev Fountain's The Broken Clock is a parody of the kind of thing you find on ITV4 or Blaze TV. The story of Mark, the Master's sentient Tardis, is the dark heart of a laboured parody 2/5 Talmars
The Belly of the Beast by Jonathan Morris, seems to be set on The Planet of The "Scoattish"as a labour force of clones rebel in the guts of a space creature. Missy does a thing: who knows what it is, It was nice to hear John Scougall, a buddy of my late pal Gary, as Cort the clone. 2/5 Talmars
I was looking forward to this box set but I really couldn't wait for it to end. It was overworked and really overstayed its welcome. 2/5 Talmars as a set.
This year's Fourth Doctor Adventures season introduced a new audio companion for Tom Baker. WPC Ann Kelso became embroiled in the Syndicate Master Plan. This season as any fule kno has clear links to the mid-sixties epic Dalek Master Plan.
In Time's Assassin, by Guy Adams, the Doctor combats mad science in a sanatorium in space: on the planet Kembel, to be specific. The Doctor has to deal with ambulatory Varga plants and time-displaced wraiths while we discover Ann Kelso is not what she seems. 2/5 Talmars
The Director, Zephon son of Zephon is a pathetic character, played tongue in cheek by Jon "Kamelion" Culshaw.
Fever Island, by Jonathan Barnes is a parody of post-Connery Bonds, particularly those starring
Pierce Brosnan. Dimensional experiments involve both the Doctor and suave British agent, Jason Vane. Again, things are not what they seem and the parody has a nightmarish quality as it reaches a climax. (3/5 Talmars)
In John Dorney's The Perfect Prisoners parts 1 and 2, the Doctor travels to an Earth where the population is mind-controlled by the crafty Technix, Zaal. The delegates have been developed a little since 1966: Malpha has silicon-based strength while Celation is a nebulous being. Interesting as they are, they're dispatched one by one by Time's Assassin herself, the lethal Anya Kingdom (3/5)
This a high-concept box-set for the 4DA range, what with its pastiches of popular culture and its themes of perception and deception. There's also quite a sense of loss and disappointment over the fate of Ann. I wasn't expecting too much but this half-season was a pleasant surprise. 4/5 Talmars.
In the next fortnight, I'm thinking of posts about Mantlo's Swords of the Swashbucklers, Black Lightning and the long-mooted blog on the art of Mike Grell...
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