Continuing from my previous articles on both my First Impressions of Big Finish, the Best of Big Finish, Part One and the Best of Big Finish, Part Two I now present the next phase in my review series of the Doctor Who audios. In a similar fashion to my review of the Two Masters Trilogy, I have decided to review some newer Big Finish releases available as both digital downloads and in CD format from the Big Finish website. So to begin:
Last of the Cybermen
This audio is actually the second part of a loose ‘Locum Doctors Trilogy’, which consists of the previous story The Defectors which sees the Seventh Doctor meet Jo Grant, and the next story The Secret History which has the Fifth Doctor meet Steven and Vicki. Slotting in the middle is Last of the Cybermen in which the Sixth Doctor meets Jamie and Zoe and fights against the Cybermen in the final battle between the Telosian Cybermen and Humanity, and its scale is pretty epic. The characters are likeable and interesting, and Jamie and Zoe pair really well with the Sixth Doctor and it would be great if these two could appear in the monthly range more often.
The story plays on elements from various classic Cyberman stories as well as borrowing a few NuWho ideas to round the whole thing off, whilst also managing to define itself as a brand new story. Previous Big Finish Cyberman stories like Spare Parts and Sword of Orion describe the Cyber-conversion process in detail but Last of the Cybermen depicts Cyber-production on a huge scale, as the Cybermen churn out hundreds of soldiers an hour to battle the human onslaught, and it’s gripping.
We Are The Daleks
What is the only race in existence that is more evil than the Daleks? Easy, economically liberal Conservatives. And this audio demonstrates what could happen if the Tories and the Daleks had ever decided to team up in the late 1980s, although some may say that events would have just played out as normal. Regardless, We Are The Daleks is a great romp that is intended as a ‘jumping-on point’ for newer listeners to the main range, and thus consists of a well-rounded self-contained story with few outside references or requirements, and this definitely helps it as a standalone story.
What also benefits We Are The Daleks, like the earlier audio The Juggernauts, is the redeemed companion Mel who in this audio appears alongside the Seventh Doctor. Even for those who have seen very few televised Mel stories her reputation as a fairly shallow and ‘screamy’ companion is pervasive, yet the Big Finish audios do wonders for redeeming her character, making her a stronger character and giving her a more direct role in the story. Like The Juggernauts, We Are The Daleks shows Mel going undercover and expertly blending into a top-of-the-range work environment using her exceptional skill at coding, and with these two audios alone she is quickly becoming one of my favourite audio companions which shows just how effective the audios are at redeeming missed potential from the show…
Order of the Daleks
The cover of this audio alone is eye-catching enough, and although the concept of a ‘stained glass Dalek’ may seem odd at first, the context of the story justifies their presence – having crashed on a primitive planet with limited technology, the Daleks have infiltrated an order of Monks known as the ‘Brotherhood of the Black Petal’, teaching them how to construct rudimentary casings for them out of stained glass and lead. The Sixth Doctor and a Galactic Census team arrive to investigate signs of alien interference in a medieval society, and chaos ensues. On the surface, Order of the Daleks is a fairly standard Dalek story, but the concepts it utilises in the narrative context make it stand out, as Daleks that are both unarmed and vulnerable make an interesting twist on the standard formula for Dalek stories.
Another interesting aspect to this story is the relatively new audio-only Sixth Doctor companion Constance Clarke, who appeared initially in The Sixth Doctor: The Last Adventure, an audio anthology that depicts the lead-up to the Sixth Doctor’s regeneration. Constance originates from the Second World War, originally working as a leading WREN before encountering the Doctor, and in this story she faces the Daleks for the first time and proves her mettle against the Doctor’s ultimate foe. The supporting cast also brings this story to life, as there are a fair few memorable characters with distinctive voice acting and some great moments between the Monks and the Daleks as well as some intrigue within the Brotherhood, as all is not as it seems on the seemingly idyllic world of Strellin…
Energy of the Daleks
Last on the list is the fourth installment of the Fourth Doctor Adventures, a six-part series that saw the return of Tom Baker to the role of the Fourth Doctor for the first time in decades. Energy of the Daleks features the Fourth Doctor and companion Leela facing off against – you guessed it – the Daleks, and for the most part Energy of the Daleks follows the ‘standard’ Dalek story formula. The real draw for this story is Tom Baker, as hearing him face off against the Daleks again after so many years is a real treat. What makes this all the better is that, despite having one of the longest tenures of all the Doctors, the Fourth Doctor only fought the Daleks twice – once in Genesis of the Daleks, which was a definite classic but was mostly focused around the Kaled/Thal conflict and the introduction of Davros rather than being a true Dalek story, and Destiny of the Daleks, which is a universally poor story. Energy of the Daleks therefore gives the Fourth Doctor a chance to really shine in a battle against the Daleks in a way that his TV tenure (for whatever reason) denied him.
Another peculiar thing about Energy of the Daleks is its length – unlike all of the other Big Finish audios I have previously reviewed, this and all other Fourth Doctor Adventures stories use a single-disc format of around one hour, as opposed to the two-disc 4×25 minute format of the Main Range. This makes Energy of the Daleks more similar in length and feel to a NuWho story, meaning that the pacing is much faster and thus this audio is probably more accessible to those NuWho fans who aren’t sure of how to get into Big Finish.
So that’s the end of Part 3 of my Best of Big Finish, I hope you enjoyed and if you did then be sure to leave a like, and you can follow us either here or on Facebook for more content like this. Also, check out the read more tab below for articles related to this one. Thanks for reading!
Read more in this series with the links below:
- Doctor Who – First Impressions of Big Finish
- Doctor Who – The Best of Big Finish, Part One
- Doctor Who – The Best of Big Finish, Part Two
- Doctor Who – Big Finish – The Two Masters Trilogy Review
And check out more of my Doctor Who opinion pieces here:
- Doctor Who – Summing up the Moffat Era, or ‘The Tale of Two Moffats’
- Dalek Customs
- ‘The Man Who Never Would’ – The unpopular truth about the Tenth Doctor
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