Doctor Who: The Carrionite Curse
by Simon Guerrier (Big Finish, 2017)
Guerrier captures the Sixth Doctor’s character and the salient features of that era (in a good way). Colin Baker’s vitality is undiminished 30+ years on, but the Carrionites—being the type of monster that screeches and threatens but never attacks—are disappointing.
Doctor Who: Empire of the Racnoss
by Scott Handcock (Big Finish, 2017)
Peter Davison is in fine form and clearly relishing his freedom from petulant, dialogue deadweight companions. Unfortunately the Racnoss are equally hard to stomach, here proving themselves to be one of Doctor Who’s most incessantly shrill, one-dimensional and irrationally motivated alien races.
Doctor Who: Night of the Vashta Nerada
by John Dorney (Big Finish, 2017)
A standard base under siege story with stock characters but nice execution and snatches of dark humour. The script is slick and the actors embrace their parts, Tom Baker veering away from his latter-day flippancy to give an unusually measured, heartfelt performance.
Doctor Who: Terror of the Sontarans
by John Dorney & Dan Starkey (Big Finish, 2015)
The Seventh Doctor is in full-on affability mode, drained of all intensity; the Sontarans are demented à la Strax; and one of the minor characters is channelling his inner Lord Flashheart. A specious comedy where only Bonnie Langford takes her role seriously.
Doctor Who: The Two Masters
by John Dorney (Big Finish, 2016)
Though undoubtedly ingenious— relegating Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor to a supporting role while prefiguring the multi-Master double-up of ‘World Enough and Time’—The Two Masters asks too much of the audio format, voicing and characterising its twin antagonists in too similar a fashion.
Doctor Who: Tomb of Valdemar
by Simon Messingham (BBC, 2000)
Messingham writes in the present tense, and with a framing device fit to discombobulate readers weaned on Terrance Dicks and the like. The result is a fully fledged SF novel that artfully showcases—rather than props itself up on—the Fourth Doctor.
Doctor Who: Planet of the Rani
by Marc Platt (Big Finish, 2015)
Colin Baker remains a powerful presence but the plot and character motivations are all over the place. Platt has latched on to the conceit that the Sixth Doctor can defeat all the evils of the universe solely through dint of supercilious speech-making.
Doctor Who: Rhythm of Destruction
by Darren Jones; audiobook read by Dan Starkey (BBC, 2018)
The character of Peter Capaldi’s Doctor is just about right—and is well conveyed by Dan Starkey—but the writing is plain at best and the story is hackneyed; it might well have come about in extemporised response to the cover art.
Doctor Who: The Enigma Dimension
by Nicholas Briggs (Big Finish, 2017)
John Hurt and Jacqueline Pearce in a story with big ideas. What can go wrong? Answer: the Daleks—Doctor Who’s greatest folly—gone inexplicably viral. Fine acting notwithstanding, the Time War boils down to yet another tiresome harangue by demented pepper pots.
Doctor Who: The Lady of Obsidian
by Andrew Smith (Big Finish, 2017)
Leela’s return—pairing Louise Jameson with John Hurt—is a highlight of the Time War, both nostalgically and for the manner in which Andrew Smith brings her back. Unfortunately, there’s too much else going on. The story rattles helter-skelter around the moment.