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.
Doctor Who: Pretty Lies
by Guy Adams (Big Finish, 2017)
As gratifying as it is to hear John Hurt as the War Doctor, this audio drama—inevitably?—portrays him as doing his humane best in an impossible situation; ergo, as no more callous or culpable than any other of the Doctor’s incarnations.
Doctor Who: The Mind Robber
by Peter Ling (Target, 1986); audiobook read by Derek Jacobi (BBC, 2010)
Peter Ling’s only Doctor Who novelisation is more competently written than many in the Target range. As a Wonderland homage, however, and as a pioneering work of metatextualism, the story trots out (and bottoms out on) visual flourishes better suited to television.
Doctor Who: An Earthly Child
by Marc Platt (Big Finish, 2009)
Platt does a good job envisaging Susan’s future life and a reunion with her grandfather (in his eighth incarnation)! Carole Ann Ford and Paul McGann work well together but the Doctor—not uncommonly in Eighth Doctor stories—contributes little to the resolution.