Big Finish - Special Release
Wow! That theme music sure is hard core coming through headphones. Very over the top and intense. Though the background music is the opposite through the story. Why do they need to fill in the story with music? It is VERY distracting. The story is pretty darn fun and scary, with lots of running around. It took me about 15 minutes to just stop hearing the background music, which seems to be prevalent throughout these Destiny of the Doctor stories. Frustrating as Big Finish usually does a much better job with the incidental music and sound effects. Must be an Audio GO thing.
The Doctor and Donna land on Death’s Deal, a planet with a very apt name. Moments later a tourist shuttle lands with a bunch of “people” there to have two minutes on the deadliest planet in the universe, which is illegal to land on. But two minutes is too long and the deaths start happening quickly, with few survivors as the story progresses. It turns out that the landscape is hostile for a very specific reason, which the Doctor can help with later, after he fixes the issue with slaughter crystals. Apparently they’re extremely powerful blue crystals that can kill people and planets very easily. We do get to see the effects of a slaughter crystal on one person and it’s definitely an ugly way to die. So there are some mining ships coming to dig out all of the crystals, effectively stripping the planet bare. And the 11th Doctor pops up to give the mission to the Doctor using a wrecked ship. It’s a lot of running and dodging death and weird stuff – Donna even shuts herself inside of a large mollusk to survive at one point. Weird, icky, but successful. So a good listen and a very 10th Doctor story. Except for that stupid background music. Ugh.
Read by: Catherine Tate (Donna Noble), Duncan Wisby (Kruks and Erskin)
Writer: Darren Jones
Release: October 2013