The Night Witches (4.1)

  Big Finish, The Early Adventures

 

I hadn’t heard the of the Night Witches, a Russian, all-female unit of flyers caught in a way against the invading Germans in WWII as they approach Moscow. Their leader, Nadia, is heartless and suspicious of everyone and everything in this story. Every time there is a chance to kill or get rid of the TARDIS team, she will take it. Though Tatiana isn’t much better as she is determined to run away, replacing Polly. Polly and Tatiana are almost exact duplicates so that allows for some fun moments in the story. But mostly this story is grim and stark, with little fun to be had.

A major problem I had is with Polly not thinking straight when she is lost. Why destroy the radio she found? Who will help her then? And wow but the distance between camps and that cave is long, long, long until they know the way. Then it’s just 5 minutes, if that, though at least 5 hours by tank. Very strange, the sense of distance in this story. The historical portion of the story is very, very good but there are just some weird inconsistencies that made me scratch my head.


Anneke Wills (Polly Wright/Narrator), Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon/The Doctor), Elliot Chapman (Ben Jackson), Anjella Mackintosh(Tatiana Kregki), Wanda Opalinska (Nadia Vasney), Kristina Buikaite (Lilya Grankin)

Writer: Roland Moore

Director: Helen Goldwyn

Release: October 2016

© Laura Vilensky 2019