Big Finish Main Range
Oh the sheer misery. At the end of this audio, I just want to run away. And starting the listening to listen was something I was dreading. I guess this is what a Dalek adventure could be if I just didn’t feel like the Daleks were really bad guys. Ugh. What a painful mess… One of the few audios to rate this low on my scale—along with Medicinal Purposes and Pier Pressure. Those two are painful audios that seem to have the point cut out of them.
Mutant Phase, on the other hand, seems to have all of the angst and threat taken out of it. With the Daleks it’s always down to a showdown of Daleks versus Doctor and that feeling just is non-existent in this audio. I don’t care about the Emperor Dalek trying to stop the mutant phase and why should he? The Daleks in another form will rule the universe if given the chance as this mutant phase expands. Just not the ones in the casings! But they’d still rule the universe in mindless phase… So much for the Daleks being master tacticians, eh?
Nyssa and the Doctor don’t actually interact much, either. Nyssa is there to carry the bug under her skin. The Doctor is there to shepherd everyone around in the TARDIS. The whole point of this story seems lost in the details.
The beginning starts out promisingly enough as we don’t know what’s going on. Swarm moves a ship along, Doctor lands on Earth, the people are trying to “catch” the Doctor, we’re curious of what’s going on. J But then things start downhill. Too much going on with no real hope of a mental showdown in the end. Oiy but it’s just not a good Dalek story! Realistically it just doesn’t work together in the end. If it was all a paradox and the hallmark of every paradox is that the paradox resolves itself—time can’t stand a paradox—then what’s the point of the Doctor and Nyssa being there? It could be a 2 jelloid rating but as it’s surrounded by such good stories that it has to go to a 1 rating for me. In an independent world where all other audios don’t exist, it’s a 2.
Peter Davison and Sarah Sutton
Writer/Director: Nicholas Briggs
Release: December 2000