A Full Life (6.09)

    Big Finish - Short Trips Season 6


WHOA. This is an amazing story, through and through. The first few minutes are of a tape recorder, fast forwarding through bits and pieces of Adric’s life, before and during his travels with the Doctor and Romana. Then we get down to the real story we came to listen to – how they die saving a world from a lack of death. A man on this world has invented a machine that brings people back to life. Not as undead but back to full life again. And now no one dies. And the population is out of control. Plus there will be other species who would want to use and abuse this machine so the Doctor and Romana must stop it. Naturally. They’re the first people to die on Veridis in months and to stay dead.

Then Adric lives on. And struggles with living without them until the daughter of the creator talks to him. His life was surrounded by death until the Doctor came so he took awhile to recover. It’s a fascinating and touching story of the life he could’ve lived. I love the little touches – admissions that he must’ve been very difficult to deal with at times, concerns for the future of e-space and the universe without the Doctor in it. This was an amazingly done story and deserves the title of best of the short trips stories that I’ve heard. Or if not the best, in the top 5 for sure. Fantastic!


Narrator: Matthew Waterhouse

Writer: Joseph Lidster

Director: Lisa Bowerman

Release: September 2016

© Laura Vilensky 2019