The Dark Flame (#42)

    Big Finish Main Range


<big ole spoilers in this one, but why should you care?>

Dark energy beings from another universe?  Threatening to take over the entire universe?  Why?  Well, that’s never explained adequately for me.  Just to make things interesting, I think.  I just don’t buy into the bad guy, Silus Kroll.  He ends up just being a nasty guy so that’s why the dark flame is dark instead of light?  It could’ve been the light flame and a nice flame at that if the energy of the universe dying could be contained that way.  Or was the Doctor just bluffing and he really was an energy being from another dimension?  And give me a reason to care…  The robot was the best thing about this adventure.  I just never really felt like anyone as in danger.  Cringing at the Benny beating up Ace thing but other than when the robot, Joseph, was meandering through the script, I wasn’t all that interested, honestly.

What more could I say?  Hmmm.  Slyde was a typical baddie with the baddie voice.  Lomar the goodie who went bad.  Broke was like the butler gone mad.  Not much to say this is great but not much to say it’s terrible.  Doctor making big pronouncements and saving the universe at the end.  Again.  Nothing too shocking.  A cult gone mad!  Decent acting, an okay story, just nothing really all that gripping about it, honestly. Disappointing for the final audio that Bernice Summerfield participates in!


Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, and Lisa Bowerman

Writer: Trevor Baxendale

Director: Jason Haigh-Ellery

Release: March 2003

© Laura Vilensky 2019