Big Finish Main Range
Take us on a dark tour of a pitch black planet where your eyes get ripped out by the aliens there and I’m feeling the anxiety of the moment! Nicholas Briggs has written quite a few adventures, at least one for each Doctor: Sirens of Time, Mutant Phase, Sword of Orion, Creatures of Beauty, The Nowhere Place, and Frozen Time (not released yet—will be out August 2007). This is the most successful and spooky one he’s written! I actually could feel that the Doctor and Charley were in some danger from the Cimmerians. They probably wouldn’t die but that doesn’t mean they weren’t in danger. And throw in ROSM to boot and you’ve got that crazy Hal-like computer that’s just “performing it’s function” and putting everyone in danger all over the place for the wrong reasons. It’s all in the logic! How was it programmed? Um, the wrong way! Hehehe.
There are some cheesy parts towards the end that bring this down a bit. The Doctor “sacrificing” himself to apologize, the ROSM refusing to shoot, the force fields are up so they’re yelling “arrr!” and it just sounds cheesy. Little stuff like that which keeps it from being a 5 jelloid tale. Overall, it’s very cool though it’s one of the very few stories that doesn’t really have a resolution! It’s odd but at the same time, very interesting. The Doctor’s end of the story is resolved but not the tale. But perhaps I don’t need to know what happens. Or someday they’ll get back to that planet and the Doctor will be revered/saintly/the ultimate evil. We just never know with Big Finish and the Doctor!
Paul McGann and India Fisher
Writer/Director: Nicholas Briggs
Release: April 2002