Big Finish audio adventure #154, November 2011
This story confounded me a bit. I didn’t love it but I did find it intriguing and oddly compelling. The witch in question is actually Agnes Bates, the healer from the local community from “ye olde dayz” and she’s a kindly character. I could see where it would’ve been very convoluted in a previous version, which Rick Briggs talks about in his interview at the end. It’s nice to have a new writer for Big Finish who’s got different ideas! This one definitely falls a bit outside of the typical Big Finish storyline as the menace is the humans and the aliens, yet neither are out to kill the Doctor directly. The Doctor is central to the story yet just one piece of the puzzle.
I really enjoyed the almost parallel storylines with Mary and the Doctor, though I’m wondering if a requirement of a Mary Shelley companion story is having read her works and somehow suggesting them in her adventures. Whatever will they do when they run out of stories that she wrote? Despite her speech patterns, which are a bit old world and really make me think she won’t be able to pick up the new world things she’s been thrust into, Mary’s quite adaptable and the technology doesn’t keep her from thinking. And she’s definitely a thinker and one who can put the puzzle together on her own! Really liking her as a companion so far, though they should really stray from an Earth setting please. Put her on another planet and see how it goes! That will be even more fun to listen to. Go Big Finish, Go!
Paul McGann and Julie Cox
writer: Rick Briggs (no relation to Nick!)
director: Barnaby Edwards
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