|
|
| PLANET
SF HOME | DOCTOR
WHO HOME | BIG FINISH AUDIOS
| 8TH DOCTOR NOVELS | EPISODES
| MISC REVIEWS |
||
|
|
Despite the upturn seen (well, heard) in the last couple of Big Finish audios, I have to confess that my hopes for THE FEARMONGER weren't all that high, not least because it features Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred, one of my least favourite TARDIS teams ever. This scepticism initially proves misplaced with an assassination attempt on Sherilyn Harper (BLAKES 7's Jacqueline Pearce), leader of New Britannia, Britain's answer to the Nazi Party, which seems to be setting things up nicely. However, things rapidly degenerate. The Doctor pops up on a radio show hosted by DJ Mick Thompson (Vince Henderson). With Ace phoning into the show, this set-up quickly proves annoying - Thompson is by far the worst character yet on a Big Finish audio and comes complete with an over-the-top set of jingles. And while I'm no big fan of the Seventh Doctor at the best of times, here his lecturing proved even more annoying than usual. We soon learn that Harper's would-be assassin can hear the usual alien entity in her voice and, naturally enough, he's the only one who can do so. It also transpires that the entity thrives on fear, which I would never have guessed judging by the title. Okay, I lied, it was bloody obvious. The Fearmonger jumps from person to person as the story progresses and things eventually progress to full-on rioting caused by Harper's ethnic cleansing statements. Unsurprisingly the Big Finish budget didn't stretch to Kate Adie so our man on the spot is - quelle surprise - Mick Thompson, who is even more annoying out of the studio than he was in it. On the performance side, Hugh Walters puts in a good performance as Harper's heavy, Roderick Allingham, but Jacqueline Pearce seemed a bit wasted and her character was pretty much confined to delivering a few speeches. On the downside, Vince Henderson's Mick Thompson appears in all four episodes which is quite simply four too many. The two leads put in okay performances, but they're let down by a rather poor story and some daft scenes - in particular the Doctor in the first and last episodes. Production is good as usual, but the whole thing suffers on the story front - a none-too-subtle political storyline with a thin science-fiction coating. A disappointment after recent releases. BACK TO THE TOP |
THE
FEARMONGER |
