Planet 14 - Doctor Who

After the mostly enjoyable Eighth Doctor season and last month's LOUPS-GAROUX, Big Finish takes a bit of a tumble with the disappointing DUST BREEDING.

Actually, "disappointing" isn't quite the right word as, to be honest, my expectations weren't that high in the first place. I've not been overly fond of Mike Tucker's previous WHO work, and the return of the Krill from STORM HARVEST didn't exactly fill my with excitement. On the cast front, Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred are one of my least favourite TARDIS teams, and when coupled with a writer who seemingly regards their era as one of the show's best, all the pieces were in place for one of BF's weaker offerings.

Sadly, my expectations were proved largely correct.

On the plot front, Tucker mixes various elements to varying degrees of success. The idea of the Doctor's art collection is neat and fairly well handled, and the concept of something lurking within Edvard Munch's The Scream is also good. However, even this provides Sophie Aldred with an incredibly annoying scene where she discovers the painting on the barren world of Duchamp 331.

While previous BF audios have managed to sidestep Doctors' and companions' weakness (eg the Sixth Doctor in general and Mel in THE FIRES OF VULCAN), DUST BREEDING reminds us how bad a lot of seasons 24-26 was.

McCoy and Aldred must take their share of the blame for this. McCoy's tendency to roll his Rs crops up again, and his inability to sound convincing when explaining things is equally annoying, while the scenes where he's possessed are almost embarrassing to listen to. Aldred is not really any better. She wasn't particularly convincing as a teenager on television and over a decade later she's even less convincing on audio.

The other characters are a bit of a mixed bag. Making a return as Bev Tarrant, Louise Faulkner sounds rather too like Sophie Aldred in places, making things a little hard to follow in places. On television, Caroline John played one of the most underrated WHO companions in Liz Shaw, but here her performance of Madame Salvadori suffers way too much from bad accent syndrome to be anything other than annoying. Quite what accent it's supposed to be is a bit of a mystery as it sounds all over the place at times, reminding me of a Centauri from BABYLON 5. Her real life husband, Geoffrey Beevers, also makes a return to DOCTOR WHO , but his performance as the mysterious Seta is a lot better.

Of course, there's a major revelation about Beevers' character that provides a decent cliff-hanger (as opposed to, say, Aldred screaming) and was a genuine surprise as far as I was concerned, not least because I thought Big Finish had stated their position on the subject.

Although some elements of the plot were well done, others were less satisfying - keeping two sets of characters separate for most of the story reminded me of a lot of Sixth Doctor stories (and I didn't particularly like the idea there either) and the Krill don't really make a great villain as far as I'm concerned.

Production standards are up to the usual Big Finish standard, but some less than successful plot elements and some sub-standard acting drag it down a long way. BACK TO THE TOP

DUST BREEDING

Written by MIKE TUCKER

Directed by GARY RUSSELL

Starring SYLVESTER McCOY
and SOPHIE ALDRED

BIG FINISH PRODUCTIONS

£13.99 CD

RATING: 4/10

NEXT RELEASE:
BLOODTIDE

PREVIOUS RELEASE:
LOUPS-GAROUX