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Almost a year after their latest Big Finish adventure, THE APOCALYPSE ELEMENT, the Sixth Doctor and Evelyn are back, and once again they're up against an old enemy. That old enemy is the Silurians, a colony of which happened to have awoken on the Galapagos Islands, just as a ship carrying a certain Charles Darwin arrives. That's not the only ship in the vicinity, as the TARDIS has brought the Doctor and Evelyn there as well. After a strong debut in THE MARIAN CONSPIRACY, Evelyn Smythe's character trailed off in her subsequent stories, and I was being to doubt the wisdom of including her as an ongoing companion. Fortunately, she's pretty much back to her best her, with BLOODTIDE probably her second best story so far after her first one - with her optimistic outlook not proving as annoying as her last couple of outings. Unfortunately, despite a good TARDIS team, the story didn't really take off for me. There was a fair amount of getting locked up and escaping going on, and a couple of major plot elements were distinctly unoriginal. The "plague" idea cropped up in DOCTOR WHO AND THE SILURIANS, while the killer creature and homing device one was highly reminiscent of the Skarasen in TERROR OF THE ZYGONS. Still, at least we didn't have to see the Myrka this time as given DOCTOR WHO 's usual budget, audio is clearly the best medium for this monster! That also means there's no zips in the Silurians' (why do they use that term themselves?) costumes, although Big Finish have done a decent enough job on recreating the vocals from their original story. That's not to say there's not some enjoyable stuff in there. There are some good characters, notably Miles Richardsons' Darwin, and the Doctor is on good form - taking delight at smashing up the Silurians' equipment and his conversation with Tulok in part 4. He always displays a character trait seen in THE TOMB OF THE CYBERMEN - telling others not to do something (in this case giving Darwin any ideas) and then doing it anyway. Not the best audio BF have given us so far, but still worth a listen. BACK TO THE TOP |
BLOODTIDE |
