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THE ONE DOCTOR was one of Big Finish's best releases, so it's hardly surprising that twelve months later, they repeated the idea of a comedy story for Christmas. Writers Gareth Roberts and Clayton Hickman are back, as is Bonnie Langford as Mel. This time she's been paired with Sylvester McCoy and instead of spoofing DOCTOR WHO itself, the writers have turned their attentions to other sci-fi series (including some which ITV used to schedule against WHO) and the Eurovision Song Contest. The story is set on Dark Space 8, a Deep Space 9/Babylon 5 type space station. We only met a handful of the station's crew, including Doctor Eleanor Harcourt (Sabina Franklyn) and Professor Fassbinder (Graeme Garden). Harcourt seems based on the Barbara Bain character from SPACE: 1999 and her voice-overs help introduce the setting. Fassbinder gets to use a lot of the technobabble that you associate with TREK, although it turns out that there's actually a good reason for this. It's just a shame that Garden, who many British fans will have grown up watching in THE GOODIES, is slightly underused. The other characters are all there for the song contest. Patricia Quinn's Angvia (I'll leave you to work out the anagram) has an outrageous Russian accent and attempts to seduce the Doctor, while Anthony Spargo's constantly anxious Nicky Newman forms a good double act with Mel. The other main contestant is the entry from Gholos (interestingly, both Angvia's and Gholos' entrants are named after their planets), who communicates using crackles. Loozly (ROBIN OF SHERWOOD's Nickolas Grace), who seems to prefer Gholos to humans, acts as an interpreter. With the story based around a song contest, we get the Intergalactic equivalent of Terry Wogan, while the rodent-like Pakhars make their first appearance in a BF audio (the less serious nature of the story is shown by the character's appearance on the cover - all the others are represented by the actors playing them instead). The story takes the form of a whodunnit, and the characters are all given sufficient motivations to be the murderer. Mel's jumping to conclusion with regard to the murderer's identity works well, as the character continues her revival in the audios. She gets to play Hastings to the Doctor's Poirot and forms a good double act with Nicky. The Doctor isn't quite as successful. To an extent, the season 24 persona is sent up, but McCoy's tendency to overdo things - rolling his Rs and spelling things out one...word...at...a...time - still proves annoying. However, his impersonation as an authority works well, especially since it allows Mel to continually prompt him. Not as outrageous or enjoyable as THE ONE DOCTOR, but the story is good, there are some decent laughs and Mel is upto her usual Big Finish standard. BACK TO THE TOP |
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