Christian Cawley's Blog, page 150

Jenna Coleman Talks In Doctor Who Magazine 482!

Christian Cawley is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Doctor Who Magazine have sent us the details for their latest issue, which is out on Thursday. The focus in issue 482 is on Jenna Coleman, who gives a revealing interview about her time so far on the show…

DWM asks Jenna if the Doctor and Clara can finally move on in their relationship – and after the sacrifice of Danny Pink, can things ever be the same again?

“I think so,” Jenna says. “But they are a bit addicted to each other, and to the dynamic that they share. It’s getting so that one can’t go without the other, and I think that’s definitely what Clara’s realised. In a way that’s quite dangerous now, because she realises that there is no going back for her…”

ALSO INSIDE ISSUE 482 OF DWM…

Rachel Talalay, director of the 2014 series finale two-part finale, reveals the secrets of how Death in Heaven was brought to the screen.
Peter Purves, who starred as companion Steven Taylor in the 1960s, talks in-depth about his time on Doctor Who.
Discover fascinating new facts about the acclaimed Seventh Doctor story The Greatest Show in Galaxy in The Fact of Fiction.
Doctor Who showrunner Steven Moffat answer readers’ questions – including the knotty problem of the Doctor’s many wives! – in his exclusive column.
Writer David Fisher, who wrote three memorable stories for the Fourth Doctor in the 1970s, revisits his work.
The Doctor and Clara face Sontarans and Nazis as The Instruments of War continues, a brand-new comic strip written and illustrated by Mike Collins.
Sarah Jane and the Brigadier are reunited, as the Time Team watch The Sarah Jane Adventures: Enemy of the Bane.
Jaqueline Rayner wonders how the Doctor’s companions would get on in the Cubs in Relative Dimensions.
Last Christmas is put under the spotlight in The DWM Review.
The Watcher considers the many surprising ways that Doctor Who stories can change from script to screen in Wotcha!.
The Watcher gives the answers to his Fiendishly Festive Christmas Quiz! How well did you do?
Have your say on Peter Capaldi’s first series as the Doctor in the DWM Season Survey.
The DWM Crossword, prize-winning competitions, and much more!

Doctor Who Magazine 482 is out on Thursday 8 January, priced £4.99.

The post Jenna Coleman Talks In Doctor Who Magazine 482! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

RTD On Doctor Who Cancellation: “Twitter would be set on fire”

Christian Cawley is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Former Doctor Who supremo Russell T Davies has been chatting to Radio Times about his new shows Cucumber, Tofu and Banana, two dramas and a discussion that examine gay life in modern Britain and launch later this month. Naturally, conversation has turned to our favourite show, which RTD spearheaded the revival of 10 years ago.

It’s interesting to see that Davies is still repeatedly asked to write an episode of Doctor Who by Steven Moffat. “The lovely Steven [Moffat] invites me every year to come and write one. And I love him and I love them and I love watching it, but here I am, moving on. I love Doctor Who with all my heart but nothing is more important to me than my own stuff.” Russell is certainly going to be busy with his own stuff over the coming year or so, but perhaps the next showrunner will get lucky and convince the “Man Who Revived Doctor Who” to say yes.

Amazingly, it has been almost ten years since Rose aired on March 26th; just over a decade since the first teaser trailer was played on BBC One.

While we here at Kasterborous are keen on the idea of a 10th anniversary of sorts (not least because it’s also our 10th anniversary) Russell is less keen, noting “Someone from the [BBC’s] branding team sent me a very lovely email saying do you want to do something. I don’t know what they imagined: a talk or a convention perhaps. I just said no, to be honest. A programme can’t have its fiftieth and then it’s tenth. I think that’s just confusing. It’s marvellous and glorious; let it carry on.”

You can see his point. Meanwhile, it also seems as though the BBC is undecided on how to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Doctor Who‘s return. We reckon the smart money is on a celebratory special talking heads complilation clip show of the sort previously seen on BBC Three, but released on iPlayer instead.

Perhaps more interesting, however, is Davies’ reaction to the idea that there could ever be another Doctor Who cancellation. “It’s now impossible for it to ever be axed. It’s certainly heading that way. Could you imagine if it was axed now? There would be uproar in the streets. Twitter would be set on fire.”

“Who would have thought? If you look at the last ten years: ten years of rock solid ratings! It’s bizarre to an old-school Doctor Who fan like me; it’s success continues to be extraordinary. Also, there is a current generation who will keep it alive in a generation’s time. As long as there’s an audience, that audience will grow up loving it and want to make their own and it’s self-perpetuating.”

What do you think? Could Doctor Who be axed again, or would its international ratings and the likelihood of a Ripper Street-style co-productions with online partners stay BBC One’s executioner’s hand should ratings and audience appreciation dip to unwanted levels?

The post RTD On Doctor Who Cancellation: “Twitter would be set on fire” appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Doctor Who Series 9: Musings on Magic

James Lomond is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Greetings Kasterborites! I have been musing over my Christmas list when it comes to Doctor Who Series 9 and beyond. I’ve been thinking about the darker, edgier direction Series 8 took and the kind of things that give me that little tingle of awe that I think are referred to as “squeee” or “the feels”. And my demands are both vague and specific…

The future of Doctor Who currently lies in the mind of Steven Moffat and his band of writers. Thereafter it rests in the minds of future showrunners – I like to think of them walking among us, bearing The Sign (perhaps a TARDIS-shaped birthmark between the dimples of Venus) unaware that their Who-based daydreams will one day be broadcast to millions…

The other day [British for “recently”] I saw The Hobbit at the cinema… Monsters, magic and good versus evil. This got me thinking, not least because of Peter Jackson’s love for Doctor Who, about where the show could go next. Bear in mind that my brain has mostly been working in a solution of two parts brandy, two parts sherry and one part brain-juice for the past week or more. So any recent “thinking” has been heavily influenced by Christmas *cheer*.

One of the things I enjoy about The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are the epic forces and ancient magics that underpin the events in Tolkien’s world. Whatever is happening at any one time is usually part of something much bigger and it’s more than mere politics. (Then, of course, there’s the monsters and adventure). It’s the same thing that makes a lot of fantasy appealing, in my view: things that usually take the form of dramatic irony or providence in ordinary fiction can take on a deeper significance in fantasy literature.

In normal fiction someone might get their comeuppance because of a negative character trait or a convenient twist of fate whereby the good guys always win. Often in fantasy literature narrative tricks and allegories can participate in the narrative in a much more direct way: they can be a part of the events unfolding. The things people do, say and feel – a protagonist’s or antagonist’s agenda – can take affect across time and space (even between universes).

So where stories may sometimes rely on the general principle that the good guys win, coincidence or dramatic irony, in fantasy literature, destiny can take on a very real form. In fact destiny can be identified and interacted with whether as a prophecy, magic or perhaps some feature of advanced technology. There can be more tangible reasons for things turning out the way they do and being able to make narrative structures or tropes actual entities within the story, you can tell richer, more complicated stories. At least that’s my view as a fan of the genre.

Of course this can cause problems as well. We’re all familiar with the aphorism in recent Who that “time can be re-written.” Of course the mechanics of – when it can and cannot be re-written or whether any attempt will be thwarted by the intrinsic structure of wibbly wobbly ball (“destiny” perhaps) – tend to change depending on what is convenient for the writer in that particular story! And fair enough. It’d be difficult to keep a time-travel based show going if there weren’t some arbitrary “fixed points” to shape the narrative here and there.

So in speculative fiction, things that inform the agenda of the key players – things like vengeance, desire, punishment, love and redemption – can take affect across generations and between galaxies whether though spells, programs, transmats or God-like powers. Or they can take effect in ways that are impossible in ordinary fiction. Themes like deceit, the anonymity of war, and redemption can take on other allegorical forms in fantasy fiction. One of the best examples in Doctor Who that I can think of transforms these into a plague…

If you haven’t seen 2005’s The Empty Child/ The Doctor Dances yet, look away now (actually, watch it now!)!

The bulk of the two-parter centres on the harm done by nanogenes (or nanobots) that colonised the body of a young boy killed by a WWII bomb moments before they get to him. He was in the way of danger because he was looking for his mother and died with his gas mask on. His mother had been *too young* when she had him and worse (going by the social standards of 1940s Britain), was not married. Because of this, his mother, Nancy, has had to lie to him from birth and pretend to be his sister…

After his infection with nanogenes, we have an outbreak of gas-masked zombies searching for their mothers. The nanogenes were battlefield medical technology primed to get soldiers up and doing what they were supposed to be doing.  Thinking that a lost little boy in a gas mask, looking for his mother is what humans are supposed to be like they set about re-modelling anyone that came into contact with them.

At the denouement the Doctor tells Nancy to go and tell Jamie that she is really his mother. This allows the nanogenes contact with one of the boy’s parents and they recognise maternal DNA as a generation above Jamie i.e. a more authoritative example of what humans are suppose to be like. They also notice the fact that she doesn’t have a gas mask and isn’t on a singular quest to find a longed-for mother – they realise they’d made an error in their wartime swift “repair” based on one example of a human. They reverse all of the sinister damage and even improve some of the victims along the way (a missing leg has returned!).

This is quite a neat and complicated science fiction explanation (and I LOVE it). But the brilliant thing that fantasy genres can do, as discussed above, is feature allegory and other narrative devices as physical realities in the story. We have the literal event of microscopic robots recognising a very concrete fact of human biology paralleled by the emotional event of Nancy being honest about who she is and Jamie discovering that he does have someone who will be a mother to him rather than a big sister. The “cure” from bringing the nanogenes into contact with maternal body and DNA is spread by the Doctor to every other victim.

The truly brilliant part of this is what we also see. If the viewer follows the nanogene plot, they will get that there is a well thought-out speculative scientific event taking place. But we see something that looks like magic from modern traditions of depicting supernatural forces in fairy tales. There is glittering holy light around the embracing mother and child as she reveals who she is, overcomes her shame and gives Jamie the assurance that he is loved. It looks like something from a Disney movie, but the glittering light is really advanced technology doing something very clever. The next thing we see is the Doctor shooting glowing magical powers from his hands – but again with the perfectly thought through sci-fi explanation for what is really happening. What looks like fairy tale magic has a perfect speculative scientific explanation. Moreover this science fiction event is made possible by Nancy’s bravery and the Doctor’s desire to heal. Where bravery and good intentions can take on magical appearances in fairy tale, here their impact has a technological explanation. Never mind the brilliant performances – as a piece of science fantasy writing and directing this is what I call: Bloody brilliant.

So we have an example of Doctor Who doing a sciencey version of shooting powers from your hands in the manner of Harry Potter and LOTR. In those two franchises, and I’d argue in a lot of Manga, the use of magic seems to stand in as an allegory for the strength of emotions and strength of character – moral fibre perhaps. This sort of thing crops up in Doctor Who too, in the love-conquers-all endings we have seen a bit too much of over the years. In The Lodger, Craig’s desire to remain where he is somehow is comprehended by the mysterious ship’s systems and enables him to oppose its pilot-trapping protocols. Then his love for his son in Closing Time somehow overturns the Cybermen’s emotion-removing software. What with the finale to Series 3, Ridiculous Rings of Akhaten and Bracewell’s humanity in Victory of the Dalek’s this can all get a bit much…

But anyway – back to Tolkien and the future of Who. The point I wish to make is that Doctor Who can do magic-plus. It can present all the visual and metaphorical trappings of spell-casting in other fantasy literature and go further, introducing different kinds of explanations and properties. And the reason this is important is because it enable Total Awesomeness. And I’m thinking of the kind of Total Awesomeness that you see when the Wise Old Man (or woman) archetype (the Santas, Merlins and mysterious Sages-on-the-Hill) goes badass. Key examples that give me this particular thrill in LOTR are the showdown between Gandalf and Sauron in The Fellowship of the Ring and similarly the Cure of Theoden in The Two Towers. In The Hobbit, I got “the feels” for the faceoff between Galadriel and Sauron – clips are online (though they probably shouldn’t be so I won’t link!).

In Peter Capaldi we have an actor who, I think, can carry this off more than any other since the Classic era. While Smith managed to portray an ancient Time Lord in the body of a 20-something wonderfully, there’s something that a bit of salt-n-pepper gravitas lends to the role. Capaldi certainly has a contrasting stillness and presence that may come with a bit of seniority.

So this is what I’d like for Christmas, Kasterborites. It doesn’t matter that the big day is gone as the delivery is being made to a production office in Cardiff, and should hopefully already be sitting on a desk:

1) More properly thought out speculative science-magic awesomeness.

2) The Twelfth Doctor getting some Wise-Old-Badass moments – probably involving stuff that looks like cool magic but without a Welsh Children’s Choir or poorly explained leaves.

3) Peter Jackson directing Capaldi in Wise-Old-Badass moments.

That is all. Doctor Who using the flexibility of its format to bring us some truly epic, magical narratives and the Doctor doing some Epic Wizardness – he’s got the Magician’s outfit and the eyebrows. All he needs are the stories. With Series 9, episode 1 being titled The Magician’s Apprentice, might I be getting my wish…?

But enough of my two-parts Brandy rambling! What do you want to see in Series 9 and beyond? What does Doctor Who look like, feel like and do when it’s at its best for you? And what gives you “the feels”?

The post Doctor Who Series 9: Musings on Magic appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Remember The Anticipation Of The Doctor Who Series 1 Teaser Trailer!

Christian Cawley is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

News Year’s Day, 2005, was a Saturday, appropriately enough. So what better time to screen a Doctor Who teaser trailer to whet the appetites of viewers (admittedly, mainly only fans at this stage)?

Above, you can see the trailer. If this is new to you, consider what it must have been like to have been without any new Doctor Who on TV for 9 years, only to be presented with the image of the TARDIS dematerialising.

And then multiply that by the highest number you can imagine.

You may get somewhere close.

According to this very website’s archive, the trailer was apparently revealed first online on December 12th on the BBC’s old Cult pages (which predated the soon-to-be-launched dedicated Doctor Who page) before getting a TV broadcast on January 1st…

21.03, Saturday January 1st, 2005

It’s almost Time…..

That’s right! Many will have missed it, sandwiched as it was between a news update and the Vicar of Dibley (an episode with strong emphasis on world poverty), but last night BBC1 broadcast the Doctor Who teaser trailer! Although a slightly different edit, the content was the same as that seen on the online trailer. It is also possible that this hints at a February start date.

Heads up ladies and gentlemen, he’s almost here…

I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling the excitement all over again! Where did I put that TARDIS-shaped Series 1 box set…?

The post Remember The Anticipation Of The Doctor Who Series 1 Teaser Trailer! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

The Companion Chronicles: Second Chances

Nick Kitchen is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

In Big Finish’s Companion Chronicles finale, the series returns to Wendy Padbury’s Zoe as more of her memories return in Second Chances.

Out of courtesy for some of our new Whovians who may not be incredibly familiar with the classic Doctors and their companions, Second Doctor companions Zoe and Jamie were stripped of all memories of their times travelling with the Doctor by the Time Lords during the events of Troughton’s last serial, The War Games. These suppressed memories have been coaxed out of Zoe by an investigator via memory probing.

In Second Chances, it is the memories of the events of a pair of space stations, Artemis and Apollo, that Zoe is forced to recall. It is revealed that these memories are actually taking place in real time; Kym (voiced by Emily Pithon), the interrogator, wants to use this information as a way to reclaim status with “the Company” and this gives Zoe an opportunity to change the fate of the people on the Artemis, and relieve her of the guilt she carries for their deaths.

The performance turned in by the voice cast of two is done nicely, as are Padbury’s attempts at Troughton and Hines. Padbury has no problem picking up the character of Zoe in a believable way. The story itself is well written by John Dorney and keeps the listener on his/her’s toes, as not everything is as it seems. Indeed, a second listen maybe warranted to really appreciate what happens in the story. This reviewer can confidently recommend this as a “need to hear” audio. That being said, however, as range finale I found the story as a less than fitting capstone. This isn’t necessarily a reflection on Second Chances, but the strength of some of the preceding stories. I would argue that the final spot would have been better filled by Starborn or The War to End All Wars, the latter being the best fit. But this is just one writer’s opinion. Second Chances is available for purchase now.

For those of you who find yourselves missing the Companion Chronicles, I highly recommend that you check out the newest range, The Early Adventures, full cast audio adventures that will definitely fill the void left by the Companion Chronicles. Be looking for reviews on the series coming soon! In the interim, if you’ve checked out these two releases, please let us know what you thought about them, won’t you?

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Get Doctor Who Short Trips Volume 3 From Big Finish Today!

Christian Cawley is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

So, what have Big Finish got for us this time? It’s Day 11 of their 12 Days of Big Finish-Mas Special Offer, and this time around you eight stories!

That’s right, it’s Volume 3 of Short Trips, a collection of short Doctor Who tales written by new and established authors and read by stars of Doctor Who such as Peter Davison, Colin Baker and William Russell…

Released back in May 2011, Short Trips Volume 3 can be purchased for 48 hours for the ridiculously cheap price of £2.99.

Get ready for eight fantastic new adventures in space and time with the Doctor and his companions, featuring stories from many of Doctor Who’s most popular authors from the worlds of television, print, comics and audio, as well as new talent and fresh voices… and read by your favourite Big Finish actors!



Seven to One by Simon Miller

Read by William Russell and Nicholas Briggs

Seven Doctors… one tricky situation. Will the First Doctor be able to save his future incarnations from a deadly trap?

The Five Dimensional Man by Kate Orman

Read by David Troughton

A Fifties housewife gets more than she bargained for when she offers to help a strange girl who appears in her kitchen.

Pop-Up by Dave Curran

Read by Katy Manning

Jo Grant takes pity on a tiny advertising robot from the Epsilon Cluster with disastrous consequences.

The Wondrous Box by Juliet Boyd

Read by Louise Jameson

The Doctor and Sarah Jane pay an ill-timed visit to PT Barnum and The Greatest Show on Earth.

Wet Walls by Mathilde Madden

Read by Peter Davison

The walls of a manor house are dripping wet at night. But why can only mad Lady Catherine – and Peri – see it?

Murmurs of Earth by M Deacon, J Middleton and C Wraight

Read by Colin Baker

Peri’s life is in danger when she and the Doctor land on a planet populated with mysterious holograms…

The Riparian Ripper by Andrew Cartmel

Read by Sophie Aldred

The Doctor and Ace investigate a series of terrifying slasher attacks along the banks of the Red River.

All the Fun of the Fair by Bev Conway

Read by India Fisher

‘Welcome to the future. Step right up for the trip of a lifetime! Yes, madam, I know it says Police Public Call Box but that’s just by way of a bit of disguise…’

 Exciting stuff, and we think a nice lead into the beginning of a new range later this month. Doctor Who – Monthly Short Trips, begins with First Doctor tale Flywheel Revolution read by Peter Purves. Stay tuned for more details on that, but in the meantime, don’t let your 48 hours run out – buy Short Trips Volume 3 as soon as you can!

The post Get Doctor Who Short Trips Volume 3 From Big Finish Today! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Mirror Continues Doctor Who Attack, Cites “Ratings Slump”

Christian Cawley is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

An utterly bizarre report on the website of newspaper The Mirror this evening claims that Doctor Who‘s alleged “ratings slump” (alleged by only that news organ) will lead the BBC to ditch so-called “edgy” adult plots.

As any fan will know, the notion of anything edgy and adult in a series that featured Kill the Moon and In the Forest of the Night is bordering on demented. Actually, the idea that ratings have slipped is also rather barmy, as we proved a couple of months ago. These new claims follow on from previous Mirror attacks on Steven Moffat and the leaking of the news that Jenna Coleman was leaving, something that has since been put to bed with confirmation that she is staying for Doctor Who Series 9 (although we’re reliably informed that it was a very drawn-out process, far more than usual.)

Talking to The Mirror’s Sunday paper The Sunday People (presumably a full report will appear in tomorrow’s edition), a made up person loose-lipped senior BBC source stated that “There will be some tweaks. We are obviously keen for it to appeal to the whole family.”

The report goes on to cite some fan criticisms (never hard to find these days!) such as “Moffatt seems hellbent on killing off Who,” and “Used to enjoy watching with my kids, now it is on far too late and is ­complicated and ­boring. Bring back the monsters!”

Series 8 of Doctor Who featured clockwork robots, the Skovox Blitzer, the Teller, skeletal Cybermen and a Mummy. We’re not quite sure how Series 9 can improve on this level of monstrosity, although of course if it’s too monster-heavy, the timeslot might still be a problem for some.

Now, it seems that The Mirror is taking the Steven Moffat presence on Doctor Who in his fifth series as showrunner as its main target of late. Why this is we just don’t know (replacing showrunners isn’t exactly the job of a newspaper, right?), although the use of the phrase “back in time” in the headline is perhaps more than just a hook…

The post Mirror Continues Doctor Who Attack, Cites “Ratings Slump” appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Not One, But Two Doctor Who Tenth Anniversaries In 2015!

Christian Cawley is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Not only is it the 10th anniversary of nuWho this year (Rose was broadcast on March 26th 2005, but we’ll be coming to that in due course) but 2015 also marks a decade since the launch of this very website.

Conceived by myself and Anthony Dry on a boring summer afternoon in the Outpost Gallifery in 2004, it took a lot of work to get from the basic static layouts to the more interesting and quicker loading prototype of the site you now see before you.

So big thanks to the people who have been involved with Kasterborous over the years, from designer Anthony Dry to podKasting partners Brian A Terranova and James McLean, my assistant editor Philip Bates and longrunning news team member Andrew Reynolds. Back in July Phil pre-empted the anniversary by marking the first movements of activity preparing content for the site in 2004, which you can still read; note that it isn’t entirely serious…

And for those of you with enquiring minds, here’s how we looked in 2005 (some menu graphics are missing, otherwise, it looks good)…

Bigger thanks, of course, go to you, our reader. We wouldn’t be still hammering away at this newsface of Doctor Who goodies, tempting chunks of emotive, conversational fuel that seems to be able to feed us permanently.

We’re going to remain largely low key on our anniversary, rather than celebrating putting our energy into making Kasterborous an even more vital home for your Doctor Who fandom needs.

Stay tuned…

The post Not One, But Two Doctor Who Tenth Anniversaries In 2015! appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

The Companion Chronicles: The Elixir of Doom

Nick Kitchen is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

For fans of the Big Finish audio series, Doctor Who: The Companion Chronicles, 2014 was a bittersweet year as it marked the end of releases for the range (though Nicholas Briggs hasn’t ruled out a return to the series for specials and etc.). As such, the series ended with its 79th and 80th entries, The Elixir of Doom and Second Chances.

We’ll take a look at #80, Second Chances, tomorrow. First, for the Big Finish/Companion Chronicles uninitiated, the Companion Chronicles typically consists of a cast of two, one of which being a former companion of the Doctor, in the era the story is set (typically between the First and Third Doctors). The companion acts as a narrator and also usually gives their impression of their Doctor as well, if the Doctor is featured in the story (as many of them are of the Doctor-lite variety).

My initial reaction to The Elixir of Doom is that it should really have been titled “Iris Wildthyme and The Elixir of Doom”. While the audio features Katy Manning reprising her role as Third Doctor companion, Jo Grant (Jones), it is Iris that gets the lion’s share of the narrative. It also features the Eighth Doctor, one of only two Companion Chronicle stories to do so, though neither voiced by Paul McGann. Thus, accepting that the setup is a little different than you might expect, the story itself is rather engaging (if a little light on substance), in this reviewer’s opinion.

Iris and Jo find themselves at the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, at a party hosted by movie star Vita Monet (also voiced by Manning), where in the midst of the company there is a Time Lord and an appearance by Monet’s monster co-star, The Lizard Man. I’ll not spoil the major plot points, but there is an obvious disconnect between Jo and Iris, because Jo expects her to act more like the Doctor. Indeed, it is Iris’ carelessness with time travel that set some of the events of this adventure in motion. Wildthyme’s handling of the knowledge that the Doctor is also on the scene is also noteworthy, as it underscores an insecurity within Iris.

Speaking of which, Manning’s performance is terrific. She seamlessly slips back in to Jo Grant Jones as if the character and actress haven’t aged a day. Her turn as Paul Magrs’ successful spinoff creation Iris is also well done and engaging. There is always the risk of boredom when one person narrates and voices the characters in the story, but it isn’t an issue in this case. Manning goes between the pair in a way that keeps the dialogue fresh and her throaty Iris is definitely entertaining (and in many ways, the highlight of the audio).

As this is billed as Third Doctor’s companion story it is a little disappointing that the Third Doctor has no part in the story. The consolation prize is the Eighth Doctor, but even he is used sparingly and it would have been nice to have McGann voice him for the plot points for which he is present. That being said, this is an enjoyable ride and while it isn’t the best of the series, Katy Manning’s performance is worth the price of admission.

The Elixir of Doom is available for purchase from the Big Finish website.

The post The Companion Chronicles: The Elixir of Doom appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

12 Days Of Big Finish Goes Back To The Beginning!

Christian Cawley is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

For 48 hours you can grab hold of one of Big Finish’s big hits of Doctor Who‘s 2013 anniversary year, The Beginning, in which Susan and her grandfather leave Gallifrey… only to find that they’re not alone in the TARDIS…

This intriguing tale is a rather spiffing £2.99 to purchase and is the tenth offer from Big Finish to celebrate Christmas – there are just two days left in this promotion!

The Beginning is one of the popular Companion Chronicles stories, typically two-handers, and if you would like to know more, read below:

When the First Doctor and his grand-daughter Susan escape through the cloisters of Gallifrey to an old Type 40 Time Travel capsule, little do they realize the adventures that lie ahead… And little do they know, as the TARDIS dematerializes and they leave their home world behind, there is someone else aboard the ship. He is Quadrigger Stoyn, and he is very unhappy…

Starring Carole Ann Ford  as Susan and Terry Molloy as Quadrigger Stoyn, The Beginning is by Marc Platt and directed by Lisa Bowerman and you can get your copy for just £2.99 today.

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