Primord written by John Dorney and directed by Nicholas Briggs

What’s it about: Prisoners are escaping from incarceration all around the country and UNIT have been called in to aid in the search. But the Doctor is unwilling to agree to the Brigadier’s request for help as he and Jo have opted to take a holiday – they’re going to visit his old assistant Liz Shaw, now working in Cambridge University. But, unfortunately for Jo, the Doctor can’t relax for very long. Soon the Time Lord and his friends are facing an old enemy – creatures they’d long since thought they’d put to ground. The Primords have returned – and this time the danger may strike very close to home.

The Mighty Nose: ‘You might enjoy the prospect of gallivanting about across the countryside searching for absconded ne’er do wells but Jo and I have rather more salubrious plans…’ The Third Doctor is really rather easy to capture in script form; a dash of arrogance, the odd name drop, some bizarre domestic technobabble, a moral lecture and moments of eye-popping drama. Add in a drop of comedy and you’ve got it. The Doctor suggests that they are off the clock whilst they are in Cambridge…bless him for thinking that. The Doctor is delighted to be reacquainted with Liz. There always was a sense of them being equals rather than Doctor and companion. Much like Sarah and Rose in School Reunion, the Doctor is in a lot of trouble when Jo and Liz get together. He admits it was a pity to lose Liz back in the day but had that not happened then he would have never have met Jo, and he wouldn’t have wanted that. He thinks they are bot impressive, intelligent women in their own ways. They are both extremely important to him. I really enjoyed this dialogue, it never strayed into over celebration but stresses the relationships. Scenes with the Doctor and Liz doing experiments in a scientific base just feel right, don’t they? ‘Good grief use your brain man! If you have one!’ sounds 100% Pertwee to me. He’s so smart he could do experiments in the UNIT canteen and still get the desired results.

Dippy Agent: I’m not sure why but Katy Manning seems fit to open this story playing Jo with a baby voice not that far removed from the time when Mrs Slocombe was dolled up like a baby doll on Are You Being Served. I know Jo was occasionally a little childish but I think this is misremembering the role slightly and had I been Briggs I would have asked her to tone it down a little. Interestingly, it settles down after a while. It’s almost as if Manning was so excited to be playing the part again that she got carried away and then found her authentic Jo voice somewhere near the end of episode one. There’s no tension between Jo and Liz. Indeed, she grabs her in a huge hug as soon as she sees her. Sometimes when the Doctor gets started on technobabble it all sounds like gobbledegook. The Doctor suggests that Bessie couldn’t be in finer hands than with Jo. Is he insane? She’s been locked up enough times to know that somebody always comes to the rescue eventually. Manning has recovered herself entirely when she gets to stick up for the Brigadier and his actions surrounding the Silurians. When she realises that the Brigadier has the situation in hand she pops off to save the Doctor. That’s her job.

Doctor Shaw: Liz was originally supposed to be UNITs scientific advisor until the Doctor arrived. Imagine if she would have had to have dealt with the Autons, Silurians, Ambassadors and Primords on her own? She would have been fantastic. Daisy Ashford doesn’t sound entirely like her mother (nor should she) but I found the idea of her playing Liz a touching one at first and then before long I was simply enjoying her in the role. A note perfect impression? No. An accurate rendition of Liz Shaw? Yes. I miss Carrie John’s presence in the audios very much (remember The Last Post?) but having her daughters presence in these love letters to the era is a wonderful thing. Liz’s fiancé Michael has been turned into a Primord and she has managed to control his behaviour through temperature regulation. Things developed between them when they were studying the liquid. Michael was the one who named them Pimords. It wasn’t until Liz got infected and became a Primord that her priorities changed and she started working for those who wanted to study the liquid, instead of opposing their work.

The Brigadier: Let’s get one thing out of the way: nobody could replace Nicholas Courtney. I know that might seem an obvious thing to say but I have to get it out there that I adored his portrayal as the Brigadier and found him one of the biggest comforts throughout the entire run of classic Who. There was something about Courtney’s deadpan humour, absolute stiff upperlipedness and unerring loyalty and devotion to the Doctor that made him such a joyous constant in the show. A lot of his appeal comes down to Courtney’s twinkle (because some of the time he was written as a dimwit). Imagine the Brigadier without that sparkle, we’d have another Walter Skinner from The X-Files, a deadly serious head of operations with a chip on his shoulder. However, if they were ever going to recast the part then Jon Culshaw is one of only a few actors that I would give a pass to. His mimicry of Courtney is astonishing. At times I felt I was genuinely listening to him and there is something about that sardonic tone and no-nonsense attitude that takes you straight back to the 70s no questions asked. It’s a remarkable performance from Culshaw, bravura even. There’s a fantastic scene where the Brigadier condemns Sharp for threatening to inflict genocide on entire nations and he is silenced when the General reminds him of the Silurians. Moral outrage suits the Brigadier very nicely. There’s a moment in the last episode where the Brigadier faces up to Liz and it reminds of the wonderfully icy relationship they set up between them in Spearhead from Space. The Brigadier isn’t one for big goodbyes but when he thinks this might be his last stand he admits it has been nice working with the Doctor and that he is a splendid fellow.

Standout Performance: For a second I thought that Big Finish had acquired the services of Judi Dench. They’ve secured John Hurt and Derek Jacobi so it isn’t out of the range of possibility. Bethan Dixon Bate is not a name I know but it really does sound uncannily similar to Dench. And how much does Michael Troughton sound like his father?

Sparkling Dialogue: ‘Practically everybody knows a bit more about science than you, Jo.’
‘I never thought I’d save the world with frozen peas!’

Great Ideas: UNIT has done its job only too well because now all threats to Earth have been defeated they are now being seconded. Why would the military possibly be kidnapping criminals? The green slime from Stalman’s Inferno project has been found and stored. It is capable of turning any man into a savage murdering beast. I really enjoyed the cliff-hanger to episode one, it demonstrates exactly what I was saying in The Monsters of Gokroth. It looks for all the world like Liz has unleashed a Primord on the Doctor and that is because we are seeing (listening) to the story from his point of view. The story then switches to Liz’s point of view after the reprise and we can see that he was in no danger whatsoever. It’s a lovely subversion that completely shifts depending on whose narrative we’re following. After Stalhman’s project fell through there was a lot of worry about the liquid. Nobody was sure what it was. It reacted with heat but beyond that it was a blank page. Liz started to ponder that there might be an outbreak when they weren’t around to stop it. It’s one of the oldest substances on the earth and there was enough recovered to analyse and eventually they called upon Liz to try and study it. Sharp thinks that he can use the liquid as a form of viral warfare. Drop a cannister in another country and watch the mutation spread. The resulting Primords will either wipe out their fellow countrymen or infect them. It would decrease the population considerably for a successful attack.

Musical Cues: Briggs really knows how to capture the feel of an era through its music and he’s done a sterling job here. It’s half Dudley Simpson (dramatic scene changes) and half Malcolm Clarke (atmospheric tuneless piercings). If I shut my eyes, I could almost see the grainy location work.

Standout Scene: I was a little of suspicious of Liz from the start but the moment she played her hand was well timed. What could be worse than developing the liquid from the Inferno project into a weapon? Has Liz Shaw really gone over to the enemy? The end of episode is revelatory. Nobody could possibly have seen that coming.

Result: As a sequel to Inferno, re-introducing Liz Shaw and having her meet Jo Grant and the recasting of the Brigadier, Primord really could have felt like sheer wankery. Instead John Dorney has written a script with a very plausible scenario, taking probably the weakest element of the season seven climax (the monsters) and exploring them in a very frightening way. The additions to the range feel very positive; bringing Daisy Ashford and Jon Culshaw into the mix makes this feel like an authentic full cast drama (which, in really it is nothing of the sort with all the recastings) and we get a fair rendition of Liz and an excellent one of the Brigadier. There’s a terrific, adult feel to the story that really feels like it is a natural extension of Pertwee’s debut season. I especially enjoyed how it held back its twists and relaxed into the setup, building up the tension over time. Very like Inferno, then. The idea that an unfinished story element from a previous adventure could be used as the springboard for a sequel is not a new one but it is done particularly well here, especially when you realise what the Primord liquid is being used for. Trust somebody in the military to think of such a diabolical application for the supernatural substance. John Dorney is one of Big Finish’s most prolific of contributors and you might be forgiven for thinking that because his talent is spread over so many ranges and releases that it might start to dilute the strength of his stories. Not one bit of it. Like Jonathan Morris, he seems to have an endless stream creative storytelling inside him and even now, years after his introduction to Big Finish, he is still delivering memorable goods. His name is synonymous with quality. Primord isn’t a story that is trying too hard to show off but instead knuckle down and capture its era as authentically as possible. It reminds me of the best of the Terrance Dicks script edited period; intelligent, full of character and with some really dramatic ideas at its core. This story could happily have nestled in season 8. Or should that be season 7.5: 9/10