The Further Adventures of Lucie Miller Vol.1: The Dalek Trap written and directed by Nicholas Briggs

What’s it about: "It’s a funny thing, livin’ a ‘life or death’ life. Fightin’ monsters. Seein’ alien planets and spaceships and stuff. Thinkin’ about it… it’s sort of addictive." It’s been several months since Lucie Miller, Blackpool’s mouthiest, landed up travelling through time and space in the company of the Doctor, the last living person to believe that frock coats are acceptable apparel. They’ve met Daleks on Red Rocket Rising, Cybermen on the planet Lonsis and alien monsters eating glam rockers at a service station just off the M62. But their greatest adventures are yet to come…  The thing about black holes is, they’re big and they’re black and they’re deadly, and you’d have to be mad to go anywhere near them. Because anything that falls inside a black hole ends up crushed in the singularity.  Unfortunately, the Doctor just went mad, or so it seems, and flew his TARDIS beyond a black hole’s event horizon, causing him and his companion Lucie Miller to end up marooned on a planetoid just inside the event horizon. Along with a Dalek saucer… and something else. Because this is no ordinary black hole… This is the Cradle of the Darkness.

Breathless Romantic: A cute, trouble free eighth Doctor free from the shackles of the Time War. Perhaps that is the ultimate refreshment with this incarnation given that so much of his material these days is tied to that appearance in Night of the Doctor (how a ten-minute vignette can have such an impact on the eighth Doctor’s run is quite astonishing). He’s that bouncy, witter Tiggerish eighth Doctor of old, knocking about the universe for the sheer fun of it. How lovely. He hoots with joy at the idea of running through the snot of a monster that might be mistaken for rain. Laughing, singing, id’ almost forgotten that he was capable of those things. When the Doctor hits Lucie you know something must be wrong.

Lucie Bleedin’ Miller: Lucie is at the beginning of something that she feels is worth recording, the beginning of something special in her life. She explains how she was kidnapped by the Time Lords and dropped him with the Doctor, who is dead good fun and is taking her on outrageous adventures. It’s an opening that suggests the magic of the Doctor Who formula through the eyes of a regular human lass. Sheridan Smith is immediately likable, just as she always was. She suggests that she could have gone home at the end of Human Resources but instead thought stuff that for a game of monkeys. There’s a sweet moment when Lucie celebrates her time with the Doctor which is about a million times less annoying than the great emotional love-in at the start of new Earth (the Doctor and Rose literally on a date getting off on their own wonderfulness) because whilst it is commemorative (which you cannot blame this box set for, it is rather what it is about) it is a fairly brief pat on the back before snapping back to the adventuring. She knows the Daleks are bad news…oh Lucie if only you knew. Her life with the Doctor, it seems to count for so much.

Standout Performance: Smith; brilliant, brave, enthusiastic, relatable. Despite some dialogue that threatens to trip her up.

Sparkling Dialogue: ‘You’re gonna be the death of me…’ might be really obvious line, but it does pack a punch.
‘Lucie bleedin’ Miller, you will identify this device!’ I think this entire story might have been created just to justify that line.

Great Ideas: The bioship Stenguard is currently located on a planetoid, which is held midway between the event horizon of a black hole and its centre. Objects caught in a black hole can be crushed by the singularly or propelled into another universe. They are in the cradle of the darkness.

Audio Landscape: There’s a hysterical opening where the Daleks are crushed by a singularity that is brilliantly staged, despite the histrionic technobabble delivered by Nicholas Briggs.

Isn’t it Odd: In a story that is already short on time, was it really a good idea to feature a montage of snippets of adventures with the Doctor and Lucie? I get what it is trying to achieve, but it leaves the main story with even less time than usual to develop. Briggs was clearly so caught up in the idea of Lucie’s return that he just wanted stress the fun to be had with the character. And who can blame him? I really like the idea of Lucie’s audio diary of her adventures, but it does feel very Bernice Summerfield and it is a shame that it never featured in her actual run. However, as a way of getting to Lucie’s thoughts and feelings in an economic way, it is a brilliant device. The first half of the story is practically empty of plot and explanation so the latter half offers up great gulps of exposition. Lucie admits at one point that she is talking self-indulgent, self-pitying rubbish, which could be Briggs trying to hang a lantern on his troublesome dialogue but I genuinely think we are supposed to feel something when Lucie confesses how important her life is with the Doctor to her diary. It seems odd that in order to give Lucie a bigger bite of the apple that the Doctor has to be removed completely. The inference seems to be that the two cannot work in tangent with each other with hr just given the focus.

Standout Scene: There is a huge, complex, moral question at the heart of The Dalek Trap that Briggs completely fails to capitalise on except for a glib choice in the final five minutes. Either everybody survives the black hole, or nobody does. That means Lucie has to decide whether to save the people who are trapped and the Daleks and release them back into the universe or to abandon them all after having gotten to know them. There’s huge potential there. I would have gotten to that point quite soon and given a great deal of time to Lucie having to make a adult and difficult choice. Instead the story is far more interesting in waving a flag and saying ‘Lucie’s back!’ Lucie takes a deep breath and decides that nobody dies. Which would have been a great conclusion for a more substantial story to reach.

Result: ‘It is the Doctor! Our saviour!’ Someone has been reading my wish list. Right near the top of my list of wants would be a celebration of Sheridan Smith’s tenure with Big Finish. Lucie Miller was a massively agreeable character, still one of best original companions that Big Finish created and played with real gusto and verve by Smith. A set that dips back into her time with the eighth and a number of standalone stories from that time strikes me as one of the most refreshing things they could do with the eighth Doctor right now. Nicholas Briggs writing a Dalek adventure is not exactly a novel idea. Actually, he has terrific form in doing so from the dramatic heights of Patient Zero, The Mutant Phase and To the Death to the stunning four series Dalek Empire series. His few misfires (The Conquest of Far, Energy of the Daleks) are unfortunate but harmless enough fun and have come from simply being too prolific in the area of Dalek drama and running short on ideas but even those are entertaining in an extremely macho, meat and potatoes kind of way. A bit like Terry Nation on autopilot. Briggs is somebody whose scribblings have fallen out of favour in the past five years because his name dominates Big Finish’s schedules (in the form of acting, directing writing and producing) but it is worth remembering that at its best his output is dramatic and operatic and at worst entertaining enough to pass muster. How does he fare bringing back Lucie Miller years after her unforgettable exit from the audio range? The Doctor Trap is enjoyable, inoffensive stuff. It has a fun premise (the Daleks in trouble and trying to ensnare the Doctor to get them out of it) and waves it at the listener without ever threatening to challenge them with it or examine it in any detail. It’s a most unusual way to conduct a plot, by seemingly forgetting to add one. There’s some hints that this is tied into a greater story but I don’t listen to an hour long story hoping for hints to a narrative that’s more interesting than this. Briggs’ dialogue is as functional as ever (‘it’s bat poo crazy, all of it!’), where I would probably have kicked off the set with script that sparkled. Sheridan Smith is as addictive as ever. That’s the reason to dive straight into The Dalek Trap. With the Doctor acting peculiarly it is down to Lucie to take control of this adventure and that is when it shines. It’s certainly not for the Daleks, who barely feature and squawk and scream when they do but offer nothing new. This is as functional as any of Briggs’ 4DA stories but with added Lucie and that gives it a touch class: 5/10