The Mind of the Hodiac written by Russell T. Davies and Scott Handcock and directed by Scott Handcock

What's it About: In the depths of space, the mysterious Hodiac is manipulating the Galactic Stock Exchange to raise money. His aim? To hire mercenaries for a deadly quest across the stars. Meanwhile, on Earth, an ordinary British family is plagued by a series of psychic events. The one thing connecting these events is a magnificent patchwork coat - which just so happens to belong to the Doctor! 

Softer Six: The Doctor is happily reading The Wind in the Willows because it does no harm to keep in touch with a little magic. Mel says there is a good bit of Toad in the Doctor; pioneering, devil-may-care, reckless, the adventurous spirit, a pain...never day die. Having been brought up on The Wind in the Willows and Doctor Who, I can definitely see the parallel. Toad (as irritating as he was to his friends) was always my favourite character. There's a glorious moment when the scanner opens and the Doctor cries that all of time and space is the open road and there's to explore. It's the sort of material I would have loved to have seen Colin get whilst he was on television. I'm not sure how anyone can possibly object to the sixth Doctor quoting literature, since he was doing that ever since he stepped out of the TARDIS on Jaconda. He doesn't like not understanding things and rather petulantly states that when that happens it isn't fair. I rather love his proud exclamation that he is going to leave their destination up to the TARDIS (as if that isn't what happens all the time anyway). The Doctor gets a lovely moment when he gets to bamboozle a guard which reminded me of McCoy in Dragonfire but the guard is given lovely touches of RTD characterisation that made it sing. 

The Great Ginge: If the Doctor is Mr Toad, that makes Mel Ratty. The Doctor attempts to give an entirely nonsensical explanation for what is going on in the TARDIS and Mel, as curt as ever, calls him out on it. There's a lovely warmth between the two of them and there is no sense that Mel doesn't trust the Doctor completely. That's why she is so appalled when starts behaving in a disreputable manner when they reach the family home. Mel is delighted to be back in a suburban setting after a series of showy and colourful adventures, you get the sense that she yearns for a bit of normality after waltzing around the universe with the most bombastic of Doctors. Often Mel is used as an avatar to express how appalling people are behaving ('you're despicable!') but for once it is entirely justified when she cannot comprehend how Mrs Maitland has been convinced by Mrs Chinn that the horrors that have beset her household are the work of God punishing her for breaking her matrimonial vows. In a wonderful moment of comedy, Mel gets to impersonate a religious zealot and it is exactly the sort of fun that Bonnie Langford should have been having on TV. Pairing up Mel with a child feels fresh and fun, she gets to be protective and a little petulant when dealing with an emotional adolescent. 

Standout Performance: If there's one thing that you can guarantee with a Doctor Who story on television or audio and that is if Annette Badland is involved you are bound to have a grand time with her scenes. She gets to chew the microphone outrageously as the preposterous and irresponsible Mrs Chinn. I'm still not entirely sure the story needs the psychic investigation subplot but the story would be much less entertaining without Badland's presence. This is season seventeen fabulous, every line a delight. 'I smell...a discovery!' 'Let's not stand around like grinning ninnies!' Because this is such a grotesquely characterised villain (I say villain because she behaves appallingly whilst never quite reaching for world domination) you can't help but detect strong traces of RTD's anti-religious sentiments. Everything terrible thing she does is to reach out touch a higher power. She's both absurdly comic and slightly terrifying in that respect. This is obviously considered something of a prestige Big Finish release and so they pulled out all the stops and with no less than sixteen actors involved, this is as full cast as these stories get. T'Nia Miller is the standout draw and I was surprised that her part felt a little underwritten but just made Sutara Gayle's Nan standout all the more. Gayle really sells the emotional material. What could have been an agonising celebration of family above all else becomes something quietly profound as she plays the age-old Hodiac with no regrets of the life that she has made for herself on the Earth.  

Sparkling Dialogue: 'Some people call it the Music of the Spheres' 'Well it's certainly not the Archers.' 

Great Ideas: Davies is making political, social and economical points even at this point of his career. The line about a worker being 'devalued' is something that I heard myself bandied around. The idea that you can be boiled down to a number which determines your value is terrifying. Coming from a writer that draws upon the personal strengths and weaknesses of all his characters and doesn't criticise them for it, this has to be a deliberate point about the clinical appraisal system of the executive world. The Hodiac is reaching across the stars for a woman, described as 'like a sister, and something more.' Searching, and determined to never give up. Was I the only person who made a connection between the institute of the psychic science (on the thirteen floor, ahem) and BURPS from The Sarah Jane Adventures. After their father left, things in the Miller household started going wrong, things moving and going missing and then as time went on it became more insistent. Mrs Chinn gets in touch because she wants to pay Mrs Miller to investigate the psychic phenomena in their family. The Hodiac aspects are born to different worlds; the male and the female, they adopt an appropriate form, live out their lives and then the cycle begins again. The Hodiac is never together, that is how it thrives. Separate, experiencing different cultures. One of the aspects has become arrogant and frightened, and he is clinging to this existence and wants to cheat death by becoming God. He wants to find the aspect living on the Earth, purge everything that makes her human and force her to feel his love. It's an intriguing layer of SF concepts but I'm not entirely sure I completely understood what the point of the Hodiac was, except to exist to allow Nan to stress the value of the family that you create rather than the family you are born into. Perhaps that is enough. With Russell, I am used to a great thematic unification of ideas but the SF elements here are merely a catalyst to explore the characters. It's played for comedy, but if you were the right way inclined you could say that the Hodiac arriving on the Earth resembles a manifestation of God. 

Isn't it Odd: 'Big Finish; for the love of stories...' It's a bizarre catchphrase, isn't it? 'We love stories' was a bit on the nose but it was sharp, punchy and to the point. This offshoot declaration of romance for storytelling lacks the same kind of impact. It's a bit...twee, and it doesn't set these stories off on the right foot. It's time to rename the company. 'For the satisfaction of Finishing Big.' The first episode could easily be half the length with the amount of plot it has to offer and could get the family and the Doctor and Mel to the Bechman Centre in a handful of scenes. It would lose some of its rich characterisation but it would certainly get to the point a lot quicker. The discourse on capital feels fitting in the mid eighties ('This is it! The Day of the Middle Man!') but there is a great deal of running time given over to the acquisition of the Tungsten Warriors that doesn't really go anywhere. I'm so used to RTD getting to the point with a dense single part script these days that this does feel authentically...relaxed in its pacing. Things step up a gear in the second episode but getting there might try some people who aren't enamoured with The Wind in the Willows' patience. The cliffhanger (Mel screaming!) is very funny as realised. 

Standout Scene: The story makes a lot of noise about the family members but keeps Nan in the shadows for the most part and so I should have figured that she was going to have a pivotal role in the story. However, when the moment comes and the Doctor calls her out as the other aspect of the Hodiac I was taken by surprise (my other half wasn't, so I can only imagine that is me not paying enough attention). It's a fantastic moment too, one of those astonishingly gentle scenes where the sixth Doctor gets to be empathetic and sensitive and reach out. Baker sparkles. 

Result: Conceptually, this is very exciting for me. Russell T. Davies is my favourite Doctor Who writer and Sixie has always been my favourite Doctor and so the idea of bringing these two greats together in a Big Finish adventure is very enticing. A script written by the man who would eventually reshape what Doctor Who can do written in the mid-eighties before his career had taken of is such a tasty peek into the developing creative mind of a genius. What transpires is a fascinating hybrid of what was and what is but with an emphasis on the latter rather than indulging the former. The Doctor and Mel take an age to enter the story (much like Revelation of the Daleks they don't impact the larger narrative until the end of episode one) but rather than waste time with pointless bickering scenes, Davies uses this as an opportunity to explore their relationship and to give the Doctor a chance to wax lyrical on the wonderful absurdities of his lifestyle. Very New Series. There's a slightly cheesy science fiction plot about a lifeform that has been split across several worlds wanting to be brought together (not a million miles away from the high concept stories of season 20) but that is married to a touching and heartbreaking treatise on family and the emotional bond that transcends species. We've even got space mercenaries stomping about the place, but that's offset with a wonderfully theatrical turn from the ever reliable Annette Badland as the doctrinaire, Mrs Chinn. Even the Doctor's coat has a plot purpose rather than a representation of ghoulish eighties garishness. It's a mishmash of classic and new with scenes that would have felt completely out of place in Saward era Who (the domestic drama that exudes warmth and genuine emotion) but would have pre-dated precisely where the show was about to head in the Cartmel era and beyond. He would have paved the way once again. The fusion of all these elements doesn't sit completely easy and ultimately this quite a simple story about a being that is trying to unify itself that could have been told in a hour without the complications of the galactic stock exchange, psychic investigations and the like but the whole piece is put together with such care that it is a pretty smooth listen as a whole. I especially liked the score, which stood out in a way that little music does for Big Finish these days. Colin Baker hasn't been written this well for a while now and he responds extremely favourably to the material, and his chemistry with Bonnie Langford is so effortless at this point it is a joy to hear them being written for with such love of the characters. The Mind of the Hodiac lacks the weight and drama of Damaged Goods but it is a satisfying curiosity and there were scenes in the last episode that left me with a lump in my throat in the way that only a good Russell T. Davies story can. Props to Scott Handock for taking on the mantle and delivering such an enjoyable listen. I'd pay just to hear Colin Baker say 'Poop Poop!': 8/10