Classic Series, New Monsters: The Stuff of Nightmares

The House that Hoxx Built by Tim Foley: Genuinely unsettling, and given I thought this was going to be the weakest of the set, imagine my surprise when it turned out to be my favourite? What you have here is two hoary old clichés, smart technology and a haunted house and it merges the two together with a massive sprinkling of characterisation that makes the whole piece sing. Who would have thought a carbon clone of The Moxx of Balhoon would transpire to be one of the more likable guest characters we have had in a while? And brought to life by Dan Starkey you have no sign that Strax is anywhere to be seen. Tim Trelor and Sadie Miller really impressed me too; I was listening to this by candlelight in the garden and kept grabbing my partners hand every time there were serious echoes of the third Doctor and Sarah. I think his hand was sore by the end. There's slight hints that the Doctor's time is coming to an end but like Hartnell in his last gasp of brilliance, Treloar still plays him with maximum charm and moral outrage. He's brilliant, and I could absolutely believe this was season eleven team. Massive kudos for that. Barnaby Edwards is here so the atmospherics are on point (this is the man who gave us The Chimes of Midnight) and the story unfolds with plenty of spooky incident, explanations and an uplifting climax. I came away feeling I had listened to one of the most refreshingly unpretentious and original horror tales from Big Finish in some time: 9/10

The Tivolian Who Knew Too Much by Robert Valentine: I've never really rated the Tivoli as an alien race; the concept is fun enough but this is the sort of thing that Douglas Adams would throw away with a devastatingly witty line and what has happened is that we've a handful of stories that labour the point. So again, big surprise that Rob Valentine (who is emerging as a real find from Big Finish) manages to forge a gorgeous character out of this premise and the simple but sunny idea that Timble Feebis just wants to have a holiday away from alien invasions. He wants no part in this madcap caper in Rome that the Doctor and Leela keep dragging him into, has no desire to be a hero of any kind and tries to escape their dangerous clutches as much as possible. It's a star turn from Robert Daws as Timble, who gets to go on a great journey and discover the joy of finding his confidence and ability. That's the character work running through this like a stick of rock but the periphery elements are just as bubbly too. A terrific location (I want every alien invasion to come to Rome from now on), the Doctor and Leela at their most irreverent as they relax into this pacy comic adventure and some glorious stereotypical gangsters. There is a serious side to this story, involving potential mass murder and enslavement, but what I really took away from this story was the pleasure and wit of the escapade and that Tom Baker seemed to be having the time of his life. And you can't help but be dragged along with that: 8/10

Together in Eclectic Dreams by Roy Gill: Big Finish isn't above dropping a companion in our lap without explanation (and strangely it seems to be the sixth Doctor that is gaining friends by the bucket load, hence Gill's clever use of the same idea here) and so I was prepared to accept that she was the genuine article as long as she was characterised robustly. She was, and yet Mark wasn't convinced at all. Given this story is about Dream Crabs, guess which one of us ended up with egg on our faces? The thing that you would imagine this story would be built around - the sixth and eighth Doctors meeting - barely registers and I think this is deliberate because the idea of multi Doctors has been flogged to death by now. It's a perfectly fun scene that is part of the larger story. Doing these 'what is real and what is flimflam?' stories are tenapenny these days and so you have to either go for a brilliantly constructed script (which Moffat does with Last Christmas) or really attempt to subdue your audience with the freakishness of the unreality, which both Gill and director Barnaby Edwards really achieve here. I was never sure from scene to scene what was real and what wasn't and more disturbing concepts dripped into the story and the reactions of the cast were disturbingly accurate and discomforting. Like the third Doctor tale I got the sense that this was at the end of the Doctor's life and so being handed one last adventure by the crabs with a kind and loyal friend was rather touching. This was all atmosphere and weirdness but I thought the entire cast acquitted themselves beautifully: 8/10

If I Should Die Before I Wake by John Dorney: This is the celebrated story in the set and I have confession to make - I fell asleep while listening to this. Ironically when it is about the power of storytelling and dreams. That is no way an a deprecation of this tale, which is a typically genius script from John Dorney, but just that my memories of this tale are scattershot because I have heard it in pieces (going back to listen to what I missed after I listened to the end when I woke up). I can say this; it's like Paul McGann and India Fisher have never been away and this is back to their series two charisma, driving the story with the sheer force of their personality. The dialogue is thick and fast and Dorney manages to take the idea of telling a narrative and pick it apart like the master craftsman that he is. At first the Doctor is in control of the story that he is telling and making the smart remarks but slowly Charley takes the reigns off him, picking apart the details and taking up the mantle. How the script leaps back and forth between the two of them is ingenious because it shows precisely how each character individually improvises within a story that they are telling but is running away and confounding them. I can only think of a few times where a script has self consciously thrown the limelight on the differences between two characters, their individual strengths and concluded that they absolutely belong together. The X-Files' Bad Blood comes to mind. If I'm making this sound like a dry intellectual piece then never fear, this is amalgamation of storytelling tropes drawn together with verve and conjured up vividly by Barnaby Edwards (perhaps the greatest contributor to this incredible set of tales) that leaves you feeling you've been on a hell of a ride. Top notch language at play here: 9/10