Fight the Future written by Chris Carter and directed by Rob Bowman

What’s it about: The X-Files hits the big screen…

Trust No-One: Where they trying to whet our appetites for Mulder and Scully as long as possible? They don’t show up until at least ten minutes into the movie, long after the plot has kicked into high gear. Mulder is bored in his current assignment and Scully is trying to discourage him from thinking unconventionally, to try and salvage something from his career. There’s a glorious dig at Duchovny’s acting skill when Mulder suggests that his panic face is exactly the same as his normal one. You know when you have one of those days when you look at the work you have achieved and you are entirely satisfied? I’m almost willing to bet that Mulder Scully weren’t thinking that when they are left staring at a skyscraper half gutted by a bomb that they failed to find in time. Mulder sums up his character spec in a drunken rant to a bartender – it looks like they learnt nothing from the Doctor Who TV Movie about regurgitating lots of exposition about a shows past in one great lump. Mulder can sure say shit a lot more on the big screen but it is hardly a positive move. If anything it makes him sound more juvenile. Mulder discovers that his father allowed his sister to be abducted to turn her into a hybrid, so she would survive the holocaust. All these years we had thought that she was the victim and Mulder the one who was spared so it is fascinating to learn that actually it was the other way around. Mulder suggesting that they are going round in circles to be exposed to so much evidence only for it all to be tidied away before they can show the appropriate people in authority is accurate. There’s only so many times you can be disappointed like this before you would walk away. There is news that the X-Files has been re-opened at the conclusion so it looks like it is going to be business as usual for Mulder and Scully…how wrong is that assumption?

Brains’n’Beauty: Picking up directly where the fifth season left off, the agents have been reassigned to other areas since the closure of the X-Files (made somewhat permanent by the Smoking Man smoking out their basement office). We catch up with them helping out with the bomb threat unit in Dallas. Mulder and Scully always seem to perk up during moments of adversity like this and it is exactly what happened the last time the X-Files was closed down during the early stages of season two. Whilst they are not where they want to be, they still have each other and they are striving to get back to the work they both love. During season five I complained a fair amount that the chemistry between the two characters had waned somewhat as the writing had become predictable and complacent but Carter looks set to turn that around now and the movie is starting point for a spanking new, slightly comedic but always enjoyable, banter between the two of them that would continue long into season six. Carter manages to get some tension out of their interplay too, with Scully thinking that Mulder is playing a prank on her when he has found the bombs. Once they start proceedings to have Mulder and Scully split up, she considers quitting the FBI as her work on the X-Files has given her a taste for field work and she wouldn’t be satisfied confined to an autopsy bay or office all the time anymore. She really has broadened her horizons. As much as Scully might rant about being out in the sticks with Mulder when she should back in the city to attend her hearing we all know that she wouldn’t have it any other way. In fact this dog with a wagging tail routine that she does following him around from one crazy case to another will be examined comically in How the Ghosts Stole Christmas next season. How much extra did they have to pay Gillian Anderson to stand in that vat of gunk with a slimy tentacle stuffed down her throat? On the positive side it does look very nasty. Trust Scully to lose consciousness as soon as they pursued by an alien and for her to miss the spectacle of the ship breaking free of the ice and ascending to the heavens. This feels very season one in that respect. Scully refuses to walk away from Mulder even when he attempts to push her away, she admits that her work is with him now.

Ugh: It looks like Rob Bowman has been brushing up on the Ridley Scott art of making movies and the grisly opening sequence that features cavemen being dismembered by a particularly vicious alien lifeform could have stepped straight out of the Alien franchise. Torchlight exposes a slashed throat and black blood bursts from the aliens throat as a knife is plunged deep inside. The children infected with black oil still gives me the wiggins, horrid wormlike strands bulging from the flesh as they make their way to the eyes. An alien incubating inside a human host – it looks like Chris Carter has been cracking open his Alien DVDs too! Love the nasty corpse that Mulder and Scully find in the morgue, his gunky skin sticking to the shroud like string cheese. The alien seen in darkness, glistening with putrescent goo, is a genuinely frightening creation. Add some hideous screams and razor sharp claws and I was scrabbling for the light switch because suddenly aware of how dark it had become. I’ve read some mockery with regards to the bees and their persistent appearances in The X-Files. Speaking as somebody who has a phobia of buzzing insects (don’t mock, I adore spiders!), the situation that Mulder and Scully find themselves in here is just about the worst nightmare I can imagine.

The Good: There is something terribly amusing about the film taking the piss out of the TV series’ conventions. Ever since the pilot we have been informed of our whereabouts from scene to scene with a documented location in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. All very contemporary and businesslike. I nearly pissed myself when North Texas - 35,000 BC appeared at the beginning of the movie. As if the heavy eyebrows, furs and general lack of technology wouldn’t have given it away. I realise that it has been hiding away an alien intelligence for thousands of years but how exciting would it be as a kid to fall down a hole like that and find an intricate working of caves? You would have never got me out of there! It’s nice to see Terry O’Quinn make an appearance, a stalwart actor who has appeared in many of Chris Carter’s television shows. Michaud sitting in front of the bomb and not even attempting to diffuse it is quietly haunting and suggests a much larger story for the character that the movie never explores further. It isn’t like Carter to give his one-minute characters great depth like this and it really impressed me. I was impressed at how interested Bowman managed to make me in the bomb threat sequence considering its only purpose is to drag the agents into the story. It plays out as typical action movie fare but with Bowman at the helm it is packed with tension and visually stimulating to boot. I especially like how we get to see children being given a tour of the building just before Mulder discovers the bomb in the vending machines – it makes the situation feel that bit more terrifying. The explosion itself is phenomenally executed and in these post 9/11 times really made my skip a little faster. It looks so authentic when you compare to the real life terrorist attack that claimed the Twin Towers that you have to question whether such an approach would have been taken had this been made a few years later. With the building destroyed to hide to murder of one little boy infected with the black oil, it goes to show the lengths the dark government forces will go to to cover their tracks. I remember an anecdote told by Robert O’Reilly (Gowron of the Star Trek franchise) where he learnt that the characters of Lursa and B’tor were going to make the leap from TNG on TV to the movies and he took great delight in telling the actresses the only reason that would happen was because they were going to be killed off. Add The X-Files to that fine tradition as the Well Manicured Man (they really should have found a better name for this guy) played exquisitely by John Neville (how this man managed to maintain his dignity being handed some of the more pretentious and ambiguous dialogue is a marvel) makes his curtain call. It is nice to catch up with him in England and see the sort of lifestyle he leads away from the Syndicate. It isn’t such a loss to the series because the conspiracy arc is about to come to a climax in the middle of the next season anyway so this was probably the most memorable way he could have exited the show. The location filming is as ambitious as you would imagine from an X-File movie – from stunning desert plains to the snowy wilderness of Antarctica, the scenery on offer is a feast for the eyes. I haven’t been this impressed by the design and atmosphere of an alien craft since the initial discovery of the Borg Cubes on TNG. The scale is incredible and it feels like Mulder is crawling about inside the bowels of a living creature, groaning with aches and pains, and yet there is a logic an functionality to the craft too. Mulder heads down the best theme park slide ever in the ship, climaxing in him hanging on for dear life over a vertiginous ravine. We’ve never seen spectacle quite like that of the alien ship breaking through the ice (and taken the scientific base with it) as Mulder tries to drag Scully clear of the ice quake in its wake. For a second there it really looks like they have been buried beneath the snow. For once we get to see the government mopping up their mistakes, cleaning up their mess before any kind of investigation can be kick started.

The Bad: Whilst this movie is clearly making use of an expanded budget it highlights a massive strength of the television series and what would have been a huge problem had it continued on into a movie franchise – the production values on this show are already reaching cinematic proportions on a weekly basis so a blockbuster has to tell a much bigger story in order to prevent it feeling like an extended TV episode. Fight the Future manages to squeeze in more set pieces than a regular TV two parter, but that is the only difference I can tell between this and its television counterpart. Both Scully (‘because they wanted me to invalidate your investigations into the paranormal’) and Mulder (‘I’m the key figure in an ongoing government charade…’) have moments where they are bringing a new audience up to speed. I can’t think of any other point where they have had to re-iterate old information like this before. It’s not as intrusive as I have seen it done elsewhere (Star Trek was notorious for this sort of thing, just in case somebody had missed an important episode) but it still sounds unconvincing. Mulder pisses up an Independence Day poster, a dig at another film with similar themes but at least they had the chutzpah to actually stage their alien invasion. There is a bizarre moment when Scully seems to suggest that Mulder has decided to come and cop a feel in a drunken frenzy – it is awkwardly written and so it is awkwardly played. Brilliant, a sequence filmed on a London street manages to have both a Royal Mail van and a red double decker bus in shot in the five seconds of screen time. Was it worth having the Lone Gunmen in for their pointless little cameo. Surely they could have been given something more productive to do? The trouble with packaging so much information into one scene such as the info dump that the Well Manicured Man regurgitates before his death is that those who haven’t watched the series before must have been left scratching their heads wondering what the hell he is going on about. For those in the know it isn’t exactly a satisfying sequence either because the majority is information we’ve obtained from other episodes of the series and the only real fulfilment is having all those elements comprehensively spliced together into one explanation. We shouldn’t need massive gulps of exposition to reminds us how serious things have become, these events should be dramatised rather than being transposed into a long, descriptive lecture. Show, don’t tell. Having Mulder head off to bring down the Syndicate’s fifty year scheme and prevent the alien invasion of Earth should be feel far more climactic than this. It’s a personal mission to save Scully and if he succeeds nobody would be aware of his efforts and what he has done to save humanity. It would be the quietest alien invasion defeat in history. Mulder finds his way on board an enormous alien spacecraft packed full of pods containing human specimens and manages to find Scully’s in record time? Scully’s evidence of one bee made me chuckle, given what they have just witnessed that is the best that they managed to come away with? Why didn’t Mulder nab some alien technology whilst he was on their ship? What the hell happened to Gibson Praise? Introduced in The End and handed from the Smoking Man to the Well Manicured Man at its climax and yet never once mentioned here.

Title Sequence: I have often said that you can tell the quality of a movie by the amount of imagination and pizzazz that has been put into the title sequence. With light bouncing off copious amounts of black oil, fans are left with no doubt that this movie will be tied heavily into the series mythology and not a standalone adventure.

Moment to Watch Out For: In a moment that pays off the audiences patience, Mulder and Scully finally work up to that kiss we have been longing for. Not before he admits that she has kept him honest and that he owes her so much for her loyalty to him. Without her he probably would have given up long ago. Never mind the implausibility of the bee surviving until this long in Scully’s hair, the sting that cuts between their moment of intimacy is a real blow for the audience. I can remember the cinema erupting as soon the moment was broken.

Fashion Statement: ‘Don’t think! Just pick up the phone and make it happen!’ – you know, Scully is so commanding when she cries out this line she near as well gives me the horn. Gillian Anderson is doing proper movie acting in the early action sequences, pitching her performance at a hysterical level.

Orchestra: Note perfect, Mark Snow deserved the crack at the movie score and merely extends what he already achieves with the TV show. His work has always erred towards the cinematic so he is right at home writing the music for the film. As Mulder and Scully go driving through the desert, Snow provides an ambitious and sweeping re-imagining of the series’ theme tune. Listen as he bashed out his frustrations on a piano as Mulder and Scully are pursued through the corn field. I feel sad for him that he never got to score an actual alien invasion of Earth because I have a feeling he would have done an amazing job.

Mythology: This is the first time we have ever seen the black blood leaking from an alien as though it is blood. I always thought it was a lifeform with an intelligence of it’s own. If the TV series is to be believed then the blood carries the consciousness of the alien and can transfer from person to person. ‘We have no context for what killed those men or any appreciation of the scale of what will be unleashed in the future. A plague to end all plagues. A silent weapon for a quiet war. The systematic release of an indiscriminate organism for which the men who will bring it on still have no cure. They’ve been working on this for fifty years. While the rest of the world has been fighting ghosts and commies, these men have secretly been negotiating a planned Armageddon. The timetable has been set.’ Once the emergency has begun, the secret government (the Syndicate) will claim power. ‘The virus is extraterrestrial. We know very little about it except that it was the original inhabitant of this planet. AIDS, the Ebola virus…on an evolutionary scale they are newborns. This virus walked the planet long before the dinosaurs. They’re aliens, Agent Mulder. Your Little Green Men arrived her millions of years ago. Those that didn’t leave have been lying dormant underground since the last Ice Age in the form of an evolved pathogen, waiting to be reconstituted by the alien race when it comes to colonise the planet using us as hosts. Against this we have no defence, nothing but a weak vaccine. Until Dallas, we believed the virus would simply control us, that mass infection would make us a slave race. Imagine our surprise when they began to gestate. My group has been working co-operatively with the alien colonists, facilitating programmes like the one you saw to give us access to the virus in hope that we might be able to secretly develop a cure. Without a vaccination the only true survivors of the viral holocaust would be those immune to it – human/alien clones.’ 

Foreboding: Elements of the movie would be picked up in the next TV season – in particular this ability of the aliens to gestate inside people.

Result: Visually stunning, dynamic and full of memorable set pieces this might be, but Fight the Future for all it’s cinematic bluster is merely an extended TV episode with an increased budget. That’s fine, if you’re a fan of the show then what you want to see is more of the same but with (marginally) better production values. What a newcomer would make of this film defeats me as very few concessions are made for the fact that this takes place in the heart of a tangled and garbled arc story with a list of ingredients as long as my arm. The film doesn’t so much have a linear narrative but is instead constructed out of set pieces bolted together by elements of the shows mythology. It isn’t really a piece of storytelling because there is no clear progression of plot, which renders a conclusion moot. It’s not a film with a beginning, a middle and an end because it takes place near the conclusion of a convoluted story arc – it’s a movie with a middle, a middle and a middle. The beginning is the first five seasons of the X-Files and the end is the two part mythology story in the middle of the next season. When I saw Fight the Future in the cinema I was pissed as a fart so much of the story washed over me whilst I was whooping with joy at the more spectacular action pieces. What Carter has done here is actually pretty devious, he has managed to produce a film script with apparent revelations about the planned invasion of the Earth by using all the information that we have already gleamed from the five seasons that precede it. Looking at the bigger picture we learn nothing new about the conspiracy arc that we didn’t already know, it’s just that it is packaged in such a comprehensive way it is made to appear as if we are getting all the answers that we have sought since the show began. Whilst they had the money and time this was the perfect time to stage the apocalypse and it would have given Carter the chance to tie up the conspiracy plot and kick start a whole new era for the show with the sixth season. As a result the movie feels like it is on the cusp of something fantastic but is too afraid to deliver it. I don’t want to give you the impression that I didn’t enjoy Fight the Future because any five minute segment is gorgeously shot and acted and hugely entertaining to watch. I just feel that it was something of a missed opportunity, when the conspiracy arc was going to be concluded in the next season anyway why not use this opportunity to go out with a bang. I personally feel that Two Fathers/One Son outshines Fight the Future in practically every way, not least because it does have an ending. Other pluses include some fine Mulder and Scully interaction, a dramatic send off for John Neville’s character, some genuinely spine tingling moments featuring the scariest alien the franchise has ever presented and the breathtaking sequences on an alien ship that conclude the movie which are unlike anything we have ever seen before. Containing all the elements you would want from an X-File film and yet not everything it could have been, Fight the Future is sporadically brilliant and disappointing and as such serves as a good example of the two extremes of the TV series. Flawed but fun: 6/10

Carnival of Monsters written by Robert Holmes and directed by Barry Letts

This story in a nutshell: In a nutshell? Are you kidding me?

The Mighty Nose: If Pertwee was going for the charm offensive then this was to be his greatest story. Remember when Terrance Dicks said that Holmes liked to give the actors what they wanted, well he peppers this script with enough moments of charm for Pertwee to make you think ‘there was another Doctor Who?’ For aficionados of the Pertwee/Manning chemistry, this probably exposes the two of them at their peak (I'd toss in The Curse of Peladon and The Green Death too) and if there is any doubt that Jo is the the companion for the third Doctor must surely be dispelled before you reach the climax of this marvelous adventure. Whilst it is often alluded to by fans, is this the first time we have heard the Doctor mention that he is trying to reach the fabled beauteous planet Metebelies. He has only just been given control of the TARDIS so I guess it must be. His exile being lifted suddenly gives the Doctor a sense of freedom and series (despite hops forward and sideways in time and space) a giddy thrill at the possibilities again. How like the Doctor, especially this Doctor, to refuse to admit that he has failed to pilot the TARDIS to the correct destination on their first flight, even in the face of clucking chickens! Okay, he is proven to be right but his obstinacy in the face overwhelming evidence is very amusing (which is interesting in itself because just a few seasons back it would have been irritating rather than charming). This is man who tries not to judge by appearances (hmm, your logic failed you in The Curse of Peladon then, didn't it?) and refuses to admit that he is wrong because the very idea is impossible. You have to wonder about the sorts he has been hob-nobbing it with during his exile on Earth because he seems to have become quite versed in the manner of an upper class gentleman. I can see him at high class business clubs, sipping brandy, reading the politics of the day and discussing literature and science with the best brains of the day. His 'Hello! Topping day, what?' makes me roar with laughter, as does his retort '99 skidoo!' and it doesn't surprise me that when asked if he wants a drink he requests a large Scotch. The fella has some pluck and boxes by Queensbury rules, having taken lessons from the great John L. Sullivan himself (smug get). After running up and down the decks of the SS Bernice as though he is in a Benny Hill parody of Doctor Who, scrambling through the miniscope and sized up for dinner by the Drashigs, the Doctor admits that he is starting to feel the centuries. Always use the gifts that the actor brings to the role (think of Sylvester McCoy when he gets to play the showman in Greatest Show in the Galaxy) and Pertwee's days as a showman are hilariously brought to life as he breaks into patter ('Roll up! Roll up!') when explaining the function of the miniscope to Jo. When the Doctor recalls making a terrible old fuss to the Time Lords about the Scope and it's crimes against sentient creatures, I can see Hartnell standing before the High Council, clutching his lapels and bellowing at them with his most commanding tones. I think the Doctor should offer to give his lateral thinking speech to any organisation with the slightest whiff of bureaucracy. ‘Doctor, you’re brilliant!’ cries Jo ‘I am?’ he replies - he is just so cute in this story. Amazing how likable he has become in a very short space of time. You better stop referring to him as the creature as he will likely become exceedingly hostile. Vorg and Shirna admire his audacity for standing up to the tribunal of Inter Minor but Pletrac refuses to listen to him since he is clearly a menace to public health. Marvelous audacity, look at his manner and his clothes – he must be in the carnival business! He’s certainly got the style. The Doctor clearly loves a pretty girl and bows profusely before Shirna. I always chuckle at the scene where the Vorg tries out the carnival lingo on the Doctor and he stares at him a picture of confusion and says ‘I’m afraid I do not understand your language!’ The third Doctor as characterised here (and for much of the rest of his run) is delightful and it is at this point I would happily hop on board the TARDIS and join him.

Dippy Agent: Perhaps Katy Manning whispered in Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts' ears, or maybe they were planning this development for her anyway but there is a definitely feeling of confidence emerging with the character in season ten. I remember as far back as The Claws of Axos where she was little more than something pretty to look at in the background but here she is right in the thick of the action, asking a multitude of questions, dashing about ships and circuitry and marshland, back chatting and figuring things out. She's opinionated, resourceful and clearly enjoying every second of her time with the Doctor, whether she is terrified or not (that is Katy Manning spilling through). She admits that she loves being with the Doctor because he makes her feel so young, although she is frustrated by his stubbornness at times. Manning has finally found a use for her chicken noises. This is a girl with a key for every occasion, breaking out the skeleton key when the Doctor's sonic screwdriver proves insufficient. I love her reaction to the Doctor trying to get her to wake up - ‘Not yet I’m only half cooked.’ Fluff aside, Jo’s reaction to the peepshow concept feels very real, she is disgusted that people should be watching them for kicks. Jo is smart enough to tell the Doctor to stay hidden and let herself be locked up and then has a go at trying to get Claire to remember the loop she has been stuck in. Once the Doctor has tripped his way out of the Scope and she is left on her own, Jo is trapped in an endless series of loops and knows the drill well enough by that point to recognise that eventually the scenario will kick start again and she will no longer be a prisoner. I bet when she convinced her Uncle to get her a job with UNIT she never imagined she would be held firm by a racist tycoon, as he fires a machine gun at a Plasiosarus that has burst through the hull of a sailing ship believed missing for 50 years! She has been given some fabulous stories to tell her wealth of grandchildren to come.

Sparkling Dialogue: Considering this is one of Robert Holmes' best scripts, that must tell you something about the wealth of fantastic lines that are deployed...
‘Our purpose is to amuse, simply to amuse. Nothing serious, nothing political!’
‘Human beings are slightly more intelligent than whelks!’
‘Bric-a-Brac!’
‘They’re great favourites with the children!’
‘Eaten? They ate a spaceship?’
‘Merciful and compassionate?’ ‘One has…twinges.’
‘Are you feeling a bit umpty?’
‘One has no wish to be devoured by alien monstrosities! Even in the cause of political progress!’
Put your finger on there’ ‘Here (SCREAMS!)?’ ‘Good that must be the live one.’

The Good Stuff: Carnival of Monsters is directed by Barry Letts and with these four episodes he produces some of his most innovative and imaginative work. At times his producers head has been lost in the excitement and he seems to think he has an endless budget to work with but the rich imagination, colour and gloriously bizarre juxtapositions that Carnival of Monsters flaunts proves that he was the man for the job. Check out the visual quirkiness of the first scene, Kalik walking amongst the clouds of Inter Minor. Only in Doctor Who would you enjoy a story that catapults you from a grey faced planet of politics across time and space to a sailing ship in the twenties bobbing calmly on the ocean. They are so diametrically opposed (visually and tonally) that the very fact that we cut from one to the other produces delight. Vorg and Shirna's costumes are so kaleidoscopic that I felt I was under the influence whilst enjoying their patter. I think its wonderful that they got to play about on a real boat, I love larking about on water and these scenes give the 1920’s scenes a sense of  authenticity that they would have lacked had these sequences taken place all within the studio. Episode one throws a number of mysteries at the viewer, giving them a puzzle to unravel (involving an extinct monster, alien metal in the 1920s, a lost ship and a time loop - I know some Doctor Who's that fail to generate half that many intruiging ideas and with Carnival of Monsters this is just the tip of the iceberg) and the fun comes in the fact that the answers are so convivial and much bigger and brasher than I was prepared to guess. I would never imagine Doctor Who attempting to pull off something as bold and as expensive as the miniscope with its multitude of environments and an alien planet to boot. The first cliffhanger is especially delightful because it comes out of nowhere and is the last thing you are expecting to happen (for a ruddy great hand to appear and steal the TARDIS!). There is a chance to see Ian Marter at work before he joined the series full time as Harry and John's manipulated characterisation goes on to reveal what Harry might have been like had he been given a little more bite. Against all the odds, Carnival of Monsters sports a new monster that despite its obviously false appearance genuinely manages to terrify. The Drashigs are a major success story for effects pioneer Barry Letts, a vicious colony of  giant reptiles that can eat their way through spaceships and love nothing more than crunching their way through the bone and gristle of Lurmans. It was the choice to use real terrier skulls to construct the head and the hideous screaming sound effects that make all the difference to me. The Drashigs are so triumphant that you have to ask why the show seemed incapable of getting puppetry to work like this again (as exemplified in the Chewits monster Dinos, the Loch Ness Monster that pops its head up out of the Thames and the Bandril Ambassador). For once the director manages to convince that the Doctor's life is in real danger as this unmanageable threat dogs his steps wherever he runs to. It is initially pitched as quite a simple story with two storylines - one set in space and one at sea and it is great fun as the settings are innovated. It is like a Russian Doll effect - a sailing ship adjacent to a swampy marsh inside a Miniscope on an alien planet - perhaps it would have been nice to have had one final twist and show that the whole thing was inside the television of somebody watching the whole story. Things get riotous as the various story lines start breaking into one another - the Doctor and Jo entering the Drashigs resting place, the Drashings breaking into the circuitry and the Doctor exiting the Scope and actualising on Inter Minor. The performances are all sublime in this story but Leslie Dwyer and Tenniel Evans in particular have been superbly chosen, playing larger than life characters that it is extremely easy to warm to. The quick fire dialogue, the wit, the character...the scenes on Inter Minor have more than a little shade of The West Wing to them (30 years early) except this is a very sarcastic approach to politics rather than cataloguing an administration that is struggling within its constraints. The Tribunal scenes had the potential to be repetitive and bore the ass off the audience but thanks to some cheeky Robert Holmes digs at bureaucracy, the delicious chemsitry between Peter Halliday, Michael Wisher and Terrance Lodge (devious Kalik, pansy Orum and jobsworth Petrac) and a healthy dose of humour these scenes delight in their mockery of pomposity. It just goes to show what an imaginative designer can bring to a story - I remember a Star Trek DS9 episode where Bashir and O'Brien were shrunk to the size of coffee cups and were forced to wander around Starfleet circuitry in order to fulfill some kind of technobabble requirement. Whilst the sets were enormous and constructed with a hundred times the budget of this story, they are not a patch on the Scope and it's multi layered, chaotic workings with all manner of bizarre looking pieces of technology to clamber over. Isn't it amazing how evocative the Charleston is? Closing my eyes when I hear it takes me straight back to the 1920s. Vorg and Shirna, for all their attractive characterisation and the appealing performances of the actors are little more than Victorian zookeepers, poking at their live stock and getting them to scrap for the amusement of the crowds. The story isn't frightened of shying away from making that point, even if it does portray them as misguided entertainers rather than morally bankrupt businessmen. I love Shirna's little tap dance and Kalik's deadpan reaction ('Bravo') and the way it plays out twice across episodes one and two suggests that their story might be taking place in a Scope too. or it could just be dodgy editing. I prefer the think the former is true. A Scope within a Scope? Boggling! I cheer every time that spear darts towards the Doctor and Jo and they are observed by a giant eye in the ceiling. We have never seen anything quite like this in Doctor Who before. Vorg's nervous hand waving to pat the Drashig's away is similarly gigglesome. If only the Doctor's adventures all took place in a Scope, it would be advantageous if Vorg could be there to shoo away the monsters as they advance. All three cliff-hangers are turning points in the story, pushing the story in a new direction.

The Bad Stuff: The opening scenes of badly dressed extras manhandling the cheap looking Scope is all the ammunition non fans might need to make them turn something as delightful as this story off. How they could get the Drashigs so right and the Plesiosaurus so wrong within the same story baffles me. Whether it was poor continuity, the heat of the studio or just a shoddy job, the make up for the Inter Minor characters gets progressively worse throughout the story.

Result: There is a reason that the oddball stories stick in your mind more than some of the more functional ones - like the Pixar/Disney animated films of late it would appear that they have all the imagination, wit and humour has been injected into them that the other stories (adult films) are lacking. Carnival of Monsters has so many elements in it's favour that I don't know where to begin but chief amongst them is it's relative brevity, it is a Pertwee adventure at four episodes and it is packed to the gills with sparkling material which means it is one of the rare moments in the era where the story doesn't drag or feel as though it needs a little pruning. I would argue that this is a vital Pertwee story because it goes to show what the era can do when it ditches UNIT and contemporary Earth, and lets its hair down a bit. It proves that Letts and Dicks were right to reject the formula and start mining the potential in finding stories out there in the universe again (which the audience might have questioned after worthy but dull tales such as Colony in Space and The Mutants). Given his wealth of excellent material it is no small statement to say that this is one of Robert Holmes' strongest scripts, one that is saturated with wit, creative ideas and great characters. He sure knows how to pique your interest, brewing his own special brand of storytelling alchemy in the first episode and whetting your appetite for the answers. Carnival of Monsters is post-modern before it became all the rage, offering a cutting satire on television and it's conventions with some marvelous digs at Doctor Who in particular ('They're great favourites with the children!'). Holmes is always thinking about how his environment works and there is a twisted logic at the heart of the story that makes perfect sense, even when the wild ideas are bursting like fireworks in the sky. The incredible premise, the Doctor and Jo caught in the workings of a machine with miniaturized environments, is incredibly ambitious Barry Letts never shies away from that. The director is clearly having great fun bringing this world to life and has cast the story superbly too, excellent character actors buying into the concept and bringing even more attraction to the piece. The Pertwee/Manning relationship is at its height and proves effortlessly watchable and the Doctor and Jo are inundated with memorable moments in a story that plants them centre stage. It might have the odd duff effect here and there but this is about as magical as Doctor Who comes; revelling in the possibilities of a limitless format, mocking everything from the TV medium, showbusiness and bureaucracy, indulging in a fast paced runaround, contributing some terrifying monsters and providing much food for thought as it entertains the pants off you. A return to sparkling form: 10/10

The Three Doctors written by Bob Baker and Dave Martin and directed by Lennie Mayne

This story in a nutshell: Doctor Who meets Doctor Who and Doctor Who!

The Mighty Nose: Welcome to ego central! Having successfully removed the Master from the series full time because he felt that Roger Delgado was muscling in on his territory, Pertwee now has to content with the scene stealing antics of Troughton and the effortless command of Hartnell! It is hilarious when you learn about the behind the scenes clash of personalities, especially the idea of Troughton improvising his script as he goes along and throwing Pertwee off his game who has learnt his to the letter! You wouldn't think that contrasting Pertwee's straight laced Doctor against Troughton's much more fun and irreverent version would do him any favours but it actually works a great deal in his favour, highlighting him as somebody much more parental and responsible. Mind you early characterisation is pretty painful, especially the UNIT scenes which continue on from The Time Monster in displaying a distressing level of complacency.  As Omega's not-so terrifying electronic jelly attacks the UNIT labs the Doctor and Jo are so completely earnest about the threat it is very hard to take any of it seriously. It's not until Troughton pops out of nowhere that Pertwee finally gets a handle on the story, relaxing a great deal and having some fun with the material. I love his furious reaction to his predecessors constant upstaging, the second Doctor refusing to let his predecessor get a word in edgeways. You'll find yourself laughing along with the pair as they butt heads throughout, providing the disappointing tale with the energy it is desperately missing in other areas. All his life he has known of Omega and admired him as his people’s greatest hero (strange that he has never mentioned him before but let's take him at his word). Imagine a whole season with the pair of them travelling together, Troughton constantly stealing the limelight, charming Jo and leaving Pertwee in the background with smoke pouring out of his ears? On the whole the Doctor would soften a great deal in this season and drop some of Pertwee's more spiky characteristics from earlier seasons but I couldn't help but notice how dictatorial of Jo he still was in The Three Doctors, constantly telling her to 'Do as I say!' Perhaps it was losing her at the end of this season that really mellowed him out for his final season because I really can't imagine the Doctor barking orders like that to Sarah. His ‘take it!’ to Omega in the last episode is extremely powerful, the literal example of the 'glittering lightbulb' that Tom Baker was talking about in More Than 30 Years in the TARDIS. He hopes that he wont meet himself again even if does agree with Jo that his former self was rather sweet. He thinks terrible about tricking Omega into his death but recognizes that it is the only freedom he will ever know. In a surprise twist the Time Lords give the Doctor back his freedom and he’s now back in the time travelling game, an unexpected coda that puts the show on a brand new footing. Given the quality of the last three adventures lets hope some outer space larks will spice things up a bit.

Oh My Giddy Aunt: Watch as Troughton single handedy shakes up the Pertwee era, finally giving us something worth watching after the mediocre efforts of The Mutants and The Time Monster. As soon as he turns up Troughton transforms this story to something very watchable, there is something about his giddy discourtesy that I could just watch all day. It's a sharp reminder of an actor who could make any story sparkle. You'll find in the three stories that Troughton appeared in after The War Games (and thank goodness he did with so much of his material missing and 90 episodes not about to materialise on the horizon) he was written somewhat as a parody of the character that he played during his own era, highlighting the comic excesses without any of the darkness but he such an engaging actor he makes the screen come alive with his manic energy and huffy silliness. He's the ultimate good time Doctor, always promising it and never failing to deliver. Much like the The Five Doctors he isn't keen on redecoration and is failed to be impressed by the latest incarnation of the TARDIS. Watch his chemistry with Katy Manning's Jo and imagine the pair of them whisking off together and having adventures like a pair of excitable kids. Troughton is the king of physical and I crack up every time he runs into the TARDIS to escape the fizzing blob of energy and then discreetly pokes his head out again to see if it has gone. He takes great umbrage to being told he is the other Doctor’s assistant (‘His what?’). I love it in the last two episodes where he keeps going on about his recorder, trying to rile Omega and test his self control, that’s the wily old second Doctor I remember. This increasing frivolousness proves to be a central element of the plot as the Doctor's instrument proves a vital component to the climax. I love how Troughton can be seen grinning madly at Hartnell whenever he appears on screen, as the second Doctor is delighted to be reunited with his old body.

Dippy Agent: Jo is so inconsistently characterised from story to story it is hard to take her serious in a series that has become increasingly serialised. Fortunately season ten is point where there writers allow her to grow up and we go on a clear journey with her throughout this season leading to her departure in The Green Death. You really cannot reconcile the bright, engaging young girl from this story from the airhead that was dashing about in The Time Monster. Either the Doctor has been quizzing her over the summer or she has taken an Open University course. She's still making the tea (it was probably a requirement of Pertwee's that all women were to be seen in subservient roles) and asks all the right questions on behalf of the viewer but she is the one to explain about faster than light travel to the Brigadier and the only person who is trying to make any kind of sense out of Omega's Palace. Whenever Jo thinks that the Doctor is dead, it just about breaks her heart. She is distraught at the though of losing the Doctor at the end, flinging herself into Sergeant Benton’s arms.

Pompous Military Idiot: It is at this point in the Pertwee era that you might be asking 'what has happened to the poor old Brig?' There's a suggestion that the Brigadier devolved into a comedy buffoon towards the latter end of Pertwee's run but as far as I can see there are only two stories where his characterisation jars and feels as though he is a military man being brought to life by juveniles, The Time Monster and The Three Doctors. Come the end of the season, the Brig is back at the top of his game in The Green Death (and he's similarly excellent in Invasion of the Dinosaurs too). Even during this story he has his moments, Nick Courtney is such a divine actor that he can rise above his shaky material and delivery some funny and poignant moments. There is a gag at the beginning that suggests that all he is good for is stirring tea! He has always been a stalwart British patriot (naturally) and I was amused greatly by his concerned 'oh' when Dr Tyler mentions that the 'other lot' have seen the x-rays. What really made me grind my teeth was his resistance to the idea that the TARDIS has travelled to another world, especially when he understands that that is its function. After everything he has seen surely he doesn't think that the Doctor has been tinkering about with the TARDIS for all these years just for kicks. Sergeant Benton calmly accepts the idea of an old Doctor popping forward from the past and being transported to the universe of anti matter but it is a little too much for the Brigadier to handle. He believes that the Doctor has been spending UNIT funds on building the dimensionally transcendental interior of the ship and that the rocky desert outside the laboratory is Cromer. You could argue that this is a rational mind trying to cope with a completely irrational situation. You could also argue that it is sloppy comedy writing that makes the guy look a bit buffoonish. He almost makes up for all of this during the climax when he thinks it is the last he will ever see of the Doctor and salutes the pair of them to show his respect (I also love the way he adresses Jo by her name to force her to go, he has only ever called her Ms Grant before). He thinks they are both wonderful chaps, although he has come to the conclusion that Doctor is more than enough for him.

Sparkling Dialogue: ‘I am he and he is me’ ‘And we are altogether coo-coo-ca-choo?’
‘That’s why its been left to me and me and me.’
‘Mind you might say over antimatter…’
‘I was out for a stroll with my friend here when this horrible great jelly…!’
‘Nobble him? You’re talking about one of the most powerful blokes in the cosmos…nobble him?’
‘Not a bit of it old chap…we just want to avoid a long tiring walk was all!’

The Good Stuff: The fact that the Doctor calls in The Time Lords sells the danger of the situation far better than the actual events that are taking place. I screamed when Troughton turned up to lend the proceedings a healthy dose of insanity (and its lovely, if a little strange, to finally see him in colour). I don’t care how forgetful or emaciated he is, it is wonderful to Hartnell again and he still has the screen presence that brought this show to life in the sixties. The ‘Me!’ ‘Me!’ is hilarious; it’s all in the performances, Pertwee and Troughton feeding off their rivalry beautifully. There is a very Doctor Who way of suggesting that parts of our universe have ended up in the antimatter universe (ie cheap but imaginative) by having bits of the laboratory (including a set of double doors cut out jaggedly) scattered around the quarry. It is just jarring enough to work. As usual Bob Baker and Dave Martin aren't short of an idea or two; a stable world in the universe of antimatter on the other side of a black hole! Lennie Mayne must have read this script and wept. The writers included a sequence where the entirety of UNIT HQ was sucked through a black hole and wound up on Omega's magic trick planet - they did remember they were writing for Doctor Who, right? There's ambition and then there's lunacy. Smartly Mayne shows the building floating towards the black hole but never attempted to realise it in the quarry. Omega is a fascinating character and a terrific addition to the Time Lord mythos, the first suggestion that they aren't the Godlike being suggested in The War Games but something altogether more human and emotional. To learn that he was the solar engineer that discovered the power source that gave the Time Lords mastery over time is exactly the sort of revelation that is needed in an anniversary story to give the series a little kick. Stephen Thorne's performance errs on the side of theatrical (on a show like Doctor Who that is almost a requirement) but he still manages to sell the important moments with some degree of subtlety. The agonizing scream when he removes his mask and reveals that he his body has been disintegrated gives me goosebumps, he goes from a raging tyrant to an altogether more sympathetic figure. He's a prisoner of his own power, the very thing that he craves is what is preventing him from escape and has ultimately consumed his body. He exists only because he himself wills it so, he can only exist here in the universe of anti matter. Proving what good actors can bring to the show, Pertwee and Troughton's reaction to the naff Singularity Chamber set is one of complete awe and somehow they convince you it is much more impressive than it actually is. Probably the best realised scenes in the whole story take place in Omega's mind. Shot in slow motion, moodily lit and afforded the luxury of expensive looking film, these sequences belong in a much more impressive production than The Three Doctors. After larking about with horrible great jellies for four episodes the story regains focus in the last, incredibly serious, five minutes. There is a surprising amount of poignancy around the idea that the Doctor's might be staying in the antimatter universe despite the fact that we know that they never will (this is only the first story of the season for one!). It is how convincingly it is played that counts and everybody is giving their all.

The Bad Stuff: I'm not sure what Reg Hollis and his missus bring to the story beyond their cliched country bumpkin accents and that terrible gag in the last scene. The face in the X-Ray is hardly the subtlest of moments in Doctor Who. Electronic effects hit an all time low with the fizzing blob that attacks UNIT in the early episodes, it looks like something a b-movie would reject as too ridiculous. The UNIT scenes have degenerated to such a point since the heights of season seven that Benton walks in to join in with the jollies and remembers as an afterthought that there has been an explosion in the garage. By this point in Doctor Who (ten years down the line) we have already seen a number of monster costumes that have failed to make the grade. The moptop Monoids, the clunky War Machines, the Venom Grubs with their paper strips for legs. However nothing could quite prepare me for the sight of the Gell Guards, easily the most cringeworthy (or hilarious depending what mood you are in) creatures the show has ever had the gall to put on display. Impractical, unconvincing and totally farcical, the way they wobble about is hilarious (they even make comedy ‘burble burble’ noises!) and the fact that they are introduced in such a dramatic way only adds to their comedy value ('Holy Moses! What's that?'). What has happened to Gallifrey? It looks like the backdrop of a Saturday morning kids pantomime show, all multi coloured tack in ugly plastic. Is this what Gallifrey looked like in The War Games but we just couldn't tell because it was shot in black and white? Dudley Simpson accentuates the comedy tone of the piece with some of his least compelling musical cues. The spunky 'Bessie drives' jingle has to be heard to be believed and there are bizarre cues like elongated burps that kick in throughout the story. Omega's Palace should have been an Aladdin's cave of wonders, cavernous, built from exquisite jewels and finery and with the feeling of oppressive claustrophobia despite its enormity. Instead it resembles a poor mans Santa's grotto and I'm certain I've visited some that look more impressive than this. Of all the times that they should have ditched the usual BBC quarry and found a more exotic location, it was this story. The universe of antimatter is possibly the drabbest looking place imaginable as a result and it says much about Omega's imagination if this is all he can conjure up. All those characters piled onto Bessie like that look like a Goodies Doctor Who sketch. It astonishes me that this is the anniversary story and it is granted possibly the worst production values of the entire Pertwee era (I honestly cannot think of a single story that makes as many mistakes as this one as far as the look of the piece is concerned). When you think of the expensive and dyanmic location work of stories like The Ambassadors of Death and The Mind of Evil and exquisite sets of Day of the Daleks and Frontier in Space it is crazy to think that the celebratory adventure failed to get any of that sort of care.

Result: I don't want to suggest that there is no good in The Three Doctors because that is clearly not the case but it is one of those rare moments in the shows history where the script and the production are so at loggerheads with each other it is hard to believe the that the writers and director ever clapped eyes on each other (Paradise Towers is another example in this vein). The script isn't a work of art but it has some very tasty ideas hidden beneath the comedy but it is constantly undercut by poor resources and some gaudy and dull direction on behalf of Lennie Mayne. Certainly his work on stories like The Curse of Peladon and The Hand of Fear are a massive step up in quality and do not have this level of ambivalence. Before Troughton turns up in episode one it is practically unwatchable, the UNIT scenes here are perhaps the nadir of the era because there is a paradoxical feeling that everybody is approaching the material so earnestly and yet not taking it seriously at all. It's like anti-drama (and I don't mean comedy, just people reacting to things in a very bland way). Then the Gell Guards turn up. Poor Nicholas Courtney feels like he is being characterised by a child and is given some terrible dialogue that he tries his damnedest to overcome. It certainly says something when Benton is given far more credibility than his commanding officer. Things only get worse once we reach the universe of antimatter, probably the singularly dullest place the Doctor has ever visited (and that includes the pacifist planet of Dulkis) and all the characters wind up romping about some garish and over designed sets being chased about by horrible great jellies (I never get tired of saying that). It feels as though it is written as a dramatic piece but is translated into something ludicrous, it is probably the closest Doctor Who has ever come to feeling like a parody of itself (including the Williams era). The good stuff is easy to spot because it is surrounded by so much guff. Troughton sparkles, and whilst this is (again) more of a parody of the character he once played he still makes every scene count and I was chuckling along with his huffing and puffing throughout. It's lovely to see Hartnell too, but it feels like a missed opportunity that he was sidelined so badly (not a fault of the production team, I know). You would have thought that all the resources of the season would have gone into making this anniversary story look as polished as possible but the truth of the matter is every other story in season ten looks better than this. Omega is a terrifying creation and his backstory is thrilling but his world is dressed up in gaudy pantomime trappings, which destroys his credibility. Hurrah for Patrick Troughton who manages to salvage something from this travesty, whenever he is on screen it goes from cheap old nonsense to magic. I feel like a party pooper being so wretched to what is generally quite a fun runaround but I question whether  the most important Doctor Who story to date should have been little more than a fun runaround or something more. I would have made the next story the anniversary tale; it is wholly original, imaginative, funny, dramatic and scary. In comparison The Three Doctors feels like it is just biding time until we get to the good stuff: 5/10

The Final Phase written and directed by Nicholas Briggs

What’s it about: The raw power of the very fabric of reality itself. And you dare to think you can conquer it?' Cuthbert's plan for the Proxima System is reaching its final phase. The Doctor and Romana have been separated. The Doctor is aiding the Proximan fight-back. Romana and K9 are prisoners of the Daleks. And as the countdown to the opening of the Quantum Gateway begins, the Daleks reveal their true intentions.

Teeth and Curls: ‘What’s the matter, too scared to show your plungers?’ With dialogue like that it is hard to get too excited about the characterisation of Tom Baker’s fourth Doctor. His speech is not actively unpleasant but it is functional, rather than witty and effusive. However I did like the moment where he almost burst into laughter at the news that the Daleks on board the saucer are dead. It felt like a little of that dangerously batty fourth Doctor (you know, the one who toyed with Davros’ hand over the self destruction button in Destiny of the Daleks whilst beaming like a nutter) had made it into the story.

Posh Girl: This is Mary Tamm’s last Doctor Who adventure before her untimely death and whilst it does showcase her character a fair amount, I wouldn’t say that she is given the strongest material of the season (that would still go to The Auntie Matter and The Justice of Jalxar). To be fair Nicholas Briggs did not know that this was going to be Tamm’s final story and I dare say would have worked things a little differently if he did to give her a more dramatic/satisfying send off. Romana is bolshie enough, smugly standing up to both Cuthbert and the Daleks (she’s got some pluck, I’ll give her that) and shows off her scientific knowledge by piecing together the mystery that is hanging on the periphery of this story whilst everybody else is trying to bring down the Daleks. She is uncomfortable admitting it but there are times when the Doctor’s knowledge exceeds her own and should be sought out. It is only after she thinks he is dead that Romana acknowledges that although they resented each other at first, they had started to get on despite themselves. They had become good friends and she had never stopped to think about it before. The Doctor might be able to bypass the Randomiser and get Romana back to Gallifrey but she doesn’t want to just yet. She doesn’t think she should let him out of her sight for quite some time.

Standout Performance: Tom Baker is at his best when confronting the Supreme Dalek, literally growling his lines out at points. It jars when compared to the fruitloop that is on display elsewhere but it really feels like he is giving it all for this scene. He attempts to make the conclusion to this story feel as climactic as possible, booming about Gods and raw energy unleashing. If only the script could deliver the cataclysm that Baker manages to portray so effortlessly.

Great Ideas: Cuthbert learns (as do all those who try and make a pact with the Daleks) that they will be subservient to a point but as soon as things aren’t going their way… He tries to control them with his monumental ego but when it comes to a battle of words and firepower, I know what I would put my money on. Fortunately they seem to need Cuthbert for some purpose, which is his one ace up the sleeve at the moment but the trouble is nobody seems to know what that is. The Quantum Gateway is a tear in the fabric of time and space and the energy required to create it is enough to destroy the universe itself (that’s the sort of melodramatic statement that sounds awesome coming out of anybody’s mouth). Cuthbert’s intentions aren’t to look into the future but to discover the glories of the past. Whilst Cuthbert thought he had the Daleks under control, they were busy extruding tunnels through the Quantum Gateway right under his nose. Punching through the fabric of the universe exposes you to energy from other dimensions, energy that doesn’t conform to our laws of physics. No matter how strong Cuthbert’s forcefield is, it is essentially porous and deadly particles have been pouring in from the other dimension. They have the power to tear reality in half when the forcefield comes down at the moment of the final phase. Without Cuthbert and the Conglomerate, a thousand would starve, Earth would be bankrupt an economies across the galaxy would fall. Billions will die if he doesn’t walk through the gateway because the seeds of the Conglomerate Empire were planted in the past that he managed to access by creating the Quantum Gateway. Before the gateway is destroyed Cuthbert manages to take the opportunity to slip back in time to the right place to keep time on track. Perhaps to be met by another Doctor in the future (I would love to hear David Warner and Colin Baker lock horns). Is he a living temporal paradox?

Audio Landscape: Loved the psychedelic sound effects for the Dalek saucer, very Dr Who & the Daleks. There’s a lovely moment when K.9’s noisy motors are so loud they threaten to spoil Romana’s moment of subterfuge (mirroring the racket he used to make in the series) and he adopts his stealth mode, effectively muting himself. When asked why he has never done that before, he responds that nobody has ever asked him. At points during this story it sounds like Daleks are having a nervous breakdown, although never to quite the level of the Michael Wisher voiced one in Death to the Daleks. The dimension ship screams across space and is detonated with some force, an appropriately dramatic moment since it is supposed to signal the Doctor’s death. Dalek heartbeat, bullets breaking through Dalek casings, extermination blasts (obviously),

Musical Cues: Rather oddly the music in The Dalek Contract was one of my favourite aspects of the story but I grew a little tired with the style in The Final Phase. I still laud Alistair Lock as one of Big Finish’s finest but there was a feeling of melodramatic wallpaper to the score here that I didn’t sense in the previous adventure.

Isn’t it Odd: Perhaps this story should have been called The Deadly Particles? An ominous cloud of microbes threatening the system? It’s hardly on the same sort of scope as a plague planet, is it? Endless scenes of guns firing at Daleks, bullets bouncing off their casings and Nick Briggs screaming his head off as the bonded polycarbite explodes might have been fun way back in The Genocide Machine and The Apocalypse Element but since then there have been countless Dalek stories with similar scenes. I’m starting to get a sense of déjà vu. Unfortunately these metal meanies have been so overused by Big Finish now that in order for a story to truly excel they have to do something a bit different with them (the lone Dalek in Jubilee for example) and constantly playing out the same round of sound effects as though all out war is occurring just out of sight is getting a bit wearisome. Perhaps it is time to give them a rest.  Briggs has a thing at the moment about people mis-pronouncing things (‘The Doctor’ and ‘Tardy Box’) and Cuthbert continues to call Romana ‘Ramona’ throughout this story. It’s the lowest form of wit and inspires groans rather than giggles. Listening to Cuthbert’s downfall should be a lot more satisfying than it is but he really has been (as Romana so delicately puts it) ‘terminally stupid’ by letting them get so close and thinking they knew nothing about the Gateway. It is hard to feel sympathy for such a numbnuts. Daleks messing about with dimensional technology – wasn’t this covered in Briggs’ own Dalek Empire? The suggestions of romance between Chidak and Halka are so subtle as to be undistinguishable, it certainly adds nothing to their thinly drawn characters. The Doctor attempts to probe deep and discover why the Daleks want access to all of time and space…conquest. Well, duh. This story is always reaching for something special but settling for the mundane.

Standout Scene: Romana’s quiet reaction to the Doctor’s death stands out as a genuinely heartfelt moment amongst all the sound and fury.

Result: Perfectly average, but never stimulating. Nick Briggs can be a fine writer  but you only have to compare The Final Phase and To The Death (both epic Dalek finales that climax a series of 50 minute stories) to see that he is starting to get a little exhausted, possibly because of his prolific presence in this particular range. Like The Dalek Contract, The Final Phase has its moments but they are scant and submerged in all the rest of the noisy fluff. The dialogue is mostly functional rather than characterful, serving the scant plot and so the guest cast get a bum deal of being some the least interesting and memorable that have appeared in a Big Finish for some time. If the second season of 4DAs has been your first exposure to Big Finish then this might feel like a genuinely climactic and exciting adventure but if you have listened to even half of their other Daleks adventures (especially the likes of Davros, Jubilee, The Juggernauts, Enemy of the Daleks and Patient Zero) then The Final Phase is likely going to feel like quite the letdown. The Doctor and Romana play out the roles that is expected of them but aren’t stretched in any way (even when it looks as if the Doctor is dead the aftermath is handled too quickly and his return to the story quickly follows) and whilst David Warner continues to delight (despite his stiff characterisation, I don’t think this guy knows how to give a bad performance) Cuthbert’s story fizzles out without any resolution. The whole self fulfilling prophecy angle has been done before, and better, and I couldn’t help but think considering that since the story was promising an epic revelation (universal destruction, time and space split asunder, etc) that this was more than a little underwhelming. I struggle to see the merit in playing it quite so safe with the 4DAs. Even season two, which has been a quantum leap in terms of quality from season one, has failed to take any big risks (the best stories are a P.G. Wodehouse parody, a reunion with Jago & Litefoot and a claustrophobic SF tale beneath the sea – all quality stories but nothing especially groundbreaking). Next year I would like to see them try and push Tom Baker into more challenging areas, edgier drama and more oddball comedies. I would love to see him get his own Jubilee, Chimes of Midnight, A Death in the Family or Dr Who & the Pirates, something truly memorable. The Finale Phase caps off an entertaining season of adventures but I cannot imagine ever choosing to listen to this particular adventure again: 5/10

Persuasion written by Jonathan Barnes and directed by Ken Bentley

What’s it about: The Umbrella Man is back. But when the Doctor recruits UNIT's Scientific Adviser Elizabeth Klein for an off-the-books mission to the apocalyptic final days of Hitler's Germany, he isn't expecting Klein's hapless young assistant, Will Arrowsmith, to be joining them too. The Doctor isn't the only alien creature seeking to loot a very particular secret from a Nazi base in Dusseldorf, however. Strange and sinister beings are converging on the same time/space location in search of the scientist Schalk, whose experiments are the key to a devastating power... The power of Persuasion.

The Real McCoy: The Doctor is not used to the sort of reaction that Klein gives him when he drops in on his old friends – horror and indifference. Some of them are even pleased to see him! Raine is no longer travelling with him and he has come to check up on his old nemesis/friend (take your pick). The Doctor doesn’t use the TARDIS to start wars but to end them, a firm statement of fact that he feels he has the right to determine the course of history. Perhaps the Valeyard should have chosen that moment to use in his prosecution against the Doctor in Trial of a Time Lord. The Doctor is afraid, he knows he is reaching the end of this body and he’s worried that whoever comes next wont be capable of doing the things that he does so he is trying to tidy up the universe before he departs. Such arrogance, but that has always been an element of this incarnation. He thinks that his future incarnations wont be able to go as far as he does  but he is wrong – in the novel line the eighth Doctor destroyed Gallifrey when such a decision had to be made and between the TV Movie and Rose another, as yet undisclosed, regeneration also made the same decision. If he ever seems sure then he is never as sure as she seems. The Doctor calls the Earth a plucky little mud ball, which I thought was rather sweet. He states that he can’t tolerate beings who put the greater good before the lives of individuals but that has been something he himself has been guilty of time and again in this incarnation. The hypocrisy on display is awesome.

Nazi Scientist: Klein has responsibilities and cannot just take off on an intergalactic jaunt. She has a natural level of curiosity about the TARDIS but objects to being kidnapped against her will. I hate to say this but Klein is far too strong a character to be tethered to the seventh Doctor and constantly dogging his footsteps and demanding to know what is going on. It has become something of a cliché with the seventh Doctor’s companions thanks to the overdone manipulation angle that writers take with him and it is a shame to see a character as strong as Klein falling into that trap. She should be spearheading her own range, pulling the strings herself instead of being led around on a leash. Tracey Childs will always take whatever material Big Finish give her and make something juicy of it but I really felt the character was undersold in Persuasion. I remember the fierce intellect and moral determination of the woman in A Thousand Tiny Wings but it would seem that her time with UNIT has softened her into perfectly ordinary companion material. Perhaps she will regain some of that bite in the next two stories. Out of all of his previous colleagues, it was Klein that the Doctor thought would understand his need to get things in order before losing his identity. She doesn’t believe in co-incidence when it comes to the Doctor anymore and she thinks he came to her because she is the perfect companion for the man he has become.

Sexy Geek: I think it says something about our perception of people and how we like to categorise them by what we see that the general feeling surrounding this release so far seems to be people struggling with the disparity between Will as portrayed on the cover (rugged, handsome, confident looking) and the character who is portrayed in the story (who is anything but – wimpy, geeky and insecure). To be fair it is something I have experienced myself in the past. I look after myself and I’m fairly straight acting and so when I meet people the response is often that they are shocked to learn that I am the geeky gay sort! However I at least sound how I look, the discrepancy between Will as visualised and Will as characterised is so enormous that it feels as if somebody has missed the point of the character in one of those areas. There is a real feeling of Jeremy Fitzoliver about the character; a feckless, useless brainbox who lacks basic competence and if I’m honest Will does wind up about as appealing as Barry Letts’ most infamous creation. To say that he drags this release down in quality simply by being present would be a massive understatement. When confronted with a threat he babbles and gushes and perspires, I can’t imagine why Klein keeps him around. By the way that she loses her temper with him, I think the question often dawns on her too! Will isn’t a field agent, he’s more of a theorist. Perhaps if Will had proven himself throughout the course of his first adventure to be much more than meets the eye then this uber geek approach to his character (mind you I have rarely met geeks that sound quite this shrill and pathetic) might have been made to work. If the idea of introducing a new companion is to entice the audience to want to spend more time with the character, Persuasion is an abject failiure.

Standout Performance: To say that McCoy has been riding high on the success of his latest Big Finish releases would be an accurate statement of fact. Let’s be honest he has come a long way since the early days of the audio productions where it felt that the weaker scripts were always being filtered his way and there was a nagging feeling as if he was reading the scripts for the first time when stepping up to the microphone. His performances over the past three or four years have seen a marked improvement and the quality of his stories (The Magic Mousetrap, A Death in the Family, Protect and Survive, Robophobia, UNIT: Dominion) has seen a dramatic rise in value. That’s why it is sad to confess that this story felt as though it had come from the days of Unregenerate! and The Rapture, McCoy sounding frighteningly under rehearsed and uncertain of how to structure his sentences and where to place his inflections. It doesn’t help that his characterisation is a bit all over the place in Persuasion too (often the curse of a new writer, trying to achieve everything in their first script) but there is a definite feeling of the leading man lost at sea here, which I hope isn’t a precursor into an arrangement similar to the days of yore. We’ll see. Watch out for his multitude of rolling rrrs, that is usually a sign that McCoy is desperately improvising his way through a scene.

Great Ideas: The cause of a great of this adventures problems, the cover, is visually stunning and promotes the tale as a gritty and dramatic one. It doesn’t tally with the story that unfolds but that doesn’t stop it being of excellent quality. The Doctor keeps an entire galaxy in one room in the TARDIS, that’s a very cool idea. Walking around the TARDIS is more like stepping into a mans mind than a geographical location. The Kletch are a race of space faring asset strippers and they are mentioned in the UNIT files. The Doctor once left one of his old model sonic screwdrivers in the UNIT labs and they have managed to reverse engineer some of its functions. The Doctor first heard the name Kurt Schalk two months ago, on interstellar communications he monitors from the TARDIS. Across thousands of worlds the wireless communications across a multitude of law enforcement organisations, the private correspondence of a plethora of governments, the memos and emails of Presidents, Prime Ministers and Kings, those secret words that fly daily to and from the criminal underworlds of many planets – the Doctor has access to it all. Schalk has become the most wanted man in the known universe. New Peerlessness is a prison planet built by the Time Lords, cocooned in impermeable force fields and only let the Doctor in because it knows him. Schalk was plagued by dreams of impossible things (other worlds, realities and dimensions), he had been chosen to build the Persuasion machine. It can make any person believe in any belief or ideology. The Struwwelpelter’s plan was to turn this universe into a new home for themselves, to turn the machine on the entire population of the planet Earth and make them agreeable to the aliens because otherwise we would behave destructively to their scheme. No I’m not sure if it makes sense either.

Audio Landscape: A squeaking door, birdsong, the echoing TARDIS corridors, falling into water, a cheering crowd, rolling waves, a shrieking scream.

Musical Cues: Andy Hardwick’s music is as wishy washy as ever and is starting to become a little formulaic now. If you listen to his work in Zagreus, The Next Life and Persuasion there really isn’t enough of a difference between them to call them original scores. To be fair to Hardwick, he hardly has much dramatic material to work with but this is a pretty faceless soundtrack regardless. Perhaps a more dynamic score would have improved things slightly (ala The Rapture).

Isn’t it Odd: The prologue is too long, too confusing and too indifferent to drag you into the story. It sounds like The Rings of Akhaten in a nutshell with a child caterwauling and lots of talk of love conquering all. It also feels as if we have come in halfway through the adventure, I had to check that I hadn’t pressed play at the wrong point. With a random Nazi character turning up at the cliffhanger to venerate Klein, the overall feeling is the first episode could do with another draft, it feels disjointed, undramatic and bafflingly vague. When contrasted with the opening episode at the start of the last McCoy trilogy (Protect and Survive) which was startling in it’s economy of storytelling and raw in it’s dramatic intensity, the flaws of Persuasion are even more apparent. Constantly returning to a story that is completely disconnected from the main narrative is highly distracting. I had no doubt that they would be dovetailed at some point but for the first two installments at least I found my attention divided between two, equally uninteresting stories and having no clue how one impacted the other. Is there a script editor working on the main range these days? This story is distinctly set after UNIT Dominion (Klein recognises who the Doctor is, Raine is mentioned) and yet when confronted with a Nazi who seems to venerate her she is baffled by the entire prospect as though the revelations about her past that she made privy to in the previous epic never took place. I’m not sure that this story ever presented any kind of dramatic thrust, it feels like a bunch of people who have come together in an obscure location whilst the plot runs on the spot and they discuss the danger they are in without ever actually appearing to be in any. It’s like an anti-narrative, with nothing of note propelling the story forwards. Terrifying beings from another dimension? Again? Is the main range starting to haemorrhage imagination? Wasn’t the Toymaker a similar foe? And Fenric? Or the entity that existed between realities in House of Blue Fire? Or the extra dimensional creatures for Lurkers’ at Sunlight’s Edge? Or the Elder Gods from Protect and Survive? And The Word Lord? Why does the seventh Doctor always have to butt heads with such grand, end of the universe as we know it enemies? Is that the only way to make his character impressive by having him cut these grand villainous sorts down to size? There is something deeply unsatisfying about a narrative that doesn’t reveal its secrets but contains a character (the Doctor) who knows precisely what is going on from the off and suddenly dumps all the facts in our laps two thirds into the adventure. There’s no detective work on the part of the audience, just an outpouring of exposition when my patience had worn thin. For the Doctor to just suddenly drop that every lifeform in the known universe is in danger without properly explaining his reasoning for such a statement or backing it up with evidence in the story it just a hollow cliché. The Doctor facing up to the Gods from another universe felt as though it had been a copy and paste jobby from Gods and Monsters. It’s such a predictable story to drop this incarnation in I was considering playing online Tetris to stave the monotony – I don’t mean to be rude but surely the script editor can see that we’ve been here countless times before with the seventh Doctor? I was aghast at the ambivalence of the conclusion, the Doctor convincing the Struwwelpelter’s that this dimension is actually rather lovely and not worth consuming and he can take them somewhere pleasant to settle down. Huh? Four episodes of running on the spot for that blinding resolution? Fooling them in such bland way shows that his opponents are clearly of an inferior nature these days. The Doctor tricking higher beings into a prison – isn’t that a replica of the plot of Protect and Survive? The Kletch sounds bizarrely like it is being spearheaded by a particularly perky supermarket announcer. The idea of the Persuasion machine is such a strong one that to drop in it’s abilities in at the last minute and not take advantage of the dramatic possibilities that such a device brings to a story left me speechless. Let’s hope it is revisited, along with the whole Klein/Schalk recognition that has been left unresolved. It does feel deflating that after four episodes of meandering we are even denied resolution.

Standout Scene: Watch out for the truly bizarre moment when all the characters converge late in episode three and it plays out like an endless roll call of hellos. I was getting visions of the Janet/Dr Scott/Janet/Brad/Rocky sequence in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. There was so little happening dramatically at this point we can waste 30 seconds with everybody saying hi.

Result: That was…boring. It has been a long time since I was last this indifferent about a Big Finish release because even the weakest of the latest batch of main range adventures have been entertaining despite their flaws (Eldrad Must Die!). Given the previous Klein trilogy and UNIT: Dominion, I came to Persuasion expecting something very juicy indeed and instead was greeted by a lacklustre tale that felt like a desperately confused first draft. There was no point where the narrative managed to perk my interest because I always felt disconnected from the (lack of) action. There was an awful lot of chatter between the under developed cast but I never felt the situation was being adequately explained or dramaticised and because of the unusual plotting techniques (dumping us in the tale after the important events have happened and excising moments of genuine jeopardy) it never gained any kind of momentum or thrust. For the most part it felt like a bunch of strangers standing around nattering about prosaic things and the resulting story that emerges in episode four is just a watered down version of Protect and Survive. The Doctor suffers from Sylvester McCoy’s weakest performance in an age (did he receive the script late?), Klein fails to engage because she is being shoehorned into the role of an enquiring companion rather than the intelligent foe of old and what they were thinking with Will Arrowsmith bewilders me because he emerges as a copy and paste Jeremy Fitzoliver with all the irritating quirks that come with it. The cover promised a fresh, dynamic team but the story promotes a regular cast that fails to inspire any confidence. I also took issue with the idea that seventh Doctor thinks he has to conquer all the evil in the universe because he doesn’t feel as though his future incarnations will have the stomach to adopt his methods. He’s still in the nursery compared to what is to come, and what his predecessors would be capable of. After a fairly disappointing fifth Doctor trilogy (the excellent Prisoners of Fate aside), I was expecting big things from the return of Tracey Childs to the main range but her consistently enthralling performance was the only strength I could detect in this otherwise limp and open ended tale. I think even if this was your first Big Finish and you hadn’t been privy to all the wonderful things they have been doing with the seventh Doctor of late this would still come as a major disappointment, and if this inconclusive tale was the point that your subscription ended you might not be tempted back. Persuasion showed signs of basic competence but nothing more; there was nothing inspiring, original or remarkable on offer. It pains me to see more insubstantial storytelling filling up the anniversary year, after an unsatisfactory mini season on TV I was rather relying on Big Finish to pick up the slack. This is a two hour chapter one of this trilogy, and it doesn’t inspire me to seek out the rest: 3/10

Mastermind written by Jonathan Morris and directed by Ken Bentley

What’s it about: The Vault – an archive of alien artefacts securely stored deep beneath the Angel of the North. There's also a prisoner in the Vault. An extraterrestrial known as the Master. He has been on Earth for some time, but now he's under lock and key. This is his story. Or, as Captain Ruth Matheson and Warrant Officer Charlie Sato discover… perhaps it is theirs.

You Will Obey Me: What an awesome idea it was to tell a first person story from the Master’s point of view. We haven’t seen anything quite this innovative as far as the shows villains are concerned since the trilogy of adventures that focused upon three of the most infamous at the close of 2003’s experimental run. As soon as Geoffrey Beevers joins the story and deploys that dark, hypnotic, menacing voice of his the story automatically went up several notches. He brings something truly malevolent and skin crawling to his stories that is not to be underestimated.

The Master arrives with an ominous chiming of the grandfather clock that happens to be his TARDIS in disguise. When it sounds, it always means he is going to wake up. He’s categorised as alien artefact number one, which might put him at the top of the priority list as far as the Vault is concerned but seems like such a dull official label for such a great character. He’s locked in a vault within and vault because you can never be too careful with the Master. He only wakes up every five years or so for an hour and fortunately this time round we are privy to that 60 minutes. A master of mind control and psychological manipulation, UNIT has had too many dealing with this criminal to deal with his security lightly. Others have made the error of underestimating him and paid the price. As far as this psychopath is concerned, there are few things more satisfying than taking the life of an innocent. While it looks as if the Master might take a moral stance over pushing forward humanities technological progress in order to expedite his experiments, the truth is he was worried that doing so would attract the attention of the CIA and the Doctor. The Master’s waltz through the 20^th Century reminds me of the experiences that the Doctor had when he was trapped on Earth during the same period in the novel line. It is great to compare their approaches, the Doctor using the time to study and broaden his horizons as much as he can whilst trying to stay in the shadows and not make too much of a fuss. In comparison the Master is drawn to the power, taking over the bodies of a succession of influential men and building up an impressive business Empire. He’s so effortlessly cool that being held up by a Mafia assassin amuses him greatly. Once UNIT have him in custody they want him to work for them, giving them the benefit of his knowledge during potential alien incursions. How that would stick in the Doctor’s throat.

UNIT Officers: As soon as Charlie excitedly boasts that he is going to be interviewing the Master I envisaged a terrifying future for the lad. His influence is so strong he can force people to murder themselves, to act against their own sense of self preservation, an ability that truly disturbs Ruth. The Master is an expert manipulator and he offers Ruth a glimpse of a changed past, the ability to bring her murdered unit back to life if only she releases him. Would he uphold that bargain if he was at large? Who knows, but the tantalizing truth is that what he is telling her is possible. Charlie became a soldier to honour his fathers memory, but the Master offers him the chance to save his father if he lets him go.

Standout Performance: The material that Beevers is given in Mastermind is miles beyond the one dimensional villainy that was foistered upon him during the first season of 4DAs. He’s afforded the opportunity to play all manner of guises as the Master and adopt a number of accents and personalities, all of which convince. However he is at his best when he gets to bring his voice right down and purr in the ears of the UNIT operatives, quietly and threateningly inveigling his way into their minds… 

Sparkling Dialogue: ‘I have worn many bodies over the years but always they revert to my true form. I am the living embodiment of entropy, rotten to the core…’

Great Ideas: Given that these are the UNIT vaults it makes perfect sense for Jonathan Morris to plunder old stories for continuity references (especially in the 50^th anniversary year but there is no reason why you wouldn’t do this anyway since the situation has presented itself). In this case there is mention of Excalibur from Battlefield. A grandfather clock and the Tom Baker theme tune seems to suggest that this is the Master from that period, either somewhere between The Deadly Assassin and The Keeper of Traken or post Traken and pre-Logopolis. Dalek scorch marks detected on his TARDIS could mean be suggesting that was why he was suddenly an emaciated corpse when we caught up with him in Assassin, but ultimately it turns out that this is a post-TV Movie version of the Master set after he escaped his prison in the Doctor’s TARDIS. A shame, it might have been fun to wind up those people who agonise over where stories are placed by leaving the placement ambiguous. However it is pleasing to fill out this previously unexplored (except for a suggestion that the Master is still in the TARDIS at the end of the 8^th Doctor novel Sometime Never…) part of the Master’s life. There is a fascinating and dramatic story to be told between the TV Movie and his resurrection in Utopia. His TARDIS was discovered in a burial chamber in the Valley of the Kings over a century ago, which means he has been trapped in the Vault ever since. If it is suspected that UNIT soldiers have been taken over by the Master they can be incarcerated for up to fifty years until they are certain that the influence has passed and no hidden instructions have been left to fester in your mind. Perhaps Charlie should have been made aware of these conditions before he stepped foot in this section of the Vault. It is quite sweet to have a story written for characters played by Daphne Ashbrook and Yee Jee Tso featuring the Master. It turns out that the viscous state that the Master found himself in during the TV Movie was a death worm morphant and it was a necessary measure to ensure that he survived execution by the Daleks on Skaro. It also allowed him to exist within the Eye of Harmony. So there to anybody who snubbed the idea, it makes perfect sense after all (I am talking myself more than anyone else). One of the Doctor’s companions, Edward Grainger (I wonder if we will ever see that story emerge in the eighth Doctor line?) made contact with the Master in the TARDIS, opened the Eye and allowed him to escape in a vaporous state. He surged from the TARDIS into the year 1906 in a precarious, gaseous existence, his mind only held together by his unconquerable will. He found the perfect hiding place within a human being, so discreet that the Doctor would never be able to detect his presence within his mind. The Master’s greatest fear and strongest motivation is to stay alive and it seems that whatever method he chooses always comes with an inherent flaw. In this case the body accelerated in age, brought on by his possession and decomposing to the state that it is now. He eventually wound up on the Titanic and stole the place of one of the survivors when it crashed and eventually took over the body of one of the Hudson Dusters, a New York street gang. Just that sentence alone could provide enough substance for several stories. To hear the Master being played by Beevers as a Godfather figure is a delight. I could have happily have spent much more time around this character and learnt of his brutal, unlawful acts in the early 1900s. After taking over the Don’s son, the Master soon realised there was another resource that was abundant on the planet and that brought with it great power – money. He bought a casino and started to exploit the greed inherent in humanity in order to harness the power of the nearby Hoover Dam, a necessary plunder to fuel his experiments to return his body to its previous, undecaying state. Another great full length story to be told there. Soon he was running all the casinos, pulling the strings but remaining in the shadows. Come 1973 he had spent two decades practically confined to his penthouse, leaving the every day running of his business Empire to his son Frankie. Just when you think you exactly how the story is going to play out with the Master moving successfully from body to body he hits a snag in the form Frankie. He’s figured out exactly what has been polluting the family line over the years and that he will be next and turns the Master’s own toys against him. After being trapped in his apartment by his son it isn’t until UNIT recovered him that he saw the light of day again.

Audio Landscape: Footsteps, marionettes clinking, a chiming grandfather clock, retina scanner, the Master screaming inside the Eye of Harmony, Big Ben, the screaming maid, seagulls screaming, the sound effect of the Master seeking out a new body in gaseous form is genuinely spine tingling, slot machines, casino atmosphere, cocking a gun, the mechanical airlock, opening a bottle and pouring a drink, brewing coffee, bombs falling, children screaming, canned laughter, rubble falling, alarms.

Musical Cues: An appropriately brooding, dramatic and exciting score for a release spearheaded by the Master, Daniel Brett has delivered his best work yet. The piece that plays over the Godfather Master’s possession of his ‘son’ is a genuinely riveting passage and sax score that kicks in during the casino sequences has a sensual atmosphere all of its own.

Standout Scene: I was waiting patiently throughout to see when the Master would make his move and what trick he would play in order to escape from UNIT confinement. When the moment comes, it doesn’t disappoint. He’s such a devious bugger he allowed himself to brought to the UNIT vault as a prisoner in order to obtain his property previously lost – his TARDIS. His trap sprung, he soon makes his mistake. Let’s hope we get to stow away on board with him one day.

Result: A gripping story that charters the Master’s struggle through 20^th Century America, Mastermind is an ground-breaking way to open the final season of companion chronicles. In a way it is a shame that such a transfixing story of the Master’s passage from the TARDIS to the Vault is told in so short a space of time and in the first person. It is such an engaging story I would have liked to have seen Jonathan Morris turn this into a much longer, full-cast story and for it to be marketed as the next box set from Big Finish. The story as recounted would have been better than Dark Eyes and UNIT: Dominion combined. Their loss is the Companion Chronicles’ gain and I cannot imagine anybody not getting excited by the journey we take with the Master following the TV Movie and leading up to his incarceration in the Vault. Geoffrey Beevers is the living embodiment of malevolence in this tale, his voice dripping with malice. Daphne Ashbrook and Yee Jee Tso prove they are no slouches either, effortlessly resurrecting their parts from Tales from the Vault but taking on other roles within the flashbacks. Anybody bemoaning the fact that Jonathan Morris has been turning up in the schedules rather frequently of late should remember that his latest work has consisted of Protect and Survive, Prisoners of Fate, The Auntie Matter, Guardians of Prophecy, The Age of Revolution…basically the best of their respective ranges. It would appear that his imagination knows no bounds and he is still producing work as innovative and startling as his very first novel way back in 2000. Mastermind lives up to it’s title, offering a deceptive piece with a great sting in the tale. It is written with plenty of intelligent historical detail and cheeky moments whilst always focusing on the hypnotic storytelling abilities of the Master. Once you have reached the heart stopping climax you will be cursing the end credits because there is so much more of his story to be told. If the success of this release doesn’t convince Big Finish to give the Doctor’s nemesis his own spin off range then nothing will. Oh and one more thing…if your partner ever comes home a changed man, it’s time to get very worried indeed. A fantastic listening experience, the companion chronicles shave struck gold again: 10/10