The Light at the End.

2 episodes. Approx. 116 minutes. Written by: Nicholas Briggs. Directed by: Nicholas Briggs. Produced by: David Richardson.


THE PLOT

After the TARDIS nearly blows up, the Doctor and Charley find a new feature on the console - a blinking red light that has never been there before. The Doctor checks the instruments, and finds that the light appeared after the TARDIS passed through time/space coordinates matching a particular home in Hampshire at 17:03 on November 23, 1963. He promptly sets the TARDIS to materializes at those exact coordinates to investigate.

But they don't materialize in Hampshire... or in England... or on Earth. They find themselves in a pocket dimension, home to a factory run by the Vess, who are selling the most destructive weapons the universe has ever seen. The Doctor and Charley have not been lured here by accident - nor are they alone. The Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) and his companion Leela (Louise Jameson) are also here. And all the Doctor's other incarnations are on the way, falling one by one into the same trap.

In the heart of the factory, like a spider at the center of a web, the Master watches, patiently waiting for his plan to unfold - And for the Doctor to be erased from history!


CHARACTERS

The 8th Doctor: Spends much of the story paired with the Fourth Doctor. This is appropriate for many reasons, not least of which is that the Fourth and Eighth Doctors are the two most superficially similar incarnations. Both seem to take things lightly until they turn on a dime and get deadly serious... Though the Eighth Doctor doesn't have the undercurrent of violent anger that marks the Fourth Doctor's most memorable appearances. For this 50th anniversary story, Big Finish could have selected any part of his audio era and any traveling companion. They chose to hark back to the beginning of their McGann audios by partnering him with Charley Pollard. She is only in the story briefly, but she gets just enough air time to re-establish the effortless camaraderie of the early Eighth Doctor/Charley stories.

The 4th Doctor: In contrast to most multi-Doctor pairings, Tom's Doctor seems to get on genuinely well with his likable 8th persona. Tom himself is in fine form here, doing a more convincing job of recreating his Doctor than has sometimes been the case in his audio outings. After dominating much of Part One, he's pushed to the background for the second episode - but he and McGann are brought back to the fore for the climax, when their Doctors get the final confrontation with the Master.

The 5th Doctor: Is cautious enough to recognize a trap of some sort in the flashing light. Alone of the Doctors, he takes the precaution of materializing just before the time coordinates, seemingly avoiding the Master's snare. Partnered with Nyssa (Sarah Sutton), the companion with whom this Doctor was the most compatible, he gets the chance to investigate and seems to be set up as the Doctor to save the day... Though as it happens, his precautions were not only foreseen, but were in fact critical to the Master's typically convoluted plans.

The 6th Doctor: Barely features in the first half, but makes up for it with a commanding showing in Part Two. As much by chance as anything, he is able to discover how the Master was able to spring his trap. He then swings through all of his Doctor's best/worst traits as he badgers and bullies a browbeaten Time Lord agent, huffing with all the righteous indignation his lungs can carry (and as all who have seen Trial of a Time Lord can attest, that is a lot of indignation), until the other Time Lord allows him to use his TARDIS to do some Technobabble that is able to put the Doctors on the offensive for the final stretch. Colin Baker is terrific, and it's appropriate that his Doctor gets such a key role, complete with "hero moment" - After all, what Tom Baker was to television Who, Colin Baker pretty much has become to audio Who.

The 7th Doctor: The least prominent of the Doctors. Oh, he gets his segment, and Sylvester McCoy's banter opposite Colin Baker at the start of Part Two is terrific fun. But his biggest chunk of action sees him working with Ace, discovering the nature of the Master's factory before fleeing from his killer drones... Which would be a lot more dramatic if the Fourth and Eighth Doctors had not already spent a lot of time discovering the nature of the factory before fleeing from the killer drones in Part One. This isn't really a complaint, mind you - With five Doctors in starring roles, someone had to draw the short straw - but it's clear that McCoy is more a "spare Doctor" than an integral part of the story.

The Master: Geoffrey Beevers' Master returns. And even though Beevers' incarnation was made current by Big Finish, at least for the Seventh Doctor, there's a fair amount of complicated exposition explaining that this version is from the period before The Keeper of Traken. An unnecessary flourish that in no way diminishes Beevers' wonderfully silky line delivery. His material is more typical "Arch Villain" stuff than his roles in Dust Breeding and Master, and I confess to unwillingly picturing Anthony Ainley's version several times as this played out... But Beevers remains a treat in the role, and I hope it isn't too long a wait before we hear from him again.


THOUGHTS

More than a decade after its founding, and after multiple non-traditional multi-Doctor stories, Big Finish finally delivered a good, old-fashionbed multi-Doctor romp with its 50th anniversary special, The Light at the End - presumably titled such because The Five Doctors was already taken.

Comparisons with The Five Doctors are apt. Like that story, the plot involves various Doctor and their Companions taken out of time - in this case, by the Master instead of by a Time Scoop - in order to have an adventure. The Master's plot is convoluted, but it largely matters only in justifying this chance to have some fun with multiple Doctors and Companions.

Also as with The Five Doctors, "narratively unambitious" should not be read as a synonym for "badly written." Like Terrance Dicks before him, Nicholas Briggs has taken on a massive undertaking: Starring roles for five Doctors and major supporting roles for their companions; cameo roles for impersonators of those Doctors no longer with us and snapshot cameos with some of their companions; some decent interaction among Doctors and Companions; and a plot that's simple enough to leave room for all of the above, but challenging enough to justify the participation of five Doctors. Oh, and a plot that moves fast without ever confusing the listener.

That's a lot to cram into two hours, and Briggs delivers on all fronts. The plot may be a thin clothesline, but it holds together and has a reasonable bit of cleverness at its center. The story may be a celebratory romp, but for the first half it's clear that the Doctors are in a desperate situation. There's even a nicely ghoulish moment at the end of Part One, as the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa discover exactly what has happened to hapless Bob Dovey (John Dorney)'s perfect family. It's a bit that's unusually dark for Who these days, and makes for an effective jolt.

My only real complaint is the theme music used for this story. It feels too bombastic, too clearly aiming for a "New Series" feel. It isn't quite my least favorite version of the theme (that would be the "8th Doctor Adventures" theme that debuted with the second 8th Doctor/Lucie season), but I still hope this proves to be a one-off.


Overall Rating: 8/10. A fine celebratory romp.


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II. Shada.

6 episodes.  Approx. 150 minutes.  Written by: Douglas Adams, Gary Russell (uncredited).  Directed by: Nicholas Pegg.  Produced by: Gary Russell.

THE PLOT

When the Doctor receives a message from his old friend, Professor Chronotis (James Fox), a retired Time Lord living on Earth as a Cambridge professor, he remembers something long forgotten. Four lifetimes ago, he had visited Cambridge with Romana (Lalla Ward) and K-9 (John Leeson) in response to a summons from the Professor - a summons that went unfulfilled when they were snatched out of time and space. Now it's time to finish old business, sending all three of them "back to Cambridge, 1979."

Chronotis has called them to retrieve an artifact he brought back from Gallifrey. A book that isn't a book, but which has powers that could be devastating in the wrong hands. Trouble is, Chronotis has inadverdantly lent the book out to a student, and the wrong hands are already searching for it: Skagra (Andrew Sachs), a brilliant but unstable scientist who plots to use the book as a key. The Doctor doesn't know what Skagra plans to do with it when he has it. But he knows enough to realize that the consequences might spell the end of the universe as he knows it!

"Beware the sphere..."


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Paul McGann steps into Tom Baker's shoes in this remake (or should that be second attempt? For purposes of the review, I'll refer to it as a remake) of the half-finished, strike-aborted 1979 story. I know opinions on this are divided, but mine is that the shoes fit perfectly. McGann has a laid-back, deadpan line delivery which is perfectly suited to Douglas Adams' dialogue. He has a knack of delivering lines about how taking the universe makes no sense because "it's useless as a piece of real estate because, by definition, there's nobody to sell it to," all while sounding perfectly conversational... which makes these lines much funnier than if he was trying to "sell" them. McGann is particularly good opposite Andrew Sachs' Skagra, his calm demeanor the perfect foil to his increasingly agitated and excitable foe.

Romana: Lalla Ward returns to the role of Romana, the Doctor's former companion and now President of Gallifrey. That Ward has no problem settling back into the role is no surprise, given that she had already reprised it multiple times by the time this was recorded. The main body of the story is almost exactly what Douglas Adams wrote for Season 17 (with some material apparently pilfered from earlier drafts), so the relationship between Romana and the Doctor quickly settles into being the traditional one. This works in the story's favor to the extent that Ward actually plays quite well opposite McGann, seeming far more relaxed here than in most of her Big Finish outings. Within the story's continuity, though, there is no sense of Romana's position having changed after the opening prologue. She defers constantly to the Doctor, allows the Doctor to chide her in one scene... which makes it all the more jarring when the story remembers to nod at her being Gallifrey's President once or twice thereafter.

K-9: The robot dog is amusingly utilized by Adams' scripts. The invisible spaceship is particularly enjoyable, as the Doctor and Romana bump straight into it while K-9 makes no warning because he assumes that they can see it. The story takes the mickey out of K-9 multiple times. Repeated replies of "Insufficient data" are played on to good effect, as is his overly-literal response to a cry of, "Blast it!" John Leeson is terrific, capturing the bits of character that made K-9 work when he probably shouldn't have.

Villain of the Week: Andrew Sachs is Skagra, a brilliant and stability-challenged scientist who has devised a plan for universal domination using a big ball, an invisible spaceship, and a bunch of silicon-and-lava derived thugs. My recollection of the 1979 version is that Christopher Neame's Skagra came across as rather weak and wooden (a surprise, given how good Neame is generally). This is one area in which this new version definitely works better. Sachs is terrific as Skagra, sneering out his every line delivery. He has just enough fun with the part to be enjoyable, but reigns it in before it crosses the line into camp. He also gets many of the story's best exchanges, particularly opposite the Doctor and Romana in the story's latter half. I loved the Doctor's final punishment of Skagra, which is far more satisfying than simply killing him would have been.

Befuddled Time Lord Guest Star of the Week: Though I think Sachs' Skagra works far better than Neame's did, I'm afraid that James Fox's Chronotis just isn't as effective as Denis Carey's was in the 1979 version. This is easier to judge, given that most of Carey's scenes were actually filmed.  It is also rather disappointing, given what a good actor James Fox is. Unfortunately, though almost certainly a better actor than Carey, Fox... just isn't as good at comedy. He doesn't seem to have the knack of playing Chronotis' befuddlement in the kind of straight-faced and off-hand manner that Carey had. He also delivers some of the dialogue in the early episodes a touch too rapidly, when certain lines ("It could be green!") would be funnier if allowed a second or two to sink in. He's better in the later episodes, when Chronotis is a bit less scattered and more focused, but this is very far from Fox's best work.


THOUGHTS

Shada is famous as Season 17's half-finished season finale, what should have been the valedictory bow of the Graham Williams era, and particularly of the Graham Williams/Douglas Adams season. Depending on who you listen to, this story would either have been a sparkling epic of wit and high concept that would have redeemed that controversial season, or would have been a lugubrious mess that would have been a nail in the coffin lid of the season's reputation. It is worth noting that Douglas Adams later professed to have been relieved that the story was cancelled, as he wrote it in a hurry when the story he really wanted to make was rejected as being too silly.

My own opinion falls somewhere between the two poles. I'm rather fond of what was shot of the 1979 Shada, as presented on home video, and I think it would have been the second-best story of a season that I admittedly don't much like.  On the other hand, it is not exactly Adams' best work, and it's not hard to see why he was dissatisfied. There's much that is funny in Shada, there are a handful of wonderfully clever moments, and the villain's plot is both ingenious and unlike anything Doctor Who had done prior to that point. It's lesser Douglas Adams, but it's still a pretty good story.

Unfortunately, it is very slow and structurally rather messy. It is equally true of both versions that the first episode could be described by the phrase, "Nothing happens," and that the second episode is only marginally better. The story doesn't really seem to start until Part Three, and doesn't take off until Part Four. Had it been completed in 1979, I doubt it would be regarded as any kind of classic.

These problems hamper the 2003 version. A clever prologue by Gary Russell provides a "grabber" that helps ease listeners over Adams' slow opening, and puts the story in context as having first "happened" (1979), then "un-happened" (The Five Doctors), so that it is reasonable for it to "happen again" for the 8th Doctor. But since there are only very tiny tweaks to Douglas Adams' actual script, there is no sense of urgency in the 8th Doctor and Romana's visit. There is even one point at which Romana refers to this visit as a "social call," something which is flatly contradicted by the new prologue!

This audio version is extremely well-produced, and Nicholas Pegg has gathered together a strong cast. Most of the story's failings lie in the original script: The structural problems, the lack of momentum, the weak cliffhangers.  These were as much a problem with the 1979 version as with this one.

That said, the story's one really good cliffhanger - "Dead men don't need oxygen" - is destroyed by a bad production decision. This is triply disappointing, because: (1) It's a very audio-friendly cliffhanger; (2) This was one of the scenes never shot for the original version; and (3) Since director Nicholas Pegg bungles the cliffhanger by repeating the line over and over before bringing in the credits, that means that there is no good version of what should have been an all-time classic cliffhanger.

With that exception, the direction is generally well-judged. The soundscape feels convincing for both Cambridge and the outer space settings, and I never had any trouble following the action even in the most visual sequences. The score is effective, the performances are good (even James Fox is generally pretty good, just not up to the level of his predecessor in the part). The story takes too long to get going, but when it does finally kick into gear, there's plenty of Douglas Adams wit and loopiness to enjoy.


Rating: 7/10. Too many flaws to rate higher, but too enjoyable to rate lower.

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