A Quick Introduction to Big Finish Doctor Who, Part Three

Colin Baker was fired. The BBC blamed him for the failures in the show and let him go. He asked to return to film a regeneration episode, but they refused to give him more than one scene. He didn't want to play a scene, and so Sylvester McCoy played him in a blond wig. Really. I have no idea why they did this. Sylvester McCoy is a foot shorter than Baker, and quite a bit skinnier. Didn't Baker have a stunt double they could have used? Or couldn't they have grabbed a random person off the street? Anyway, the TARDIS is shot, the Doctor falls on the floor, and regenerates. Why? No one knows.

The Seventh Doctor

Sylvester McCoy played two incarnations of the Seventh Doctor. Okay, that's not actually true, but he may as well have.
 

When trying to fix the perceived problems with Doctor Who they decided that people just didn't like the Doctor. It never seems to occur to people that the problem is that the writing is garbage, so instead of firing the writers they decided to change the Doctor. So they cast someone short and goofy who reminded them of one of the most popular Doctors, Patrick Troughton. So for his entire first season the Seventh Doctor is goofy, foolish, makes mixed metaphors, and plays the spoons. And he is awful. Just terrible. Then something strange happened. New writers came in and decided to completely overhaul the Doctor.

The Second Seventh Doctor is quieter, sterner, and much more manipulative. He's the darkest he's ever been and the most mysterious he's been in years. He's often described as the chess master, as he always has a plan and plays everyone in the room with ease. There are aspects from his earlier portrayal intact; he still rolls all his r's, and makes the occasional mixed metaphors, but he's a very different Doctor. During his time the TARDIS interior all but disappeared from the show, as his Doctor always knew where he was going and what he was doing. We didn't need to see a scene where he tries to discover where he is, because he already knows. He went there on purpose and knew what would happen. An example of this is Remembrance of the Daleks, wherein the Doctor spends the majority of the time avoiding the Daleks and trying to prevent from getting a hold of Hand of Omega. The Daleks get a hold of the Hand and use it, only to be wiped out entirely as a result, as was the Doctor's plan from the beginning. The Hand destroys all the Daleks except one, but the Doctor tracks that one down and convinces it to kill itself. The Seventh Doctor would have somehow managed to end the Time War in seconds if he was there. It also would have turned out that he started it on purpose.

That isn't to say he was just cold and cruel, he was capable of great sympathy and kindness, but he was the most dangerous incarnation of the Doctor. Unfortunately, this came at a time when the BBC hated Doctor Who. The budget was next to nothing, and it was put at the same time as some of their most popular programs, and a couple years later it was cancelled. This era had some of the strongest writing since when Baker was on the show, but it ultimately was cut short.

I would recommend skipping McCoy's first season entirely and starting with Remembrance of the Daleks. Although you could watch Dragonfire for Ace's introduction, and the stupidest cliffhanger ever (he literally hangs off a cliff for no reason). That said, I think that McCoy's era would probably be the most painless transition for fans of the new series.

The Companions

Yes, I chose an annoying picture of Mel, but it was easy to do.

The Seventh Doctor had two companions on screen. The first was Melanie Bush, who doesn't fair much better here than with the sixth Doctor. Mel is the stereotype of the classic 60's companions, although most of the 60's companions weren't like this, She terribly irritating, has little actual character, and screams a lot. A lot. Mel leaves for no reason. Later in the books they reveal that the Doctor brainwashed her to leave so he could recruit Ace. The Seventh Doctor was occasionally kind of evil.

Ace was pretty much the opposite of Mel in every single way.

Then we get to the person more generally considered to be the Seventh Doctor's companion. Dorothy Gale "Ace" McShane. Ace doesn't like her mum and doesn't use her birth name. In a lot of ways she's the stereotypical rebellious 80's teenager. Despite this she is far from awful, and in many ways is the prototype of the modern era companion. She's a twenty-something working class girl from modern times. I'd call her the proto-Rose if that wasn't insulting to Ace. Ace was fun, tough, and liked to blow stuff up. She even invented her own explosive called Nitro-9. Ace and the Doctor was the best companion and Doctor pairing that the show had had since Romana.

Professor Bernice Summerfield, archaeologist

If Ace is a proto-Rose then Bernie Summerfied is a proto-River, but again that's kind of insulting to Bernie. She's a intelligent, daring archaeologist from the future. She traveled with two different Doctors, sometimes out of order. She's disorganized, has a bad memory, and keeps a diary. She apparently is implied to have slept with the Eighth Doctor in one of the novels, but let's just count that as not actually cannon and never speak of it again. She originated in the novels, and eventually got her own, and then got her own Big Finish series. Despite this all, she is only in two of the Seventh Doctor's radio plays.

The Best

In some ways I am limiting myself most with the Seventh Doctor by only counting plays from the first fifty, as he didn't really find his feet till after that. He has some good stuff here, but it was most difficult for me to choose five of his movies.

5. The Fearmonger

An assassin is on the run, his accomplice is sitting in a mental institution, while their intended victim is making speeches and riling up trouble. A terrorist faction is about ready to create another demonstration, and a radio program is reporting on all of it in order to make money. Meanwhile someone is possessed by a nasty alien called a fearmonger. The message here is a bit obvious, and the execution lacks subtlety, but its still an exciting, entertaining story with a fairly well executed twist. The story is a thriller and kept me on my toes, yet still has relatable human characters that are easy to connect with. It would have been easy for a lot of these people to come across as caricatures and while it does come close to that, the characters all feel human partially due to great performances. The story is about intolerance and racism, and is not subtle at all, but it still mostly works and never feels too preachy. 

http://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/the-fearmonger-623

12. The Fires of Vulcan

During his time working for UNIT a police box was found buried at Pompeii, as old as the city itself. Now the Doctor has found himself there and knows that his TARDIS will be caught in the volcanic Eruption. Mel is not so certain and refuses to give into the Doctor's fatalism. It's a very similar idea to The Fires of Pompeii, except there are no silly volcanic monsters, just the Doctor and Mel trying to survive in a doomed city's last days. McCoy manages to play his sillier earlier version of the Doctor with much more gravitas than usual, while Mel is only slightly annoying. The story of Pompeii is better served here by making it a pure historical. What happened at Pompeii was a tragedy and no lava monsters are needed to make it interesting.

http://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/the-fires-of-vulcan-635

13. The Shadow of the Scourge

A homage to the New Adventures novels that came during Doctor Who's "wilderness years" written by Paul Cornel, who happened to be one of the most popular writers of that period. The New Adventures were known for being darker and making the Doctor even more cold and manipulative. This play strikes a good balance; it's dark and occasionally scary, but not without humour and light moments, and no one is out of character. At a hotel there are three conventions triple booked; an experiment in time travel, a seance, and a cross stitch convention. The Doctor is convinced that this is a recipe for disaster and so he goes to check out the last one, being a cross stitch enthusiast of course. His companions are left to investigate the other two, that is until the Scourge arrives. It's dark and weird, and the villains are ridiculously over the top. Despite this it works, mostly because the TARDIS team of Bernie, Ace, and the Doctor are so effective. 

http://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/the-shadow-of-the-scourge-636

46. Flip Flop

A lot of Big Finish's best stuff comes when they experiment with the format of radio, and try doing things they could never do on TV. This is one such example; Flip- Flop has two stories called Black and White that can be listened to in either order. They both tell a story in which the Doctor and Mel arrive in a dystopia, and quickly run into people who want to change it by travelling back in time. The Doctor explains that such a thing could just make things worse, but they don't listen and by doing so create a new dystopia. It's a bleak, fatalistic exorcise in futility. Ultimately these people are creating their own nightmare over and over again, and there's not much to be done about it.

http://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/flip-flop-212

49. Master

Ten years ago a horribly scarred man with no memories was found outside of town. He soon became the town's doctor and even inherited a very nice mansion from a patient. A mansion that some people say is cursed. Now, ten years later, he has invited his two closest friends to dinner. It's not an entirely pleasant night, on of his friends is a police inspector who is very shaken up by the most recent murder in a long string of serial killings. His other friend, the inspector's wife, wants to attempt a seance in order to discover the doctor's past. Their seance is quickly interrupted by a weird little man outside the house, a man who seems to know the town's doctor very well.

      This is my favourite of the three villain stories, although it's also the most inconsistent of them. It's at times fascinatingly deep in its discussion of good and evil, but it also becomes ridiculously silly at other moments. The incarnation of Death shows up near the end, which just feels wrong for Doctor Who, but there's so much good stuff here, including a long scene in which the Doctor and Master discuss evil and free-will, that I'm willing to forgive the odd silly moment. It's a story that I never seem to get tired of, despite the aforementioned problems. 

http://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/master-215

The Worst

36. The Rapture

The Doctor and Ace go clubbing, and that's about it. The Doctor travels to Ibiza with a world weary Ace who demands a vacation free of monsters. She's really annoying in this one. For some reason to demonstrate that she was battle scarred and tired, the writers have her insist on being called McShane. It gets tiresome immediately. The Doctor sends her to a club run by angels where she mostly just hangs out as other people experiment with drugs. It is so fun to listen to other people partying! Anyway, that goes on awhile and then the Doctor shows up, and the fake angels do stuff, and I get really bored. Ace runs into her long lost brother, a plot point so stupid that I didn't believe it was real until the end. Then there's some more clubbing, some evil angels, a ridiculous explanation, a forced climax, and... Oh good, it's over. Annoying, tiresome, and surprisingly badly acted, this is one worth avoiding. I really like the cover though. 

http://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/the-rapture-202

39. Bang-Bang-A-Boom!

The Doctor hosts a talent show. No, seriously. The Doctor poses as a commander of a starship on which there is a talent show, and a murder. I think it's mostly going for comedy, but it never becomes funny. It's tiresome, and annoying, with some dreadfully irritating alien voices. There's not a lot to say about this one, except that it's a failed experiment best forgotten.

http://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/bang-bang-a-boom-20

For the next one I'm going to switch things up a bit and do a general introduction and overview of all things Eighth Doctor.

   

A Quick Introduction to Big Finish Doctor Who, Part Two

   

The Fifth Doctor and his many friends and foes

I was planning to save the Fifth Doctor for last as I had not listened to many of his plays, but I got through them faster than I expected and so I decided to talk about him now while it's all fresh in my mind.

The Fifth Doctor

Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor

Typically Patrick Troughton is credited as having the hardest transition to put up with, as he had to sell the very idea of regeneration to audiences. As difficult as that must have been, I think that Davison may have had an even harder time as he had to follow up Tom Baker. If you are not familiar with Tom Baker than imagine David Tennant's popularity and then imagine if he had stayed for seven years. Tom Baker was insanely popular, and since he played the Doctor for so long many children didn't remember there being another one. In order to make the transition easier they chose an actor who was already established for playing a popular character, and was young and charming. Instead of the strange offputting Doctor that Baker played, Davison played the Doctor as a polite, charming English gentleman. At the time he was controver, but he has experienced a lot more popularity as people go back and re-watch his stuff without the bias of missing Baker, and realized he was actually pretty good.

In interest of complete honesty I think it is worth mentioning that I don't like him much. I don't dislike him exactly but he is my least favourite. The fifth Doctor is polite, suave, charming, and kind of boring. I understand why people like him, I just typically find him to be the least interesting thing in his stories. He also typically seems to be the most helpless Doctor, and I'm unsure of why he is written that way, as he constantly seems to be declaring there is nothing he can do to help.
   
For Big Finish they had the advantage of an older Davison and so his fatherly relationship with his companions works much better, as does his grouchier side. That said, his Doctor was developed well enough on TV and was not in a great need of revision, and so they mostly keep him the same.

The Companions

The Crowded Tardis Crew

The fifth Doctor had the typical three seasons, and yet he had more companions than most during that time, as he had typically had two to three companions at a time. I actually quite like the crowded TARDIS, as it does allow for interesting character interaction. Unfortunately, it also allows for a lot of bickering that can get quite grating after awhile. His initial TARDIS crew consisted of Nyssa of Traken, Tegan, and Adric.

Adric

Adric was the most hated companion of the classic series. He is probably most comparable Wesley Crusher of the classic series. He was the boy genius, whose genius we are mostly just told about, and often seems like a petulant child. He was annoying, whiny, and arrogant. He was also one of the few classic companions to die. His death may have left many fans happy, but it was well handled and surprisingly emotional considering how annoying he was.

Tegan looking rather frightened of something. 

Tegan was an airline Stewardess who the Doctor promised to bring to Heathrow, but had trouble getting her there. She was often mad at him and wasn't afraid to let him know it. I thought she was a pretty good character, and she does eventually do some big finish audios, but is not in the first fifty. Nyssa is the only one who is actually in these audio dramas. She's from the planet Traken, and is also a teen genius, but, unlike Adric, she's not annoying.

Nyssa and a large statue thing 

There are two other companions that I should mention. One of them is Peri, who I briefly talked about when discussing the sixth Doctor. Peri was controversial because she was American and mostly wore revealing outfits, leading critics to think she was mostly there as pandering. They were probably right, but when removed from that she really isn't a bad character. She's an american botany student who wants to see the universe, and while she often had an adversarial relationship with the Doctor, it was still clear that she had a great amount of affection for him.

Peri and the Fifth Doctor

Finally there is Erimem, an Egyptian Pharoah who joins the Doctor in The Eye of the Scorpion. She's strong willed and wise beyond her years, which often makes up for her lack of understanding of technology. Erimem is loyal and gracious to her friends, and vicious and cruel to her enemies.

The Doctor saves Erimem.

The Best:

24. The Eye of the Scorpion

The Doctor and Peri find themselves in Ancient Egypt, and the Doctor quickly saves a young woman who claims to be the new Pharaoh. The problem is that the Doctor has never heard of her, and there were very few female pharaohs so he really shouldn't have forgotten one. It's a fun story, with science fiction elements that don't overtake the story's historical setting. It also introduces a new companion to the Doctor, who really helps to mix things up.
http://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/the-eye-of-the-scorpion-649

Big Finish also has a free short radio play about the Doctor showing Erimem around the TARDIS. It's a fun, charming little story.

http://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/doctor-who-no-place-like-home-1115

34. Spare Parts

Spare Parts is often cited as the best play Big Finish has ever made, and for good reason. The Doctor and Nyssa arrive on what the Doctor insists is Earth. London, clearly. Nyssa isn't convinced since she's pretty sure London isn't underground. It's pretty clear that wherever they are the Doctor doesn't like it, and wants to leave as soon as possible. Before long it becomes clear that they are actually on Mondas, Earth's lost twin planet, during it's last days before the inhabitants turned themselves into Cybermen.

It's a dark, sad, and frightening story that shows the end of a civilization through the eyes of a family that Nyssa and the Doctor meet. It was written in an attempt to do for Cybermen what Genesis of the Daleks did for Daleks, but I don't know if anyone would have even thought this would be the superior story of the two. It's hard to compare Doctor Who across mediums, but I think this may be the best Doctor Who story. The Doctor gives a tragic, quiet, sad performance that really showcases the strengths of Davison's Doctor. 

http://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/spare-parts-200

38. The Church and the Crown

Another historical, but the fifth Doctor seems to be strong in those settings. This one is a pure historical which means that the only science-fiction elements are the Doctor and his companions. No aliens, no ghosts, and no evil plots to alter history. This does not mean that it's historically accurate, but just that it is a period drama starring the Doctor, which can lead to some good stories. In this case the Doctor finds himself in France in the 17th Century, which means musketeers, Cardinal Richeleiu, the Duke of Buckinham, Queen Anne, and King Louis XIII. It's a fun time, and really allows Erimem to come into her own as a character and a companion.

44. Creatures of Beauty

Creatures of Beauty begins with the Doctor, voiced filled with world weariness, wondering whether he made any difference at all. Then we flip to earlier on to find that Nyssa has been arrested for  murder, by disfigured people who refer to her as a beauty. The story unfold in a non linear fashion, showing a world in a terrible position on the eve of destruction. It's a story that admits at the very beginning that the Doctor made no difference on this planet, creating an atmosphere of melancholic fatalism. Doctor Who often runs the risk of having the Doctor feel unnecessary to the story, as though he's just watching as things unfold. By doing this we have a story that explores a situation in which there are no good answers and maybe nothing really can be done.

http://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/creatures-of-beauty-210

47. Omega

The Doctor arrives on a museum ship dedicated to the history of Omega, one of the founders of Time Lord society, who was trapped in a pocket universe. One of the actors goes mad and attacks the others, and then Omega's ship appears. This is a hard one to describe without giving too much away. It starts slow, but has a twist about halfway through which leads to a great second half. The story itself explores history and our tendency to either hero worship or slander the key figures of the past.

http://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/omega-213

Honourable Mention:

15. The Mutant Phase

I find Doctor Who is often at its weakest when it is using classic villains such as Cybermen or Daleks. It's not that either of these villains are bad, but just that it seems to be difficult for writers to come up with exciting stories that involve them. So because of that I was somewhat hesitant when I realized it was a Dalek story that I was listening to, and then even more nervous when I reallized that this is a story where the Doctor is on an alternate Earth future where the Daleks need his help. It won me over when they revealed the threat, which was just dark and creepy enough, and convincing enough a threat to make me believe that the Daleks wanted the Doctor's help. After that I was hooked, and when I re-listened to it I loved every minute. Its probably not a great story, but it is one I enjoy a lot.

This one has the added advantage that you can listen to it for free:
https://soundcloud.com/big-finish/doctor-who-the-mutant-phase

Or buy it here:
http://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/the-mutant-phase-640

The Worst

In my post about Colin Baker's plays I said that there were no bad ones, and the play I labelled worst was actually pretty good. Unfortunately, I cannot say that about Peter Davison's run. 

41. Nekromanteia

The TARDIS materializes in the middle of a space battle wherein the technologically superior side is easily winning. That is, until witches on the planet below start tearing spaceships out of the sky with magic. Up to this point I was okay with it. It was weird, dark, and silly, which is all fine, but then the problems quickly started presenting themselves. The Doctor is irrelevant to the story, and not in an interesting way. He mostly walks around declaring the whole thing to be hopeless, until he passively watches as a cat saves the universe. That's not even close to the biggest problem this story has.

Around forty minutes in, a guard captures Erimem, brutally beats her, and attempts to rape her. She is rescued, mentions it briefly, and then never speaks of it again. She even seems completely un-phased by it. I'm okay with Doctor Who exploring more adult themes, and darker territory, but I think there is a line where it still needs to be something children could listen to. This crosses that line, and not even for a good reason. There is no attempt made to tackle this subject matter in a mature fashion, instead it seems to only be here in order to establish a dark mood. There are other scenes of humans being brutally killed that also possibly go too far, but the thing is that the audience members have almost certainly never lost a loved one to an army of witches, but there very well could be people listening to this who have been sexually assaulted. They took a traumatic, terrible, and terribly real action and used it as a way to pad out the story. The thing that makes this even worse is that this is a story with cackling cartoon witches and a heroic cat. It's just all so terribly misjudged and uncomfortable to listen to. 

I haven't even mentioned all the other problems. The story is almost incomprehensible, most of the acting is terrible, and there isn't a single likable character in the whole thing. This next complaint may be a bizarre one for radio, but there is a scene in which Peri is completely naked and they talk about this for some time. It bears no relevance to the story, and seems to be there for the same reason that it would be in a movie. It's weirdly shameless, and awkward. 

Nekromanteia is a bizarre, boring, incomprehensible, and uncomfortably misogynistic mess. The downside to buying a digital copy of this is that I cannot throw it out. I'm going to link to the place you can buy the story, but please don't. No one should support this disaster.

 http://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/nekromanteia-207

Part three (7th Doctor) coming soon.