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.