Review | The Fourth Doctor Solo Adventures | Doctor Who | Big Finish | Tom Baker

0:00 hi this is cj miller and you're listening to the sirens of audio nice bit of glitter there cyber lieutenant i bet you'll be lining up for the next remake of time lash keep my effing cyber lieutenant's name out of your effing mouth i will cyberleader i will whoa whoa well i've just had my head blown off by the cyber leader and the award for the best conversion goes to cyber leader i hope doctor who has me back because lack of emotion makes me do the craziest

0:48 things [Applause] [Music] good day audio files this is the sirens of audio the podcast that explores the universe of doctor who in the audio medium i'm dwayne

1:33 and i'm phillip g'day dwayne good day auto files and good day kenny good day mate how's it going ah you're getting better every time welcome back kenny it's been far far too long it has thank you very much for having me back on it's always a pleasure and i will always make the time and space to join you guys on our exciting audio adventures but you're always welcome now this is episode 101 of the signs of audio so we had a we've had a couple of doctors on the last couple of times and we couldn't possibly follow it on with anyone else other than you kenny [Laughter] one thing i can't lend you my doctor i was going to ask you about that because not only have we had the

2:19 privilege of speaking with a couple of doctors recently and not so recently you've had the opportunity to speak with a doctor as well and particularly on the topic of your podcast pieces of eight tell us about your experience for those who haven't heard it already yeah that was um a little bit of serendipity because a couple of years ago paul mcgann was due to come up to scotland for a silent film festival in a wee place called bonus which is something on the it's on the coast of the river forth which of course you'll be familiar with through cybermen going across there and roy gill's recent double of echoestone stories and he was coming to this film festival but it was cancelled but when it was

3:05 rescheduled to be planning to bring him back and because i've been in touch with the pr girl quite a lot over the past couple of years when they did online versions and kept highlighting it i was number one in the list to get an interview with paul when he came up when so i was able to get 20 minutes with him on sunday uh just gone there or this will be obviously a week past and sunday for people listening as we chat now and it was amazing and incidentally happy 100th episode congratulations i know it is no easy feat getting there so well done to the two of you and long may it continue thank you so much thank you very much so the interview with paul can we hear that on pieces of eighth or is it scottish field or as well i it's you can hear um the non-doctor who stuff is on my work

3:51 podcast scottish field and the same clip does appear in pieces of debate when there's a full pretty much a 20 minute chat with him sadly i didn't get as long as i'd like to have done but i had to narrow it down because normally when i do an interview i'm quite happy to just free-flow it and see how it goes because i usually know the beats that i want to hit but because i knew i'd officially got 15 minutes but pushed it to 20. of course i'm going to push it to 20. it's talked to you after all and managed to get all my questions in so i got my re-hit list of of things to ask him there and managed to get just about everything in so when yeah it was the first time i'd ever met him um it's bizarre considering you know he's been how long he's been around big finish and you know i've been writing big finished stuff officially since 2012. and that was the first time i'd actually had

4:38 the chance to meet someone interviewing so it was a bit of a dream come true and he was absolutely manic he was if you think tv movie doctor but if you'd given him some lucas aid or gatorade or some sort of energy drink i'll give him 10 red bulls that's how he was he was absolutely bouncing off the walls he was in great form and i'll give you some info that he that that isn't in piece of debate and it will be exclusive for you and i completely forgot to put it in so you guys can have it but when i went in i was introduced to him um he was behind this big wooden door which i tweeted a picture of before i went in and didn't reveal who it was and when i went in it was just like this it was like a baronial room you know with a big chair at the top of it big wooden table and paul was sitting there at the top just lounging and it's looking so comfortable very doctor-ish just the way

5:23 he was lounging around you know one leg over the arm and uh it was just this huge empty table said hey take a seat sit down there i'm i'm just like vladimir putin so sit down there at the bottom and he made a joke of it yeah i know it's serious stuff that's going on but said you know we've got to make a wee joke about these things just now so yeah yes so i got to actually got that uh beside him was about six seven feet away from him so it was good gotcha fantastic it's a different experience to when i got to to meet him i didn't sort of spend a great deal of time with him but it was at an event in melbourne probably eight or nine years ago and i found him to be kind of really chilled he was just floating around the place just chilled out he wasn't manic at all so but he was

6:09 surrounded by three other doctors so perhaps he was sort of taking a bit of a back seat with those other personalities around him as well who knows wow as long as he's happy and that's what we like we like our happy doctors around us i remember after that absolutely going out with colin and sylvester and um we said go invite paul as well but paul just want to go back to his room so we had two doctors out for dinner with us that night could have had three but never mind you know three embarrassed or somebody once said indeed so today on the podcast we're going to be talking about a recent big finish release well it's been recently released but it was made a long long time ago and that is the latest fourth doctor release called solo i think it's series 11 isn't it kenny series 11 of the

6:56 fourth doctor adventures we are going to get into that in a moment but before we do you know what i see kenny do you know what i see um philip do you know what i see is that a rabbit hole it's a rabbit hole here we go right guys i've gotta i'm gonna talk tv the tv series today because uh our topic of the fourth doctor series 11 relates very closely to the tv series and i want to talk a bit about the deadly assassin because i've heard

7:42 people who who often compare this era and the revelations that have come out in the current era on television have compared it back to the deadly assassin and how that was a massive massive change to doctor who law and i've got to say fellas that i've always been one to sort of disagree with that i don't think the deadly assassin was such a big change of law as everyone seems to recall do you have any thoughts on that philip well there were certainly some changes i mean the things that are similar are the time lords so we've met the time lords before at length i guess in the three doctors and the war games so that's sort of where we've seen them we saw them as fairly straight laced fairly dull boring people um always male

8:27 so not quite sure how they populate but it's in there and and and of course briefly do we see them in the doomsday weapon my memories of the book yes there's a big scene we do colony in space yeah yeah calling in space um yeah sorry so you need to go to the target you're going target books i go target because to me that's that's that story is just all about target um and so we have a continuation in terms of what gallifrey is like there's new stuff entered i mean the biggest new stuff is just an amazing set i'm pretty sure that would have been who did the sets design that's um saying i did the arc in space but i've forgotten who so james uh georgia murray lee sorry roger murray leach and so he's his set designs are spectacular and then they end up becoming the norm what gallery would look like down the track

9:13 and they add the matrix um but i'm really not sure that there's that much added i don't know what do you think kenny i'm i don't think it was that size maybe yes it shows that the time lords are not gods it shows that they're just like us in some ways they're fallible and but they play politics and there's and obviously they're playing politics in the war games and for me i don't think it was that big a shift i mean yes it does humanize them humanizes them a bit more for once of a word or since obviously time wars can't really be humanized unless they're half human on their mother's side and it's very you know i like it i love the deadliest ass and i have no problems with with that because i think that it's pretty much keeping the time lord lore in place and it's sort of expanding on

9:58 it without actually reinventing the wheel and i just find it hilarious when i read reviews i've seen them in old fanzines from the 70s and people just going ape over them i took a naughty word they were self-centered before i said it yeah people going ape over the deadly assassin and just outraged and the fact that it kept i think it was bottom of the doctor who appreciation society paul that year and it just proves to me that you should never really um let doctor who fans have their opinions in these things because they'll just be they'll be completely wrong i think one of the great things russell t did was get rid of them from the universe get rid of the time lords because after the deadly assassin that was their peak and then it's diminishing returns with

10:45 the invasion of time and the arc of infinity yes there's a slight improvement in five doctors but that's because it's a celebration and we can forgive it for that but really getting rid of the time lords was one of the best things doctor who did because they are just quite frankly in my book tedious dull and boring do you agree with that sentiment phillip um i do think that most gala phrase shows aren't worth watching oh so there's no actually there's allah they're certainly not the high points so you look at things like invasion of time arc of infinity and then into the new series i think every time they start focusing on time laws we just don't care russian tier dave is certainly the right idea which was we care about earth stories human stories

11:31 and so following them through i think was always more successful i don't think we needed gallifrey to come back i don't think we needed it to come back and then be destroyed and come back and destroy it again i think he's just getting ridiculous but that being said my one of my favorite series on on audio is actually gallifrey because it deals with politics and it's soap operas in its most lavish american dynasty sense and for me the first three seasons of gallifrey are spectacular but that's because it's about characters and people and politics i think what do you want to do anything about the girlfriend kenny i love gallery absolutely love it it absolutely got me hooked because i remember buying the first cd of that with the thinking i'm not sure i like this and i think i listened to it three times in three days because i enjoyed it

12:18 so much love it on the audio i love the audio stuff i think that gallifrey is great series and it's your very different eras than the different producers you've got four different years of gallery on audio and i really enjoy all of those but for me just when they're on tv with the doctor it just slows things down and it's the case of um it's the doctor oh he's inerrant one of us we don't like him very much and the doctor is the greatest time lord of all sorry russell on and i just think that it's i just on tv is just sort of here are the people in big callers telling the doctor what to do even the doctors even though the doctor is better than all of them so no i'm not a timeless fan of tv really how do i love the doctor how much do you love the time lords though dwayne

13:03 okay i'm a little bit different i i think the deadly assassin in particular introduced a richness to gallifrey that is it's almost steampunk isn't it and it if you look at the the background behind me that that whole wooden style uh of of the deadly assassins always sparked my imagination and not just the design of gallifrey but the personalities that were were introduced there before that they were always godlike and they were always a bit one-note one-dimensional personalities all the time lords that we saw prior to that except for the time lord in terror of the autumns he was an interesting character we only had him for a couple of minutes but the deadly assassin introduced these

13:49 incredible incredibly interesting personalities into the mix councilor goth who you know you think of engen i think of barusa who was introduced there and then in the invasion of time that continued we had the casterland there who was you know the weasley kind of guy who i always found an interesting personality barusa had regenerated so that was interesting to see a regenerated character uh the only other person who was seen regenerate before was the master and the doctor so uh to see an established character go on to regenerate into another another person was interesting in the case of barusa yeah i think arc of infinity is probably the weakest of the gallifrey set stories um i've seen i've seen some i do think four bruces and four stories is going a bit

14:35 too far from generations though i mean this poor guy no wonder it goes around the twisting five doctors having to regenerate every few years because what is happening on gallifrey they just keep regenerating over and over again yeah that's right and i do i i was a little bit uh miffed that when the series came back he was the last of the time lords i didn't like that very much so i was very excited as gallifrey was coming back but then i was let down again when gallifrey got destroyed and then when it was found again destroyed again i don't know how many times it's been now i just find that really irritating because the other thing too is a big finish has proven that gallifrey is a very interesting and engaging place and lots of lots of things uh can happen there uh how many

15:20 gallifrey sets have we got three four five six six seven eight eight wars for another four eight series plus the time more time more on top of that another one's about to come out with louise as well yeah the war room that sounds like an interesting thing as well so uh yeah very very very rich rich planet with uh with a history that i love getting into which is particularly why i enjoyed blood of the time lord so maybe we should climb out of the rabbit hole and have a bit of a chat about that because it is a direct sequel to the deadly assassin so why don't i throw in a trailer for that and we'll come back and have a chat about it in a second for all the grand titles these are dark days another resident has been taken from us who would want to dispose of time lords

16:05 who are already so close to death from big finish productions doctor who the fourth doctor adventures solo no no no no no you can't do that then stop it hello oh hello pleased to meet you i'm the you can't park here i'm so awfully sorry i well you'll have to move it look the flickering glow over there right behind us too i'm very sorry [Music] i'm afraid it's unlikely to be dignified consider the implications young man infinite library an infinite fire

16:54 doctor antholon how good to see you i am to arrest you and have you escorted down to gallifrey two residents down there you say honorable lorric he's a crotchy old soul an eminent sedan later the predonian academy that's her you want to get her bad books no talking at the back please yes me sorry miss may i ask a question miss you may not oh well i'm not afraid to say i often did the doctor is on the stand i know i have a habit of buzzing in just as everyone's vanishing or keeling over or a president's getting shot or whatnot but trust me in this i am innocent dark times

17:41 dark times well i think this is excellent news [Music] hello anyone down there hello [Music] what were we saying two members of personnel disappearing without a trace [Music] where do you think you're going old girl huh where do you think you're going gordon miles i've heard him talking in the office there have been sightings strange lights and the witch

18:32 have you ever seen her yourself the stories go back a millennium at least they wrote of a ghostly woman who would appear out to sea and along the shoreline over time she acquired her name the ravencliff witch the places the kitchen sinus quickly doctor what can we do you want to speak with the witch we're about to have a seance the whole world is in danger you must think i was born yesterday big finish for the love of stories what exactly are you a scientist or venus this isn't that well that fills me with

19:18 confidence all right so that was a trailer for uh the fourth doctor adventures series 11 solo first story that we're going to talk about is blood of the time lords by timothy x atac and i'll read the blurb from the website it says the book known as the discord grimoire is an incredibly powerful tome believe capable of altering the true passage of time itself and the doctor has it in the tardis wanting to sorry wanting to look into this mysterious opus further he decides to take it to an old friend the recusary a monastery like retreat on a moon of gallifrey but he's chosen an inauspicious time to arrive something else is visiting the recusary and this

20:05 something hasn't brought a book with it but death so i found this story fascinating from from start to finish as i said i i really enjoy getting into time lord society and gallifrey itself so so kenny what was your initial impressions of the story well i was quite impressed because uh obviously i knew a wee bit about it from having done the vortex preview and the fact it's set on one of gallifrey's moons makes it straight away a slightly more familiar but different setting which i thought was a really nice touch so we don't and it also covers the need for the fact that we don't have characters like penguin and spandrel around and it's so so that's that covered but it's i think just we've given that we've

20:51 just had a whole load of you know new time lord lore it's quite nice to get a little bit more here i think it's a great setting i mean i think um anybody who's a doctor fan more than likely has the element of the collector about them and likes to buy physical media and keep it in place and i know that that's definitely me so i like your keeping everything in place in its right order so i really enjoyed that there's some great characters in there um i think there's some some nice little continuity nodes particularly when we find out who it is that's in charge that um i think we're basically told this is campo isn't it without it being actually using the name campbell yeah and there's a doctor's old teacher and some very very interesting characters and i love the whole idea of

21:37 the cohorts as well the fact they've got wooden masks on and hearing them move around which is a great bit of a great idea particularly for sound design as it does give them that sort of library kind of feeling you can just imagine them with them with a dark sort of wooden mask on and creaking as they move i do like that great characters full of life and of course there is a little bit of mystery and we think who's behind the killings particularly when we get that great cliffhanger when the doctor steps forward and admits he's the one who's done the killings and you definitely didn't see that one coming what about yourself what did you find about how did you find it philip you know it's interesting because the last phillip hinchcliffe box that came out i didn't think felt very feel a

22:24 pinch cliff and then when this started the first 15 minutes it made me feel exactly like we're back in the bob poems hinchcliffe era the dialogue the setting the mystery um there's certainly very strong parallels with deadly assassin i mean daily assassin's building up and yes yeah i hope people listen to this because otherwise spoilers galore um but this doesn't build up to the doctor doing an assassination at the end of the first episode it's such a major shock that what you can't believe is gonna is happening is actually happening and then you've almost got the similar situation in the first episode we've got this build up build up build up and then suddenly this major behavior act thing happens with the doctor the fourth doctor which is just you can't believe it it's a total shock almost as big as as shooting at the

23:10 president is what what you know the fourth doctor reveals at the end of the in that first episode so it's a beautiful brilliant cliffhanger which just leaves you wanting more so that first episode the pacing of it the weight built up the casting is spectacular um there's so many people in there that i love and we really love the distinctiveness of the voices and i think that's part of the richness of this this episode is the fact that the voices are so rich and so distinct and that just makes it all the more powerful so yeah well acted um interesting a few people who are going to come back uh and be playing a bigger role in big finish this is because i don't know if this was actually recorded um this would have been quite a long time ago 2017 almost five years ago yeah wow

23:55 so yeah so this has been sitting there for five years and a lot of the cast who are in this have not anything and they're going to come back and become major companions for one of them so yeah this is the time when they first made the impression obviously they got on well with tom um so just in terms of casting there um of course i'm talking about um christopher naylor who has got a huge role in this but he's going to be recast as harry sullivan so obviously this was sort of the beginning of his relationship with tom and when you know when big finish finds people that tom works well with they find ways of bringing them back jane slavin of course is in the every tom baker show because the two of them has clicked really well once again it's not a major role she's got um rules she has but she's still very distinct if she you

24:41 know she can just do anything so there's this really strong underlying cast members um and then yeah and at badland who i just love and adore we've had on the program she's utterly mad and crazy and she does a lovely character piece here where you're never quite sure where he's coming from so yeah as she always does she always does um let me give you my views on on the story it it was that gallifreyan richness that really stuck out to me here and i've got to tell you kenny i i tweeted my thoughts on this the other day and i hadn't yet read your piece in vortex magazine so don't uh don't scold me too much i'm sorry but i tweeted out that this reminded me very much of the name of the rose i love

25:28 that movie in particular the sean connery version although the mini series it was a few years ago was pretty good too but i certainly got a sense of inspiration from that particular story in this i loved also the there's some quite some unusual named characters as well um the the cohorts they kind of reminded me a little bit of the is it the drudges that mark platts uh invented for that was next kids the drudgers in uh audio visuals and sounds of time points what was it mark's got the it's got badger oh it goes it goes way back yeah yeah so there's characters that remind me of of those but i was certainly having read lung barrow

26:14 recently i was certainly hit with lots of familiar lung barrow-like um atmospheric uh placements throughout the story and i was wondering if tim had uh drawn from lung barrow as well so and i i'm not a real big fan of lung barrier myself i find that a really hard book to read i find it a difficult one i got a much better appreciation of it more recently when i that the guys from the doctor who show did an episode on lung burrow and i i sort of read two thirds of it given up again and listened to their episode of of their review of lung baron i've got a better appreciation of it that way so uh certainly um the richness comes

26:59 through in the script for gallifrey in this story so we've talked about some of the cast yes and at badland is fantastic i want to mention james dreyfus as the master because i've enjoyed his master throughout this the previous stories he's we've had him in stories with the seventh doctor the second doctor i think the first doctor david bradley as well so how many all together kenny do you know that's four he's done four all together he's he's done four the last one to be released now yeah yeah and i i he's sort of hit the note really well with the master in this um so i think he was a great choice to be cast as the master i don't know what you guys think about this i think in this story it's probably his

27:45 best performance i think he plays a very cold and detached master who's quite clinical cynical and just downright there's no frills to him there's no charm he's very much an analytical mind who has his goals and sets about what he wants to achieve them and it's a very i think it is actually a very clever performance his because when you hear his normal speaking voice there's quite a lot of vocal inflection and character to it but here he's taken all of that out and plays it almost flat but it's an evil flat and it's it's very very difficult to do if you've ever tried to do that even just to speak a normal sentence i mean particularly for aussies where you like

28:31 to go up at the end of your sentence and uh it's a very very tough thing to do to kill that vocal and i think he's in fact well he does give two very very different performances in the story are we allowed to see that give away the spoiler yeah i think we'll just have to warn people this spoilers yeah that's it well here's a spoilery bit um because we get to find out that the master is in fact playing one of the elderly timelines his name is was on my other computer and i've not i can't access it now old oh what's his name kim do you remember no it's not just the castle the other name which is a shame because often they're both there but it's not here yep they've not given that one away no but i i i did actually miss that

29:16 along the way it wasn't until he changed over and i went oh okay so i it was the reveal which i had missed along the way so it's always good when you don't recognize the master in disguise and this because i didn't i think i think you're spot on in terms of his um performance because he's just so evil in fact i think this is the most evil the master has been and he and tom james and tom work so well together and essentially you know there's all these hints about their history and their past and of course you know this isn't the earliest incarnation of the master we have seen um oh no actually i've trained masterful we've seen an earlier one that is supposed to be the second or the third incarnation but it's the one it looks like it's the one before roger delgado's master and so

30:02 tom of course is known and he's only just defeated and thinks he's dead oh thinks he's dead um so he actually sort of knows the end of the master's life from the previous story so he knows what's happening here and the master has an inkling that tom knows this but a lot of stuff they talk about their time at the academy and things that they did together and in fact a lot of this whole master plan that the master's got in action is because of things that doctors taught him earlier on and so it's interesting seeing two people closer to the time of when they were friends and how they've how they've changed different paths and james traifors i think just nails nails the part brilliantly yeah absolutely and it is actually mentioned in the the story itself i think the doctor mentions it that this

30:47 is the most um evil incarnation of the master because he's a he's a child and he's like a child in a with no control so that's what makes him so terrifying um and he i think he says that in the script somewhere but um interesting as well i'm not going to spoil it but there is reference to how the doctor and the master get their names the doctor and master which i think it was really really satisfying and i thought oh that's very simple that's very very satisfying that's that's revealing something that we previously didn't know but not destroying the whole show if you know what i mean that was just a little bit of reveal and i thought yes this is the way things need

31:33 to be done in in terms of storytelling i really enjoyed that aspect of it too and also why no one knows what their names are now yes yes fantastic yeah and once it doesn't change anything doesn't change the whole time law or the doctor's history but it's just a little throw away that you can go ah and then just makes you smile if you understand it very very much so i think i mean also i did not see james dreyfuss's appearance coming or the unveiling of the master i had not picked up that at all alistair juror the wonderful lovely fellow who makes those action figures for us he spotted it and he texted me to say i knew it was him all along and uh so he was the master all the time but i didn't see it coming

32:18 so i've i was quite oh i was quite pleased with that in fact i didn't see it i think timothy attack is such a wonderful wonderful clever writer he crafts worlds and believable characters uh engaging characters as well who you you want to know what happens to them and go with them on their journey oh gosh i said journey this so pretentious but you know what i mean there's so much there to enjoy and it's a very rich colorful story and it's definitely all made in to my mind yes it all looks like the the fourth doctor's secondary console room just that sort of dark wood and glass sort of churchy kind of feel to it yeah as i said would this be the first story that timothy uh what's his timing

33:04 the x attacks how you pronounce it to me timothy x attack a tacky um because he's only written what one two three four five or six six stories so far um and this was probably what may have been the first one he wrote probably was if it was five years ago when the wreck of the world so the wreck of the world was 2017 as well which was the um early adventures with jamie and zoe so this was written about the same time as that but he doesn't do a lot but what he does is very interesting well you mentioned the the tardis console room let's talk about that for a second because we've got nicholas briggs doing the direction on this and we've got the sound design and music by jamie robertson

33:51 so i know nick is very very um he has a lot of attention to detail when it comes to recreating the sounds so he may have given jamie lots of notes unless jaime's just very clever anyway which no doubt he is but to get those console console room sounds uh in both stories that we're going to talk about tonight um i was taken right back to that console room and i really felt that i was on a gallifrey and moon i thought it was absolutely incredible the way the sound design was done in this and i see jamie's name more and more i know he's been around for a long long time hasn't he kenny and he's pretty much doing all the fourth doctor stuff these days getting right he's been i think he's been doing them pretty much since

34:36 season two he's pretty much been given these to do single-handedly so there's wonderful weak things that you like when canines in a story there's a little variation in the canine and theme canine and company theme chin yeah which you can hear quite subtly and it's wonderful it's it's not it's a homage without being a copy and i think jimmy's wonderful what he does he's a very talented musician great with a guitar and he's appearing in an upcoming episode of pieces of eighth which i'll just get replugging for now which will be in a couple of weeks time when we're chatting about the silver turk uh you've you've beat us to him we had him at christmas time as well we had him on christmas eve for our christmas party uh but jimmy's wonderful he's very very

35:23 humble guy very talented and what he does is it's just great it really i think sometimes people can easily overlook the importance of sound design and music in these releases and jamie's got a very distinctive style and i would know his music when i if i heard it and like yep just because there's just we we things when you listen to a lot of their work you recognize the composers little motifs that they have and jamie is is just one of the best okay do we have any final thoughts on this particular story before we move on it's my favorite time we've had for a couple of seasons yes yes this is so this is there's been some one up this is someone off toms i've loved in terms of the seasons this has been my favorite one

36:10 probably says the jane slavin season actually so so that brings me to the next question how do we all feel about the doctor being companionless this was inspired by tom baker's own desire after elizabeth sladen left to have be companionless for a while so they've gone and taken the idea and turned it into a big finish series or two so how do you how do you feel about this kenny well i'm just missing the talking cabbage but other than that i i think it's great i mean we've got quite a lot of the other doctors we've had them traveling solo even the fifth doctor who didn't have any obvious gaps in which he would have but big finish managed to create them and i really enjoy them i think it's quite it gives it gives you a chance to see the doctor through other people's eyes

36:57 and he's he's quite nice for me sometimes he's trying to show off and impress a wee bit just to to show to new people that hello i'm the doctor this is what i do and building up new dynamic relationships as well with others i quite enjoy that i'm quite happy when he's traveling solo just for short periods of time and picking up new friends and meeting them and then off he goes at the end i think it's perfect for audio because to be able to have that monologue talking to yourself well that's what audio's made for if he was talking to himself on the tv screen all the time that'd seem a little bit weird but in this medium i think it works absolutely perfectly and we've had quite some quite successful stories with other doctors on their own as well throughout the big finish years so

37:42 yeah i think it works extremely well he does make fun of talking to himself though which is part of what's so amusing in both stories he has a little girl talking to himself i think i mean as i said this might be the first series that they've put together as a solo but thomas had lots of solo outings throughout big finish now because he pops up in all over the place doesn't he so it's not like these are the only episodes and stories beginning of him so i think we often see him solo um yeah and i think i think people often forget the changing nature of television so when the show started the doctor needed three other companions because they needed to have people on different sets and because they were filming it basically live you know you couldn't have people walk from set to set you didn't have cuts and so you needed to have enough different

38:27 story lines happening to be able to go from one to another to another and keep the story going um as of course once they started filming the filming techniques change particularly went to color we only need one companion then and so you know you you adapted to what what you had and so in terms of audio yeah i think you're right it does it doesn't really matter but that being said we do build a particular warmth to the companions and yeah i still think that yeah when you've got the right companion beside the doctor you know the eighth doctor so much of the eighth doctor's love is because of charlie because of lucy you know the colin colin was redeemed because of evelyn so you know what big finish have done with companions has actually given us a greater insight to the doctors and you know i think tom i think tomorrow louise worked really well together the mary time season with tom

39:14 was wonderful it's just extraordinary and so sad we lost her um straight away and of course you know we lost elizabeth far too early too so she couldn't do any seasons with tom but there still is something just magical about tom with one of his you know really it's just louise now um yeah it looks like i'm assuming we're gonna get some seasons with sadie and harry coming up i don't think it's been announced i'm just guessing that's what's happening like they'd be mad not to do that with you know it's putting off another four or five years um when they come out um but yeah there's still a special place for companions well speaking of companions the doctor's still on his own here and even in the next story that we're going to talk about he's on his own but there is someone who's going to end up being a companion that's been announced recently

40:01 so let's have a chat about that the ravencliff witch written by david llewellyn i'll just read the blurb for that story the tardis lands in ravencliff a small town on the english coast that stands in the shade of a newly built power station and that just happens to be haunted every now and then a spectral figure is glimpsed on the beach the ravencliff witch and every time she appears it's the prelude to disaster the doctor has to solve the mystery of her appearances if he wants to prevent a catastrophe but he won't have to do it alone as he has the help of margaret hopwood a renowned sculptor destined to play a big part in his life even more than we think kenny what were your thoughts on the story well this is a story that i'm an absolute sucker for this kind of setting

40:47 when you've got a location it's just such a doctor who location a village an isolated village on the coast there's a new power station there i mean it's pretty much the classic almost like pear to e kind of setting with a bit of tom thrown in there and it's just such a wonderful mix you've got larger than life characters again who make a real impression very very quickly and of course there's the supernatural element because that's the sort of thing that we quite like conduct through with the image of the fendal and the likes think is it magic is it magic can it be magic of course it's not it's science it's doctor who there's always a scientific rationale for the mysterious goings-on but i think we're introduced to

41:34 interesting characters the fact that we've got a power station and things are happening there and the rather unlikable gordon miles who's in charge of it played by the wonderful richard darrell better known to us as dr watson from big finishes sherlock holmes and i think he makes him to such a dislikable reprehensible scumbag and um it does it really gives you that you've the fact you've got who the obvious enemy is or is he but no he's just uh he's just an overzealous person who likes to work to the book but of course we're thinking there's lots of dark energies and things being worked on and there's an alien influence from a ship that crashed in the sea many moons before or many years before it was just

42:19 mental it was technically both right and just there's great characters there we've got sitting with the lighthouse trevor cooper playing silas keynes and we instantly take a like to him but i think we all know very quickly he's not going to survive is he people in lighthouses tend not to live long in doctor who and amanda keems his daughter played by delhi siegel or segal and she's very good as well but i think that one of the real stars of the show though is emma knox's eleanor i think she's playing the sort of the main scientific type lady there at the base and or the base the scientific nuclear the research station oh what am

43:05 i saying it's too early in the morning thursday power station it's a power station how can you forget the power stations the same name as the blooming band with paul weller yes it's uh the power stations is and again it's a great setting we're all used to these from the likes of hand of fear there's just there's an awful lot going on and i think the pacing of it is great there's some good it's a hybrid of fear and the android invasion yes that's it that's it exactly that's it exactly and it's perfect such a good mix okay with a little bit of fang rock in the outskirts surely though if you're going to do that kind of doctor who's story then you might as well just take elements from the best because that's what they did when they were making at the time taken from the best horror films so why not

43:51 pick and choose from the best doctor who's stories and there's wonderful elemental there and it forms something rather special i haven't mentioned margaret yet but i'm sure we'll come on to her shortly yeah absolutely the hybrid of a hybrid of those two stories that i just mentioned and you can you can certainly feel with these two stories that they would fit in season 14 perfectly and that's i think a lot of that is down to nick briggs's direction because he as i said he's got attention to detail he likes to recreate eras uh that's what i've noticed anyway so um i think it would have fit perfectly in this season phillip what are your thoughts on the story yeah i mean all the locations are such a typical doctor who located it it feels like a mishmash but it really works well so i think that

44:38 was just yeah the lighthouse and i guess they're all such strong images to me it was a bit of green death actually in terms of the power station and those sort of things so there's it actually covered in lots of different eras one of the things that the tom baker the fourth doctor stories that you do is because tom when the fourth doctor is larger than life you need characters that match it and so what these stories allow you to do is have bigger and more ridiculously large characters who you who couldn't exist in real life they're too big but then tom's too big in real life as well like you couldn't use these characters in a peter davis story it would just be overwhelming and so what's what these writers are doing is they're just pitching it perfectly for who tommy's how tom acts

45:24 and how he responds to people and so you know the villain is you know a slightly over the top villain but it needs to be to match tom and and his business and so every character here has these moments and then i think you're right i think emma knows and um dele seagal both give much more subtle performances and because that they're so much more immediately likable they're quite different and distinct but but you actually have a fondness for them that happens because of the fact that they're softer um and i will mention their issues of course you know first came in in kinder and um know so a very very famous um british actress but you know and she just plays really wonderfully off tom now you're mentioning that is she doing a whole

46:10 series with tom coming up is that the story or is this the one it is the story yes she's apparently going to be joining she's joining the fourth doctrine layla is that right that's the case yes very much so they're going to be going off and having more adventures further down the line um one of my friends has written one of these stories and uh that's what when he was working on something and they first found out that she was coming back so that's quite exciting i just realized to be minority ago i said emma knox playing eleanor i actually meant lucy piggles piggles pickles as syria banks as the chief scientific type person oh i was going to say eleanor is in the other store isn't it yes i just realized that i said that i've been looking at the castle is going something wrong with my cast list here can i say one one of the

46:56 big whinges i'm i'm gonna have about the cast listing at the moment and the box sets is that they don't separate the cast out for each story i'm really not liking that on the website because you really have to struggle hard to work out who's in which story and where they match up and and things so big finish if you're listening um i think we actually need cast lists for each story in a box set because i want to be able to find out who is in watch box set and where they're playing etc so yeah because i'm looking at the separate releases on the website which you if you buy the box set on the app you don't get that that's a sensible thing to do i should have done that you're the smart man that's what you do um whenever i see david llewellyn's name on a script he's one of these really established big finish writers now who

47:43 whenever i see his name i go yes this is i don't have any question in my mind that it's going to be a gooden and this is good as well so it's got the i couldn't work out when it was set though because she's talking about her parents being there before world war one what what was the setting i can't remember what it was the time period i think it's late 70s early 80s is the feeling that's what i thought okay i think in line with the show which is not contemporary anymore is it it feels like it's conte it doesn't feel that long ago the 70s and 80s but it was it was coming up for 50 odd years how can that be yeah so it's got that contemporary setting but it's got these really epic sci-fi themes uh coming out towards the end of it to resolve the story and i

48:29 really like that and and david llewellyn i can never can never picky stories is very versatile uh any storytelling so i think that's a good a good thing let's talk about some of the cast which you've already mentioned a few now neris hughes of course we've talked about her but trevor cooper i love his voice on audio there's just something about it i've always loved everything i love the big finnish star cops series for him uh i like them i like them all but i love hearing his voice and i particularly fell in love with his voice on audio in the kaldor city series he had a great role in that so although this was recorded five years ago i don't know what he's doing these

49:14 days whether he's still still acting or not but uh yes can he i think he's still carrying on yes because he's still doing star cops with uh when he turns up he's always wearing a star cops t-shirt and it's always always has a different one every single time no two days have been the same so that shows you there's a hell of a lot of star cops t-shirts out there and i hadn't looked at the cast list before i started listening and i the the character of gordon miles i thought i've heard that voice somewhere before so of course he's already been mentioned richard richard earl as the the voice of watson with nicholas briggs's sherlock holmes so five years ago they were probably doing some sherlock holmes around that time weren't they so they'll probably i've been doing a whole bunch of stuff

50:00 yep well they're still doing the stuff now because they the last release won the um audio audi award which is a pretty huge feather and big fingers cap because i think there's two years in a row now they've won the audi um yeah which is is it two years in a row i'm pretty sure there's a nice one i think last year they went with one of the stranded stories if i remember because sorry yep so yeah they're doing remarkably well in terms of what they're releasing it's being recognized internationally as the best of the best particularly when you see who they're beating when you've got you know actors have been in huge american series as well yeah with your major casts and here's nicholas briggs richard darrell and lucy briggs owen getting a win in in a script written by

50:48 by david barr so yeah it was bad did i say that david burns isn't it i think it is yeah for that one let's let's talk about the artwork because i think the artwork on this is spectacular uh ryan aplin is the artist i'm not sure how much he's doing is he doing a lot at the moment he's got the older style we've got that sort of sort of painted look on a lot of the covers at the moment that's not him but i really love tom baker's deadly assassin's shirt featuring on both these releases and i think i can see on philip's background tardis interior um some sort of stained glass there really really nice stuff so i think the artwork even though i still i get everything on

51:33 download now the artwork to me is very very important and i think ryan does a great job on most things that he does especially this one yeah absolutely i think that the artists everybody everybody's got their different styles and you know there's some some series lend themselves to for example stranded in unit have the lineups whereas something like this where it's one or two regulars you can have that bit more freedom to be a bit more creative and i just think i mean the overall cover for the whole box set is great and then the two individual ones they're just beautiful they're doing the sort of thing you could imagine having in a calendar couldn't use a bit of calendar art absolutely yeah definitely that's what big finish should do do some calendar used to do because did they i didn't little desktop calendars and back in the

52:19 days with clayton hickman's artwork i think it was stuff up to um craig it must have been about release number 40. so i've still got the calendar somewhere i really should scan it and get some nice clean artwork just for my arcade well that'd be collectible these days wouldn't it i would imagine it would be there you go um interesting on the sound design on this one did we say jonathan barnes before wrote david sorry i mean jonathan yes jonathan barnes wrote the um sherlock holmes thanks phillips direction we'd like to get something i'm having one of those mornings my head is a thousand to one places as you know from my stupid computer not working and having to do this episode on my mobile phone or cell phone if you're in america

53:05 would you guys say mobile or cell phone mobile mobile excellent see you guys are more cultured than the yanks i'm joking americans we smash people up so yes [Laughter] i can point out i am joking interesting on the sound design on this story it's been split up so jamie robertson did the music only on this with toby robinson doing the sound design so he's the owner of mote studios isn't he yeah so he did the sound design on that so he does a few things from time to time and works just as well on both i did notice on this one in particular some some dudley simpson tropes in there

53:51 which i really enjoyed i love that love going back to that so uh overall i think uh it worked really well what are your thoughts on margaret as that well she's the faux companion for this one uh but as we now now know she is going to be joining as a regular in a forthcoming season so philip what are your thoughts on uh on margaret as a companion well i'm really i'm really not sure i mean i think i think she was a great guest cast person and i certainly enjoyed i mean to me she's not the one she's not the one i would have picked um out of the cast to turn into a companion um but that being said i mean she's a brilliant actress and very entertaining so it's quirky i'm it's gonna be just to see i mean i love there's a little mention of the brexitel collection about

54:37 the doctor seeing one of her works in the brexitel collection yeah and um that just made me smile you know both city of death reference of course but for those of you who follow the big summerfield series like i do uh the braxt collection is my it's my favorite place to be for the bidding summer field stories both the novels and the stories that happened in the collection are the ones i love because i just love the castle of the ensemble that are there and so that that throwaway line was nice so yeah i'm looking forward to seeing what they do with a artist's companion i'm more intrigued by the fact she's traveling with leela as well so i don't know whether the doctor comes and picks it up and then leaves with the tardis while he does face of evil then who knows so i think i think her and leela actually together will be fascinating it's an interesting dynamic i'm thinking the exact same thing

55:22 because it's been a while since we've had an older companion so if we had anyone older since evelyn can you think of anyone i can't no not not not this old anyway so racking my brains and nobody springs to mind i think the dynamic's going to be very very interesting because because evelyn worked so well but she was working well alone with the doctor apart from brewster from time to time but you know that was still in a sort of a grandmotherly way where um this i don't know i don't know where in uh in the in the in the history of the fourth doctrine leela margaret is going to join whether she's still in the eliza doolittle stage and maybe she's going to

56:07 try and turn leela into a lady who knows i don't know but she doesn't who knows i don't know what they're going to do with it but um it's certainly going to be very very interesting and she's so very humorous the scenes happens at her cottage where they're all being attacked by different animals and the cat's flap and the the dialogue there between her and um trevor cooper the two of them are playing beautifully off each other i guess part of the i don't didn't feel like she had that much time with tom but certainly how she was playing with other characters i mean she yes there was a lovely performance there lovely lightness of touch but some great humor and so i think her and tom could spark really well with with the right writing yeah i think there's a lot of potential there i think the fact that nearest hughes has got great comedy timing and she can do the gravity as well and i

56:55 think that will make for quite an interesting mix particularly with lila as to how well as you say will interact with her and i would imagine it will be set perhaps you know before canine joins and it'll be in that sort of regap between seasons 14 and 15 where big fans are putting quite a few stories already so i'd imagine i'll probably put on the tail end of those yeah very good so any final thoughts on the box set fourth doctor adventures series 11 solo philip best box set for a long time super enjoyable really feels the tone of that period but also has modern stories and modern things to say so yeah really really worth listening to and getting kenny

57:40 yeah i agree i think it's great there's just so much going on there's two very different types of story here so depending on your mood if you're feeling a bit fannish and want something that will appeal to your love of doctor who and time lord lore there you go but if you want something that is very much a traditional tom baker type season 13 season 14 kind of story then you're going to be more than happy with the ravencliff which is a brilliant title as well i don't know what the original title was it's mentioned in the extras it had another title but i think the ravenclaw which does grab you doesn't it it's just such a great name and obviously um nicholas briggs he's not shy and saying it was his title or his suggestion to change the title and i think he's right it is just the perfect

58:26 perfect um tom baker story title dwayne your last thoughts no very excited just like you philip i think it's the best fourth doctor in a couple of years so um i'm looking forward to what's to come and and and on that it's recently been announced that the doctor's solo adventures are continuing in a box set called the nine so that's very exciting who plays the nine i can't remember kenny john that's john heffernan right right right so that should be uh that should be good i love that character one of the most interesting characters that big finish has created originally was the 11 but then as we've been going through various incarnations we're getting to know some of the others a bit more and the nine is

59:13 going to be facing off against the fourth doctor so that should be good yep i've just been working on the vortex preview for that and it's actually got me really excited i think he's just in the first story but it's going to be really good fun it is it's just such a great character the fact he's a kleptomaniac and is just determined to get his own way and collect everything given that the the eight lived a life of solitude and as a monk he didn't have many worldly possessions so you've got the nine who's the complete opposite of him and i think that's going to make for quite an interesting encounter with the fourth doctor i would love to see the sixth in torchwood the six is the most he's he's the murderer one isn't he i

59:58 think the six couch wood would be fantastic if we ever need to recast the six for whatever reason kenny can do a good six what do you mean i think i've got uh i always thought that robert carlisle would have made quite a good six you know some of that sort of transporting big be kind of feel to him so i think but then again to probably surprise us and cast a female six and give us the complete opposite of what you expect so they haven't passed the six have they nope never had that's right what am i talking about recasting the six he hasn't even been cast kenny it's all yours he's so well played excellent but yeah i just i think the six in torch would

1:00:43 um you could do a box set and it would be terrifying like jack the ripper on earth be you know hunting down the torture team i think it could be yeah it's a big fit if you're listening that's my uh go for it very good okay let's uh finish up but before we do a couple of recommendations on some things we've been listening to and kenny um actually no i can't pick kenny it's not your turn it's your turn phillip go for it tell us what you've been listening to oh it's my turn i'm gonna recommend a podcast i'm not sure whether you may have recommended in the past when i can't remember um it's a podcast called 42 to doomsday i haven't recommended it in the past oh you have so so i'm gonna do it now because i i don't know well was it just not on for a while do they have a big break or something

1:01:29 they do have gaps from time to time yes and so it's just one i've started listening to regularly the last few months and it really is amusing me and i love their conversations and i don't agree with all that they say all the time but i just love their manner it's particularly australian and i think they call this as the oldest australian podcast i'm not sure if that's true or not um but yeah they say it must be true because it's strange never lie is it the oldest or the most popular they call it oh i thought they said it was the oldest longest running not all longest i remember having a big gap and therefore not really getting into it when i got into podcast but more recently i guess the last 12 months or so they've been doing a lot more

1:02:15 episodes and i've just really been enjoying it and you know every time it drops to my feed i get pretty excited so yeah i'm just going to recommend the group from the boys from 42 to doomsday i i don't know if you realize but one of the hosts his name is rob uh his full name is robert mamon i think i'm not sure if that's pronounced right but he has just released a book uh through candy jar and bring it one of the brigadier books he's written one of those well there you go so check that out yeah yeah okay okay jars produces some nice stuff can i just say yeah i i'm not buying at all because my budget is limited to everything big finish but yeah the candy jar has really been putting out some nice stuff and the bits and pieces i've looked at

1:03:01 i've been intrigued by and yeah good stuff okay i might uh save your recommendation kenny till last and i'll i'll recommend something that i've just listened to it's a documentary on mary whitehouse called disgusted and it is produced by simon and thomas goria there's some readings from mary whitehouse's diaries that are that are peppered throughout the documentary and these are done by lisa bowman as well so having grown up in the time when john nathan turner was celebrating every time mary whitehouse said something negative about the show because the ratings would go up i was very interested in that and it's interesting to to go back and get a bit more detail on the life and times of

1:03:48 mary whitehouse so that's on bbc radio 4 still available and i'll put some links in the show notes for that one my understanding is they don't totally bag her out they actually do recognize the fact that she had some important things to say in the end is that right true absolutely true it's very fascinating that's good because i do think i mean i think she went too far with doctor who and read stuff that didn't read into it but i do think some of her broader work in terms of caring about society was you know good to be said anyhow she was born she was born in the wrong time i tell you this is the age of outrage and mary whitehouse would have just been a legend of twitter at the moment uh being outraged at every single thing she possibly could so you can imagine oh mate she would just be on fire

1:04:35 um okay so that's my recommendation disgusted by mary whitehouse documentary of course billy conley did once say about mary white's house how can you take seriously somebody whose surname rhymes with toilet think about it but yes it's uh it's very good yes i've um i mean at the moment because we've got pieces of eighth back up and running and i'm not actually i'm giving a minor plug but i am going to give a proper plug to something else to what i've been listening to lately we're back up and running and we've been doing quite a lot of the mary shelley run

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