Jamie Revell

The departure of Peri as companion has to rank as one of the least satisfying in the TV show's history (although there are other contenders for that honour...) Here, Big Finish tries to make sense of it with a story in which the Doctor turns up to attend Peri's subsequent marriage to King Yrcanos, and, in doing so, discovers her real motives for leaving him. Given that the story is written by Nev Fountain, it should also be no surprise to discover that it's a comedy.

What's good about it is that the story works on multiple levels. The comedy elements are often daft, with many of the characters over-the-top absurd (as an example, the two palace guards are literally named ‘Guard One' and ‘Guard Two'). But they work well, with some great lines, a good sense of comic timing, and, at times, a good use of the audio format to spring surprises on the listener.

But, on top of that, the story is quite complex, playing with time travel, and red herrings being thrown out for the murder mystery that forms the core of the tale - the villain's identity remains a secret for most of the run time. It's also a fitting sequel to Mindwarp and a more believable (if convoluted) explanation of what really happened than we got in The Ultimate Foe. This time, we get an ending that's much fairer to Peri.

Perhaps one of the most notable things, though, is the sheer number of characters the actors are called on to portray. Even Baker and Bryant are by no means restricted to their usual roles, and the results of that are some of the best in the play.

It's not one for those who like straightforward stories, and the way it subverts a lot of what happened in Mindwarp might not please those who actually liked that story. (I didn't, which may have helped). But I felt this was a great balance of comedy and drama... and yet another example of why Colin Baker is so good in this role when he's given a decent script.

This is a base-under-siege story in which the ‘base' happens to be a suburban house in north London. When the Doctor and Leela arrive they are immediately mistaken for guests at a house-warming party, and the history of the apparently unremarkable home turns out to be key to events. In the early part of the story, however, there's a bit of poking fun at the mundanities of middle-class life, and, in particular, the late '70s setting.

Once the monsters arrive, they are not really all that interesting, just standard aliens whose motives the 60-minute story only has time to deal with superficially. Fortunately, they aren't the real strength of the story, which involves a disruption in the flow of time and the lives of the people caught up in it. The story pops back and forth between two points in the house's history but does so in a sufficiently straightforward manner that it isn't especially hard to follow.

It's the interactions between the characters that make the story work, with the bossy mistress of the house being particularly notable (if a little stereotyped). Leela has her usual ‘fish out of water' role, although this is less overdone here than it has been in some other stories, and there are certainly some other elements here reminiscent of the '70s version of the show. Having said which, it isn't much like any particular episode of the era, particularly because of the time travel elements - which were more often pushed into the background in those days.

I'm not sure I'd describe it as a comedy, but there are certainly comedic elements - the deadly fondue set being especially memorable. These might work better for those who remember Britain in the '70s than for those who don't, and without them, the story is perhaps a little slight. (Hey, it's only 60 minutes long...) But I feel happy giving it 3.5 stars and rounding up.

Not, to my mind, one of the strongest entries in the normally high quality Wild Cards series. It's the third part of the ‘Fort Freak' triad, following on directly from the end of the second volume in that set and, as usual for the third volume in a WC triad, a tightly woven mosaic novel, rather than a collection of short stories. At any rate, it won't make sense without the preceding book, Lowball.

That's not really the problem, though, especially since the preceding two books were quite good. Rather, there are two issues. For one, the editing is weaker than usual, with a number of contradictions in the book that don't seem to have been caught, despite some of them being quite glaring. This really doesn't help, and, if you're going to do a mosaic novel, it's the sort of thing you really need to get right (and WC normally does).

Then there's the tone. This is horror, as the Committee, among other characters, face off against Lovecraftian monsters. But, unlike Lovecraft, we get gore and plenty of it, much of it seemingly for the sake of it, until long after it loses any ability to shock or horrify. It's quite simply overdone, and, while the book does pick up at the end and build to a dramatic climax, it drags a bit on the way there.

It's not terrible, and there are a number of good points within it, but neither does it live up to the promise of its predecessors.

The conceit here is that the book is a compilation of notes written by Bruce Wayne about some of the key superpowered people of his world, with attempts to explain how their powers work, and how best to counter them. It's a large book filled with pictures, notes and marginalia, intended, perhaps, to decorate more than inform, but, if so, that's an aim it succeeds at.

That's not to say that there isn't some genuine science in here, with the text generally being more accurate than the artwork on that front - the latter tends to be somewhat impressionistic. On the whole, though, while there is some fun speculation, it never gets too bogged down in the detail, and necessarily has to be vague about a number of things - both because superpowers obviously aren't possible in the real world, and to avoid appearing to tie the hands of future comic writers too much. (Sure, comic writers are going to ignore anything in here that doesn't fit with their planned story, but it's better not to make that too obvious).

But it's an entertaining read, and it looks really nice. A good-looking coffee table book for the DC fan.

The second instalment in this series was somewhat weakened by having the four episodes written by different authors, but here, we return to the original format - still four hour-long ‘episodes', but all written as a single story with a single writer.

This starts a little after the cliffhanger ending of the previous volume, and it's worth noting that, while it leaves things open for the fourth and final instalment, it does not itself finish with a true cliffhanger. The focus this time is on the machinations of the Master, and his attempts to manipulate the Eminence - the main villain of the previous volume - for his own ends. This it does very ably.

In fact, the first segment is largely a Master story, with the Doctor reduced to a passive bystander watching his longtime foe setting up his plans for the rest of the narrative. The joy here is largely trying to work out what he's really up to, followed, of course, by the Doctor and new assistant Liv Chenka trying to track him down and foil his scheme. We also learn rather more about the Eminence, although its true origins are seemingly being left open for the final volume.

Prior Dark Eyes companion Molly O'Sullivan, while crucial to the plot, is more of a maguffin here than previously - the Doctor is trying to save her, but she's not present for most of the story. On the other hand, we do have the appearance of Coordinator Narvin, one of the main characters in the Gallifrey series, who meets the Doctor for the first time here, and is understandably met with some initial suspicion.

But the real strength is in the overall story, and the performance of Alex MacQueen as the Master. Perhaps the best sequence is one in which he and the Doctor are trapped on a doomed starship with no means of escape, forcing them to interact with one another and explore their differing motivations and morals. A number of the minor characters also add weight and humanity to the story, putting the galactic conflict into context, while Sally Armstrong, as the Master's companion, also has quite a bit of agency of her own.

But there's plenty of action too, from a Magnificent Seven style defence of an isolated colony to a race of subjugated aliens turning on their former masters. It's consistently well paced, and interesting throughout, and a particularly good evocation of the Master and the kind of schemes he comes up with.

Set in the Edwardian era, this is a full-on evocation of the Gothic style of the Fourth Doctor's early run, with an isolated island castle that has something sinister skulking in the shadows. The central theme of the story revolves around a magic lantern (that is, an early slide projector, used for entertainment in the days before film), and is something of a cross between Horror of Fang Rock and Tooth and Claw.

The explanation for what's going on is essentially supernatural, and, in many respects, this is a ghost story. There's some variety amongst the castle visitors trapped inside with the monster slowly picking them off, although they might well have been more fleshed out in a longer story. This makes the mystery elements of the tale not as effective as they might be - it's not hard to work out who the villain is, once we know what he's up to. There's also a disadvantage in that the monster is unusually visual for an audio story and would probably work better in a different medium.

Despite these weaknesses, there's some great interplay with the Doctor, and Leela is once again well used, deliberately walking into danger, rather than running away from it. These elements, combined with the Gothic setting, fit it beautifully in with the TV era it's trying to evoke, bringing out both character and atmosphere. As a result, it's a good example of a 4th Doctor story trying to do what his era did best, without laying it on overly strong.

Set an unspecified, but clearly very long, time after the events of the previous stories in the Gallifrey series this is a one-off story with little connection to its predecessors. It concerns a temporal anomaly that, as so many of them do, threatens the continued existence of the universe, and the Time Lords' efforts to prevent it. Of the original main actors in the series, only Sean Carlsen remains as Coordinator Narvin, with Ace replacing Leela in the action role, and Juliet Landau taking over from Lalla Ward as (the Third) Romana.

In fact, it's really Narvin who holds this together, thrust into an active investigation for which his usual scheming self isn't particularly suited. This results in him coming off as less effective than usual, falling relatively easy prey to the main villain. Of the other two main characters, Ace is absent for long stretches, as the others try to figure out where she's got to. Landau does a reasonable job as Romana, a gentler character than her previous selves, but not really explored in any depth.

As the title suggests, the story is set as much on Earth as on Gallifrey, and there's a fun detour to Late Neolithic Britain. While there is some political skullduggery at the Capitol, the story is more focused on the action of hunting down the villain, although the audio format does result in more of this being resolved by dialogue than might have been in the case in a book or visual medium. One of the weaknesses, however, is an unresolved ending that leaves things hanging without particularly going anywhere. That it has nothing much to do with the rest of the series, and deals with (mostly) different characters, doesn't help and the story, while decent in its own right, feels a little disjointed.

It's common, although not universal, for Big Finish's “contemporary” Doctor Who stories to be set around the time that the TV series would have been showing episodes with relevant Doctor and companion, rather in our actual present day. Normally, this makes little difference, but, in this case, Morris is plugging the '80s atmosphere for all its worth in a plot involving Thatcherite Daleks trying to conquer the Earth with the aid of a (presumably) 16-bit video game.

The result is, of course, strongly political, which may not be to everyone's taste - although it's not really any more so than, say, The Happiness Patrol. One of the main villains is obviously based on Thatcher herself, and the storyline involves both greedy stockbrokers and picketers fighting with riot police, among other things. There's also plenty of action in the story, much of it mediated through the video game, using a plot device vaguely reminiscent of that of The Last Starfighter, if rather darker. And there are even sly nods at the modern series (mainly series 5, for some reason), as well as a number of more direct connections to the classic one.

All of this should make a story that's rather better than I found it to be. The problem is that the plot isn't really as good as the set-up, with a few leaps of logic here and there that caught me by surprise (they were presumably intended as “fridge logic” at best). And there's an entire subplot that just gets forgotten about half-way through and is never referenced again. The overall concept, and a number of rather good lines, compensate for this, and it's a good use of Mel, who is supposed to be a computer programmer, but I just didn't enjoy it enough to give out 4 stars.

The artwork is quite good, but there's little else to recommend in this volume. It's mostly a long drawn-out fight, followed up with some cobblers about qi in the final episode. The plot isn't entirely without merit, but it suffers from forgettable foes - the only one with potential gets killed off before getting a chance to use it. But the real problem is that the writing is terrible, with clunky and unbelievable dialogue in almost every scene. And that easily drowns out whatever it was that the story was trying to say.

I'll try the next volume, but only because Orlando appears to have got a co-author, and one I've enjoyed in the past.

While it fits into a broader arc, the main story of this collection sees Batwoman facing off against the Scarecrow. As a result, much of the story takes place in a hallucinatory landscape, which worked well for me (perhaps because I haven't read too many Scarecrow stories before...) and allows Bennett to play around with Batwoman's psyche and emphasise her differences from Batman. Yes, the villain behind Scarecrow isn't a great way to twist the background, and the one-episode story that rounds out the collection is nothing much to get excited about, but I felt this was a decent examination of the character.

This is a good conclusion to the arc that Humphries has set up for the two newest Lanterns. There's a mix of tones, with plenty of action, but also some expansion of the GL mythology, and team-building with a cast of new characters. The latter, despite their brief appearance, manage to be entertaining and show something of the variety of the GL Corps. And then there's a great final chapter back on Earth as Jessica and Baz try to come to terms with how superheroics affects their real lives. The artwork is somewhat variable - the artists change quite rapidly - but it's generally good, if not consistent stylistically.

Being set on a vast Amazon-style warehouse in space, it's hard to avoid comparisons between this and the recent TV episode Kerblam!. In fact, however, the plots are entirely different, with the resemblance actually being closer to the '70s story The Face of Evil. That's because the warehouse has stopped functioning due to an erratic computer, with the people on the jungle planet below having developed a literal cargo cult in an effort to restore its deliveries through prayer.

I can't say that I went into this with particularly high expectations, and it's possible that it's solely for that reason that I ended up preferring it to the previous story, We Are the Daleks. Either way, there's quite a lot going on here, with some nice ideas about the set-up of the warehouse, which, aside from its computer problems also has a rodent infestation and some mysterious mould in the biscuit aisle. The plot has a surprising number of twists in it, as these various strands are woven together, and there's a good use of the limited cast to suggest a setting rather larger than we see.

Mel's skills are once again on display here, although, in this case, it's a little implausible that, as a programmer, she's also skilled in repairing computer hardware. Other than that, she does get a reasonable amount to do, and is considerably less annoying than she was written in the TV series. (Just as one example, she'd likely have a done a lot of screaming at the giant rats on TV, but here she doesn't scream at all, and seems quite capable and together).

Well, one thing you can say about a book about the history of a single city (even a large and ancient one) that's almost 1,000 pages long is that it's going to be thorough. And it certainly is; there's a huge amount of information in here, covering all aspects of the city's long history. The longest section of the book covers Victorian London, but there's almost as much on the 20th century and the Georgian period, and a substantial amount on the earlier periods - although our knowledge of anything much prior to around 1066 is somewhat limited, filled in more by archaeologists than by contemporary written sources.

The book naturally includes the major historical events in London's existence - the Great Fire, the Blitz, and the various changes in the structure of civic government down the years. There's also a significant focus on industry and trade, from the medieval guilds to Victorian factories and the city's modern role as a financial hub. But this is also a social history, discussing the lives of both poor and rich, and information on, for example, the changes in popular entertainment over the centuries.

I found this a fascinating and mostly readable book, although one suspects that a decent prior familiarity with the city will help a reader appreciate it.

The weakness of this collection is that the artist changes with pretty much every issue (and they're short issues) which not only gives a disjointed feel, but, well, although some of the artists are good, some of them... aren't. On the plus side, it's a good story.

On the face of it, this is Wonder Girl v. Clayface, but really it's about the internment of Japanese Americans in 1943, allowing the series to explore the darker side of the home front, rather than battling Nazis. The way that the threat is overcome is also, while fitting for the protagonists, somewhat atypical for superhero fiction, which I liked, but others might not. In fairness, it's not the strongest the series has been, but the subject matter pulls it up above the middling.

The collection rounds out with an extended teaser for the next plot arc, telling us who's going to be in it (including a number of new Bombshells) but nothing much else of substance. Although it does look like we're going to be wandering even further from real-world history than we already have done.

Although he had previously made what are effectively guest appearances In the Companion Chronicles, the Third Doctor was the last of the classic Doctors to receive his own, full-length stories, of which this is the first. This, of course, was only possible because Big Finish finally decided to take the plunge and recast the iconic role. Naturally, even those happy with, say, Frazer Hines re-voicing Two might balk at the thought of an entirely new actor taking on a role of this significance to fans... and, if that includes you, then it's a safe bet you are not going to want to listen to this no matter what I have to say about it.

And indeed, Tim Treloar is very obviously not Pertwee. His impression actually isn't bad and it's helped by the way the dialogue is written, but it's clearly not going to fool anybody familiar with the original. For that matter, while Manning is quite impressive at imitating her younger self, Richard Franklin's voice has unavoidably aged forty years. There's a final oddity in that the story is narrated in places, which feels jarring but might, I suppose, be a device to cover for the fact that the Brigadier doesn't get any lines.

The set consists of two 2-hour stories which are unconnected beyond featuring the same two companions.

Prisoners of the Lake

The first story is an archetypal UNIT tale, albeit one featuring underwater action that would have been far beyond the budget of the BBC in the 1970s. UNIT are called to investigate an archaeological site beneath a lake that, it almost immediately becomes clear, is actually a crashed spaceship.
The resulting story is often claustrophobic, much of the action being tightly confined to the wreck, with limited access to the shore (or, indeed, oxygen). Many of the tropes of the Pertwee era are on display and, in that respect, it's clear that this story isn't attempting to break any boundaries – which was probably wise, given the need to establish the new actor. Having said which, it's riffing off some of the better TV stories of the era, with elements that are reminiscent – but not imitative – of The Silurians and The Daemons.

The focus is clearly on the Doctor, in a way that was never possible with The Companion Chronicles, but Yates and Jo also have significant roles to play. Jo, in particular, is given more to do than she often was on TV, and neither screams at the monsters nor gets tied up and held to ransom. Despite which, she is identifiably the same character, and arguably a key element in bringing back the atmosphere of the original. 3 stars.

The Havoc of Empires

Despite his association with UNIT, over a third of the Third Doctor's TV stories involved more traditional journies in the TARDIS, usually into the future. This second audio story takes up that theme, following up on the themes of the Earth Empire seen in stories such as Frontier in Space and The Mutants. Other links with Pertwee-era stories are also apparent, with references to Sontarans (The Time Warrior) and even the Delphons (a throwaway line in Spearhead from Space).

The story itself is a murder mystery set against the backdrop of a potential marriage alliance between a branch of the Empire and an alien polity. Echoing The Curse of Peladon, the TARDIS crew are mistaken for Earth agents sent to oversee the wedding although, this time, it's Jo who gets to take the lead, with the Doctor having to act as her assistant - something that helps to make them more equal here than their partnership often was on TV. The mystery is a decent one, with plenty of suspects, obligatory monsters, and a race against time all adding to the suspense. Perhaps due to not being shackled by the UNIT format, this story has more originality than the first one, despite numerous call-backs to the era and a definite feel that is a story that could only have been written for Three. 4 stars.

While not without its flaws, this is rather better than its predecessor story, The Rani Elite. The story opens with the Rani in prison, but soon moves to the titular planet, one that she once ruled, and where, predictably, her experiments have gone awry in her absence. As a result, we're mostly seeing the results of her scheming, rather than the process itself and the nature of those plans serves more effectively to delineate her from the Master.

There is some nice imagery in this, with the people trapped inside cockroach-like armour being particularly effective. As much of the focus is on the Rani's replacement as ruler of the planet as on the rogue Time Lord herself, and this works reasonably well, with the character's motivations and loyalties being ambiguous for much of the story so that we don't quite know who to trust.

New companion Constance also distinguishes herself effectively from Lucy Miller, and not just because her primary point of reference is 70 years earlier. While we don't really see much of her reaction at what is (presumably) her first journey in the TARDIS, she does continue to show promise as an ongoing character, and there is time for some, admittedly brief, exploration of her background.

On the other hand, attempts to link the Rani's experiments with the Doctor's past mistakes feel rather tacked on as an afterthought, and some of the action scenes towards the end are a little difficult to follow (as is often the case on audio). And, as usual, the Rani remains a somewhat limited character, hardly one of the more interesting villains in the canon - she's actually at her best before we get to the planet and she's still directing things rather than reacting to events.

There's enough to like here for me to rate this as 3.5 stars, and round up, but I also can't say that I'm disappointed that this has been (as of 2019) the Rani's last outing on audio. While the story is left open for a possible return, there's not terribly much further than can be done with the character.

This climax to the long plot arc does, at times, get a little soapy as Percy brings together a whole host of dangling plot threads, and the ending (and the necessity for the reset button to leave things open for the next writer) is a little pat. But, on the whole, it works well, doing a good job of bringing out Ollie's ideals and personality, and giving him some well-earned reward. There are some good set pieces along the way, and well-written character moments, especially with Dinah and Emiko, in a story that's about more han simply beating up the bad guys.

The series continues to be surreal in an effective tribute to the Morrison series of the '90s. There are a number of call-backs here to that earlier run, most obviously the re-appearance of Mr Nobody. The new villains are in the same vein, although the Brotherhood of Nada are very thinly drawn. The stories that bookend the main 4-parter are not quite as effective as it is, but they still work reasonably well, and the series as a whole keeps its distinctive feel.

This is an excellent base-under-siege story of the type so common in the Second Doctor's era on TV. Whereas most of those were set in literal bases in the future, however, this is set in a colonial-era hotel on an island off Singapore during the actual siege of that city in 1942. While the few remaining residents wait for evacuation, something deadly stalks the hotel corridors...

Since the monster can shapeshift, the resulting story has much in common with John Carpenter's The Thing and the novella it was based on (the '50s film version, for all its quality, diverged rather more from the original). The slow picking off of the various characters and the fact that you can't quite be sure who to trust, adds to the somewhat paranoid atmosphere of an island that's also under threat from the Japanese.

On the other hand, there are elements of the story that seem to owe rather more to Scooby Doo than to traditional horror, although not in a bad way. While some might find this off-putting, perhaps reducing the menace of the monster, I found that it fit the era's style, and it was never over-the-top or unbelievable. If anything, the fact that it's just one monster that can, at least temporarily, be dealt with in this way, helps gives the story more of a personal feel than some galaxy-wide threat would, and doesn't overshadow the '40s setting.

Ben gets more to do here than he did in the previous release, not least because a key element is that his father turns out to be one of the people sheltering in the hotel... and it's set a few months before his conception. While this relationship isn't strongly explored (in the way that, say, Ace's relationship to her mother is in The Curse of Fenric) it does add an interesting element to the story, with Ben keen to preserve his own future existence. Polly spends rather longer complaining about being sidelined but, as written, this comes across as more a commentary on the TV stories of the time than a slavish recreation of them, and doesn't detract.

With this release, we reach the fifth season of the original TV show, with Victoria (Deborah Watling) as companion alongside Jamie, in what was almost her last acting role. While I've often mentioned before that some of the older DW actors no longer sound like their younger selves, Watling is, unfortunately, one of the most extreme examples and, in her late sixties sounds nothing at all like she did as a teenager. That's unavoidable but also very distracting in an audio play.

The story is also heavily narrated in places, something that has been avoided in some other releases in the series. This matters in part because neither of the main actors was suitable for narration duties (Hines, for example, already playing two different roles) which means that we get David Warner. Now, Warner is good, and has a great voice for this kind of thing, but the use of an external narrator is different from previous releases, enhancing the contrast with them and making this closer to a regular audiobook.

There's also the issue that this doesn't feel much like a Second Doctor adventure. There are sound plot reasons why the Doctor is able to do things here that he couldn't in the TV series of the time. But these explanations are obviously wedged into the story as an afterthought, forcing the use of an obvious reset button at the end. This blunts the effectiveness of the subplot, since we know that one of the guest characters can't possibly succeed. Of course, that's true to an extent with all of these stories, since the Doctor and his companions can't die, but it's perhaps more obvious here than usual.

Take all of that out and what we're left with is actually quite good. There's some timey-wimeyness and a plot that's often quite intelligent, if not entirely in line with modern physics. There are some nice touches in the setting that enhance the '60s feel, a plot twist that echoes the modern series, and an alternative explanation from the usual fan theory as to what exactly was going on at the beginning of The Two Doctors. But, in the end, the story might have worked better with a different Doctor.

The three-episode arc that forms the bulk of this short collection is a good, solid, story about rebellion in Atlantis. There are political machinations amidst the fight scenes, and high stakes that don't merely involve some super-villain trashing things, but a real sense of the setting and the people in it. Yes, there's a rather obvious turnaround for one of the characters at one point, but otherwise, it's an effective story, and the artwork is great. The one-off episode at the end is nothing special, a widely used SF trope with much weaker art, but I'll be generous and not knock the whole collection down for it.

This is one of those things that, in retrospect just seems so inevitable - at least once Big Finish finally gained the rights to use characters from the new series. It's a perfect blending of the modern series with the classic one, teaming Strax up temporarily with the Victorian investigators who had, by this point, featured in ten seasons (plus a few specials) of their own audio spin-off series.

The story, which, at around two hours, is double the length of regular J&L episodes is clearly set within the framework of the existing spin-off. Ellie Higson, the Red Tavern, and the New Regency Theatre all play a significant role, as does Inspector Quick. There's nothing here that's likely to be difficult for those unfamiliar with the earlier stories to follow, and the characters are effectively introduced for the benefit of newcomers, but it's also probably also fair to say that existing fans of J&L will get a lot more out of it.

The plot concerns a haunted house that seems to be connected to a series of mysterious murders and would work perfectly well in any regular episode, despite the extra length. But, of course, the appeal of it is adding Strax into the mix, with his usual failure to understand humans and Victorian culture. He gets a lot of the best lines, but there are also a number of moments, especially in the second half, where his understanding of alien technology gives him an edge - and makes him more than a simple comedy foil.

This is a superb mix of comedy, investigation, and horror, doing all of the things that J&L normally does so well, and throwing Strax's over-enthusiasm into the mix. It's a one-off, with no connection to the rest of its series beyond the characters, and probably wouldn't work as part of something longer, but for what it is, it's very enjoyable.

It's not quite as weak as the previous volume, which is something - how much that's due to Houser working as co-writer with Orlando, and how much to do with the fact that this is at least building to a climax is hard to say, although I rather suspect the former. Having said which, it's still not a particularly great story, consisting largely of Bones throwing a series of unremarkable villains after Supergirl in the hope that one of them will delay her long enough for him to capture her. There's one episode that focuses instead on how Supergirl has touched people's lives, which is not bad in itself, but does feel out-of-place in the middle of the larger arc. And the artwork is consistently good (apart from the cheesy cover...)

The second story in the Torchwood audio series features, perhaps surprisingly, Ianto Jones. I have to start off by saying that Ianto is really my least favourite of the Torchwood regulars - not that he's unlikeable (as Owen tends to be), I just find him rather dull. As a result, I was surprised by just how much I liked this story. Perhaps that's partly due to what can be done when the focus of the story is on him alone, but it's also down the quality of the acting and some lovely touches in the script.

The story concerns Ianto being trapped alone on a spaceplane crashing out of the sky, his only contact with Earth a telemarketer in Turkey trying to sell him insurance. The first half is really a disaster story in space, not unlike the Airport movies of the '70s, but with a few added SF twists. Apart from the nice conceit that we're only hearing the phone conversation between Ianto and the call centre, the story is fairly unremarkable at this point - although the fact that Goss has ditched the narration used in the previous episode is an improvement.

But this is merely a necessary prelude to the final segment, which knocks it out of the park as the unstoppable plane heads towards a major population centre. This would not be so effective without the slow build up leading to it, and plays on the fact that Ianto and the telemarketing drone are just “little people” caught up in something much larger - this story would never work with any of the other Torchwood characters. It's a powerful emotional tale, full of little details about the characters' lives.

In short, this makes a stunning success out of the very reason that I'm normally not keen on its central character.

The first of a series of audio releases, each of which typically features a single member of the Torchwood team this, understandably, focuses on Jack Harkness himself. It's perhaps a little disappointing that the other characters aren't present (although Gwen is referred to) but that's unavoidable when the relevant actors are mostly still busy on what can only imagine are better-paying jobs. However, by keeping the story simple, the absence of the rest of the team is hardly noticeable - there's a sense that this is something Jack is doing by himself in between Torchwood's larger missions.

There are a number of things to like about this release, not least of which is hearing Barrowman as Captain Jack again. It's as well-made as every other BF release was by this point in the company's history, and it very much has the feel of the TV show, dealing as it does with conspiracy theories about aliens running the world. There's also just about the right amount of action, with the story mostly being told through the dialogue that audio is more suited to.

There are plenty of references to real-world conspiracy theories in the story, with John Sessions playing a character loosely based on David Icke... but who happens to have described a real race of aliens as the supposed overlords. How much of what he says is genuinely true (in the Torchwood universe) and where he got the information from is a key element of the story and these aspects are done well, at least to my mind.

On the downside, I'm less keen on the use of first-person narration, although this may be unavoidable given the short length of the story. Either way, though, it's good to have Torchwood back.