I’ve always been a little reluctant to delve into the Big Finish range of The Companion Chronicles.  When it comes to Doctor Who, I prefer the live-action TV series. In the absence of that, a full-cast audio serves almost as well.  The idea of an audio with a single voice isn’t something that necessarily appeals to me.

However, a recent sale from Big Finish increased my collection of Companion Chronicles, which prompted me to give them a little more of my time than I might otherwise have done.

Starting from the beginning, the first Companion Chronicle is narrated by Vicki (Maureen O’Brien), a companion of the First Doctor who was left in Carthage following the (currently missing) TV adventure The Myth Makers.

FROSTFIRE

Vicki is narrating her story to a mysterious entity that’s kept in a cold damp crypt below the temple in Carthage.  The story begins in Regency London, England, shortly after Steven Taylor joined the TARDIS crew.  London is gripped in freezing temperatures so cold that even the mighty Thames has frozen enough for people to walk across.

Vicki and the Doctor run into various people, both rich and poor, and a fellow selling curious and mysterious objects – including a bizarre Phoenix egg that “looks” at Vicki.

The “frostfire” is caused by heat being sucked out of everything, including people, in order to “feed” the egg such that the Phoenix can be reborn and it’s up to the Doctor, Vicki, and Steven to prevent it from doing this and thus from turning the Earth into an ice planet.

Thoughts

Judging by this first offering, The Companion Chronicles are an enhanced audiobook.  A story narrated by the single voice, without any real attempt to mimic other character voices, together with some background sound effects and music to lift it up from a simple story-telling.

In those terms it works.  The only areas it doesn’t really work is in not really recapturing the spirit and era of the atmosphere we remember from the TV series, and that it is, by nature I guess, heavily weighted towards the character played by the narrator – in this case Vicki.  Whilst the Doctor is there for the coup de grâce, Steven barely gets a look in.  The inclusion of other “famous” characters, such as Jane Austen, seems bizarre at best.

Nevertheless, I found myself warming (pun intended) to this method of story-telling.  Unlike full-cast adventures where it’s often difficult to distinguish between characters, or when the music/sound effects are so loud they obscure what people are saying, or where there are long pauses of nothing but either silence or “noise” when you can’t tell what’s going on, an audiobook is an audiobook.  The single voice carries you through the narrative such that you never really get lost in what’s happening.

Frostfire is presented in pseudo-episodic format with a cliff-hanger at mid-point – it’s just over an hour long, so the cliff-hanger is midway through that duration.  I’m not sure the cliff-hanger is entirely necessary, but it does provide a convenient stopping-off point.

It’s difficult to recommend Frostfire too enthusiastically, unless you’re the kind of person who enjoys regular audiobooks.  To hear a tale narrated by Vicki after she’s left the TARDIS is quite comforting for, whilst we only get snippets of her life post-TARDIS, there is a little information there to add to the character.  The story, itself, though is the one she’s telling to the strange entity (that’s revealed at the end).

Next time … Fear of the Daleks …