Big Finish


I’ve always considered the Philip Hinchcliffe/Robert Holmes era of Doctor Who as being one of consistently high quality.  There isn’t really a bad story there. Its strength and its weakness is of drawing on genres that were exploited by the likes of Hammer Horror around the same time.  Some might […]

Philip Hinchcliffe Presents, volume 1


Return to the Web Planet should really be called Return to Vortis, because it’s not a “web” planet any more.  It’s some hundreds of years after the Doctor originally visited Vortis and he’s decided it might be a nice place to settle down for a rest.  How many adventures proceed […]

Return to the Web Planet


The fifth adventure in series seven of Big Finish‘s Companion Chronicles range does what it says on the tin and it sees the Return of the Rocket Men.  This time they’re encountered by Steven (Peter Purves) with the first Doctor and Dodo.  The villain of the Rocket Men is this […]

CC7.05 Return of the Rocket Men



Big Finish‘s 200th main range adventure sees the merging of two eras of Doctor Who. The Secret History sees Steven (Peter Purves) and Vicki (Maureen O’Brien) team up with the fith incarnation of the Doctor (Peter Davison). The first episode opens with a magical scene, the type that we watch […]

200. The Secret History



Following the first episode of the second Big Finish audio production, Phantasmagoria, I’ve been listening to the remaining three episodes over recent evenings and, last night, I finished the final episode.  For the most part, I’m glad it’s over. The positives are that it plays like an adventure that may […]

2. Phantasmagoria, parts 2-4



Phantasmagoria is the second Doctor Who audio adventure from Big Finish, released in 1999, after their initial outing with The Sirens of Time.  Written by Mark Gatiss, directed by Nicholas Briggs, and starring Peter Davison (the 5th Doctor), Mark Strickson (Turlough), with David Walliams, Nicholas Briggs, Mark Gatiss, and others. […]

2. Phantasmagoria, part 1


After leaving the train, Holmes & Watson rejoice in their escape as they head to the city and the British Embassy.  On the road they’re stopped when Watson sees, surrounding them, many fields just streaming with crops of the odd blue flower that he first saw in Afghanistan. Their rejoicing comes […]

3.04 The Sowers of Despair, cont’d


It’s 1919 by the time of the fourth story in the Big Finish audio epic The Ordeals of Sherlock Holmes.  Holmes is well retired by this time, whilst Watson is enjoying a slower pace of life with his third wife.  Set some 16 years after The Bermondsey Cutthroats, The Sowers […]

3.04 The Sowers of Despair



Continuing The Adventure of the Bermondsey Cutthroats, Watson awakes in delirium, bound to his favourite chair, unable to move or to speak.  A blonde-haired man that laughs a lot at his predicament is watching the door, his back to Watson.  The woman who drugged him, goads him, torturing him with […]

3.03 The Bemondsey Cutthroats, cont’d


The third adventure in The Ordeals of Sherlock Holmes by Big Finish opens by doing what it says on the tin.  A woman is being interrogated and then tortured and killed by judicious use of knives by a poetry-loving woman and her knife-wielding cohort. Following the opening theme, Dr Watson […]

3.03 The Bermondsey Cutthroats


As expected, once The Gamekeeper’s Folly moves to the Gamekeeper’s village, the pace increases.  Immediately on leaving the train, Holmes & Watson encounter the author friend of Jim Hinderclay’s daughter who’s giving an impassioned lecture on her recent lively book, a book that features a woman that Holmes believes is the […]

3.02 The Gamekeeper’s Folly, cont’d