Catherine Harvey

Big Finish Productions’ 50th main range Doctor Who release was Zagreus, an enormous three-disc adventure, starring five Doctors, umpteen companions, Rassilon, and the TARDIS itself, fighting a threat to the universe itself against a universe-sized backdrop. It was something they'd never done before.

Big Finish Productions' 100th main range Doctor Who release was 100, a set of four imaginative one-part stories involving the number 100, starring Big Finish's first original Doctor/companion team, written by four of Big Finish's best writers. It was something they'd never done before.

Big Finish Productions' 150th main range Doctor Who release is Recorded Time and other stories, a set of four imaginative one-part stories with no linking theme, starring a television Doctor/companion team, written by four relative newcomers to Doctor Who. It's something they’ve done before... eight releases prior, to be exact.

The repetition is a little disappointing. Though I like that these four one-part releases have become annual fixtures (I buy every one), I’d like to see Big Finish try something new for their 150th release. I mean, 150! They've been making Doctor Who audio dramas for twelve years now! Who'd have thought it? I feel like 100 and Zagreus were just yesterday, much less The Sirens of Time. Let's celebrate it with something cool and unique.

Unfortunately, once you move beyond the recycled premise, these four stories with the sixth Doctor and Peri make up the weakest of these anthology releases yet. Which is a shame, as I think this format is usually a great way to demonstrate Doctor Who's playful diversity.

You can read a longer version of this review at Unreality SF.… (more)

Big Finish's 150th regular release was a set of four short stories by different writers, all of whom I think are new to Who audios, and all with a common theme of loss of identity for the Sixth Doctor, Peri or both. In Recorded Time by Catherine Harvey, Peri falls into the clutches of Henry VIII who is incidentally trying to rewrite history; Paradoxicide by Richard Dinnick is a more standard space opera tale but with some interesting twists; in A Most Excellent Match by Matt Fitton our heroes find themselves both battling a telepathic parasite and trapped in classic nineteenth-century literature; and in Philip Lawrence's Question Marks, what appears at first to be a case of mass amnesia on an endangered spaceship turns out to be much worse. The four stories are all individually good but become very strong as a group; the whole is even better than the parts. The rotating cast includes Philip Bretherton (again) and Raquel Cassidy who I have been enjoying as the Labour minister in Party Animals.… (more)