The Shadow of The Scourge

Clearly the best cover this company has made...

The Shadow of The Scourge by Paul Cornell

Despite the experience implied from that cover, Shadow of The Scourge is actually a rather good audio. Most notable for being one of two main range audios to feature Bernice Summerfield, it’s actually rather lovely. In the whole, horrifying body horror and trauma kind of way. Gotta love Paul Cornell.
It’s rather a nice script, shaping the villain as insecurity (which is ridiculous, if it was literally that, it’d have shown up a lot before and since) and an alien being which the Doctor tries to manipulate, and quite happily, completely fails at. If you get sick of Seven’s invulnerability, try this and Dark Universe back to back. Not only that, Ace steals the show! She literally decides that since the villain influences People via sound that she’ll tear out her eardrums, because of course she’ll get better. Of course. One admires Ace’s brazen sheer awesome stupid awesome Aceness. Besides this, good performances from Sylvester and Lisa Bowerman, and an all around brilliant production. Even if it leans into what TVtropes calls “Narm,” (look it up), it’ll come right back at you, with some of the darkest stuff Big Finish put out.
You want to know why the BBC told them to tone it down? Use Your Fingernails to Carve Out Your Eyes. 9/10

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