Vampire of The Mind


 

Vampire of The Mind by Justin Richards

I enjoyed Vampire for most of the runtime, but there are a few deepseated issues in it that keep it solidly away from the brilliance of the rest of the trilogy it belongs to.

First, Alex MacQueen. Ordinarily, a brilliant chap in these audios, but due to the effects of The Two Masters, he's so much less zany here, which makes him so much less fun. His loss is Beevers' gain, however. 

Second, if you told me Colin Baker and Alex MacQueen would have a story together, I'd expect a story that's deeply based around their interactions. It's a match made in heaven, yet whereas Big Finish make two characters meeting eachother things like this usually phenomenal (See Romana/Leela, River with pretty much anyone, Suzie/Margaret, loads of other stuff) They don't really get to bounce off eachother because of the more subdued performance. What the story actually does do with it's runtime is so okay it's average. Mind Leech. Hooray. Not a very interesting premise, no. The guest stars are also very very bland, although I did like Heather, that was more to do with the actress's voice being great on audio and less whatever the script gave her. 

Thirdly, The Doctor at the end has one of the few moments where I feel a character has been just straight up mischaracterized. He tries to feed MacQueen into the mind leech, essentially making him into an empty husk in a fate that's arguably worse than death. That's...that's not how the Doctor works. That's how the Valeyard works. This is definitely the hugest problem with the story, it's just.. The Doctor attempting what more or less is the killing of a mind. The Doctor attempting literal murder, never to be chastised for it again. Like, I could still give this one a great score if not for this. This is why it's not a 9. 

So. When you put all that together, it definitely pulls down some stellar ingredients. Luckily, The Two Masters is after this. 7/10 


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