The Star Men

 The Star Men by Andrew Smith

There's a star man, waiting in the sky, he'd like to come and meet us, but he thinks he'd blow our minds... 

Andrew Smith is an interesting author at Big Finish - he's the man who wrote Full Circle back in the 80s and the fact that he's still writing for Doctor Who now - and has somehow gotten even better - is incredible. He's usually given the "nostalgia" pieces, a lot of his stories try and evoke the era that they come from, sometimes to the detriment of the story, but usually not. I've heard a fair deal of him, especially with the Fourth Doctor Adventures -  in that and Dalek Universe he really organically fleshes out Ann/Anya, and understands her well. He's just generally a good author. Even so, I think the Star Men is really rather special, because it taps so elegantly into the childlike wonder of Doctor Who itself: The program often talks about us humans looking up at the stars, and The Star Men is a story mainly about astronomy - well, that and alien invaders from another dimension. Out of Andrew Smith's scripts, I feel The Star Men is relatively the closest thing that we might have got out of Andrew if he wrote a second script for Series Nineteen. It's got many of the hallmarks of Full Circle - and Smith readily proves that he's still one of the best writers for Adric, balancing him delicately between being an intelligent young companion who is flawed, without making these flaws alienate the audience. Big Finish's usage of Adric continues to impress me, as much, if not more than their redemption of characters like Mel and Peri. Adric hasn't reached their heights of complete character redemption, and I don't think you could give the deep material Mel and Peri have recieved over the years to Adric, but he has solidified himself into something rather nice. Not incredible, mind, but very nice. But The Star Men isn't just a retread of Full Circle or a series of callbacks and nostalgia, or even that sense of wonder - it's just really good Doctor Who. One half a base under seige story featuring Adric and Nyssa (as well as a girl who's cloying infatuation with Adric who may well be one of the few flaws in the story) and the other half an exploratory space opera with The Doctor and Tegan taking a spaceship into the great Magellan Cloud itself. Doctor Who rarely references Astronomy we know - that would probably make it feel too small - but this in itself enriches the Star Men, giving the whole story a magnificent texture. The bits I love in the Star Men are so myriad and so all consuming that I am hesitant to mention any flaws - and there are few, but it does spend a little too much time on some of the less interesting aspects of the Doctor Who runaround, although not enough to truly anger like some dire main range stories do. The Star Men is just a very good two hours. If not for the story losing a bit of steam in the second half, I may be inclined to give it a 10, but don't let a slightly lower rating keep you from seeking out this utter gem: 8/10