The End of The Beginning

 

The End of the Beginning by Robert Valentine

And so it comes to a close.

The Main Range began in 1999 with a very ambitious and poorly executed little audio called The Sirens of Time. I don't hold it that much against Big Finish - it was their first Doctor Who audio at all, and they were a very very small production company at the time. It's a silly thing to look back on - there's some pretty abysmal sound editing, and you had even majestic actors like Maggie Stables incoherently babbling in a Russian accent. This would be all fine and dandy, and I still forgive it quite a lot - until you look at Big Finish's first output as a company, the Bernice Summerfield audio drama "Oh No It Isn't!" which is still to this day an extraordinary and exceedingly well put together listen with next to no flaws. So on second thought, no, I don't begrudge The Sirens of Time much at all. 

The End of the Beginning is essentially the Sirens of Time's mirror, the exact same format - and it's certainly far more dignified. The End of the Beginning has excellent sound editing, music and acting, It's ten thousand times better than Sirens, you can actually listen to it, but there's still some structural stuff. and the same issue Sirens of Time had where the three short stories that interconnect together just aren't really that interesting. Ultimately for something like this you have to care about the three stories in addition to the connecting tissue and resolution, and to be honest - I only really cared about the latter.

Part One: Death and The Desert

Death and The Desert is the strongest out of the three tales we get, and it's certainly immensely atmospheric and fun, but it's also quite visibly a fragment. It opens in the middle of the plot, and as a result a bit of it is spent with some unnatural dialog getting you up to pace of why The Doctor and Turlough are about to be shot. From there, we have a pretty great little adventure with a lovely allusion to the fable about Death awaiting us all in Samarra. There's some excellent music, and some slow dread, and a halfway decent climax. The issue is that it's missing the ten minutes at the start of it that would make it into an actual full length Doctor Who story. It doesn't feel like it's opening in the middle of things for any real good reason than a hook - it feels like we're experiencing a bit of a fragment, and the story soon slows down to give us some atmosphere. There's a lot of pacing trouble as a result, particularly a fast and exposition-y end. On the other hand, our protagonists are excellent - Davison delivers as Doctor Who, when doesn't he, and I earnestly think this may be in the running for best Turlough audio, merely because his wry humor actually managed to make me laugh a few times. I really hate Turlough, so it's really lovely to have a story where he's served well, I like liking things. It's a strong episode, but I can't help but think it could have done with maybe ten more minutes to even out it's problems. 7/10 

Part Two: Flight of the Blackstar

Oh no. Calypso Jonze is back. Ignoring the fact that their previous appearance was The Lovecraft Invasion and all of the problems they had there, there's at least some potential for The Doctor and Constance working with a cool bounty hunter. Calypso is functional in this story, and I'm willing to allow their presence even if I don't care for them, because there are loads of actual problems in this episode much more worth me caring about. The plot concerns The Doctor and Constance trying to stop some robot gangsters called Freebooters, and there really isn't an enormous idea to the tale beyond that, which can be immensely frustrating. It's a very thin adventure primarily built around action sequences - which I have NEVER enjoyed on audio. I love Constance and Six enough for me to get by some problems, but all the same, there's very little material here at all. El Zeddo hates all human life because of the arc. The Doctor wipes his memory and he no longer hates all human life. It's a very quick idea, which on one hand, is excellent for a short story. On the other, it's just thin and stretched out in general. It feels sort of done. Going deeper into humor for this one may have made it more productive. 4/10 

Part Three: Night Gallery

Ooh look, Vampires! I can't help but feel Vampire Science utterly ruined me, because ever since I read it, I've held Doctor Who Vampires to a certain level in my brain. They're fascinating creatures that can lead to really great stuff. But gee wiz does Big Finish really have an unfortunate record with them. I've never really cared for the Forge stuff, but they're at least fine and gnarly enough there. When you get stories like this one and Zaltys where there isn't much of an idea except VAMPIRES. It's really unfortunate. You can't do Vampires without atmosphere, the exact same way you can't really do Ghosts without atmosphere. They've been done too many times, they're boring to the audience unless you actually sell them as a force of nature or an interesting villainous character. Dude who wants to eat people isn't that out there for Doctor Who. But Night Gallery has a trick up it's sleeve to be better than the previous episode, and that's the return of Eight and Charley, one of the most dynamic companion duos out there, and they really do a lot to raise this material, especially since it's been a while since they've appeared together. McGann and Fisher are on fire - I most certainly will be picking up the Further Adventuress because of this! All the same, I'm just kind of done with stories like this, the pinnacle of inconsequential. 5/10 

Part Four: The Lost Moon

On the one hand, delightful, because The Lost Moon is a Multi-Doctor story that is ludicrously successful at what it does, an original concept that allows Three Doctor Who's and their companions to interact in scenes that unironically reminded me of the holy standard of The Five Doctors. On the other hand, the villain of this story is a peak "MWHAHAHAHAHAHA! I AM EVIL BECAUSE I AM EVIL!" character, a villain without decent motivation or real build-up. That's the story's only real problem. To be fair, it is a glaring, utterly massive problem, but it is telling the story only has one. I'm rather inclined to love The Lost Moon on the most part, because it really does feel momentous yet new. The plot doesn't feel done before since the lack of a Cyberman or Dalek plot or something and the characters have fun interaction - exactly what you want a Multi-Doctor story to be. Short and Almost Unbearably Sweet, it's the sort of thing that will make a fan happy, but it also doesn't TRY to make fans really really happy at the expense of actual interest. The episode feels like it was thought through way more than any of the other ones out of the four, which is nice, but at the same time, the journey to get here should have been a lot more appealing: 8/10