Living Legend review [Scott Gray]

"Did you notice those devices attached to their belts? The ones that resemble guns."
"Yes. What are they?"
"Guns."

The Plot: The world faces imminent destruction when Italy wins the World Cup! Can the fabled Time Lady Charleyostiantayshius save humanity from the dreaded Threllip Empire, or will her idiot assistant, the Doctor, ruin everything?

The Doctor's Case: November 2003, a month that commemorated the fortieth year since An Unearthly Child was broadcast on BBC TV one Saturday. Doctor Who was kept alive by Big Finish - as well as the books and comics - which took the Eighth Doctor from the very American world of the TV film, paired him up with a wonderfully English companion and continued the Doctor's adventures. A cliff-hanger in June 2002 had fans on their toes for eighteen months as they awaited the anniversary story, Zagreus. It was a mess.

Living Legend was free with Doctor Who Magazine, on a disc containing a documentary for Zagreus and is, in many ways, far better. It's a very short story at only 22 minutes but doesn't try to be anything other than what it is - a bit of fluff, and a welcome bit after a relatively poor run of Eighth Doctor stories. Neverland was an epic but when was the last time we got to see the Doctor and Charley have fun and enjoy themselves? The Stones of Venice? It's a refreshing change of pace and a reminder, if one's needed, of how delightful Paul McGann and India Fisher can be together when given the opportunity.

The story is effectively a sketch. The Threllips (with their Bristolian accents) are setting up a portal that will unleash an army upon Earth and are met by the Doctor, a humble transcriber, and the Most Exalted Time Lady Charleyostiantayshius, a hilarious parody of the ridiculously long names of some Time Lords. The Doctor and Charley are quick on their feet and defeat them through flattery, getting them drunk, telling them that World Cup Fever is contagious causing an argument between the two. There's never any threat but that's not important. It's just a fun listen.

The Valeyard's Case: It's difficult to imagine the Threllips conquering one planet, let alone several.

The Best Bit: Whenever Charley is pretending to be a Time Lord. A favourite exchange is: "You must feel very fortunate to work so closely with such a great figure." / "Oh, yes. I often wonder what I did to deserve it."

The Databank:

• The Doctor says that he hasn't seen celebrations on the same scale as the 1982 World Cup since VE (Victory in Europe) Day.

The Timeline: There isn't very much to go on, but it must be set between Charley's first trip in Sword of Orion and Neverland.

From Your Past... or Future: Lucie Miller would later claim that the Doctor was her bumbling assistant in Immortal Beloved. 

The Inquisitor's Judgement: Living Legend is a tiny story that's easy to overlook or forget about and hardly sets the world on fire. For a pair that endures a number of weak stories early on, has their relationship practically fall apart and require rebuilding, it's a welcome reminder of how fun the Eighth Doctor and Charley can be. It's never going to end up on anyone's Top 10 lists but it is what it is - 22 minutes of Paul McGann and India Fisher showing off their chemistry and making us laugh, showing that the Doctor Who universe isn't always bleak or tedious. Sometimes, the Doctor and his companion just get to have fun, and so do we. A

Sword of Orion review [Nicholas Briggs]

Sword of Orion might have been a pretty good story if it was released in the '60s. Unfortunately, by 2001 we'd seen this story a dozen times over. After the exciting freshness of Storm Warning it was important to show that Paul McGann was a modern Doctor for the modern listener, but Nicholas Briggs instead chose to remake an old fan story and show that McGann can follow the same tried-and-tested plotlines that the other Doctors have already done. It lacks ambition.

The Eighth Doctor goes up against the Cybermen in order to solidify McGann as a Doctor rather than because it was an interesting story. It's the same technique that Moffat would later do with Matt Smith (who fought the Daleks in his third episode) and Peter Capaldi (who fought the Daleks in his second episode). What do all these stories have in common? They're not that good, existing almost because the Doctor needs to go up against one of the big bads in order to be accepted.

The plot itself involves an abandoned space-station, the awakening of the Cybermen, antagonistic humans who think they can make a deal with them, blah blah blah... The guest cast are your usual Doctor Who stock characters: predictable, one-note and lacking any real colour. It's an unwelcome combination of The Tomb of the Cybermen and Earthshock. The story isn't offensively bad, but it's boring - arguably the worst thing Doctor Who can be. 

The previous story did a great job of introducing the Doctor and Charley with a script paired with convincing performances that made them both feel like breathing, warm-blooded characters. Sword of Orion does away with all of that personality and makes the pair entirely interchangeable with any other Doctor-companion duo. The dialogue and characterisation is completely generic and at a time that we should be getting to know this new Doctor, his dialogue shouldn't feel as though it could belong to any one of his predecessors. The adventure-thirsty Charley too has become more subdued and reactionary. They're hardly a pair that get you rooting for them in this story.

The Inquisitor's Judgement

Charley's first adventure in the TARDIS proves to be a disappointing affair, providing all the traditional elements of classic Who in a story that unfolds almost by rote. Storm Warning wasn't a perfect story but its characterisation was spot-on, its plot and setting new and exciting and it began the Eighth Doctor's adventures with a real sense of forwardness and invigoration. Sword of Orion, however, is by-the-numbers, tried-and-tested, been-there-done-that Who. It's an atrocious story and earns itself an F.

The Main Range - The Eighth Doctor

Storm Warning  |  Sword of Orion  |  The Stones of Venice

Storm Warning review [Alan Barnes]

There's a storm coming. The R101 flies high over France with two strangers aboard. One is a young boy by the name of Murchford with a lot more hair tucked under his hat than one might expect. The other is a man in a green frockcoat going by the name of Dr Johann Schmidt.

When and Where?: This story takes place on the 4th and 5th October 1930, in the R101 over France. For the Doctor, it takes place after Mary's Story and the Terror Firma flashbacks and before Sword of Orion.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "Breathe in deep, lieutenant. You too, Charley. You feel that pounding in your heart? That tightness in the pit of your stomach? The blood rushing to your head, do you know what that is? That's adventure. The thrill and the fear and the joy of stepping into the unknown. That's why we're all here, and that's why we're alive."
• "Trust me. I haven't a clue what I'm doing."
• "You're heavier than you look." / "I carry a lot of things in my pockets."
• At the point that this audio drama was released, we didn't know very much about Paul McGann's Doctor. He had been in books and comics and such, but this was McGann's first performance as the Doctor since the film, in which the character was amnesiac and not his self for most of it. Not only does Storm Warning have the job of introducing Charley but also of reintroducing the Eighth Doctor, and it does both effortlessly. Both are introduced through books - the Doctor is having a passing look at a few on his shelf as he looks for his misplaced TARDIS instruction manual (showing us that he's easily distracted from mundane things by more fun prospects and that he still doesn't keep the manual at the ready) and Charley is beginning writing her book on her Edwardian adventures before she gets into her disguise as a boy. One is a seasoned adventurer who could have filled a library but instead reads the works of others, and the other is a prospective adventurer who's not even started writing her first chapter. The Doctor is a breathless romantic and a far cry from the dark man in The Great War and beyond.
• It might not be the most original method of exposition but the radio announcement on the inaugural flight of the R101 is functional without being obviously so - getting those unaware of the airship up to speed - and gives us a feel of the time we're in. News reports were used a lot by Russell T. Davies to great effect.
  
• Lord Tamworth could have been a predecessor to the flat and one-dimensional English soldiers of Empress of Mars but he's played to perfection by Gareth Thomas. 

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "Oh, no! An energy weapon!"
• The Doctor is without a companion at the beginning of this story which makes it somewhat necessary, but his talking to himself gets a bit unbelievable around the line "oh, no. Vortisaurs!" The Doctor lamp-shading it with a line about talking to himself being the first sign of madness doesn't excuse it.
• Part 3 is made up mostly of exposition about the Triskele, who aren't the most interesting aliens we've ever encountered. To go from the relatively quick pace of the new Doctor and his new companion dashing about to the long crawl that is Part 3 is quite jarring.

His Constant Companion: Rathbone shoots the Lawgiver and later the Uncreator Prime. Everyone about the R101 dies in its crash.

I'll Explain Later:

• Why does the Doctor feel that Charley isn't supposed to be aboard the ship given that it's the place she's destined to die?

This Reminds Me...:

• The last page of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is missing from the Doctor's copy of the book, and he regrets that he'll never know who did it. The Eleventh Doctor, however, will later deliberately tear out the last page.
• The Doctor corrects Mary Shelley's book like Susan did the book on the French Revolution in An Unearthly Child.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: The story of this audio drama isn't particularly ground-breaking and the Triskele are something of a bore, dragging the story down in Part 3. But then perhaps an average story was what the Eighth Doctor needed - we've only watched McGann in the, erm... flawed film and listening to him tackle a story like those his predecessors have week in and week out since 1963 proves that McGann isn't the George Lazenby of Doctor Who. McGann and India Fisher have instant chemistry as the Doctor and Charley and it's simply musical whenever the two talk to one another. This is the start of a delightful TARDIS team. Storm Warning is okay, and that earns it a C.

The Main Range - The Eighth Doctor

Storm Warning  |  Sword of Orion