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Classic Doctor Who, The Lost Season 27 Review
Doing these audios was never really something I considered when I was planning my watch of Classic Who, and it was only after I did my previous "lost season" watch that I realized another "season" like it actually existed. It makes complete sense that the show's future had already been charted when the BBC pulled the plug back in 1989, and these audios probably don't reflect what the season would have truly looked like the way the previous ones did, but the way they've been changed and adapted feels much more faithful to the direction the series actually did take after it was cancelled with the novels and the subsequent revival. The fact that much of it was also helmed by Andrew Cartmel himself was a major selling point for me, and upon listen I was surprised by how much of it ended up being a large, linked "season-long" arc.
However, I will say that because these stories weren't as fleshed out as the ones from the aborted season 23, they by and large feel much thinner. That's not to say I didn't enjoy them - I really did! - but they almost felt constrained by what they could do with The Doctor and Ace since so much ground has already been covered elsewhere. What they did get, however, was extremely satisfying, and this listening experience has really inclined me to look into Big Finish more once the dust has settled a bit more.
All four stories are available for purchase from Big Finish as well as on platforms such as Audible. This "season" ended up being difficult to rank due to how interconnected they each were, and its entirely possible my ordering will change after I hit publish. I should also note that I actually lost a huge chunk of this review due to hardware failure and had to rewrite it later, which means that parts of it have been written much later and in less detail than I originally gave.
Characters
Sylvester McCoy as The Seventh Doctor - The "all knowing" trickster that the Seventh Doctor became was an archetype I really enjoyed, but I really appreciated these audios for showcasing that this incarnation is in no way infallible. From him overstepping and attempting to map out Ace's future without her input, to him admitting that the solution at the end of Earth Aid wasn't planned and was dumb luck, it grounded the character and made him easier to connect to. This is especially needed because there were parts of this season where he ended up taking on more of a secondary role to Ace in particular. McCoy is fantastic in his reprisal, and it feels like he picked up right where he left off.
Sophie Aldred as Ace - In season 26 I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of focus Ace got as character and how much her arc dominated the story, and I was equally thrilled to see how much of a lead she took in these stories, some of which she was not originally slated to appear in. The biggest divergence from the originally planned season was that she was originally supposed to depart in Thin Ice and get replaced by a new companion, and instead she decided to stay. This change not only helps match continuity with the years of other material indicating she had many more adventures with the Doctor, but the decision also feels much more true to her character. While the Doctor may worry about her settling in somewhere, Ace does not want to be tied down by school or conventional responsibilities, so her decisive rejection of his scheme ends up being a much more satisfying route for her, and it allows her to continue to grow within the story itself. I appreciated how much responsibility the Doctor entrusted her with, even if it was something she didn't feel equipped to do, and it affords her a level of respect we don't always see for a companion - especially one from the Classic series. Like McCoy, Aldred feels like she picked up right where she left off from the role, which is remarkable considering how difficult it can be recreating the performance of a teenager years later.
Beth Chalmers as Raine Creevy - While hardly the first instance in Big Finish, Raine is the first new companion I've met on audio rather than television, and I enjoyed her character quite a lot. I do think she suffers a bit from the existence of Lady Christina, however, since the latter is a clear homage to the former and actually made a brief television appearance that I quite liked. Unfair comparisons aside, however, I thought Raine had a very fun storyline and meshed well with both the Doctor and Ace. However, I do think there were points where the writers didn't quite know how to use her, and kept going back to the same beats that worked the first time. I will say they do nail the feel of a Classic companion in their initial season, and its a shame the character doesn't get any progression beyond this series. I also would be remiss if I didn't mention that, like Mel before her, Raine's introduction had a gimmicky feel that New Who at the time was concurrently doing a version of on television. While I don't think this is a bad thing, I think it would've landed better in the original conception than it does here.
Ricky Groves as Markus Creevy - In some ways, Markus Creevy is a bastard. Its a characterization I didn't really expect going into this but its one I ended up quite enjoying and it worked well for both the stories he appeared in. I thought his relationship with Raine felt real in a way their situation didn't, and he fit in well as a supporting player to the larger Tardis team. However, the way his character was ultimate written out kind of feels like a cop out, even if it did work well as a narrative beat for Raine. Sadly, while it's suggested there's more to come, it never actually goes anywhere.
Other recurring players include John Albasiny as Maxim Alexandrovitch Felnikov, who I think worked well as a villain but as a recurring presence felt a bit strange; as well as John Banks as the Metatraxi, a villainous race that feels reminiscent of many other Doctor Who alien races but were utilized very effectively here. Angela Bruce also reprised her role from season 26 as Brigadier Winifred Bambera, and she's just as excellent here as she was back then.
The Audios
I've ranked the audios based off my own personal preference which is only tangentially related to how good they are on a critical level.
4) Fourth Story, 4 Parts - Earth Aid
The biggest flaw, however, is one that can't be attributed to it's "finale" nature - the whole story is riddled with plot holes. While normally that sort of thing doesn't bother me all that much in Classic Who, this story starts in media res and completely fails to establish why any of the characters are there, or explain why they are doing what they're doing. How and why Ace is pretending to be the captain of a spaceship is never explained, which makes the whole storyline surrounding it hard to take seriously since, to the audience, there's no reason for her deception. It's a testament to the strength of Aldred's performance, however, that Ace is a character you're still inclined to side with and root for, but the weight of carrying the story shouldn't be entirely on her. Similarly, though I enjoyed the Doctor's admission that the events of this story weren't, in fact, a clever scheme of his, it does make much of what happens a happy coincidence. It also means we don't know why The Doctor and Ace infiltrated this space ship or what their ultimate goals were in pulling this charade. It doesn't help that Raine's random reintroduction, as fun a callback as it was, hints at a story that sounds more interesting than the one being told.
Despite all the flaws, the story was fun to listen to, and the talents of the voice cast for the aliens blew me away. It was also nice to hear Ingrid Oliver in a Doctor Who role before her debut as Osgood in New Who.
3) First Story, 4 Parts - Thin Ice
The real strength of this story is everything involving the Doctor and Ace. In a culmination of Ace's entire television run, the Doctor decides to have her undergo a test to get into the Academy on Gallifrey without her knowledge, and her steadfast refusal at the end, despite generally performing well, is extremely satisfying both from a story and a character standpoint. This marks a significant milestone in the agency Ace has on her adventures with the Doctor, as well as a clear example of the Seventh Doctor attempting to be too clever for his own good. The Doctor's constant games of 3d chess prior to this has normally been presented solely as an asset, so it adds an interesting dimension here that all his planning could've been avoided if he'd had a straightforward conversation with Ace.
2) Third Story, 4 Parts - Animal
The Numlocks are one of the most interesting original Doctor Who aliens/monsters/villains I've encountered in recent memory. The way the audio medium was used to execute their collective will was fantastically done, and it was genuinely creepy to listen to to a degree that I doubt would've been achievable in 1990. The real standouts in this story for me though were the Doctor and Ace. The Doctor's scenes with the Numlocks were amogst the best of this run, and Ace had great chemistry with every character she interacted with - especially Raine, with whom she shared a fun, if short-lived, double act. Raine definitely felt overshadowed in the story, which is a bummer considering this was her first adventure as an official companion, but she was still solid, and the ending with her character was effective if predictable.
1) Second Story, 4 Parts - Crime of the Century
This was also a story that surprised me in a lot of ways: the shocking death of a supporting character that had been built up through the story and the ultimate execution of the Metatraxi were very pleasant surprises that helped elevate this story into something that felt more special. The lynchpins of this story, however, were definitely Raine and Markus Creevy. The meat of their storyline this "season" unfolds here, and it feels much weightier than most of the audio releases I've heard so far. It's a relationship I'm sorry I didn't see on screen, but I suspect wouldn't have played out this way had this story been made back in 1990. The instant chemistry the Doctor managed to create and maintain, respectively, also certainly helped.
Final Thoughts
The latter part of this review isn't as good as I had hoped, because halfway through writing it my computer shut off and only saved my review for the first story and deleted the other three sections that I had worked very hard on and I am very angry. So angry that I wrote this review in chunks over the last two months, with the bulk of it being composed in early April in anticipation for The Legend of the Sea Devils. And with Classic Who companions like Ace coming back, it feels like my timing couldn't have been any better!
Next up on my agenda is finally tackling the Wilderness Years over the summer in the time between now and the Centenary Special this Autumn. While I haven't ruled out reading some of the novels that came out this period, or dipping my toes further into Big Finish (espeically since I enjoyed this so much), my focus will primarily be on the filmed releases that took place during this period. That's both the 1996 TV movie, and the independent productions by Reeltime and BBV that used canon characters and, as a result, bleed into Doctor Who canon in the vague way a lot of spinoff media does. I also want to go back and finish the Companion novels I was making my way through around the Sixth Doctor era, and a couple of select shorts and audios (like the Third Doctor radio dramas) are also on my docket.
However, I will say that because these stories weren't as fleshed out as the ones from the aborted season 23, they by and large feel much thinner. That's not to say I didn't enjoy them - I really did! - but they almost felt constrained by what they could do with The Doctor and Ace since so much ground has already been covered elsewhere. What they did get, however, was extremely satisfying, and this listening experience has really inclined me to look into Big Finish more once the dust has settled a bit more.
All four stories are available for purchase from Big Finish as well as on platforms such as Audible. This "season" ended up being difficult to rank due to how interconnected they each were, and its entirely possible my ordering will change after I hit publish. I should also note that I actually lost a huge chunk of this review due to hardware failure and had to rewrite it later, which means that parts of it have been written much later and in less detail than I originally gave.
Characters
Sylvester McCoy as The Seventh Doctor - The "all knowing" trickster that the Seventh Doctor became was an archetype I really enjoyed, but I really appreciated these audios for showcasing that this incarnation is in no way infallible. From him overstepping and attempting to map out Ace's future without her input, to him admitting that the solution at the end of Earth Aid wasn't planned and was dumb luck, it grounded the character and made him easier to connect to. This is especially needed because there were parts of this season where he ended up taking on more of a secondary role to Ace in particular. McCoy is fantastic in his reprisal, and it feels like he picked up right where he left off.
Sophie Aldred as Ace - In season 26 I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of focus Ace got as character and how much her arc dominated the story, and I was equally thrilled to see how much of a lead she took in these stories, some of which she was not originally slated to appear in. The biggest divergence from the originally planned season was that she was originally supposed to depart in Thin Ice and get replaced by a new companion, and instead she decided to stay. This change not only helps match continuity with the years of other material indicating she had many more adventures with the Doctor, but the decision also feels much more true to her character. While the Doctor may worry about her settling in somewhere, Ace does not want to be tied down by school or conventional responsibilities, so her decisive rejection of his scheme ends up being a much more satisfying route for her, and it allows her to continue to grow within the story itself. I appreciated how much responsibility the Doctor entrusted her with, even if it was something she didn't feel equipped to do, and it affords her a level of respect we don't always see for a companion - especially one from the Classic series. Like McCoy, Aldred feels like she picked up right where she left off from the role, which is remarkable considering how difficult it can be recreating the performance of a teenager years later.
Beth Chalmers as Raine Creevy - While hardly the first instance in Big Finish, Raine is the first new companion I've met on audio rather than television, and I enjoyed her character quite a lot. I do think she suffers a bit from the existence of Lady Christina, however, since the latter is a clear homage to the former and actually made a brief television appearance that I quite liked. Unfair comparisons aside, however, I thought Raine had a very fun storyline and meshed well with both the Doctor and Ace. However, I do think there were points where the writers didn't quite know how to use her, and kept going back to the same beats that worked the first time. I will say they do nail the feel of a Classic companion in their initial season, and its a shame the character doesn't get any progression beyond this series. I also would be remiss if I didn't mention that, like Mel before her, Raine's introduction had a gimmicky feel that New Who at the time was concurrently doing a version of on television. While I don't think this is a bad thing, I think it would've landed better in the original conception than it does here.
Ricky Groves as Markus Creevy - In some ways, Markus Creevy is a bastard. Its a characterization I didn't really expect going into this but its one I ended up quite enjoying and it worked well for both the stories he appeared in. I thought his relationship with Raine felt real in a way their situation didn't, and he fit in well as a supporting player to the larger Tardis team. However, the way his character was ultimate written out kind of feels like a cop out, even if it did work well as a narrative beat for Raine. Sadly, while it's suggested there's more to come, it never actually goes anywhere.
Other recurring players include John Albasiny as Maxim Alexandrovitch Felnikov, who I think worked well as a villain but as a recurring presence felt a bit strange; as well as John Banks as the Metatraxi, a villainous race that feels reminiscent of many other Doctor Who alien races but were utilized very effectively here. Angela Bruce also reprised her role from season 26 as Brigadier Winifred Bambera, and she's just as excellent here as she was back then.
The Audios
I've ranked the audios based off my own personal preference which is only tangentially related to how good they are on a critical level.
4) Fourth Story, 4 Parts - Earth Aid
Earth Aid functions well as a finale, and provides some gripping drama for Ace, but is riddled with too many plot holes for it to feel truly satisfying. Raine's presence in the story feels superfluous, and mostly feels like a tease for another, more interesting story. (x)
Classic Who has had "season finales" of a sort before. Major cast departures like in The War Games and The Green Death gave those stories the feeling of an ending, while others like The Dæmons, The Invasion of Time, and The Armageddon Factor felt more in like with what we'd expect from a modern series finale. Earth Aid holds no such ambiguity. It is the finale of this season, and divorced from the three stories that came before it doesn't make a ton of sense. All the best moments within it - Raine's reappearance in the safe, the return of the Metatraxi, Ace's final stand as the captain of a space ship with a mutinous crew - don't work quite as well without the prior knowledge of what came before it. That's not to say it's a bad thing, and many New Who finales function the same way, but it does make it weaker as a standalone story.The biggest flaw, however, is one that can't be attributed to it's "finale" nature - the whole story is riddled with plot holes. While normally that sort of thing doesn't bother me all that much in Classic Who, this story starts in media res and completely fails to establish why any of the characters are there, or explain why they are doing what they're doing. How and why Ace is pretending to be the captain of a spaceship is never explained, which makes the whole storyline surrounding it hard to take seriously since, to the audience, there's no reason for her deception. It's a testament to the strength of Aldred's performance, however, that Ace is a character you're still inclined to side with and root for, but the weight of carrying the story shouldn't be entirely on her. Similarly, though I enjoyed the Doctor's admission that the events of this story weren't, in fact, a clever scheme of his, it does make much of what happens a happy coincidence. It also means we don't know why The Doctor and Ace infiltrated this space ship or what their ultimate goals were in pulling this charade. It doesn't help that Raine's random reintroduction, as fun a callback as it was, hints at a story that sounds more interesting than the one being told.
Despite all the flaws, the story was fun to listen to, and the talents of the voice cast for the aliens blew me away. It was also nice to hear Ingrid Oliver in a Doctor Who role before her debut as Osgood in New Who.
3) First Story, 4 Parts - Thin Ice
Thin Ice takes some clear creative liberties with the original intended version of this story, but they're all for the better. Ace's conflict with the Doctor feels like a natural extension of her arc in the final season, and her decision to stay in the TARDIS is very satisfying. (x)
Thin Ice has a really cool setting and a premise that's easy to understand, but is weighed down significantly by the narrative decisions made with Raina, specifically her pregnancy and the twist with the artifact that essentially turns her into a prop for most of this story. It also doesn't help that this plot development is what leads to the thread that this story is actually about - mainly the resurrection of a legendary Ice Warrior leader. On paper it's a very good idea, but it feels like it takes too long to arrive there here, and then there's not enough time left in the story to explore it in depth. It hits the beats in needs to, mainly the realization that Sezhyr was actually a tyrant whose reign had been whitewashed in the thousands of years since his passing. The usage of the Russians and Markus Creevy also feels uneven, though when it comes to the sheer power of vibes, this production knocks it out of the park.The real strength of this story is everything involving the Doctor and Ace. In a culmination of Ace's entire television run, the Doctor decides to have her undergo a test to get into the Academy on Gallifrey without her knowledge, and her steadfast refusal at the end, despite generally performing well, is extremely satisfying both from a story and a character standpoint. This marks a significant milestone in the agency Ace has on her adventures with the Doctor, as well as a clear example of the Seventh Doctor attempting to be too clever for his own good. The Doctor's constant games of 3d chess prior to this has normally been presented solely as an asset, so it adds an interesting dimension here that all his planning could've been avoided if he'd had a straightforward conversation with Ace.
2) Third Story, 4 Parts - Animal
Animal is a rather straightforward story that hits all its marks very well, and manages to address the topic of animal research without getting too preachy either way. Ace and Raine have good chemistry, and its nice to see the Doctor be clever but still have to think on his feet. (x)
Animal is probably the least complicated story of this group, and that is both to its detriment and its benefit. The simplicity becomes a problem when examining the motivations of characters like Willa, who was secretly working against Scobie but didn't really go into detail why. This lack of character building made it so she wasn't really anchored in the story the way she should've been, and just left me wondering who she was working with if not UNIT. All in all, though, it's a minor quibble considering how cohesive everything else ended up being. Brigadier Bambera was a welcome return, further anchoring these stories to the seasons before them, and allowed her to flourish more in a role that staunchly allied her with the Doctor. The UNIT soldiers being a mess was an unexpected element that I think mostly worked, even if it didn't necessarily have the payoff it could have. Scobie also worked as a very effective villain, even if he didn't have all that many layers to him aside from the reveals of how far he was willing to sell out his classmates and all of humanity for his "ideals."The Numlocks are one of the most interesting original Doctor Who aliens/monsters/villains I've encountered in recent memory. The way the audio medium was used to execute their collective will was fantastically done, and it was genuinely creepy to listen to to a degree that I doubt would've been achievable in 1990. The real standouts in this story for me though were the Doctor and Ace. The Doctor's scenes with the Numlocks were amogst the best of this run, and Ace had great chemistry with every character she interacted with - especially Raine, with whom she shared a fun, if short-lived, double act. Raine definitely felt overshadowed in the story, which is a bummer considering this was her first adventure as an official companion, but she was still solid, and the ending with her character was effective if predictable.
1) Second Story, 4 Parts - Crime of the Century
Crime of the Century is at its best when it leans into its cheesy caper aspects, and overall is a strong introduction for Raine. The guest characters are also well drawn, though perhaps too tied to the previous story, leaving a final product that feels more fragmented than it is. (x)
Crime of the Century is a story with a very big and obvious shortcoming: it is extremely tied the events of the previous story, but is not actually a true sequel to it. This leads to an experience that can be a hard listen if you're recollection of the previous story doesn't hit the same story points that this one does want to revisit, and since the Russian characters were a big blind spot for me it was a hill I had to climb. That said, it was a hill that was 100% worth climbing. The opening scenes with Raine are so good I understand why they were kept intact from the original conception twenty years prior, and alone more than justify this top ranking for me. What really sells me on it though is how well all the characters are utilized, and in certain cases dispatched when they're no longer key to the story being told. Ace was not part of the original conception of this story, but here is given a lot of screen time facing off against every adversary.This was also a story that surprised me in a lot of ways: the shocking death of a supporting character that had been built up through the story and the ultimate execution of the Metatraxi were very pleasant surprises that helped elevate this story into something that felt more special. The lynchpins of this story, however, were definitely Raine and Markus Creevy. The meat of their storyline this "season" unfolds here, and it feels much weightier than most of the audio releases I've heard so far. It's a relationship I'm sorry I didn't see on screen, but I suspect wouldn't have played out this way had this story been made back in 1990. The instant chemistry the Doctor managed to create and maintain, respectively, also certainly helped.
Final Thoughts
The latter part of this review isn't as good as I had hoped, because halfway through writing it my computer shut off and only saved my review for the first story and deleted the other three sections that I had worked very hard on and I am very angry. So angry that I wrote this review in chunks over the last two months, with the bulk of it being composed in early April in anticipation for The Legend of the Sea Devils. And with Classic Who companions like Ace coming back, it feels like my timing couldn't have been any better!
Next up on my agenda is finally tackling the Wilderness Years over the summer in the time between now and the Centenary Special this Autumn. While I haven't ruled out reading some of the novels that came out this period, or dipping my toes further into Big Finish (espeically since I enjoyed this so much), my focus will primarily be on the filmed releases that took place during this period. That's both the 1996 TV movie, and the independent productions by Reeltime and BBV that used canon characters and, as a result, bleed into Doctor Who canon in the vague way a lot of spinoff media does. I also want to go back and finish the Companion novels I was making my way through around the Sixth Doctor era, and a couple of select shorts and audios (like the Third Doctor radio dramas) are also on my docket.