The Tertiary Console Room: Review - Doctor Who

'As William Shakespeare once said to me "Come and have a go, if you think you're hard enough!"'

At the Pinehill Crest Hotel in Kent, three very different conferences are occurring. One sees an experiment with a Temporal Accelerator occurring, the other for cross-stitchers and the third sees a medium performing seances which soon seems to serve a greater purpose than contacting the dead. Into this arrive the Doctor, Ace and Professor Bernice Summerfield. The Doctor, as ever, seems to know what is going on, but isn't saying and as his companions begin to investigate. Soon though one of the businessmen there for the experiment, who was exposed to the seance, begins to act very strangely and not before long it seems clear that the summoning of the Scourge is underway...

As Big Finish's first foray into New Adventures territory, it's fitting that they turned to Paul Cornell, one of the best NA writers, for The Shadow Of The Scourge. And the result is one of the best audios produced so far.

The plot regarding the Scourge's takeover of Earth is very good. It begins well with introductory scenes at the Pinehill Crest Hotel where the Doctor demonstrates that he knows what is happening and is just waiting for events to fall into place. This ones one of the recurring features of the New Adventures with the Doctor using his prior knowledge of situations to his advantage and Cornell uses an interesting variation on this by having the enemy, in this case the Scourge, seemingly aware of all the Doctor's tricks and traps and uses this to their advantage by luring the Doctor into a trap.

By choosing what is often thought of, especially by myself, as the classic New Adventures team of the Doctor, Ace and Bernice it results in some very interesting character interaction between the three regulars. Cornell's dialogue between the three works well and this helps to evoke the feeling that this truly is a New Adventure. With bringing Bernice into the Doctor Who series of audios there is an inevitable need to re-introduce her and also to introduce her to those listeners who may not have read or heard any of her previous adventures. This is a partial success as her character is well written as you would expect from her creator, and so for those who know her well it's wonderful to hear Benny with the Doctor, but there isn't really enough highlighting of her character strengths and so it becomes easy to dismiss her as someone who just makes witty remarks every few moments, which of course she is not.

This is the first time that Sophie Aldred has played the more developed Ace that was introduced in the New Adventure Deceit. As The Shadow Of The Scourge is set between All-Consuming Fire and Blood Harvest, Ace is the less angry, more comfortable with who she is version rather than 'the cold-hearted bitch' that she was often referred to during the period immediately after Deceit. But the hard nature to the character is immediately obvious here through Aldred's performance and it seems she is a little uncomfortable with this new aspect of her character. Although she herself has aged since she played Ace, playing an older version of Ace doesn't seem to sit well with her. When she is required to demonstrate the 'reinforced' steel of the older Ace she goes over the top as if to compensate for her lack of certainty as to what direction the character is moving in, and the result just sounds plain odd. This uncertainty seems to affect her whole performance, and although there are moments when she is very good in this production, at times her delivery of her lines is woeful.

Making her debut as Professor Bernice Summerfield, in the context of the Doctor Who audios, is Lisa Bowerman who previously appeared as Beth Pernell in Whispers of Terror. Bowerman has been playing Bernice for a number of years now in Big Finish's series of audio plays about the Galaxy's favourite archaeologist, but this was the first time I heard her playing the role. During the New Adventures (both with the Doctor and without him) Bernice was a very real character, much more so than any previous companion of the Doctor and having read all the Doctor Who New Adventures featuring the character and the New Adventures where she became the star, like any character in a book many readers will have built up a strong mental image of what she sounds like based on the descriptions contained in the books and through her general behaviour. Lisa Bowerman doesn't quite match up to the mental expectations, but she does come close by proving what a good choice she was for the role. Her performance here is excellent, and she really manages to capture the essence of the character.

But despite the superb performance of Lisa Bowerman, the star of The Shadow Of The Scourge without a doubt is Sylvester McCoy. Some of his previous performances, albeit good, haven't sounded quite right somehow but that is rectified here with a tour de force display as the Doctor, which is right up there with his best performance as the Doctor in Ghost Light.

The Scourge themselves are superbly rendered by the production team with their voices sounding deeply menacing. The effects on this story are excellent, with the transformation effects from humans to members of the Scourge being remarkably disturbing and they are so vivid that it really helps to evoke the sense that the alien is emerging from inside the human. Alistair Lock's music also compliments the story very well, adding a real sense of atmosphere to the proceedings.

The Shadow Of The Scourge is a very well written play which is incredibly enjoyable overall. Paul Cornell's story, although set during the New Adventures, manages to create a sense of something else. It feels like a hybrid New Adventure, as it's not really a typical story of that time, but it does reflect their greatness through the quality of the story. The performances of the leads are exceptional, with particular merit for Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor who has rarely been better than he is here. Despite some occasional lapses with the dialogue, The Shadow Of The Scourge stands out as one of the best productions that Big Finish have done in their entire range.