The Tertiary Console Room: Review - Doctor Who

"Actually I rather fancied a moonlight stroll through an unfamiliar forest to search for some undoubtedly hostile alien creatures."

"Me too, come on!"

While it doesn't feature any notable returning comic strip characters like its predecessors The Ratings War and No Place Like Home, Living Legend certainly has the feel of those slightly quirky, off the wall single issue comic strips that are so often done in the Doctor Who Magazine between their more involved storylines which isn't really that surprising given that it's written by one of the strip's most prominent writers of recent times, Scott Gray.

The basic plot of Living Legend involves the greatest cliché in Doctor Who - the old aliens invading Earth storyline. But what makes it interesting is the unusual spin that Gray devises for the Doctor to thwart the Threllips and their dreams of empire with an inventive use of his own wits. Set in a small Italian village on the night of the national team's victory in the World Cup final and while the celebrations rage, the Doctor and Charley are drawn to the locale because of a strange alien signal…

Written with rich humour and a cracking sense of pace, Gray's script positions the Doctor into using his own people's reputation to manipulate the two Thellips in the advanced scout party of the invasion into turning against each other. It is very cleverly done and thanks extremely well performed. Paul McGann and India Fisher are arguably the most dynamic of the various Doctor/companion combinations used by Big Finish and the script plays on their lively banter to show how well they can work together. Their dual approach in subverting the expectations of the aliens helps them to defeat them as the Doctor convinces the Threllip captain he's suffering from an incurable fatal disease named "World Cup Fever" while Charley uses the haughty image of the Time Lords to play upon the insecurities of his colleague, and turning his resentment into rage for being overlooked in the glorious future of his captain. Both plots facilitate lots of greatly effective comic scenes with the Doctor's being the most successful.

As the plot is very clear-cut and performed in an extremely relaxed manner, the natural humour in Gray's script flows freely to create a very amusing twenty-two minutes of undemanding Doctor Who. While the idea of giving aliens funny regional dialects seems extremely passé now - the first DWM free story Last Of The Titans, for example, did that years ago! - the Threllips are a fairly standard race but Stephen Perring and Conrad Westmaas bring them to life with gusto. But the real delight of the story is hearing both Paul McGann and India Fisher at the peak of their camaraderie as they show why their partnership as the Doctor and Charley has become so successful.

Newcomer Simon Robinson's production work is very atmospheric and emphasises the unperturbed tone of the play, which is embodied perfectly in the performance of Paul McGann. As with the previous release, Living Legend shows that the art of making these Doctor Who Magazine stories a success is to keep it simple, slightly off-beat and filled with plenty of humour. As it wisely doesn't overstay its welcome, Living Legend leaves the listener wanting more which is always the best way to leave your audience. Great fun!