Three's a Crowd

An audio adventure featuring the Fifth Doctor, Peri, and Erimem

Written by Colin Brake and directed by Gary Russell

Polarity Rating: 3.5 out of 5

After listening to this story, I really have to admit that there was nothing particularly extraordinary or original about it. There's a stranded colony of earthlings, a lot of people getting separated and running up and down corridors, and elements of the story seem to have lifted directly from films like Alien and The Island. All that being said, I still have to admit that it has everything that a halfway decent Doctor Who story has, and I have to laud it on that fact alone, as so many of the Big Finish stories seem to try to do something new and innovative and fall flat on their face (Minuet from Hell comes to mind).

The setting is space station Earth Colony Phoenix, stranded in space and cut off from the home planet, still attempting to terraform the unnamed planet below. The station itself is apparently huge, but houses a minimal number of colonists, and all of them are forced to live in solitary living quarters, never mingling with more than one other colonist at a time. The colony seems more like a prison ship, with the colonists suffering from severe agoraphobia (thus the title). Earth Colony Phoenix is headed by a woman named Auntie (perhaps hearkening back to Mother from Alien?), and she is played with steely coolness by Deborah Watling, whom most of us will know as Victoria during the Second Doctor's era. Ms. Watling has changed quite a bit over the years, and when I saw her hosting one the documentaries on missing episodes as part of the Lost in Time boxed set, I was taken aback at how stoic and somehow cruel she seemed, not unlike a poor man's Anne Robinson.

But I digress. The Doctor and his companions arrive as usual (with Erimem still feeling a bit of angst left over from their last adventure), and we learn that, unbeknownst to most of the colonists, Space Station Phoenix has been infested by a lizard-like alien race called the Khelllian (three L's, that's not a misspelling). The infestation becomes apparent when the TARDIS crew comes across a room filled with large slimy eggs; look closely at the CD cover art and you can see them. Again, inspiration from Alien looms.

I will not tell you what the Khelllian are up to and why they are being aided by Auntie, but the cliffhanger at the conclusion of the second episode is spine tingling; I really didn't see that one coming! There are three other colonists we meet: Bellip, Laroq, and Vidler, and they're pretty much indistinguishable except for the fact that Bellip is a high-strung female and Vidler seems to be a little more headstrong. The three characters were likely added to the mix to provide company to Peri and Erimem, who almost instantly break away from the Doctor and are involved in their own subplots. (There's also an insipid little romance between Bellip and Laroq, but this subplot seems a little forced and pads the story to its detriment, although it is helpful to understand the isolated lives the colonists are living.)

I have listened to about 25 Big Finish stories so far, and while Three's a Crowd doesn't stand out as one of the best, I really cannot say many bad things about it. Again, the lack of originality didn't seem to bother me, since this formula has worked so well in episodes like "The Ark in Space" and "The Macra Terror." I can say that the second half of the last episode was rushed and confusing, with all of the characters struggling to arrive at a fixed point while a time bomb counted down the seconds. How some of them survive eludes me (the story relies a little heavily on the convenience of transmat technology), and there's a final scene involving a hidden explosion that seems a little tacked on, but the resulting squishy sounds effects that were fun.

Deborah Watling is chillingly wonderful as Auntie, Peter Davison gives an adequate performance as the Doctor, and Nicola Bryant outshines her television performances as Peri. Caroline Morris as Erimem is a true joy, however, and I look forward to listening to more adventures with her. I've only listened to one Erimem adventure (The Eye of the Scorpion, her first one) and look forward to hearing more. She seems to be a carbon copy of Leela from the classic series, but it's fun to listen to her interact with Peri rather than just stick in her in the TARDIS to let the Doctor do his Professor Higgins magic again. Also, to my knowledge this is the only story in which the Doctor presents one of his companions with the option of staying behind to help the survivors and she turns him down, preferring a life in the TARDIS.

Kudos also goes to Gary Russell, who did a fine job recreating an eerie, desolate space station. Russell has come under fire from some fans for his lacklustre writing and his insistence on bringing back old villains, but I've enjoyed almost everything he's done for Doctor Who.

Three's a Crowd would be a great recommendation for Big Finish fans, and I am tempted to recommend it to fans who don't listen to the audio adventures because it hearkens back to the classic series so well. Just don't eat anything while you're listening to it.

The Eleventh Tiger

A novel featuring the First Doctor, Barbara, Ian, and Vicki

Written by David A. McIntee

Polarity Rating: 3 out of 5

I've never been a very big fan of the historical epics during the First Doctor's era, so it was with trepidation that I opened The Eleventh Tiger. However, my fears were quickly allayed: the prose is descriptive and the characters (particularly the four regulars) are well-realized. McIntee uses masterful brush strokes to recreate China in 1865, and I was almost instantly sucked in.

But first, a bit of history. In 1865 China was still recovering from the Opium Wars, in which they lost to the British and were forced to tolerate the British occupation as they traded freely in opium and other goods. Among other things, China also ceded Hong Kong to the British. In the background of all this was a league of bandits known as the Black Flag Army, whose primary ambition at the time was to oppose the British. It's the Black Flag Army that's the catalyst of this story, although we later learn that, as usual, there are otherworldly powers pulling the strings.

As colorful as the book was, it dragged out for a bit in the beginning after the main characters are introduced and we discover that there's a British soldier in the city of Guangzhou who bears an uncanny resemblance to Ian. Did Ian return in the future? And why does this soldier not remember anything about his own life? The mystery is pretty compelling, since we all know he and Barbara eventually returned to their own time. But more on that a bit later. The story appeared to be taking the turn that most of the historicals did, with the TARDIS crew involving themselves in some tumultuous past event. Until, that is, we meet the abbot who is gearing up to take over the Black Flag Army. And the guy literally plucks out the eyeball of a dead deer and pops it into his mouth like a grape, but not before he orders one of his henchmen to cut off the nose and tongue of an allegedly insolent minion. And with this passage, the story takes a turn for the better.

Well, not all that better. McIntee's writing style continues to shine, and there are some absolutely fabulous passages with descriptions of hand to hand combat; this guy would have been an awesome choice to write a novelization of Kill Bill. There are some creepy terracotta soldiers that are possessed by alien energy and run amok, and the celestial activity leading up to the villain's master plan cause energy stored in rock to create images of ghosts. (Female ghosts, it should be noted, with long black hair that weep for dead lovers. I see some influence from the film Ringu in there somewhere.)

And then, dear reader, after a climactic scene in which Ian is going to shoot his future self to save Barbara's life, the story just takes a complete nosedive. We learn the story behind Ian's body double, and it's one of the most contrived plot points in recent memory. After leading us down the garden path for pages and pages, making the reader wrack his brains to figure out why a future Ian is in China in 1865 and why he's suffering from amnesia, we learn (spoiler alert!) that the "future" Ian is actually the "real" Ian's great grandfather. And they look like twin brothers! This has absolutely nothing to do with the alien menace lurking throughout the rest of the story and served only to insult the intelligence of the reader.

I have no complaints about McIntee's portrayal of the First Doctor, which is spot-on; there's a wonderful scene in which he engages in hand to hand combat that I could easily play out in my head despite the Doctor's obvious frailty. This is also the first novel, to my knowledge, in which we get to read about the inevitable affection between Ian and Barbara, and they even snog at one point. It was a bit of a shock, but ultimately quite understandable (particularly since they eventually marry, as we learn in The Devil Goblins of Neptune). Vicki seems a little under-utilized, as she spends most of the story hanging about in the background and developing a crush of her own on a local boy.

At the end of the day, the alien menace is vanquished and our heroes leave in the TARDIS. Unfortunately, the ending just seems a tad bit forced, as the solution to the problem appears out of nowhere. I do forgive McIntee for that, as the rest of the novel (sans the bit with Ian's double) is quite good.

Great writing or not, The Eleventh Tiger is not McIntee's best; he thrilled the socks off of me years ago with The Dark Path and impressed me again with The Face of the Enemy. But, particularly if you're a fan of the historical stories, you can't really go that wrong with this book. It beats the hell out of Sick Building anyway.