Doctor Who Mega Review - Big Finish's July Releases
Welcome to my Big Finish mega-review for the month of July! Im also including one June release, since I wasnt able to listen to it until just this month. Enjoy!
Companion Chronicles 8.01 Mastermind
rating: 5
The Vault an archive of alien artefacts securely stored deep beneath the Angel of the North. There's also a prisoner in the Vault. An extraterrestrial known as the Master. He has been on Earth for some time, but now he's under lock and key. This is his story. Or, as Captain Ruth Matheson and Warrant Officer Charlie Sato discover perhaps it is theirs.STARRING: Geoffrey Beevers (The Master), Daphne Ashbrook (Ruth Matheson), Yee Jee Tso (Charlie Sato) This is easily the best audio this month, and one of the best Companion Chronicles stories period. The story itself revisits the UNIT vault, previously seen a few chronicles ago, and brings back the characters of Matheson and Stao. That alone would be pretty nifty, but having the Master back, especially as played by Beevers, is quite a treat. This story also does an excellent job of filling in the gaps in the Masters personal history. It takes place (mostly) after the Doctor Who movie and explains how the Master escaped from the Eye of Harmony, explains his snake form, and explains why hes back to the beef jerky in a cloak version of the character. In doing so, it draws quite a bit from some of the novels that were done in the 1990s. I also very much enjoyed the particular format that was used, which basically features the various actors playing different roles throughout the story. In fact, I enjoyed pretty much every aspect of this audio, and if I had to come up with one complaint it would be that Yee Jee Tso isnt quite there as a voice actor. Something about his performance feels quite awkward, especially when hes playing characters other than Sato. Aside from that minor complaint, this really was a first-rate audio.