Doctor Who Review - "The Stones of Vengeance"
rating: 4
Who among us hasnt sat around watching late-Pertwee Who and thought to themselves, What is the origin of Mike Yates? Clearly he cant just be some guy who got assigned to UNIT. No, there must be something bigger and more grand! A large, epic, origin story! Yeah! Who ever thought of that? Right. None of us. None of us ever thought that. None of us ever really wanted a Mike Yates origin story. We all assumed that he was just this guy, you know? That he was there, and did a job and turned traitor, which was the most interesting thing his character ever did. But we didnt really need nor want to know exactly how it was he came to be with UNIT. What makes this story, the third in the Destiny of the Doctor series, so terribly interesting is that its the Mike Yates origin we never knew we wanted, but end up being glad to have. It adds depth and dimension to a character that lacked both until the very end of his run. In this story, Mike Yates (Richard Franklin), not yet a captain, gets seconded to UNIT to help investigate a missing fighter jet and its pilot. In the process, he meets the Brigadier and the Doctor, and soon finds himself up to his eyeballs in a possible alien invasion and weirdness with standing stones. The standing stones brought to my mind The Stones of Blood, from the Key to Time series. This story is neither as good nor as interesting as that one, which is one of my favorites, but its still quite decent and well worth your time to listen to. Franklin does an excellent job with the character of Mike Yates, and guest actor Trevor Littledale, who plays the leader of the aliens who are seeking the titular vengeance. I must also take a moment to wonder why Mike Yates was featured in this story. I have no problem with the character, butthis is something of a prestige series for Big Finish, so I wonder why they didnt have Katy Manning turn up to play Jo Grant and do a story from her viewpoint. Yes, theyve done that plenty of times before, but for something this prominent, I just feel she might have been a better choice. As with the previous audio, we get, in this one, an appearance by a future character. Unlike in the previous one, where that characters identity was instantly obvious from his description, I have no idea who this one was. But he did set up some interesting plot points that Im very sure are going to pay off down the line. I really cannot recommend buying this story on its own. It can probably stand up ok by itself, but I really feel that at this point, if youre interested in listening to it, you need to go back and buy the first two, then move on to this one. They arent terribly expensive, and they are very worthwhile. NEXT TIME: Lalla Ward reads off a story about the Fourth Doctor and Romana!