Big Finish Productions Dark Eyes: The White Room

Written by	Alan Barnes
Format	Compact Disc
Released	2014

Starring Paul McGann

Synopsis: Molly O'Sullivan is still trying to help people, but now she is back in London, staying in Baker Street. But there are dangerous forces abroad. Where are the young deserters disappearing to? Who are the Huntsmen? And what is really going on at the Blackwell Convalescent Home? Perhaps the mysterious "Surgeon General" has the answers. To find out, the Doctor must tackle an old and baffling enemy.

• The Land of the Blind by Noe Geric

The Land of the Blind by Noe Geric 3/12/24

The previous Dark Eyes story (The Traitor) ended on an incredible cliffhanger in which the Doctor helped the Daleks. Of course, everyone rushed to its CD player and put The White Room CD in it to know what the damn conclusion of that cliffhanger was. And, of course again, no one could've predicted that the story would open with something that has absolutely nothing to do with The Traitor. Having the stories in the box-set being told out of order is a bold experiment: you don't get the resolution of cliffhanger one until the third story of the set, and The Traitor takes place (from the Doctor's perspective) after the fourth episode. But the main problem is that listeners can be really tough, and not having the immediate resolution of the cliffhanger can makes some of them angry.

But the main weakness of The White Room is that it badly uses audio. In its first years, Big Finish used the medium wisely, trying not to be too visual and even playing with the fact that you only hear the adventure (Scherzo is a clever example, Live 34 another...) But recently, everyone in Big Finish writing room is taking everything for granted. Matt Fitton and Alan Barnes are two examples of guys who think we can get where and when we are and what is happening without anyone talking about it. The first scene is incredibly hard to understand at first listen. The Doctor is menaced by a man with a gun and... Ho...

Here we come! The second mistake every Big Finish writer is making these days (Matt Fitton again is a good example) DESCRIBING the bloody stuff. People in the Doctor Who audio universe seem to have all lost their eyes and are doing stuff blindly, so they need to describe everything they're doing ('I put my gun on your neck' Noooo? You don't say!) Of course, it could be interesting if they were describing what WE NEED TO KNOW. But... No. Actually, I listened to this one twice, and I couldn't figure where the characters were. The scenes with the soldiers in the street are impossible to understand because the audio medium isn't used by someone good with it.

As for the actual story... It's a mess. Sometimes it manages to be entertaining, but the plot makes no sense and is all over the place. The Viyrans (Big Finish's new favorite monsters) are coming back to do stuff while there are ghosts that travel through time, sort of mad scientists, the Doctor's house and I still can't figure what it was all about. The conclusion seems to be particularly rushed. Even the music is hardly trying to follow the events, jumping from dramatic tension to the happy-ending theme-tune.

This review is quite hard to write as The White Room isn't interesting at all. I could say I quite like the cover of the CD case, but that would be all. It isn't interesting, and it's filler in all the possible ways. We've got the return of Molly O'Sullivan as a companion, but even that doesn't save the fact that it's dull. Alan Barnes wrote better stories, but this one is crap: 3/10