Demons of the Red Lodge
|
|
Big Finish Productions Demons of the Red Lodge |
|
| Written by | Cavan Scott and Mark Wright |  |
| Format | Compact Disc | |
| Released | 2010 |
| Starring Peter Davison and Sarah Sutton |
| Synopsis: A long, dark night in 17th century Suffolk for the TARDIS travellers --- when they find something nasty outside the woodshed. |
A Review by Thomas Tilley 30/6/24
The first play The Demons of Red Lodge has the Doctor and Nyssa in a 17th century forest with a bunch of bodysnatching/duplicating aliens. It's a story that has a couple of nice moments such as Nyssa reflecting on her life and a nice twist to defeat the aliens (they try to duplicate the Doctor but don't realize he is an alien with two hearts so it backfires on them) doesn't overstay its welcome, it would have suffered if stretched into four parts.
The Entropy Composition, written by a competition winner, has the Doctor take Nyssa to an archive of the universe's music so she can listen to music from her lost home, only to find a monster wrecking the place. It is a sweet idea and gives Nyssa some good human emotional moments that the TV series didn't give her very often. The part where the Doctor and Nyssa try to get into a recording studio of a rock star by pretending to be fans is a hoot.
Doing Time has the Doctor locked up in prison that uses time to contain its prisoners and trying to prevent a foreseen future catastrophe. It is a fun story with the Doctor's alias John Smith turning out to be the name of a notorious local criminal, the Doctor improving the prisoner's life and Nyssa trying and failing to get herself arrested so she can reunite with the Doctor. The story while nice is probably my least favorite, what with a rather rosy sanitized view of prison life and an obvious time-travel twist (the Doctor gives the bad guy the idea, which leads to the explosion that leads to the Doctor trying to prevent it, getting locked up and giving the villain the idea, etc)
The final story, Special Feature, has the Doctor recording a DVD commentary of a film he and Nyssa helped make. Again it's a fun story, not taking itself too seriously, poking fun at some of the Doctor Who DVD commentaries at the same time. There are lots of funny lines: when the Doctor tells one character it's suspicious that she has spent all the time talking nonsense, she quickly points out he hasn't listened to many audio commentaries before. I don't think there are many stories about aliens trying to take over the world with DVD extras, but if there are then this must be in the top ten. It is the best story on in the collection and well worth listening to.
I would say that the collection is a ten out of ten just for the last story but if taken as a whole I would give it either a seven or eight out of ten. It is well worth your time.