Doctor Who: Once and Future: Past Lives

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At the risk of damning it with faint praise, this is a nostalgic romp and it thoroughly entertains. As an opening chapter it naturally asks more questions than it answers, but it also comes stuffed full of pleasing references and rips along at a pleasing place. Once and Future is off to a promising start – roll on next month! Michelle Ryan added: “I love that I got to work with Colin. He’s great. He’s got that wisdom in his voice. I love the new dynamic (working with his Doctor), it’s a totally different dimension that I didn’t anticipate.” The inclusion of Sarah Jane was a fantastic touch, seeing that she served as a companion to Baker’s Doctor. There is a bittersweet moment hearing Sarah in the adventure, having lost Elisabeth Sladen years ago to cancer. However, her real-life daughter, Sadie Miller fills her shoes magnificently. She doesn’t miss a beat slipping into the role of Sarah Jane, bringing the same energy I’ve come to expect from Sladen. It’s a nice tribute to bring her daughter in on the roles and I could think of no one else who could properly do the role justice.

The story, which brings together the degenerating Doctor (stabilised as the Fifth) with his future daughter Jenny, also introduces him to The Curator. The future, retired version of the Time Lord who began on screen in ‘The Day of the Doctor’, is played here by Sixth Doctor star Colin Baker – a role he took on during the Eighth Doctor’s Stranded storyline. Meanwhile, River Song has made a deadly alliance to try to save her husband. And the truth about the Doctor’s degeneration will finally be revealed. Special Edition Meanwhile, at a holiday resort, Liv Chenka meets the deeply annoying, slightly unhinged “good” Master, The Lumiat. They’re soon wrapped into the story as the sea drains away and the sand men appear from the beach. Additionally, the cover for standard edition of ‘The Artist at the End of Time’ has been revised, although the Special Edition version remains the same.So, for them, and for me, the joyous bit is the intellectual chess game they play with each other, as to who’s going to win, rather than the bangs and the whistles. At the end of it, it’s all about the battle of minds. Doctor Who – Once and Future: Past Lives stars Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor (with special appearances by Stephen Noonan, Michael Troughton, Tim Treloar, Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor’s other incarnations), Sadie Miller as Sarah Jane Smith, Rufus Hound as the Meddling Monk, Jemma Redgrave as Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, and Ingrid Oliver as Petronella Osgood. The Doctor stabilises into his Fifth form to join forces with Jenny and the Curator to solve the mystery of the Final Gallery and the art it has collected.

In the first moments of Past Lives, listeners are thrown into a situation that we haven’t quite seen before, with the exception of the final moments of The Power of the Doctor. Why is the Doctor regenerating into faces that we’ve already seen? What’s causing this degeneration and what happens when he runs out of past faces to visit? So many questions and as the tension rises, the Doctor stabilizes as Tom Baker’s face, thanks to the calming effect of the TARDIS. The Time War. The Doctor has been injured and brought to a Time Lord field hospital. His body glows with energy, but this is no regeneration into a future form – instead, the Doctor’s past faces begin to appear as he flits haphazardly between incarnations… Big Finish begin their audio celebration of Doctor Who’s 60 th anniversary with Once and Future: Past Lives, a Tom Baker led tale that involves the Meddling Monk and modern-day UNIT. Once again, the story here is really just an excuse to bring some favourites together but then, isn’t that what an anniversary special is all about? Multiple Doctors and some previously unheard-of Time Lord mythology? ‘Time Lord Immemorial’ ups the ante with a threat to the multiverse thrown in for good measure too. Writer Lisa McMullin said: “This particular set was a real gift because I got to make two characters that you might not expect to be able to interact because they’re in different universes, and then converge those universes and have them collide. There’s a whole heap of fun where they’re trying to decide which universe they’re in. The Ninth and Unbound Doctors were so much fun and a joy. They worked together really well, and bounced beautifully off each other.”

Sylvester McCoy added: “Doctor Who was only supposed to last for six weeks and it's now sixty years! It's astonishing. The third instalment of Big Finish’s Doctor Who 60 th anniversary series is Once and Future: A Genius for War .

Former Hartnell-era companion actor Maureen O’Brien voices the mini-series’ big bad The Union and it sounds like she’s having a blast! We may be getting closer to the conclusion of the eight-part story arc but, later this month, the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann), Susan (Carole Ann Ford), River Song (Alex Kingston), and, once again, the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) will get to the bottom of the degeneration crisis in The Union… We listened to the Special Edition version of ‘Time Lord Immemorial’ which comes with 36 minutes of extras featuring contributions from the whole cast, as well as the writer and the production team. There’s a genuine camaraderie between them, with talk of early Doctor Who memories and the show’s enduring appeal. The Doctor arrives in 2010 London, where something besides the Meddling Monk is occurring. There’s a cloaking device detected above Glastonbury, one that UNIT is already aware of. In walks Kate Stewart, the head of UNIT, and her right-hand woman Osgood. These two, along with The Doctor, work together to get to the bottom of what the Monk is up to and how they can stop him before he causes too much chaos.

Doctor Who - Once and Future

As the conflict with the Daleks rages on, the Time Lords have received an offer they dare not at least consider. Incarcerated by his own creations, Davros is reaching out – he asks for liberation from Skaro’s prison moon of Falkus but insists on the identity of his rescuer: the Doctor.

While Doctor Who: Once and Future: Past Lives is a strong story from start to finish, there are some issues. You can tell that this is the first part of a much longer story. The chapters of Once and Future are being released over multiple months, in chunks like episodes of a weekly series. Many of the offerings I’ve had from Big Finish have been multiple chapters collected in one set, providing an entire story. Once and future is like getting small snippets to wet my palette, but the length of time between each part feels way too long. We’re over halfway through 2023 and the 60th anniversary celebration for Doctor Who is just beginning. The promotional material for the anniversary specials has started to roll out, but the Doctor Who party has been in full swing all year over here at The Cosmic Circus. November is still pretty far away, but don’t worry, Big Finish has you covered for those looking for something special to celebrate the monumental occasion. Spanning eight episodes, Doctor Who: Once and Future tells an epic story that sees the Doctor facing a challenge he has never faced before. The first chapter, Doctor Who: Once and Future: Past Lives, begins our journey with a bang! With two releases in the month of October, the main narrative of Big Finish’s Doctor Who: Once and Future draws to a close (save for a Coda due in November 2024.)Additionally, there’s a reunion for Susan (Carole Ann Ford) and River Song (Alex Kingston), who first met in one of River’s audio adventures (albeit with Susan played by Claudia Grant from An Adventure in Space and Time.)