Spoiler-free review

Doom’s day is almost over. Time is running out. This could be the end. 

The multi-platform story about an assassin’s final 24 hours is tackled by Big Finish for the four hours from 8pm, and boasts the impressive production values we’ve come to expect from their full-cast audio plays, but is this too little, too late?

Sooz Kempner is a talented comedian – check out her standup act – but up until now I hadn’t been sold on her performance as Doom. The live-action trailers were hampered by poor visual effects, and her overexcited portrayal felt forced. But within the confines of these four real-time adventures, she gets to bloom. Sooz sizzles with some witty zingers, and we finally get to experience the character that was presumably intended from the outset.

I guess it’s unavoidable, but try not to look too closely at the image promoting this disc, as it does somewhat spoil some of the surprises. Across the quartet of tales we follow Doom’s interaction with a niche set of legacy characters, a former companion, a current companion and a Doctor – I’m not revealing who.

At the end of each hour-long story there’s around 15 minutes of interviews with the director John Ainsworth and some of the actors and writers, revealing some of the inspirations behind the plays. By the end of this set, there’s just one hour left before Doom meets her final hour.

Verdict: The strongest iteration of Doom’s Day so far, I just hope that there’s enough of a following for this strand left to enjoy it. 8/10

Nick Joy

Spoilers follow

Doom (Suze Kempner) is an assassin with a day to live. Each story in Doom’s Day is a different hour in that day as she frantically searches for the Doctor, who she hopes can save her. ‘Dying Hours’ covers her 20th to 23rd hour.

If you haven’t followed any of the rest to date, don’t worry, I didn’t either and I picked this up straight away.

In ‘Dawn of an Everlasting Peace’ Jacqueline Rayner and box set director John Ainsworth send us to Veus in 3975 on the day the non-aggression pact is signed. A perfect place for an assassination and a perfect time for Doom to start her run at Big Finish.

This is one of those stories you don’t see coming. Nested inside ‘The Dalek Master Plan’, it uses the Dalek delegates from that story as a start point and spins sideways into something entirely new. This is something the set does in every story and it always works very well. Here, it works fantastically well and this period of time, with its odd mix of optimism and cold war paranoia, fits Doom like a glove made of murder and knives. Sooz Kempner, who’s on top form throughout, is especially great here and the gap between Doom the assassin and Doom the human is where the story’s best moments live. Kempner plays her as a cheery, hard-charging, intensely confident figure who has convinced herself that nothing is going to get between her and her targets, especially when one of those targets is ‘live’. But just like the Doctor she’s terrified won’t help her, Doom can’t leave someone in trouble behind.

The heart of this story lies in Lonnet (Susie Ridell) and Klorin (Trevor Littledale). Lonnet is the wife of a recently killed Space Security Agent. Klorin is his three-year-old son, whose body has been aged to 90 by the same weapon that killed his dad. When we first meet them, we take them the same way Doom does; as a daughter and her aged dad. As Doom learns the truth, so do we and it breaks your heart in the best of ways.

Rayner’s script is breezy, snappy and very funny, essentially an action sequence with a punchline every few minutes. But it all orbits this relationship and how what’s happened to Klorin resonates with Doom’s time running out. Your attitude towards them evolves in lockstep with Doom’s and you can feel yourself going from sympathy to horror to grief as the story progresses. Littledale and Riddell are stunningly good here, playing Rayner’s painfully honest, open script with the sincerity it needs. Kempner, called on to anchor the meta plot, sell the action and show us Doom’s heart, excels too and there’s a scene towards the end which is the hardest of listens for the best of ways. This is intensely moving without being manipulative and it embodies the soul of Doom at her best: embattled, terrified, trying, even when it seems hopeless. It’s stunningly good work and it kicks the set off at an impossibly high standard that it never really drops from.

‘A Date with Destiny’ by Robert Valentine is a three hander and each of them is fantastic. Doom protects (mostly) Jackie Tyler from rival assassin Destiny (Yasmin Bannerman) and it’s so much fun. Camille Coduri’s always fantastic and Big Finish’s recent work has given her an opportunity to find new depths and pathos to her. This is no exception and Ben Arogundade as her doomed not-quite paramour Dennis leads to a real moment of introspection for her. Jackie’s manipulative but knows she is and, much like with the Sixth Doctor and Lady Cristina in her recent Once and Future appearance, she grows from meeting Doom.

Doom does too, confronted with her past in Destiny and her present through her interaction with Jackie. All three bounce off each other delightfully and Bannerman and Kempner have a fantastic spiky banter. The entire set uses established continuity very well but it’s arguably never better than it is here. This really feels like a story that’s both complete and sits inside a particular era of the show and it plays those established notes in a fun, new way. That helps the inventive action land too, and Doom battling Destiny’s high-tech weapons with Jackie’s washing line is a highlight of the set. ‘A Date with Destiny’ never stops moving but also never sets itself an easy task. The long dark night of the soul Doom begins here pays off throughout the final two stories here.

Simon Clark’s ‘The Howling Wolves of Xan-Phear’ signals another genre change, dropping Doom into the middle of an alien war. Doom’s target is a Silence, and the Silence has targets all of its own…

This is an interesting one and an interesting placement in the set. Rayner’s pathos-laden thriller and Valentine’s cheery murder romp set up an atmosphere which Clark’s story deliberately subverts. This plays, appropriately given how Doom is skittering along the Doctor’s timeline, a lot like an earlier Doctor story with Doom in the Doctor’s role. Kempner’s great here and her perky murder enthusiast is a neat contrast to the rest of the cast. Doom’s frantic need to find joy and meaning in her work means she’s constantly, antagonistically cheery. Here she’s doing that against the backdrop of what’s essentially a commando story with alien wolves and the contrast is lovely. It does take a while to get your ear in, but once you do it plays, weirdly, like the recent Lower Decks/Strange New Worlds crossover. Both approaches are valid and they bring new things out in each other. This is Doom at her most serious and it’s both a fun change and a clear continuation of Jackie confronting her with just what she is.

Clark crams the wolves full of interesting concepts too. Their howls are one part language one part tool and the way they’re used as the story progresses is blisteringly clever. So much so, in fact that I’d like to see them show up again, because of how they interact with the Silence. Jon Edgley-Bond’s berserker-like Fettzer is a memorable guest star too as is Rebecca Crankshaw’s dutiful Jeppra. The two soldiers almost act as externalized embodiments of Doom’s instincts; glorious violence versus considered, compassionate response. Neither is entirely right, neither is entirely wrong but both are interesting, well realized characters. Clark’s script impresses too, using jumps to show Silence interference and move the story in surprising directions. The sound design on the Silence impresses too as does Nicholas Briggs’ gloriously creepy turn as the Silence, Chu’Lac.

Of all the stories this one does have problems, and the Silence, oddly, is the biggest one. To make them, and the action, work there’s a lot of declarative dialogue of the ‘Look! The bridge is giving way!’ variety. It doesn’t break the story but it does mean you end up working a little harder than you might expect.

Lizzie Hopley’s ‘The Crowd’ closes the set out with Doom getting everything she wants and not remotely in a way she expects. Tasked to kill a group of people called The Crowd, she finds herself in Canterbury seconds before Thomas Beckett’s murder and runs, literally, into the Doctor.

This is Doom’s dark night of the soul and Hopley is the perfect writer for it. The reveal on what the Crowd are, disaster tourists who feed on death and find Doom’s reputation delicious, is inventively horrific and it gives Kempner some really interesting stuff to work with. Doom is a cheery ballerina of murder, a woman pirouetting through creative violence and the brutal artistry of what she’s been told are righteous kills. She compartmentalises to survive and when faced with the fact her work has an audience she recoils from it and herself. Kempner’s a wickedly smart performer and the way she plays Doom as running headlong back to what she knows best is spiky and poignant, untidy and affecting. It’s a credit to everyone involved too that this feels like a classic Eight/Charley story with an unexpected and chipper passenger. It’s fun, and bleak and clear eyed, just like Doom herself and closes the circle of her day, just in time for the final hour. An hour that Doom enters as a very different assassin to the one we meet in ‘Dawn of an Everlasting Peace’.

There’s so much to enjoy here and Kempner and Becky Wright as Terry, her controller, are a double act I could listen to for hours. Terry’s Bronx-driven grumpy hyper professionalism is the anchor for Doom’s flighty murder escapades and the two riff on each other beautifully. Do listen to the interviews too because Wright drops an insight into that relationship and why it works so well here which is flat out brilliant. Ainsworth’s direction and the scripts all impress too, and Rayner’s in particular stands as one of the best things Big Finish have released this year. Special note to the sound design too as Richard Fox, Andy Hardwick, Luke Pietnik and Marcus Graham build unique soundscapes for unique stories that help every story immensely.

The one issue is that, inevitably, Doom’s Day doesn’t quite finish here. Each story does end, and end definitively, but the story isn’t quite done and the final act is due for release digitally shortly.

Verdict: Having never encountered Doom before, I’ll be there for the finale, because this is fun. It’s different to everything else Big Finish have done, nested smartly inside continuity (The Knights of Oberon! Orcini would be so proud!) anchored by powerhouse performances from Kempner and Wright and FUN all the way down. Not bad for a (Doom’s) Day’s work. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart

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