The Ninth Doctor has to get rid of a deadly weapon…

Big Finish’s final release for September 2020 is a debut in two senses – both of writer Amy Veeres and of Jacob Dudman’s rendition of the Ninth Doctor. The story is more of a Moffat era timey-wimey paradox than it is Series 1, but equally this is the season that gave us Father’s Day and its temporal convolutions. It serves to explain the picture of the Doctor at Krakatoa that Rose saw at Clive’s – something that is very deliberately brought up and dealt with – and intriguingly suggests that this Doctor travelled with another companion before Rose Tyler. There’s a little bit of the sense of manipulating Time that we also have in the Matt Smith era (notably Series 6) and the solution seems a little too easy.

Dudman’s Ninth Doctor gets stronger as the story progresses and you can almost hear him relaxing a little bit as he gets into his stride. Director Nicholas Briggs doesn’t force the pace, allowing the listener time to appreciate the conundrum at the story’s heart, and Richard Fox’s sound design adds the necessary rumbles for the location.

Verdict: A well presented peek at the Ninth Doctor’s life before Rose. 8/10

Paul Simpson

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