Pointless Witterings

Released: February 2011 Range: Short Trips Range Number: 2.04 Read by Louise Jameson  Written by Darren Goldsmith  Directed by Nicholas Briggs & Ken Bentley  One single coin can set off a facinating sequence of events... If you're a Time Lord.  While it may not be the most interesting of the Short Trips series, the one thing I really like about Chain Reaction is it's simple story idea. These short stories really need to hit the ground running to make any sort of impact, and that's one thing that this story does. To my mind, it's an excellent story that is a near perfect excersize in economical storytelling.  The premise is simple, but effective. It can be summed up in a few words: the Doctor, using a pound coin, attempts to get a bag of jelly babies. Now, this being the the Doctor, it isn't quite the normal 'go-and-ask-for-some' that you'd expect. Instead, he turns it into a complex temporal game, which becomes very complicated very quickly. However,...

Released: February 2006 Range: The Main Range Range Number: 79 Starring Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, Philip Olivier, Bernard Kay, Joanna McCallum, Andrew Forbes, Ann Beach, Duncan Duff & Lizzie Hopley Written by Edward Young Directed by Gary Russell  "I warn you, things could get very nasty here before they get better." A remote Scottish mansion. Five bickering academics are haunted by ghosts from their past. Reluctantly, they offer shelter to the Doctor and his companions Ace and Hex.  Hex, already troubled by a vivid nightmare, is further disturbed by the night-time appearence of a whistling, hooded apparition.  Ace tries to befriend the young housemaid, Sue. Sue knows secrets. She knows why the academics have assembled here, and she knows why they are all so afraid. But Sue's lips are sealed - she prefers to communicate through her disturbing toy, Happy the Rabbit. And then the killing begins. Gruesome deaths that lead the Doctor and his friends to discover the ...

Released: January 2015 Range: The Novel Adaptations Range Number: 4 Starring Tom Baker, Lalla Ward, John Leeson, Terrence Hardiman, Derek Carlyle, Richard Braine, Abigail McKern, Annabel Mullion, Mark Bonnar, Tim Bentinck, Andrew Bone & Jane Slavin Written by Gareth Roberts  Adapted by John Dorney  Directed by Nicholas Briggs  The Doctor, Romana and K-9 arrive in 1930's London to return some overdue library books. They plan to take a rest after their recent adventures, but Romana detects a distress signal from the future and the Doctor is attacked by a suffocating green mist. After the sucess of Love And War and The Highest Science, it's no wonder that Big Finish are really stepping up their novel adaptations to a full blown range. And it was rather natural that the fourth Doctor Gareth Roberts novels would be among the first to get the full on treatment. And, having not read the original novel, The English Way Of Death's audio adaption is a curious beast. On the one ...

Released: February 2012 Range: The Main Range Range Number: 157 Starring Colin Baker, Lisa Greenwood, Julian Wadham, Yasmin Bannerman, Hywel Morgan, Martin Hutson, Tilly Gaunt, Kim Wall & Henry Devas  Written by John Dorney  Directed by Nicholas Briggs  Business is bad for intergalactic media mogul Augustus Scullop, whose Trans-Gal empire is on the rocks. But, having retreated to his own private planet, Transmission, Scullop is about to gamble his fortune on a new show, made with an entirely new technology. And the name of that show... is Laser. Back in the real world, far from the realms of small screen sci-fi fantasies about monsters and aliens, the Doctor is interested only in watching Test Match cricket... but finds himself drawn into Scullop's world when his new travelling companion, Flip, is snatched from inside the TARDIS. So, while the Doctor uncovers the terrible secret of Trans-Gal's new tech, Flip battles to survive in a barren wilderness ruled over by the ...

Released: February 2014  Range: Dark Eyes Range Number: 2.01 Starring Paul McGann, Nicola Walker, Chris Porter, David Dobson, John Dorney, Nicholas Briggs & Brian Shelley  Written and Directed by Nicholas Briggs  Nixyce VII is under Dalek occupation. For many, their only hope of survival is decent medical care, as slave working conditions under the Dalek regime are appalling. But when you help people to survive under the rule of the Daleks, are you actually helping the Daleks? Med-tech Liv Chenka doesn't have the luxury of pondering these dilemmas. She must just do what she feels is right. But then there are the soldiers of last resort... the freedom fighters left behind to cause maximum damage to the Dalek war effort, at whatever cost. To them, anyone who seems to be helping the Daleks is a traitor. And when the Doctor arrives, his secret agenda throws him into conflict with everyone. After Dark Eyes hadn't really worked for me on many levels, I had hoped that Dark E...