Domian of the Voord

The TARDIS comes to rest on the planet Hydra, specifically on board a ship at sea. The ship is one of a flotilla, and they are all the survivors of an invasion of their planet by a merciless enemy. The refugee fleet comes under attack and the Doctor and Barbara are separated from Susan and Ian, and the TARDIS itself is feared lost as the ship is is on sinks. The invaders are revealed to be the Voord, and unlike with their ill fated campaign on Marinus this time they are winning this war, conquering Hydra with relative ease and slowly mopping up the resistance. But Ian and Susan have helped defeat the Voord before, and if they can reunite with the Doctor and Barbara they can do so again, provided they are all still alive.

So the Voord are back, last seen in The Keys of Marinus in 1964. As far as blog continuity goes it's only been a month since that episode was reviewed but this audio drama was only released in 2014, a half century after the Voord were first seen on television. Do William Russell and Carole Ann Ford sound 50 years older on audio? Well maybe a bit in the supplemental parts of the disc but as far as their performances go they blend well with the televised series. I still find it amazing that here are these actors of advanced age now - William Russell is 91 - still playing the same characters they did all those years ago, and enjoying it. To listen to the show it doesn't sound as if they are just doing this for a paycheque, you can tell that in many ways they still *are* the characters they played back then, and even when they are playing the roles once held by their late cast members their passion for the work remains. William Russell can do a great William Hartnell impression but in the interview section of the disc he fondly says that there was only ever one Doctor for him, that being Hartnell. I really don't think that there's any other program out there that has this kind of ongoing involvement with the actors who have come before and put it on the map in its formative years - but then it's the simple fact that there is no other program like Doctor Who anyway that makes it so.

The Voord in Domain are much different than the ones we saw on Marinus. Yartek's expedition to conquer that world is explained to have been a smaller force, whereas Hydra is fully occupied. Writer Andrew Smith has taken the Voord and given them a fuller backstory which was probably not in Terry Nation's original drafts, and it's not a bad one, although the revelation of their true nature makes them seem like pseudo Cybermen. In fact there was a comic strip called The World Shapers in the old Doctor Who Magazine which tried to suggest that the Voord were actually Cybermen at some point but he has craftily dodged going there. To be Voord is now a more personalized experience, more like posession by the Shadows of Babylon 5 than being made a Cyberman, or, worse, Borg. The Voord of Keys of Marinus, Yartek in particular, were not treated to any voice modulation and had to speak around their masks but here they have a more processed sound to them, more menacing than Yartek's crazed screaming when he is intimidating Sabetha. And the interest they take in Susan as a potential convert to the Voord way of life is downright... different. They are confident enough in their ways that they believe she will willingly join them and give them the secret of the TARDIS. But this is set one hundred years after Marinus so they may well have evolved somewhat. The name of the Voord homeworld is not given but it is categorically not Marinus, so odds are Big Finish are going to trot these guys out again at some point to do battle with one of the Doctors again in one of the other series lines they produce.

Domian is a bit more than the previous Lost Stories in that it's original material now, and it is set apart a bit from Big Finish's Companion Chronicles line because it is a full cast and not one original actor telling the story from their perspective. Under the banner of The Early Adventures there will be much more of this sort of thing to come, and the news that Barbara has been re-cast for the next series of four stories is welcome to say the least, even if I won't get them in time to include in this blog. After hearing Fragile Arc of Fragrance, Farewell Great Macedon, Masters of Luxor and now Domain with less than the full original cast I am starting to get antsy to get back to the televised series and have everyone together on screen again.

But not just yet.

NEXT EPISODE: THE FLYWHEEL REVOLUTION