The Bounty of Ceres

When the Doctor stranded the Monk in 1066 he removed the dimensional control from his foe's TARDIS, shrinking the inside until it fit proportionally with its smaller exterior shell. The Doctor attempts to fit the same device into his own ship to generate more space inside but the experiment goes disastrously wrong and he, Steven and Vicki are forced to abandon ship. They find themselves on a mining outpost on Ceres, a body withing the asteroid belt of the solar system, and they are immediately suspected to sabotaging the base's operations. The Doctor suspects that there is more going on and one of the crew is in mortal fear of "her" wrath, believing that there is some entity at large on Ceres with designs on wiping them all out.

This is one of Big Finish's Early Adventures episodes, like Domain of the Voord and The Doctor's Tale, written to be a full cast audio rather than a half-narrated Companion Chronicle. Whereas the two previous adventures of this banner attempted to maintain a similar style of storytelling to the relative era of the show they were set in, Ceres is a firm departure from that, going further into technical science fiction and telling a grittier harsher tale. Themes of claustrophobia, isolation and fear and evoked, reminiscent of sci fi films like Alien and newer series episodes such as The Impossible Planet and The Waters of Mars. The Doctor and company are dropped right into this one and mesh perfectly into the setting, with Steven and Vicki realizing that the events they are witnessing are in their relative pasts but obscure enough that they do not know if what is going on is part of something bigger in the web of time.

The three staffers on the base are what you would expect all the way out there alone: they're wary and a bit frightened, suspicious and paranoid. The systems that should protect them are breaking down. Quershi sticks to her routines and facts, finding comfort in procedure. Moreland is not so quietly going nuts, hearing voices and staying just this side of a full blown meltdown. And Thorn is the token cool one, accepting that there is a problem and remaining open to suggestions about what it is yet not really welcoming any. The TARDIS crew have the usual sorts of trouble with this lot: they're captured, stunned, locked up, released, not trusted... you know, the usual things that happen when they try to help. They have no choice but to attempt to survive with the crew; with the TARDIS out of commission they are dead if they do not.

Continuity wise there are no direct leads from any other adventure, nor are there any into the next, so Big Finish can continue to bring Peter Purves and Maureen O'Brien back together repeatedly and keep building their adventures in this space between broadcast stories (the upcoming Ravelli Conspiracy would be next but is not to be released until November of this year). The TARDIS team sound as if they are well into their groove as a unit, with Steven and Vicki adopting a brother and sister type of bond, squabbling a lot but still doing what the Doctor tells them (or yells at them). Purves performs in place of William Hartnell once again like only he can (he manages to still sound like a twentysomething Steven Taylor in one breath and a cranky old man the next), and it's like the Doctor is right there in the studio with them.

But as there are no more audios for this section, we're headed back to the televised episodes once more, and Vicki is headed for her destiny...

NEXT EPISODE: THE MYTH MAKERS