The Mouthless Dead

The TARDIS makes a rough landing and is damaged as a result. While the ship attempts to repair itself the Doctor, Polly, Ben and Jamie emerge onto a train station platform in the winter of 1920. The signalman on station assumes that the travellers are there to get a closer look at the train carrying the Unknown Warrior as it passes through town, but the longer they stay the more they realize that they do not appear to be alone, with silent shadowy figures gathering around the station for some purpose of their own.

This was one of four new Companion Chronicles released in a box
set of second Doctor themed titles, but the formula is slightly different with a full cast as opposed to the usual two - three max - performers. This one is definitely a Jamie perspective though, as he sees things like trains and more modern things with a sense of wonder and in some cases apprehension. Fraser Hines does his usual double duty and really nails the Doctor's voice this time (sometimes you can hear him slip a little bit in other audios) in addition to tweaking his own to sound like a youthful Jamie. Narration duties pass over to Anneke Wills as Polly here and there, but Elliot Chapman is back as Ben to round out the cast. The ensemble cast makes it feel like another Early Adventure but the format of narration and a shorter story (two episodes instead of four) is definitely Companion Chronicles material.

There's a bit more companion bonding here than in other places, most notably with Ben and Jamie this time as they realize that their own life experiences as soldiers gives them more in common than they thought, despite the difference in their temporal backgrounds. Polly is given a female friend to relate to - a girl named Francis who lost her fiancee at the Battle of the Somme and hopes, against hope, that the Unknown Warrior may actually be him. And then there are spots where the three of them get to talk together and it's just... well it's what the TV series rarely achieved given how Jamie was chucked into the mix so suddenly; in fact it seemed that the only way Ben or Jamie could really develop was to have one of them out of the room so no-one had to split up lines for them. The care Big Finish like to take with their scripts doesn't leave anyone standing around corpsing (as far as one can corpse on audio but Janet Fielding would no doubt have an opinion about that).

Chapman, Wills, Hines

This is, though, the last of the Big Finish audios with this newly invigorated team from this 60s era. For now. The fourth series of Early Adventures is due for release in September 2017 by which point, though, I will be getting close to the end of the second Doctor's adventures, so they will have to wait. So far there are no cast listings but as director Lisa Bowerman has said, they intend to employ Elliot "ruthlessly" so odds are this team is going to have more days together ahead of them.


NEXT EPISODE: THE FACELESS ONES