Doctor Who: The Light at the End

Big Finish fills the need for more Classic Who adventures by recruiting the original actors from the Classic Doctor Who series and releasing new audio dramas.  Which I absolutely love listening to!  And they recently released their 50th Anniversary tribute with this multi-doctor story that technically involves all the Doctors from 1-8, but of course only the original 4-8 Doctors lend their vocal talent to this story.  With the 50th Anniversary very nearly upon us (this Saturday!! Eeeeee!!!!) I wanted to talk about this fun story where all these Doctors get to interact.  It must be difficult to find a way to feature five Doctors and their companions in a two hour drama, but I think Big Finish did a great job giving each Doctor their moment to shine.

I have to say though, there is a lot going on in this story and I had to listen to it a second time to even begin to comprehend what the Master's (yay, he's here too!) dastardly plan was, and even with the second listen I could probably do with another one to catch all the little nuances and references.  I don't want to say that this is a fault though, because again with such an ambitious plot, it makes sense that things get convoluted, and I really like the idea of going back and finding something new with each listen.  The story itself is a little thin when it comes to the Master's big plan because it is basically ridiculous to believe it would have ever worked, but the real focus of this audio should be the Doctors' interactions, and that is definitely the highlight.  I absolutely loved how all the Doctors' worked together!

Individually I felt like each Doctor's quirkiness was captured in the scenes and lines they were given.  I especially loved Tom Baker's one-liners!  And the way Sylvester McCoy rolls his 'R's' is always fun to listen to.  And Ace had a genius scene where after she had seen the incarnations of the other Doctors filter through the TARDIS like ghosts she clarifies with her Doctor (#7) about all the guys she saw.  Namely:
"Old man, white hair
Beatles haircut,
Frilly shirt,
Long scarf, big eyes
Cricket boy,
Joseph and his amazing technicolor dream coat
Lord Byron"

The best!  There are other opportunities in this audio for the Doctors to take the mickey as it were out of themselves and their past and future incarnations.  It was interesting to have some pair up with each other as well - 4/8 and 6/7 had to team up, and they did such a good job bouncing ideas off of each other.   I suppose with a multi-doctor adventure you want a story that captures the individual Doctor, gives them an opportunity to react to each other (in some case in how they turned out) in a humorous way and also have a story that fundamentally needs multiple Doctors to solve it.  And this audio does a great job fulfilling those requirements.  It's going to be very interesting to see what Steven Moffat has done with his multi-doctor adventure this Saturday.  And while it's disappointing that all the surviving Doctors couldn't make it onscreen for the 50th Anniversary special (although it looks like there is a surprise up Moffat's sleeve!  ILU Tom Baker!) it's wonderful to hear the Classic Doctors all together in "The Light at the End."

Check out the audio on the Big Finish website

And here's the trailer for the story!