Kill the Doctor! / The Age of Sutekh [AUDIO/2018.5.16]

★★★☆☆

  Perhaps the first half was a bit too good for its own good. Kill the Doctor! is a breeze to listen to, with an especially good role for Leela to take (rustling up the economic underdogs in this dystopian future city) and a Tom Baker performance that feels like a nice blend of Seasons 14 and 15. The first two episodes of this two-parter feel so different, so refreshing for the range; I couldn't stop listening to it. The characters were fun, Gabriel Woolf was killing it as Sutekh and everything seemed to point to something truly special in a Big Finish range that often focused on reliving past glories.

  Unfortunately for me, The Age of Sutekh (perhaps inevitably) turns back to a less interesting mishmash of familiar tropes: lots of shouting, humans under the thrall of [insert psychic control savvy villain here] taking up a good few minutes trying to escape, the usual Fourth Doctor Adventures musical cues that try so hard to emulate the Dudley Simpson experience, the lot. It's still an enjoyable latter two episodes, don't get me wrong; it's just that it rather pales in comparison to what came before, and that's never a good feeling to have.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ  

  As I revisit audio dramas from the Fourth Doctor Adventures range, I'm beginning to see that while I wasn't paying attention (I was quite busy in 2018), the writers were beginning to go for more ambitious ideas and concepts. Execution wise, this is as good as it could ever have been; Tom Baker and Louise Jameson are fantastic, and Nicholas Briggs displays an assured sense of direction in the first half. If it means anything... I have no doubt that I'll find more stories that I like as I cruise along the FDAs.