The End [AUDIO/2022.10.6]

★★★★☆

  The most interesting thing for me in The End, beyond the time spiders and the branching timestreams (which admittedly led to one of Big Finish's most intriguing synopses), is Jacob Dudman's performance as the Eleventh Doctor. Sure, he sounds very much like Matt Smith, but that's not what I'm going for here. Somewhere in the middle of this adventure (or possibly in the middle of the Geronimo! boxset), Dudman starts to lose a bit of the stressed Smith impersonation, and acts with a tone and cadence much more of his own. Oddly enough, it reminds me of theatre director Tina Landau's efforts with the Spongebob Squarepants Broadway musical (...I have many interests), and how she intended for actors to slowly shift their impression-heavy performance into a much more natural embodiment of their own. This way, Dudman sounds more like himself than Smith but still feels unquestionably like the Eleventh Doctor. Nice stuff.

  As for everything else... what can I say, great stuff all round. Time entities infecting main characters and wreaking havoc on continuity is a tried and true idea, but Rochana Patel manages to craft a stylish and novel hour-long adventure with the audience constantly being shifted between the Doctor's reality and Valerie's. It's the perfect story for this format; I think its novelty would've worn off long before hitting the two-hour mark had it been made as such, but as an hour-long story it's perfect. I honestly didn't think I'd have this much fun with the Geronimo! boxset; boy, how I love being wrong.