The Shadow of the Scourge [AUDIO/2000.10.?]

★★★★☆

  As much as I have great fondness for these old, rather wonky photoshop jobs on these old Big Finish covers, there are times when I wish the company would re-release them with a fresh coat of paint, so to speak, so that people can finally stop thinking of superb adventures simply as 'that Big Finish audio with the terrible cover art' and actually give it a try. First impressions are important, especially for works of a primarily aural medium where the only visual reference is often the cover... and hey, if that's what it takes to bring more people's attention to The Shadow of the Scourge... maybe Big Finish should give the re-release idea a spin?

  I love this adventure, always have. Not only is the Scourge the kind of alien race that sparks the imagination and makes you envision the most awful body horror scenarios (after all, the Doctor himself has a space mantis body for approximately 40% of the runtime), but its weaponisation of fear and sadness allows the story to make the ultimate Dr. Who message: fight hatred with love, because love trumps all. The final episode really is a small triumph, in which all these wildly disparate elements (small details from incidental characters, a world-ending invasion scenario, the Doctor trapped inside a Scourge body) come together to make a mission statement so strong and clear in its message of love that one could very easily consider it a precursor to the new series morale (this was made five years before the resurgence). Paul Cornell really is a fantastic Dr. Who writer, and Shadow of the Scourge is a great example. It helps that I'm quite fond of the Virgin New Adventures; this is set in its timeline, and Benny and Ace make as fantastic a duo here as they have always been over there. The Seventh Doctor, of course, is an impenetrable scheming bastard, and Sylvester McCoy seems utterly confident portraying his character at this point. 

  So if you're looking for a Dr. Who story with a horrific alien invasion set in a hotel with a fun detour inside the Doctor's mind, go look up The Shadow of the Scourge. It's well-paced, it uses Ace really well, and it's a bloody good heap of fun to boot.