Their Finest Hour [AUDIO/2018.4.10]

★★★☆☆

  If you have the opinion that all boxset entries should have some apparent connection to the overarching narrative of the larger series, I'm afraid Their Finest Hour may be a disappointment. For those of you who are more lenient to that sort of thing, it's a surprisingly tight little audio drama that's well worth listening for that particular Eighth Doctor/WWII craving. Well, as long as you can stomach Winston Churchill being the Doctor's chum, that is.

  Call me delusional, but judging from their performances here, I think the break Paul McGann and Nicola Walker must've had (a bit of guesswork here, but I'm assuming Big Finish would've given both of them at least some time off between recording two giant series) did them a world of good. By Stop the Clock in the Doom Coalition series, they both sounded a little fatigued, and I don't blame them for being somewhat burdened by all the technobabble and heady drama of their Doom Coalition adventures. Come Their Finest Hour, they're much more fired up for whatever scripts come their way; the Doctor -- with the silkiest smooth voice -- eases his way into airborne adventures and mysterious alien aircrafts, and Liv takes on an assured and more emotionally vulnerable role than usual. Their performances are well worth listening to, and I'd say that the entire audio drama is pretty well-paced and directed. With a very simple plot (albeit an intriguing one), it manages to ease listeners back into the audio adventures of the Eighth Doctor and Liv (searching for Helen) by being quite entertaining, and that's always commendable.