REVIEW: Doctor Who: Doom Coalition 1 (Audio)

credit: Big Finish

A brand new audio series from Big Finish, Doom Coalition 1 is the start of an ambitious new story for Paul McGann‘s Eighth Doctor. His last audio series, Dark Eyes, came to a spectacular conclusion a few months ago with the release of its fourth and final season.

Dark Eyes was an ambitious sixteen episode series that involved not just the Eighth Doctor and his companions Molly O’Sullivan and Liv Chenka, but also the Daleks, the Master, and Big Finish’s own creations, the Dalek Time Controller and the Eminence. While it wasn’t perfect, it was overall a fantastic series that took the Eighth Doctor in a bold new direction, with a story told on a truly epic scale. Will Doom Coalition live up to the high standard that Dark Eyes set?

The first box set certainly gets off to a rather promising start with opening story ‘The Eleven’. Beginning with a nice little cameo from Sylvester McCoy in a flashback scene, the Eleven is a brand new Time Lord villain, one the Doctor was responsible for capturing and imprisoning on Gallifrey in his previous life. Some time after the events of Dark Eyes, the Eleven escapes to cause chaos on Gallifrey and beyond, and the Doctor and Liv are brought in to stop him.

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The Eleven is such a brilliant and simple idea that you do wonder how no one thought of it sooner. Usually, when a Time Lord regenerates, their personalities change as well. What’s interesting about the Eleven is that all of his previous bodies’s personalities are actually stuck inside his head with his current one, causing him to switch minds at any moment. This gives us a very unstable, very dangerous and completely unpredictable adversary, and he’s brilliantly played by Mark Bonnar.

It’s also great to have a story fully set on Gallifrey for the first time in a long while. Not only is a story set on Gallifrey a good indication that something major is about to go down (‘The War Games’, ‘The Deadly Assassin’ and ‘The Invasion of Time’ are a few examples,) it’s also great hearing the Doctor back amongst his own race, as you can really see how different and how much more “human” the Doctor is by comparison.

We’re also introduced to some other interesting Time Lords, particularly the double act of Padrac, an old childhood friend of the Doctor’s, and Lady Farina, who’s in charge of the Celestial Intervention Agency, an organisation that have given the Doctor very, very little reason to trust them over the many years. They make a great “good cop/bad cop” routine as they try to stop the Eleven.

After the fantastic set-up in ‘The Eleven’, the following episode ‘The Red Lady’ is a very different story altogether. Set in 1960s England, the Doctor meets new companion Helen Sinclair, a woman struggling to make a career at the National Museum while dealing with some very sexist attitudes. She’s a character that’s immensely likeable, partly due to her no-nonsense attitude (which admittedly leads to her getting on the wrong foot with the Eighth Doctor and Liv), but also because of a fantastic performance from Hattie Morahan. The chemistry with her, Paul and Nicola Walker is absolutely clear, and it’s great to get a brand new team dynamic.

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Next: PAGE 2: Galileo

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‘The Red Lady’ is also rather unique in that it’s more of a horror story for Eight. With the exception of ‘The Chimes of Midnight’ from over a decade ago (and easily one of the greatest Doctor Who stories ever – seriously, you should check it out asap,) and one or two stories with Mary Shelley, there aren’t that many “scary” stories for McGann’s Doctor in the audios.

It’s a refreshing change of pace, and John Dorney crafts a really horrifying tale that plays on something as basic as perception. I felt more than a little reminded of the Weeping Angels while listening to it, particularly in their first ever appearance when we knew so little about them. This isn’t a criticism, however, as I’m amazed at how an idea so visual could work and horrify so well in audio form. Overall, ‘The Red Lady’ is a wonderfully creepy story and my favourite episode of the set. (It also leaves me very excited about how Big Finish will handle the Weeping Angels next year in their “Classic Doctors, New Monsters” box set.)

‘The Galileo Trap’ I wasn’t so keen on. While I’ve enjoyed a lot of Marc Platt’s previous stories (‘Spare Parts’ in particular is a classic), I think this episode was partially let down by the villains of the piece, which came across as one-dimensional stereotypes, at times. I enjoyed the depiction of Galileo himself, and there was a great mix of historical setting with some great science-fiction ideas (particularly the idea of “tourists” from other worlds wanting to visit Earth). I just feel that with just a little bit of tightening up and if the villains felt more fleshed out, this could have been significantly better.

‘The Satanic Mill’ finally has the Doctor catching up with the Eleven, and while I won’t give too much away, the Eleven does finally reveal his plans…or rather, part of his plans. By the end, after a slightly unsatisfying resolution, a great deal of questions raised from the first episode are left unanswered, and there are strong hints of something much bigger to come.

I wasn’t too surprised by this. Unlike Dark Eyes, which was a story originally planned to be told in just one box set before its huge success lead to three subsequent seasons, Doom Coalition was announced as a 16 episode series from the start. So while in Dark Eyes 1, virtually everything had been neatly wrapped up by the fourth episode (although kudos to Big Finish, they were able to develop the rest of the series as a natural continuation very nicely), it’s unsurprising to know that not everything is resolved by the final episode of Doom Coalition 1.

The main question is, how has this impacted the series as a whole? Well, for one thing, it’s interesting how there’s a real mixture of stories in this set with only the faintest hints of an arc. In some ways, it feels closer in tone to the Eighth Doctor Adventures with Lucie Miller, or even the current TV series: mostly stand-alone episodes with a noticeable running thread through each of the stories, rather than one grand story of each episode leading to the next as we got with Dark Eyes. I’m curious how the series will continue and evolve over the next two years.

If you’re curious about Big Finish and want to jump on board, especially if you’re more used to the New Series, Doom Coalition 1 is a great place to start. With a new storyline, a new companion and a new enemy, it’s a clear and promising new beginning for the Eighth Doctor.

Next: Peter Capaldi as the Punk Doctor