| THE NEXT LIFE by Alan Barnes & Gary Russell |
| Story 64 Synopsis: The TARDIS breaks up, C'rizz and Charley fall into the clutches of Rassilon, and the Doctor washes up on a desert island, where he meets Perfection, and her husband, Daqar Keep. Keep frames the Doctor for murder, and sets him off as the focus of a hunt. Perfection ends up joining him, as does Charley. C'rizz meets Guidance, the head of the Church of the Foundation, his faith. They all make their way to the Church, which turns out to really be the Foundry, where Rassilon makes his entrance. Shortly, there will be a planetary alignment, and a short chance to nip back into their normal universe. Keep plans to use it to absorb the universe, as he absorbed the Divergents. Perfections wants to travel through as well, but the Doctor realises she is Zagreus. Rasslion has offered C'rizz a chance at redemption, but the Eutermesan realises it was just a trick. The Doctor tries to offer the Kro'ka his TARDIS. Keep sends Rassilon and the Kro'ka back to the starting point where he was created during the Doctor and Charley's 1st excursion. Zagreus enters the TARDIS, to find it is Keep in disguise. Whilst they're preoccupied, the Doctor, Charley and C'rizz enter the TARDIS, and return to their own universe, where they find themselves on a Dalek ship... |
| Review:- So the journey must end, but who will make it to the final frame? Big Finish have faced many problems as they have grown since 1999. Having managed to secure the services of the incumbent Doctor, they could believe that there was a good chance that the show would never return on telly, and apart from the BBC book range, they had carte blanche to do what they liked. This seems to have been the thinking behind the whole Divergent Universe series, which was intended to run for twice as long as it actually did. Whether listeners would have gone for this is moot, because the show did inconveniently return to telly, and BF decided to curtail the whole adventure, so as not to confuse any new customers would come their way. So, after the promising ending to Caerdroia, we suddenly get 6 episodes to wrap up the whole darn shebang, and tell a new tale along the way. In some respects, it succeeds really well. The mystery of the island, and the arrival of the Church of the Foundation ties back to C'rizz's origins, and both Guidance and Daqar Keep make curious and compelling characters. The former's relevance to C'rizz makes his journey the most significant. Against this, the Doctor's struggle for survival, with the dogged Perfection, serves as an interesting way to develop the presented narrative. Her lack of regard for Keep is credible, and later proves to be as surprising as her intended is... Unfortunately, after waiting for the whole series, Rassilon is neither terribly interesting, or given much to do - save expose C'rizz's past, which is novel (unless you recall Turlough). The Kro'ka is also wasted, his antics as a tormentor and teaser of the Doctor rather diminished by his fawning Peter Lorre routine with Rassilon. Their fate is amusing, but somehow rather tragic. Surely both of them deserved a bit better, madcap villains or not. But the worst fate belongs to Charley, the tiresome adventuress who risked her life to stay on the TARDIS in this Universe, a decision that seems to have been more driven by off-screen needs, than on-screen ones. She reaches a nadir here, moaning about Perfection, Keep, C'rizz, Rassilon and pretty much everything. A jaded companion who's sick of their struggles calls to mind Tegan or Peri. Here, Charley seems to be in a permanent grump, and quite happy to be so. Her childish spat with C'rizz leads to the dreadful scene right near the end where the Doctor endangers their return to try and get them to be friends. Sick-making and non-sensical. Keep and Perfection turn out to be crucial to the Doctor's journey, which is explained in the comical info-dump during pt 4 where the same information is told by 3 groups at the same time, and makes only the vaguest sense. The idea that Keep is the creature created back in Scherzo, and who has merged with the Divergents rather cheapens their achievements, but does at least create a quasi-impressive foe. Perfection, on the other hand, turns out to be Zagreus, of all people, something that presumably wasn't foreseen, and which proves all too futile. Their fate, as they get wrapped up in each other at the crucial moment, is neither apt nor much cop. And so it is, that the Doctor, in a Universe with time, shows perfect timing and uses the TARDIS to return home. And into trouble straight away... Overall, then, this is quite a decent tale in its own right, but as a conclusion to the previous 7 or 8 plays, it drops the ball too often. With the door being shut on this Universe, loose ends are a mistake, but at least the series seems back on its feet again - with C'rizz's past and true nature remaining a secret, whilst Charley's fate is open again (her plot having been resolved ages ago). What does the future hold for this Doctor? Only one way to find out... |
| Disclaimer: I own a copy. |