Big Finish: Lady Christina: Series 2 Review

I’ll admit, I never liked Planet of the Dead, the first of David Tennant’s final series of festive specials in 2009. So when the news that Michelle Ryan was coming back as Lady Christina De Souza, the cat burglar companion from that story for her own audio series, I was less than enthused. But then I gave Series 1 a listen and was very impressed. Ryan won me over instantly and the series of stories was incredibly well handled. Now I’ve learned to give Big Finish a lot of trust with what they do, I don’t approach spin-offs as negatively anymore. So I was excitedly awaiting Series 2 of her adventures, which, just like Series 1, didn’t disappoint.

The Wreck opens Series 2 in a sunny climate. Set off the coast of Zanzibar, we get a family reunion of sorts, with Christina meeting up with her father, Alfred De Souza and his new fiance, Bunny. James Goss makes sure to throw us in the deep end right away, with the discovery of an alien shipwreck and, while exploring it, Christina and her father discover the terrible truth of its origins. Finding out it’s a slave ship, they bring some of the items and corpses back on their boat and begin to look. But one touch of the crystals that cover everything slowly turns you into a crystalline creature, which Bunny discovers to her horror.

While in the opening scenes, Bunny, voiced by Rose Coduri, the daughter of Jackie Tyler herself, Camille Coduri, was a little annoying, she comes into her own towards the end, getting perhaps one of the more emotional scenes of this series, with her slow realisation she is dying. One of the best things about Volume 1 of this series was the exploration of Christina’s family and that continues with the inclusion of her father, Alfred, who can’t put aside his greed and almost, magpie tendencies for anything shiny, to help his fiance not suffer too much. It’s a darker turn to take the character, given how he was played a little for laughs in the debut series, but when he gets a little too greedy, he finds he has fallen victim to the same metamorphosis as Bunny.

This allows Goss to give us a story throughout this second series, as well as the inclusion of Sam Bishop from the UNIT series, which did feel a little tacked on towards the end of the story, as did the ending with Sam and Christina swimming to shore, reminding me of Brody at the end of Jaws. But a giant shark doesn’t swim up and eat them, instead, we get a rather strange ending in which the story just seems to…end, without any ceremony and it lacks any depth, despite the water they are swimming in.

It’s a shame because the main bulk of the story was a lot of fun, with Christina and her father diving below the depths to uncover a shipwreck and the exploration of their family giving both characters some much-needed background, allowing us to understand why she decided to become a cat-burglar in the first place.

The second story, Outback from Sarah Grochala, owes a lot of the monster b-movies of the 1950s/60s, with giant grubs crawling out of the ground in the Outback. We meet another member of Christina’s family, her Aunt Eugenia, who, if Christina is a play on Lara Croft, owes a lot to Indiana Jones. Much of the story focuses on her trying to find the mythical Fountain of Youth, and digging through the desert, the story has an action-packed conclusion, that, much like The Wreck, feels like it’s over a little too quickly.

For me though, the weakest part of this story was the accents. No doubt Janet Fielding would have something to say if she heard some of the dodgy accents going on here. Whether that was down to the accents or the dialogue that would only be given to a comedy sketch about those down under, I don’t know.

But to Grochala’s credit, there is some genuine tension here, especially towards the end. You do feel that there is a terrible moral dilemma for the characters at the end and it’ll take you by surprise. While this one too ends a little too quickly, it sticks the landing a lot better than The Wreck does and it is nice that this isn’t an alien invasion story. But actress Sian Phillips, playing Aunt Eugenia more than makes up for some of the script’s short fallings.

Series 2 comes to an end with Long Shot. Writer John Dorney delivers an interesting story which deals with Christina’s father while being told from the different perspectives of the different characters involved. This was an interesting way of telling the story, I always like it when writers think out of the box when telling tales, though it did take me a little while to realise that this was how this story was being told.

Picking upright in the middle of the action is a way to certainly grab your attention, though it might not have been the best way to get listeners into the story, I think that’s why it confused me in the beginning. But once the different perspectives settle down, it’s an enjoyable ride that sees Sam Bishop on Christina’s tail once again, he’s been a good character through this series, though he does come across as a little dense here.

What also didn’t help was that half the cast didn’t seem to get the memo as to the tone of the story, with one half playing much of it for laughs, while the other treating this as a gritty Nordic drama. It does all come together in the end, but it’s almost a little too late. Luckily, Dorney is an experienced enough writer now to know how to more than stick the landing and the end of the tale doesn’t feel as lacking as the previous two and gives us some hints on some of her future adventures should Big Finish decide to go for a third series.

All of this sounds like I didn’t enjoy listening to this set. There was a great sense of fun throughout all three series, whether we were diving into the sea or digging through the Outback, it was clear how much fun everyone had making this series. Michelle Ryan is clearly having a ball getting to revisit Lady Christina again and dare I say she makes more of an impression here than she did on television? I think the audio format suits her character perfectly, given how the show never did let her have a good go at being a cat burglar.

I think, following on from Series 1, I was expecting a little more from the stories, but your enjoyment of this series will come down to expectations. If this is your first time listening to this series then you’ll no doubt get a little more out of it than I did. But there have been plenty of Doctor Who stories that don’t stand up to much scrutiny that I love, both on television and audio, and Series 2 of Lady Christina is still a lot of fun!