Dark Gallifrey: Morbius Part 1 Review

Since 1999 Big Finish haven’t been opposed to giving the villains of Doctor Who their time in the limelight. From the villains trilogy of the original range to Dalek Empire, I, Davros and the Cyberman series, they delight in delving into the chaos these creatures and villains create and leave in their wake. This time around, they are using some of the worst Time Lords and while we’ve already got ranges for the War Master and Missy, Morbius is a character they have used pretty sparingly over the years so it seems right that for kicking off this range, he would be the character to see causing havoc.

The move from doing this a boxset to monthly instalments is a nice nod to how Big Finish used to release their tales but unfortunately for Tim Foley’s script, it perhaps works as a detriment to his script as much of the run time of this opening instalment is just heavy exposition. This is pretty glaring as much of the menace and mystery doesn’t get the time to be explored here and that’s a shame because there are some great things on offer in this script.

I liked how the Time Lords didn’t just use TARDIS’ in the war with Morbius, instead, we get images of hundreds of galleon ships travelling through the vortex stripping away the safety of a TARDIS interior. It also gives the story a tighter and claustrophobic environment to take place in, feeling a lot like the Demeter passages in Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel.

To his credit, Foley does seem to have noticed the limitations of this monthly way of telling this story so he keeps a few of the characters’ motivations in the dark for now, no doubt there will be a few turncoats and spies working for Morbius outside of the ship’s prisoners and Mina Anwar’s character Rolko needs to get much more exploration through the next two outings because here she just comes across as rude. A lot of this stems from why I inherently hate the Time Lords as characters because they always feel so superior to others, it’s little wonder the Doctor ran away.

Lara Lemon’s Gilda a member of The Sisterhood of Karn who joins the crew and helps with the application of the Elixir of Life gets a bit more to do and I really hope that she doesn’t die but what was quite disappointing was that for a story about Morbius, the character is virtually not in it. I’m not sure if we’re supposed to care he’s coming back when he’s not here, hopefully that changes but I wasn’t too impressed here.

It’s all such a shame because Tim Foley has done a tremendous job and all he could do with what he was given. Unfortunately, this slow-burn opener just asked too many questions with no answers and while that’s not normally a bad thing, things would have been a little bit more forgivable if it had been a bit more fun. Hopefully, the mystery and intrigue will get explored as the story continues and while I’m going to listen to them, I have to admit to being overly excited at that prospect just yet.

You can pick up Dark Gallifrey: Morbius Part 1 from Big Finish on both digital and CD now.