Doctor Who: The Fifth Doctor Adventures: The Great Beyond from Big Finish Review

The Fifth Doctor, Nyssa, Adric and Tegan are among my favourite Tardis crews. The companions are a young capable crew with a young-looking Doctor who, despite his appearance and boyish enthusiasm, seems to have a knack for exploring and getting himself and the crew into danger. Therefore I was very excited to listen to The Fifth Doctor Adventures: The Great Beyond by Big Finish, written by James Kettle.

I haven’t listened to this writer before so that is always interesting to discover. The Great Beyond is normally another term for the afterlife where someone goes when they die so it’s an intriguing concept to see how this story will resolve itself when the Doctor, Nyssa and Adric are introduced to incarcerated within the prison facility Beyond.

James Kettle has mixed lots of different elements in this story, unsettling concepts initially which make Beyond an incomprehensible place. The idea of the constant reconfiguration of the prison changing its dimensions keeps the listener guessing but also creates a suitable level of peril for different characters as people become separated.

The prisoner guards or officers are two aerial droids whizzing around, the Princesses, who are programmed to take people to their cells and carry out executions at will. They report to Ivan, the governor. Most prisons have guards to keep order, and prisoners should be treated compassionately or humanely and have time outside, but this place is on a distant planet, in what feels like a forgotten place in the shattered peace of a brutal war.

There doesn’t seem to be any logic to the process so it’s pretty brutal. The Doctor, Nyssa and Adric are introduced and confined in the same cell as Alison Starclair, one of the infamous Starclair sisters of this sector, a woman seemingly interested only in pleasure-seeking and the material things in life. Her self-pity irritates Adric and he likes to say so. Alison seems initially a bit uninterested in escaping but has seen too much of what happens to prisoners and longs for the relative comfort of death whilst in prison.

The arrival of pilot Fairfield played by John Hopkins at the prison does give an unnerving preview of what happens to the prisoners if they are there too long. He experiences a first attack of ” forever” full of agony and pain and John Hopkins does make it sound terrifying as he returns from being made unconscious and wrenched to a different dimension or place against his will.

The prisoners are shown no mercy but are sentenced to life imprisonment and “Forever” or execution and the prisoners yearn for death. That does send a shiver down the spine really if the alternative life is much worse.

The Doctor has been sent to Beyond – for the rest of his natural lives. In the years after a devastating intergalactic war, a prison facility was set up on a distant planet. To preserve the fragile peace, the most dangerous former combatants are sentenced to life in Beyond. Like the notorious Starclair sisters, whose involvement on both sides of the war is the stuff of legend – as well as a certain Time Lord with a reputation for interfering in things that don’t concern them. But there’s something else on the planet too. Something that adds an infinite variety of agony to a life sentence on Beyond, and makes the inmates wish for the relative comfort of death.

Due to the long association of the actors with each other, and their characters the relationship of this 5th Doctor Tardis crew does feel cemented. Adric doesn’t get that much to do in this story but can discern that there must be a control centre for the prison where they can find the answers needed to escape. At one point Nyssa is separated from the others and sentenced to death.

Of course, she doesn’t die but it’s nice to hear Sarah Sutton play the sympathetic Nyssa. Her faith in the Doctor to save her isn’t ever diminished and I loved that facing death she voiced that she loved Tremas her father. Nyssa gets a chance to shine later as she uses her logic when she and Alison Starclair are on the surface outside Beyond and encounter “zombies”. She works out how the “posts” prevent the zombies from attacking.

I found it interesting how Tegan at the beginning of the story has been separated from the rest of the crew and using her wits has survived on a different planet. She doesn’t understand why the Tardis disappeared without her. This development in Tegan’s ability to be independent was explored in Logopolis and I do enjoy how Tegan hasn’t lost her resourceful nature in this story. She is working playing “fury”, looking for information about the Doctor and the others within the atmosphere of a fragile peace.

Her meeting with another of the Starclair sisters, Ocean, sets up the brilliant idea for a prison break-in to rescue the Tardis crew which is a great way to bring everyone together. Tegan’s and the Doctor’s relationship is challenging at times but she has a point when they meet again but is about how the Doctor looks after his companions.

One of the characters that I enjoyed was Ivan, the governor played by Philip Hurd-Wood. Enjoy is the wrong word as his character isn’t necessarily someone you would trust or root for. Ivan seems in control of the prison at the beginning but is just a figurehead, a brutal & brutalised man, who goes through a fascinating and complicated personal arc through the story. Much like Alison when he realises he won’t be able to leave he just needs a way out but how it ends breaks for him breaks my heart for the fate of everyone ever sent to Beyond.

But James Kettle does add humour to The Great Beyond through the Starclair sisters to balance all the horror which makes the story palatable rather than a slog of constant misery. There is a third Starclair sister Nairobi who is discovered, dressed in armour, locked in one of the cells. Ocean and Nairobi were on opposite sides of the political argument so the familial bickering between the three sisters as they meet each other again after many years and seek to play off each other throwing humorous petty barbs about past slights is rather entertaining.

The sisters can and do find strength to battle but as they reminisce with their mother it’s the realisation of how much she set them against each other that brings them closer. What I will say is with three voices that are quite similar I honestly couldn’t work out who was who sometimes. Maybe that was the point that as sisters they had more in common than what divided them.

I loved how the story unravels like peeling an onion. Something as innocuous as the Princesses saying to the governor “a new post is required” assuming a staff recruitment for the prison becomes something more deadly when Nyssa and Alison are on the surface of the planet.

The story pushes the envelope in creating these moments of horror or dread as the realisation dawns on the Doctor that Beyond is alive and has a consciousness. I’m glad that the Doctor gets to have the hero moment to meet Beyond and challenge the regime which has been in place, especially the symbiotic relationship with “Forever”.

I didn’t expect the bargain the Doctor makes but it suits the character to acquiesce and learn to defeat any enemies. My only frustration is the Doctor doesn’t talk about the events he has had to his companions. But I suppose that is the life of a time traveller who has intense experiences, especially a Time Lord. The ending where the Starclair sisters spend years together on the planet feels slightly strange in that they had to stay, and were chosen to stay by “Beyond”.

I like how James Kettle added some heartful scenes as he acknowledged the intergalactic war, the experience of Beyond left scars of post-traumatic stress on all the sisters and they wouldn’t be able to return to their past lives. It becomes a new chapter, a type of quiet peaceful paradise where we might all hope to end our days.

One of the strengths of The Great Beyond is the use of the classic episode format with cliffhangers which allows the story time to develop. There is world-building which I love and time to create more rounded characters than Davison and the crew were allowed on television.

There are some breath-taking moments such as when Tegan experiences her first encounter with “Forever” where the second encounter will be fatal. She never gets a break that Earth woman. Or when the fifth Doctor is reduced to a scared child. There always is a fear of a dark eternity because human life is fleeting, and we don’t experience that. The theme of war doesn’t interest me but the effects of it can be long-lasting on the mind.

The fates of all the incarcerated at Beyond make me sad because none of them deserved “Forever”.

The Great Beyond is a solid adventure that is worth its 3-hour run-time.

You can pick up The Fifth Doctor Adventures: The Great Beyond starting at £21.99 from Doctor Who: Big Finish now.