Doctor Who: Shadow of the Daleks 1 – Review

Big Finish is great at doing these anthology releases and much like this one, they normally focus around one particular storyline, told throughout different times of a Doctor and Companion pairing. Shadow of the Daleks, another story created to be done during the first lockdown sees the Fifth Doctor meeting the same group of people over and over again all the while with the Daleks lurking in the wings.

But what is happening? Well, this release won’t answer that question, you’ll have to listen to the second volume of these releases to find out but Volume 1 has a lot of fun building the mystery.

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting much from this release. I’ve never been a fan of Doctor Who stories where the Doctor is travelling alone, but the opening story, Aimed at the Body, from James Kettle changed my mind this time. The Doctor arrives in the outback where he meets a famous cricket player during one of the most controversial games of all time. And despite learning that what this particular cricket player did – just wasn’t cricket, Kettle’s script doesn’t get too involved in the history and politics of the event, instead, he rightly sets up the main mystery.

Douglas Jardine, the infamous cricketer is perhaps the most interesting character, proving that his volatile behaviour continued off the field as well as on it, and he clashes with the Doctor on many great subjects, some of these lead to the Doctor proving why he or she should be such a great role model. But when the Daleks get revealed things go from bad to worse.

The story continues into Lightspeed, from Jonathan Morris. I have to be honest once again when it came to writing this review, I had absolutely no memory of this story, so unfortunately from a Morris script, it made little impact on me. But on a little research, I remembered that it was okay. Set on a spaceship in the future, there is an escaped convict on the loose and a gangster the Doctor is yet to meet who has sabotaged the ship to kill the Doctor. And then a load of robots come in.

It’s a pretty fun way to spend a half-hour but with the other stories around it, don’t expect a lasting memory of this one. Sorry.

The third story, The Bookshop at the End of the World, from Simon Guerrier, is perhaps my favourite story of the set. It was brilliant from start to finish and offers the Doctor the first glimpse at a wider war taking part around him. When he meets the same group of four people in a bookshop, they find that everyone is fleeing from something. The mystery is a joy to hear come to its conclusion where I was actually a little sad. Certainly, a story that suits the half-hour format, but it’s one where the writing and the acting crew definitely give their best performances.

Volume 1 comes to an end with Interlude from Dan Starkey. When the TARDIS brings the Doctor to Florence and he finds himself having to join an acting troupe.  But it was another one that left little impression on me, mainly because the ending felt very rushed and was quite weak. With a Dalek seemingly being the cause of the problems, the Doctor defeats him in a confusing timey-whimey way that would make Stephen Moffat blush.

It was a story that I thought I got right until the end and its a shame because the previous story was so good.

But Shadow of the Daleks 1 is still a release worth getting. Personally, I’ve never seen the problem with putting the classic Doctors in more modern-era storylines. It is called The Time War after all and I guess it tries to take place over all of time and space. And I also think people need to calm down with regards to there being a classic Who way of telling stories and a modern Who way as, if Shadow of the Daleks will prove anything, it’s that the Classic-era Doctors still belong very much in the present.