Doctor Who: The Blazing Hour – Review

The Main Range of Big Finish Doctor Who audios have nearly come to an end with The Blazing Hour, the penultimate release ahead of The End of the Beginning, the final release of single adventures before Big Finish head into boxsets for the Doctor’s and their companions.

I’m sure it’s not gone unnoticed that the penultimate story for this range has the same TARDIS team as did the second release of the range. Phantasmagoria saw the Fifth Doctor and Turlough embark on their series of adventures between Resurrection of the Daleks and Planet of Fire and now, for the time being, that time together seems to be coming to end. I always look forward to hearing a story with this pairing, many of the early releases from Big Finish featured this pairing, now it doesn’t really happen so its a nice treat.

Author James Kettle takes a concept that won’t surprise anyone, the Doctor arrives on a planet where a large disaster is about to happen, but he gives it a twist by using the famed Blinovitch Limitation Effect. What would happen if you could stop something happening as it happens and use that energy it created? Well, the result is this story, a world where things feel like they are barely hanging on and the human race is out for one thing and one thing only. Profit.

Again, not the first time money has come into play with a Doctor Who story, but Kettle really hammers home just how far human greed can go, even when it means that others will be hurt or worse, will die. Luckily the message is handled nicely, with the Doctor’s disgust not clouding his judgement or judging the entire human race, just those in charge. It makes the message a lot clearer and hits home harder than the, now infamous, Orphan 55 nod to the camera.

While the world and the sound design really feel like a visceral landscape, Kettle possibly could have treated the script with a little more tension, there are a few moments, where Turlough is put into danger and the Doctor thinks he might die that, while handled well, don’t really hit home how they were intended, mainly because Turlough’s fate is explained in the very next scene. But this is a minor quibble in a story that is otherwise handled well and is fun to listen too.

Peter Davison is excellent. I’ve seen people saying they are bored of hearing him on audio because it feels like his Doctor has nothing else to give, but, Davison always delivers a tremendous performance and there are plenty of Big Finish audios that prove people wrong, the Fifth Doctor still has a long way to go and Davison isn’t going anywhere.

Mark Strickson is still as brilliant as Turlough as he was in the 1980s and Kettle grips onto what makes his characters so great, you never know if his cowardice or desire to live means you can entirely trust him. Turlough doesn’t hide his disdain of humans very well here and even though you know he is a good guy, there is still a little pang in the back of your mind that you don’t know what he will do. It’s great that his character can still elicit the same response some thirty-odd years after he first appeared on the screen.

Kettle’s script, and the tremendous performances from the main and guest cast, resulting in a story that is engaging and elegant and takes the ‘base under siege’ trope and does something brand new with it. While there are a few issues with lack of tension throughout, The Blazing Hour does bring this chapter of the Fifth Doctor’s life to a close nicely, with a promise of a brighter tomorrow…