Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor Adventures: Dare You from Big Finish Review

Fancy a game of dares? I’ll start. I dare you to listen to the latest helping of the Ninth Doctor and Rose from Big Finish. There are superb performances, unique writing, and – right out the gate – the best offering of the iconic Doctor/Companion duo in audio format so far…

Something or someone is playing truth or dare with the people on the Powell Estate. And it’s dangerous to play games with a Time Lord. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can REALLY hurt you.

I mean, that small blurb is all you need, right?

To add a little more context, essentially, there is a mischievous alien known as the Hellion present in the Powell Estate who uses its power to make the human residents act on their intrusive thoughts. What ensues is hilarity, tension, and a little bit of fear factor. And the Doctor and Rose will have to go further than you might expect outside the known universe to sort out this absolute kerfuffle.

I have to say, this is a winning idea from writer Lisa McMullin. It is a cool concept in its own right; you could probably write a whole movie or novel about this no-good, puppet-master villain. When using it to write a Doctor Who story, you get some terrific interactions between our characters. There are amusing consequences to characters behaving impulsively, and some really serious ones, too.

Let’s just say more is explored about the relationship between Rose and Jackie, adding richness to their unique dynamic of a mother contending with her daughter seeing all these wonders beyond the humble Powell Estate. And for most of the story, we don’t fully understand the context as listeners until it’s fully explained towards the story’s end. I will say no more; you MUST listen to appreciate how the story is told.

But the story goes a lot deeper than people acting like idiots and saying stuff they would never say, way more than I ever would have expected. Dare I (haha) say, it kind of gets esoteric and ‘outside of this realm’. Not sure how to describe it, but again, I implore you to give this particular audio a try to experience the Ninth Doctor in a unique scenario as he tries to resolve the aforementioned kerfuffle.

Thoughts from the team

Matt

Dare You by Lisa McMullin is 50 minutes’ worth of pure Doctor Who gold. The story perfectly embodies the feel and grounded tone of the revival’s first series, whilst also feeling distinctly fresh.

Returning once more to the Powell estate, McMullin takes the everyday game of Truth or Dare and adds a delightfully sinister twist. The script explores what can happen if you lose control of being able to reject intrusive thoughts, pushing both the Powell Estate residents and the Doctor and Rose themselves into very uncomfortable territory.

Christopher Eccleston is on excellent form, delivering a Ninth Doctor who is every bit the quick witted, no-nonsense but emotionally damaged time lord we saw in the 2005 series. There’s also a real bite to his performance when the Doctor is forced to act upon ideas and thoughts that he would normally know better than to unleash.

Billie Piper also excels at portraying Rose as the emotional tether of the story, showing us her usual warmth and feistiness, alongside a fantastic and raw performance in the final act. Camille Coduri’s Jackie grounds the story with her classic sense of down-to-earth realism. The story’s antagonist, Hellion (think Gollum mixed with Dobby) perfectly balances a mix of mischievous with a slightly childish silliness, helped enormously by Iain Meadows’s brilliant sound design.

While the resolution to the story feels slightly too easily wrapped up, the strength of the character work more than makes up for it. Dare You is a confident, unsettling and emotionally rich finale to the Powell Estate trilogy in the Ninth Doctor Adventures that genuinely has me so excited about the rest of this range, here’s hoping it keeps going from strength to strength.

I think  Christopher Eccleston has upped his game for this audio – he felt a lot more like the Ninth Doctor of old than in the first couple of Ninth Doctor and Rose audios. Whether the character was more faithfully written or he was more ‘in the zone’ on the day of recording, it doesn’t matter. The energy, the gusto, the anger – Eccleston brought us back to the Doctor we know and love this time around.

Billie and Camille were fabulous again, and a big shoutout to the support cast in this one – Jack Ayres, Beverley Klein, Harry Myers and Dan Starkey are all immersed in their roles and unwilling victims of the Hellion’s devilish scheme. And Harry Myers also voices the Hellion itself, making Doctor Who history as being the most simultaneously terrifying and pathetic antagonist of all time.