Doctor Who: The Seventh Doctor Adventures: Far From Home from Big Finish – Review

Last year we saw the Seventh Doctor reuniting with his old companions Harry Sullivan and Naomi Cross. The only problem was: that we hadn’t actually had their adventures with the Fourth Doctor yet. Having them meet the Doctor before we had been introduced to their new situation was a great way of introducing this status quo and having them go, as the title for last year’s release told us, AWOL, promised some exciting things to come, even if AWOL wasn’t the strongest set from Big Finish.

Thankfully, Far From Home bucks that trend, which sees the TARDIS bringing the TARDIS to London during the Blitz and then into the far future as the pair begin to consider asking the Doctor to take them home again.

This set kicks off with Alfie Shaw’s Operation Dusk, throwing the Doctor and his companions right into the thick of the action, having been called in by Winston Churchill to investigate the death of a British Agent. It doesn’t take the Doctor long to discover the involvement of the Vashta Nerada, not only in the death of the British Agent but seemingly unrelated people across London, always during the Blitz and after a mysterious phone call. The Seventh Doctor being the Seventh Doctor keeps Harry and Naomi at arm’s length, trying to keep them out of harm’s way but inevitably getting them into more danger than he would have otherwise when an even older enemy of the Doctor is found to be behind the deaths.

What I really liked this time around was just how competent this TARDIS team felt. We haven’t really met Naomi Cross yet outside of the UNIT boxsets so don’t know how this young woman from the 1970s came to be trapped in modern-day along with Harry following their upcoming adventures with the Seventh Doctor. But there was a real sense that this crew had been together for a long time between this set and AWOL and credit must go to Naomi actress Eleanor Crooks because it can’t be easy to record all of these adventures out of order either.

The Seventh Doctor is an incarnation who is happy both with companions and on his own, so for much of this story, the Doctor finds himself on his own, trying to keep Harry and Naomi out of harm’s way and thanks to Harry and Naomi being such strong characters and work well in their own right, author Alfie Shaw, wastes no time in splitting them off from the Doctor and giving them their own subplots, allowing the action and pace of the story to rattle along at breakneck speed.

In keeping with the Seventh Doctor era, the story runs across three parts but it was one I really wished had been allowed to be four, as one final episode would have really allowed the story to explore everything it wanted to. The pace and action in this tale rattle along nicely, but some of the twists and turns might go over some listener’s heads because of the speed, one more episode might have meant things could go a little slower, but not in a detrimental way. It is also clear how much Shaw likes the Seventh Doctor’s era on Big Finish and he packs a lot in here, not only expanding on the mythology of the Vashta Nerada who aren’t really the aggressors here but also bringing back the villainous organisation, The Forge, who have plagued the Seventh Doctor since his earliest adventures on audio.

Fun fact, I was chatting with The Forge creator Cavin Scott at a comic con a few months ago and he told me that Russell T. Davies had rung him and asked him if they could use The Forge in place of Torchwood. Cavin had said yes but the BBC deemed The Forge too dark to be used on Doctor Who. Though I don’t know why because the Torchwood series was incredibly dark.

I also really liked the Vashta Nerada weren’t really the villains here, yes they were doing the killings but they weren’t behind them, they had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had been captured by The Forge to be exploited for their own ends. It was an interesting take on one of Doctor Who‘s darkest and most disturbing monsters. Alfie Shaw has managed to deliver one of the strongest stories from Big Finish this year with this tale thanks to his fresh take on some old villains and handles the Seventh Doctor era brilliantly, not everything is black and white or cut and dry here, there are moral grey areas to be explored here, how far would you go to save your country from an invading enemy?

Alison Winter’s Naomi’s Ark is equally as strong, giving us some nice exploration of Naomi, splitting her apart from the Doctor and Harry right from the beginning and not reuniting them to the end, allowing us to see how she ticks and how much she has learnt from being with the Doctor.

Naomi must step up to the plate as a stand-in mother, teacher and protector when she finds herself on a ship with a lot of teenagers and children who are heading towards a world that wants to sell them into slavery. The time period should be familiar to listeners placing this story a little while after the events of The End of the World and the population of the world being out into ships and Arks and sent out across the universe. Naomi channels her inner Doctor brilliantly, effectively tricking the villains into destroying themselves to save the children feels like something right out of the Seventh Doctor’s rulebook, even if she doesn’t feel great about it afterwards. It’s this that prompts her to ponder on whether she can continue to travel with the Doctor a question that will hopefully get explored in the next couple of sets coming out later this year.

Winter doesn’t neglect the Seventh Doctor or Harry here either, giving Sylvester McCoy arguably some of his best material for the last couple of years as he has to face up to whether he is the hero or villain this time around. Does he force the Ark to go back for his friend and doom them all or let Naomi possibly die because he can’t get to her? He’s stuck in this story and it’s an interesting position to explore in an incarnation of the Doctor who normally has a handle on everything.

Winter’s tale, while I thoroughly enjoyed it struggled to reach the heights of Operation Dusk, sits quite comfortably as a three-part story, with the right amount of characters and action to fill its runtime. What it really succeeds at though is giving Eleanor Crooks a time to shine as Naomi and prove why she is going to be such a great companion when we can listen to all her stories in order.

Far From Home is one of the strongest releases from Big Finish this year, with two brilliantly written and intelligent scripts challenging both the characters and the listeners. I’m really looking forward to having more adventures with Harry and Naomi in the coming years, Christopher Naylor is also incredibly good as Harry despite people complaining about the character being recast. This is a set that I’m looking forward to giving a re-listen in the near future, well done to all those involved.

You can pick up Doctor Who: The Seventh Doctor Adventures: Far From Home on CD (including digital) for £24.99 and on digital for £19.99 now from Big Finish.