Doctor Who “Collision Course”

OK, I didn’t realize right away when I started this anthology that it was an anniversary special, namely the 20th anniversary of Big Finish’s Doctor Who audio plays.

But that’s where the fun comes in.

Time anomalies have been all over these stories, and it’s all the fault of the Sirens of Time.  These things feed on paradoxes, so why not cause a few, starting with preventing Gallifrey from developing time travel in the first place by sabotaging the first TARDIS test flight?  That comes to the attention of Time Lord President Romana and her Security Chief Leela, both former companions of the Fourth Doctor.  These paradoxes are causing the women to suddenly remember things that didn’t happen, as “seen” (since, you know, it’s an audio story) when Leela remembers a trip to a jungle planet with Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor where they dealt with some ghost things that weren’t ghosts since it’s always aliens on Doctor Who, but one that ended with the Doctor’s death.

That clearly didn’t happen.

So, what can Leela and Romana do, especially if history changes to see to it the Time Lords never become, you know, Time Lords.

Well, they can take the TARDIS themselves and finish the trip, even with the crew dead.  OK, Romana can.  Only other Time Lords can pilot the TARDIS, but as the new series revealed, a TARDIS is intended to have a crew of six.  Where will Romana get five more TIme Lords to fly the TARDIS?

Well, just take the Doctor.  Or, you know, take all the versions of the Doctor who have appeared so far in this story, namely the Sixth (dropping off Bernie who gets recognized by everyone else), then the Fourth, and then on through the Seventh, Eighth, Fifth, and Third.

Oh, and those were just the billed Doctors.  They had their faces on the CD art and everything.  Then the three unbilled Doctors showed up in the form of David Bradley’s First Doctor, Frazer Hines’s Second, and David Tennant’s Tenth.

Yeah, no sign of the Ninth.  Probably because Big Finish hadn’t signed Christopher Eccleston yet.

Those three stay behind, with the Tenth coming up with a BS title for themselves to monitor, but the First finds him rather undignified but will agree that they have to look important and the Second just wants to use the hammer this time.

Essentially, the multiple Doctors all bicker and insult each other as they take the TARDIS with Romana to do what the original TARDIS crew didn’t because of the Sirens of Time.  Six gets all pompous and has the others tell him to shut up when he wants to give a speech.  Eight criticizes Seven for what the TARDIS looked like when he regenerated.  Leela has to clarify which Doctor she means when she says the tall one with curly hair is not the one with the cape.  Three seems to be largely above it all, but Seven teases him for having a big nose.  Six teases Five for how long it took to drop Tegan off at an airport.  And Four says lines like “Well done, me!” and I just had a hell of a good time listening to it all.

Man, why didn’t Big Finish do a cast interview at the end of this one?

Anyway, taking the trip is all the Doctors need to do, and it was just a fun bit of comedy as the Doctor, as always, can’t get along with himself.

Well, that’s that for this batch.  I do have some more Big Finish stuff…probably enough to cover me until 2023.  But which one will I go with next?

Hang around and find out.