Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Stephanie Cole, Mandi Symonds, Andy Snowball, Nigel Fairs.

Imagination is the strongest, most potent weapon that humanity possesses. The ability to imagine the best and prepare for the worst, sometimes of our own species making and volition; to see the innate beauty in a single word, to have the ability to conjure up an imaginary best friend that sees you through the loneliness of childhood or to take the inventiveness, the sheer creative splendour, and turn into something that last for hundreds of years. Sometimes though imagination can, as to paraphrase Julius Robert    Oppenheimer, can be the destroyer of worlds.

The Abandoned, written jointly by Nigel Fairs and the ever surprising and fiercely creative Louise Jameson, sees The Doctor battle his own imagination and it is a battle that for once The Doctor is in serious danger of losing. For all his long life, for all his intelligence and aptitude to deal with almost situation, it is the thought that the lonely little boy that was alluded to by Madame De Pompadour in The Girl In The Fire Place is lost without his companion but most of all without the Tardis.

Ms Jameson’s and Mr. Fairs script is perhaps the finest of all the ones that Tom Baker’s incarnation of The Doctor has had to grapple with since Big Finish persuaded him to reprise his iconic role. It is the art of tapping into the unknown of the mind that makes Tom Baker’s Doctor and perhaps to a slightly lesser extent that of Matt Smith’s so much fun to delve into. When the Tardis and The Doctor are in complete symphony with each other, when the imagination of both are allowed to run at their fullest, that is when The Doctor is facing his greatest danger and is at his most dangerous.

Imagination is the point that sets Humanity apart from the rest of the planet, yes we are able to talk, to converse with each other, about those ideas but first of all the Id must be able to see the plan in its mind’s eye. Yet it falls to one whose imagination is arguably stunted by her upbringing, a childhood deprived of having the greatest lie thrust upon her young impressionable mind in the Evil One that saves both The Tardis and The Doctor from their own destruction.

Whether or not The Abandoned works because of the raising of tension, the enveloping feel of panic, of hopelessness in a man that never truly feels the emotion or because of the sheer honesty in the writing of someone who understands Tom Baker so well, either way both Louise Jameson and Nigel Fairs deserve much acclaim for making The Abandoned a particular highlight of the overall series. With a tremendous contribution by the ever enjoyable Stephanie Cole as Time Lady Marianna, the cast is up there with addition of Hayley Atwell, Mary Tamm and David Warner in The Sands of Life episode.

Doctor Who: The Abandoned is a real treat from the Big Finish team.

Doctor Who: The Abandoned is available to purchase from Worlds Apart, Lime Street, Liverpool.

Ian D. Hall