Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Tom Baker, Lalla Ward, John Leeson, Simon Rouse, Tom Chadbon, Paul Panting, Emma Campbell-Jones, Laura Rees, Bryan Pilkington, Jane Slavin, John Banks.

The good old days of the multi-parter, where a story line could be really explored and taken beyond the realms of the expected 45 minutes, where the imagination not only gets fed, it is sated and not feeling as if it has been left out of the desert and wine list that inevitably follows a good dinner; all things are more possible in the land of the large and truly delved into story.

Arguably under the watch of Tom Baker as the fourth incarnation of the Doctor, the serials were at their peak, the four part story in which danger stalked at every corner and the closing credit close up was both met with relief and with honest to goodness intrigue, the sense of virtuous and victorious resides in the series two-parter The Paradox Planet and Legacy Of Death and it is wonderfully complex and brilliantly complicated; a resounding success for writer Jonathan Morris who weaves the story together like a thoughtful spider in the middle of a web and whose prey is intelligent and involved.

The makers of Doctor Who never takes its listeners and fans for granted and it is an ethos that has been carried on in fine style by Big Finish and in this C.D. story the world of Doctor Who gives a fine bounty of explanation, counter-explanation and sometimes surreal bemusement in a tale that takes the prospect of being able to go back into the past of a planet and take revenge on your ancestors for the crimes they committed on the environment in their pursuit of greed.

If you could go back a couple of hundred years and commit genocide on those who have taken your planet to the brink of extinction, who have made sure that your suffering is assured, would you? It is the same question that faced The Doctor when he was there at the genesis of the Daleks, do you stop the suffering knowing that all you are is formed by the actions of your ancestors.

Jonathan Morris’ script is lovingly planned out, one of those moments where the listener has too truly concentrate to get the truth of what is being explained, the vision which is being explored, not with a map and a set of directions but with a compass and sense of overpowering where ever we end up is fine by us attitude; not many writers can master that illusion as well Mr. Morris has managed in these two back to back C.D.s.

A very fine addition to the world of Doctor Who audio, life is bound so well by the complicated.

Doctor Who: The Paradox Planet and Legacy Of Death are available to purchase from Worlds Apart on Lime Street, Liverpool.

Ian D. Hall