Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Alex Kingston, Claudia Grant, Jamie Glover, Jemma Powell, Ralph Watson, Christopher Benjamin, Owen Aaronovitch, Guy Adams, Samuel Clemens, John Paul Connolly, Edward Dede, Kathryn Dysdale, Nicholas Goh, Lizzie Stables, Dan Starkey, Mandi Symonds, Milly Thomas, Clive Wood, Angus Wright, David Bradley.

The problem with time travel is you never quite know where you are going to land in someone else’s story. Land after the climatic event, or even during, and you can be of a help, you can even tell those around you who you are, but land a day or two before, appear out of thin air and you have to live a lie, do you let history play out, or do you save one person, save a village, from the disaster that is about to befall them.

For former psychopath, trained assassin, archaeologist and wife of The Doctor, time is already a complex beast, a moment stolen here and there with her husband can have repercussions if not handled with sensitivity to Time; however, it can also lead to further complications when she reads his diary, when she decides to arrive just ahead of the Timelord and tie up loose ends before they have even had time to materialise.

In a departure from the way the first five series of The Diary of River Song had been fleshed out and capitalised upon by placing the much-admired character in tandem with any of her former husbands, or indeed being instrumental in combatting the forces of evil at the hands of the many incarnations of The Master, the sixth series of the insightfully written audio drama sees the sassily heroic Professor make her presence known before four of the Doctor’s adventures, cleaning up a mess before it has happened, adding her own unique style and influence on people that in other circumstances she would never have been able to meet.

Arriving at a point in time where she gets to meet the Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan, and teachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, Captain Knight just before the Doctor takes a hand against the Great Intelligence and The Yeti’s in London, and even the great Henry Gordon Jago as the talons of Weng-Chiang had barely begun to dig down under the surface of Victorian London,

There is a delicate act and line in which the four episodes have to tread, take the moment of introduction to far and it would add a schism to what has gone before during the television serials, perhaps causing a rift between those who adopt the joy to be found in continuality across all the many faces of the Doctor’s written lives, and those who see the audio dramas as non-cannon, who never give the medium the true applause it requires.

Thankfully Big Finish is more than adept, more than knowledgeable to understand the potential risks and pitfalls at hand and in the four episodes, An Unearthly Woman, The Web Of Time, Peepshow and The Talents Of Greel, what comes to pass, must also come to past, and with an exceptional performance as the theatrical entrepreneur, Henry Jago, the return of Christopher Benjamin is to be celebrated, and alongside Claudia Grant as Susan Foreman, Angus Wright stepping into the large shoes of Michael Spice as the eponymous Magnus Greel, the sixth series of The Diary of River Song goes further than possibly dared, it brings the heroine of the story before the time of the Doctor in a few of his adventures, almost impossible, exceptionally effective, and unbound glory, the pages of the diary keep revealing more secrets.

Ian D. Hall