Tag Archives: Nicholas Briggs

The Avengers: The Yellow Needle. The Lost Episodes Volume 3, Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Anthony Howell, Julian Wadham, Lucy Briggs-Owen, Geff Francis, Maggie Service, Derek Ezenagu, Robert Duncan, Jacqueline Boatswain, Geoffrey Breton, Jessica Martin, Nick Hendrix, Mark Goldthorp, Nicholas Briggs, Angus Wright.

 

The art of political assassination is one that still holds the weight of intrigue in the modern world, perhaps more so than at any point since the 1960s and the deaths of two of the Kennedy brothers, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King and countless others hit the headlines and stunned the world over.

The Avengers: The Yellow Needle. The Lost Episodes Volume 3, Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(442 words, estimated 1:46 mins reading time)

The Avengers: The Lost Episodes Volume 3, The Springers. Audio Drama Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10

Cast: Anthony Howell, Julian Wadham, Dan Starkey, Miranda Raison, Peter Barrett, Derek Hutchinson, Emily Joyce, Sarah Lark, Mark Goldthorp, Geoffrey Breton, Philip Pope, Nicholas Briggs, Nick Hendrix, Angus Wright.

The third volume of stories from Big Finish concerning The Avengers team of Dr. David keel and John Stead starts with the premise of a prison break out. It is a premise that has been done before the 1960s series first aired and has been done perhaps more successfully since, notably in one of the best films ever in the Shawshank Redemption and in the highly popular Prison Break television series, and yet there is something nostalgic and homely about revisiting an idea when you take away the modern bells and whistles attached to a story.

The Avengers: The Lost Episodes Volume 3, The Springers. Audio Drama Review. full post

(520 words, estimated 2:05 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: The Darkness of Glass. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Mark Lewis Jones, Julian Wadham, Sinead Keenan, Rory Keenan, Nicholas Briggs.

The glass is never half full for the Doctor. There should be a point in the Doctor’s life where someone sits him down and examines in depth, just what would happen if boredom ever got the better of him! For even in the smallest detail of finding himself cut off from his Tardis on a stretch of lonely beach, there is always a house on an island in which the allusion to an Agatha Christie novel will appear.

Doctor Who: The Darkness of Glass. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(421 words, estimated 1:41 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: Masters Of Earth. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, Tracy Wiles, Brian McCardie, Sean Biggerstaff, Hugh Ross, Damian Lynch, Nicholas Briggs.

It can be a staggering thought at times, that even after over 50 years of storytelling, filmed adventures and audio escapades, that there is still moments in which to find a large, near timeless thrill in a new tale set in the world of Doctor Who. Masters of Earth is one of those audio dramas so beloved of its makers Big Finish, that it allows the listener to sit back, relax, to a point and remember why they might have fallen in love with Doctor Who in the beginning.

Doctor Who: Masters Of Earth. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(620 words, estimated 2:29 mins reading time)

Charlotte Pollard, The Viyran Solution. Audio Drama Review, Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: India Fisher, Michael Maloney, James Joyce, Nicholas Briggs, Louise Bradley, Nadia Kamil.

The solution is always part of the problem it seems. No matter how grand the answer, another dilemma will pop up in its place. Just as The Doctor faced being able to eradicate the Daleks from all time and space by placing two wires together, the quandary appeared that he would be as evil as them for not letting nature take its course. The solution is never the utter final truth. For the Viyrans and Charley Pollard, the solution is even more complex and for Charlotte Pollard the stakes have never been higher.

Charlotte Pollard, The Viyran Solution. Audio Drama Review, Big Finish. full post

(377 words, estimated 1:30 mins reading time)

Charlotte Pollard, The Shadow At The End Of The World. Audio Drama Review, Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: India Fisher, Jacqueline King, Abigail McKern, Nicola Weeks, Lucy May Barker, Nicholas Briggs, Michael Maloney, James Joyce.

Charlotte Pollard, adventuress, traveller in space and time and once close friend and confident of The Doctor, a woman born on the day that the S.S. Titanic sank and who, as history will have it, died on the Airship 101, a woman who it seems was born to be a magnet for trouble and exploits, especially when cornered at The Shadow at the End of the World.

Charlotte Pollard, The Shadow At The End Of The World. Audio Drama Review, Big Finish. full post

(554 words, estimated 2:13 mins reading time)

Charlotte Pollard, The Lamentation Cipher. Series One. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: India Fisher, Michael Maloney, James Joyce, Nicholas Briggs.

The feeling of rarity is quite uncommon when it comes to listening to the return of Charlotte Pollard.

Arguably the finest of all the audio companions introduced since Big Finish took the job on of bringing The Doctor back into the main stream consciousness of the British public, and before the B.B.C. finally saw sense in the folly of having let one of their most loved programmes go to waste, Charlotte Pollard, Charley to her friends, has travelled with two Doctors, been in an abundance of adventures with both and has captured the ideal of what it means to be a companion in the Tardis. To question, to investigate and not get become a quivering wreck in the face of adversity or under the sometimes withering gaze of The Doctor.

Charlotte Pollard, The Lamentation Cipher. Series One. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(641 words, estimated 2:34 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: Dark Water/Death In Heaven. Television Review. B.B.C.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Michelle Gomez, Chris Addison, Jemma Redgrave, Sheila Reid, Andrew Leung, Nigel Betts, Joan Blackham, Sanjeev Bhaskar, James Pearse, Antonio Bourouphael, Shane Keogh-Grenade, Katie Bignell, Jeremiah Krage, Nicholas Briggs, Nick Frost,

The small signs have been there all season, the small nuggets of information that have filtered through should have been heeded. In their place, in one episode across 45 minutes they were easily ignored, a small rip in the fabric that not even the pickiest of fan would care too much to worry about. However as season closers go, it has to be said that Dark Water and Death In Heaven were easily the most frustrating of all since The Twin Dilema saw the beginning of Colin Baker’s era in the blue box in Doctor Who.

Doctor Who: Dark Water/Death In Heaven. Television Review. B.B.C. full post

(718 words, estimated 2:52 mins reading time)

The Avengers: The Lost Episodes Volume 2. Ashes Of Roses. Audio Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Anthony Howell, Julian Wadham, Lucy Briggs-Owen, Terry Malloy, Rachel Atkins, Emily Woodward, Nicholas Briggs, Derek Carlyle, Anna Lukis, Penelope Rawlins, Richard Hope, Dan Starkey, Cameron Stewart, Francesca Hunt, Martin Hudson.

 

Who could ever foresee that hairdressing was such a risky business?  The shampoo set that could go wrong, the gossip that turns to grudges being held, the heated dryer rigged to give a nasty surprise, arson! All these are par for the course as John Steed and Dr. David Keel return for the second set of classic The Avengers stories to be adapted by John Dorney and Big Finish starting with the tale, Ashes Of Roses.

The Avengers: The Lost Episodes Volume 2. Ashes Of Roses. Audio Review. Big Finish. full post

(620 words, estimated 2:29 mins reading time)

Doctor Who: Zygon Hunt. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Michael Maloney, Gillian Kearney, James George, Steven Alexander, Nicholas Briggs.

It only takes one of the finest creations from the classic television series and all seems well within the Tom Baker range of audio dramas from Big Finish.

Doctor Who: Zygon Hunt. Audio Drama Review. Big Finish. full post

(657 words, estimated 2:38 mins reading time)