AUDIO DRAMA
Doctor Who
Her Final Flight

Starring: Colin Baker
Big Finish Productions
RRP: £10.99
ISBN 1 84435 113 0
Available 02 July 2005


The Doctor awakes to find himself reunited with his former travelling companion Peri. Apparently he fell from a cliff edge after stepping from the TARDIS. But the ship is in a worse state, leaking unstable temporal energy from her ruptured shell. Can it be that the Doctor's beloved craft has made her final flight...?

Previously only available free to Big Finish subscribers, Her Final Flight is now available to buy. Please note, however, that this is a single-disc release, not a double CD as stated on the spine of some copies.

Though Peri has been reunited with the Doctor in previous licensed fiction - the short story Reunion in Doctor Who Magazine and the New Adventures novel Bad Therapy - both of those stories featured the Seventh Doctor. Why didn't the Doctor attempt to visit and/or rescue her immediately after The Trial of a Time Lord? Julian Shortman's story attempts to set the record straight. Here the Doctor (Colin Baker) indicates that he had believed Peri (Nicola Bryant) was happy with King Yrcanos. There's nothing he can do about it now, though, because eighteen years have passed for Peri since events on Thoros Beta.

Shortman didn't pluck that figure from nowhere, by the way. It's the length of time that elapsed between the production of Trial and the recording of this adventure. That makes me feel old!

Unfortunately, being listeners who have already experienced adventures featuring subsequent Doctors, we know that this story cannot truly depict the TARDIS's final flight. Therefore, the "twist" at the end of the tale isn't very surprising (but I won't spoil it for those of you who might not guess it as I did from the story's opening moments).

Nevertheless, this is a diverting and well-played little adventure. In particular, Steven Bugdale as the sinister Agent combines the vocal qualities of Gabriel Woolf (Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars) and Mark Gatiss. And that's final.

Richard McGinlay

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