Fair warning, I am going to gush a bit in this review.

I feel like it needs a little bit of back story though. Or rather I do. I got into Doctor Who when it was airing in St. Louis Missouri, USA back around 1983. I was 12 and it aired at 10:30 pm on Sunday night. Yes, I stayed up super late on that school night! (Eventually they aired Red Dwarf before it, that was the best night of every week.) I was all in on Doctor Who. In 1989 the series was cancelled. In 1996 it came back with a new Doctor, Paul McGann, in the form of a made for tv movie. It didn’t catch on and became a one off. In 2005 the show came back officially in the new era we all know and love. But before that in July 1999, Big Finish began producing new Doctor Who stories using the original cast. They were initially restricted to the 5th, 6th, and 7th Doctors (Peter Davison, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy.) But in January 2001 they made a massive leap. With their 16th release they brought Paul McGann back to the role of the Doctor!  The man who never got a chance to stretch his legs as the Doctor was finally given his chance to embrace the character. 

Ok. So that’s a little Doctor Who history for you in 200 words. But this is more specifically about the story Storm Warning. The first foray into Paul McGann being the Doctor in audio stories. 

We start with the Doctor simply in his TARDIS wandering about his library looking for the TARDIS manual. He then winds up running across a ship in a time paradox. He tries to fix the situation and finds himself actually landing on the airship the R101 in 1930. Unfortunately he doesn’t realize that right away and the TARDIS is unceremoniously dumped from the ship. Just a minor set back, the sort of thing he has dealt with now and then. He tries to get his bearings and then plans to come back on foot to find it. 

Until he finds out that he is on the R101. The airship equivalent of the Titanic. The R101 will explode in midair with no survivors. And he has no way to get off. He encounters a stowaway named Charley who falls into the role of instant companion. As well as some creatures called Vortisaurs. Which he describes as chronal birds of prey. Basically when something is being mucked about with time that shouldn’t be, they appear and add to the chaos. There is more to the R101 maiden voyage than anyone knew. There is an alien rendezvous set to happen in order to get a stranded alien back to his people. 

A hidden story within the disaster story. Of course the Doctor manages to get off the R101 just before it explodes, along with Charley. But Charley is a paradox. She was never supposed to be on the ship, but being on it, she wasn’t supposed to survive the crash. And yet the Doctor has plucked her from the death that was coming for her. We get a little monologue from him as he vocalizes the problem he has created. And the reality that he needs to set things right. By returning Charley to the airship so that she will die as she was supposed to. This is one of the most delicious conundrums for the Doctor. Saving someone is what he does. But when it dawns on him that at some point he has to return her to the crash to die in a blaze of fire… Well, it sets up for inner turmoil that will haunt him during Charley’s stint as his companion.

Now an interesting note here about Big Finish. When they started doing Doctor Who, they weren’t very consistent about who they focused on. It was 5 or 6 or 7. When they brought in McGann though, they changed that. He got a 4 story mini season with Charley. Followed by 8 months of the other three guys playing in their eras. And then in 2002 they kicked off the year with another batch of McGann. This time 6 episodes in a row as a mini season. 

They realized that McGann was a unique opportunity. With the other three Doctors, they had to “fit” their stories into the continuity of the classic series. Which was amazing as well. But with McGann (at this point the new series hadn’t started yet) they had an open ended Doctor they could go anywhere with. Tell any stories they want. Introduce any companions. Because there was no 9th Doctor. Until 2005 when Christopher Eccleston took the name. But without a regeneration scene, just BAM, new Doctor. Which still left a universe of storytelling for Big Finish to play with. Right up until they introduced the idea of the Time War and the War Doctor (or 8 and a half-th Doctor as I like to call him.) But this wasn’t a limitation for them. This was a challenge! What can they do with it? Well, I will get there eventually. This is going to be a regular thing for me. Because I love these and there are literally thousands of hours of Doctor Who audio for me to consume and discuss! 

This gets a solid Gold Star from me. Because it was the spark. The moment I found out what a good audio could be. I promise not all of these will be Gold Star reviews. I will figure out a way to temper my enthusiasm for them.