DOCTOR WHO: NEVERMORE [2009]

 "SOMETIMES ALL I AM IS A CAT'S PAW!" 

This go round we find the Doctor with his brand new companion Tasmin Drew (Niky Wardley) after the 'companion casting call' of SITUATION VACANT.  With Lucie Bleedin' Miller gone, Tasmin keeps the witty comebacks coming but in a different way than Lucie did.  It's always difficult when a change of companions happens but Wardley quickly makes Tasmin an interesting, entertaining character.  As you've no doubt guessed by the adventure's title, this one is a heavily Edgar Allan Poe inspired outing.  From Big Finish's own blurb:  "  A bizarre manifestation in the Control Room forces the TARDIS onto the Plutonian shores of the irradiated world Nevermore, whose sole inhabitant is the war criminal Morella Wendigo – a prisoner of this devastated planet. But the Doctor and his new companion aren’t Morella’s only visitors. Senior Prosecutor Uglosi fears the arrival of an assassin, after the blood of his prize prisoner. An assassin with claws…There’s no escape from Nevermore, whose raven-like robot jailers serve to demonstrate Uglosi’s macabre obsession with the works of the 19th century horror writer Edgar Allan Poe. An obsession that might yet lead to the premature burial of everyone on the planet’s surface – wreathed in the mist they call the Red Death!"  Not only do they have characters with names straight out of Poe (Morella, Berenice but also a shout-out to the Universal 1934 film THE BLACK CAT; guess what Prosecutor Uglosi's name unscrambles spells!  And also there's another character important to the plot named Verdegast (which is Bela Lugosi's character in THE BLACK CAT as well).  Oh, and yes, while the Doctor is giving Tasmin a tour of the TARDIS, there's suddenly a black puddy tat which the pair chase around.  As if all this wasn't Poe-y enough, the author himself also makes an appearance.  The robotic raven guards are nicely cracked characters themselves that seem not too right in the programming; and their voices are somewhat Dalek-sounding but with enough raveny differences to make them different enough sonically to stand on their own. 

Niky Wardley, Catherine Tate & David Tennant

NEVERMORE is one you really have to listen to closely to unravel all that's going on; in fact, I'll probably give this a second listen eventually to clarify some things.  But the ride is really fun; especially for us Poe fans!  This might start sounding a bit cliched but Paul McGann and Niky Wardley also have a really nice chemistry and work well together from the start.  It's always nice to have a companion who needles the Doctor now and then and Tamsin starts right in with her quips.  When she spots the kitty cat, she automatically thinks it's the Doctor's pet.  "There's two types of men . . . one's a serial killer and the other is one who lives at home and loves his cat . . . and it's nothing to be ashamed of!"  Of course, Niky Wardley has another connection to DOCTOR WHO in that priceless Red Nose Day "Am I Bovvered" sketch with David Tennant alongside Catherine Tate.  Fenella Woodgar as Morella Wendigo gives her character an evil whispery menace which is soooooooooooooo good but not a one note vocalization; she changes to an acid-tongued snarkiness with a knife-sharp sense of humour alternately.  This really works even if the description here doesn't make it sound like it does.  Other heavy hitters in the cast are Emilia Fox (Polanski's THE PIANIST) as Berenice and Michael J. Shannon (who, among other things, played JFK in that episode of RED DWARF) as Senior Prosecutor Uglosi.  There are Poe quotes galore in this story.  In fact, at one point the ravens demand that the Doctor recite from memory Poe's poem THE RAVEN as sort of a password.  Many Poe stories are referenced and, in fact, re-enacted also. NEVERMORE was written by DOCTOR WHO vet Alan Barnes (who penned Paul McGann's first Big Finish adventure STORM WARNING) and directed by Big Finish honcho Nicholas "EXTERMINATE" Briggs.  Somewhat wacky and a little bit spooky, this is an above-average lot of fun!