Flashpoint (Big Finish Audio Short Trips).

Audio These Short Trips and the Companion Chronicles have often wrestled with how to justify their subject being the narrator. Often the companion in question is making an audio recording or relating the tale to a listener, sometimes unseen depending on the casting budget. But on the odd occasion we're simply meant to assume either of those is the case without an in story reason. A diary is being updated or it's a lecture. That's the case with Andrew Smith's Flashpoint. No reason is given for Lucie Miller to be relating this tale which makes it all the more intimate because we feels as though it's being tailored for us. Smith offers what amounts to the companion side of an adventure with Eighth's contribution purposefully a mystery, as Lucie finds herself stranded on an inhospitable planet, protecting a youngster from gangsters who mean to capture him. Quickly events take a turn for The Snows of Terror (The Keys of Marinus episode 4 in decimal currency) but the results are far more exciting and a greater level of decency.  Towards the end there's a risky piece of character business which if it had been included in the original run of stories would certainly have had ongoing consequences.  But what really lifts the material is Sheridan's performance, and it is a performance as every beat sounds like its being spontaneously related by Lucie who turns master storyteller, spinning as much tension as possible out of the tale, her whole arsenal of emotion on display.  Wow.  Placement:  With the other Short Trips in the early seasons.