The End of the Beginning (The Main Range)

Audio  The final end ... of the monthly range.  When these began in 1999, they were Big Finish, some of the original actors in new audio stories released on a monthly basis.  It's where I became a Doctor Who stan and a McGann fan in particular but by 2021 they were beginning to look like an odd one out in a release schedule which elsewhere had largely shifted over to boxed sets, with Fifth, Sixth and Seventh rather stuck taking turns here, still trying to find ways of telling stories within the few gaps left by their television eras.

Bringing the range full circle, The End of the Beginning follows the structure of the first release, with the Eighth Doctor rather than Seventh in the third part of the anthology.  But whereas The Sirens of Time was about trying to be as authentic to the television counterparts as possible, this is about commemorating and enunciating how far the range had developed in the intervening decades, of having taken the licence and created a legacy of stories of a quality which far exceeds their visual precursors.

The Fifth Doctor and Turlough were the stars of Big Finish's second release Phantasmagoria so its fitting that they should return together here after creating their own mini season of about four or five stories across the years.  The Sixth Doctor story highlights how that incarnation has been reimagined in the audios with bold new eras and a range of companions who simply wouldn't have existed on television, Constance and Flip in this case (although Lisa "Flip" Greenwood is absent for health reasons).

The Eighth Doctor's era couldn't be represented by anyone other than Charley, his main range companion and where it all began (on audio).  Presumably recorded around the time of Charlotte Pollard: The Further Adventuress (yes, yes, I'll get to it), I'm in awe at how Paul McGann keeps track of the different tones he and the creators have brought to this same incarnation between the early releases through to the Time War.

We're in Vampire Science territory as the eighth Doctor's stopped off to check in with an undead frenemy from an unseen adventure, a vampire taking the slow way through London who the Time Lord presumably stopped from killing back in the day.  There's another vampire on the loose and together they head off into the metropolis in a bid to stop the fledgling from killing and eating or turning half the population of the city.

Its at the end of all this we discover how this Doctor's story is connected to the others and how he'll meet his other selves in preparations to uncover the final mystery, with a clever reversal, a homage to The Day of the Doctor (surely?) and an explanation as to why the Seventh Doctor's largely been absent (is the cover art supposed to imply that we're finally discovering what one of the visual elements of his title sequence actually is?).

The four Doctors and companions apparently recorded their sections separately, not that you'd know it with a hilarious moment (intentional?  unintentional?) where Charley and Constance are introduced and don't seem to have anything to say to each other, and the Sixth Doctor knows who the former is but can't work out why (which means we're post their travels together).  Does this mean she already recognises him at the start of The Condemned?  That would explain how she's not completely banjaxed by him.

It's all very well written by Robert Valentine, a relative newcomer to Big Finish (the TARDIS Datacore has him listed as being active since 2020) he nevertheless captures the Eighth and Charley's voices perfectly (as he does everyone across the episodes) and although the final solution at the resolution is pretty basic multi-Doctor fare, there are some neat reversals in the run up which take advantage of audio and how one of the audience's senses is of no help whatsoever.

Placement: This feels like late era 8+C, entirely comfortable in each other's presence, the Doctor happy to let Charley wander off into late 90s London on her own, safe in the knowledge that she won't get herself into trouble (even though she undoubtedly will).  It's probably set some time between Embrace the Darkness and The Time of the Daleks; you can imagine this being the next adventure after Living Legend or Solitaire.