Till Death Us Do Part (The Paternoster Gang: Rogue's Gallery)

Audio  Ah The Paternoster Gang.  At least once a year, Big Finish have the Eighth Doctor wander into one of their spin-off series and finally, he's turned up in Victorian England and bumped into Vastra, Jenny and Strax.  With only a finite amount of money at my disposal, I avoided the previous series, only really dipping my toe in via The Eighth of March box, Once and Future and the crossover with Jago & Lightfoot.  Steven Moffat apparently pitched this spin-off when he was showrunner, with the opening half of The Crimson Horror looking for all the world like a backdoor pilot.  He was knocked back but at least thanks to our audio BF we can have some idea of what such a thing would be like.

It's fun.  Having not heard the opening box, I don't know how much this replicates the formula, but it's very much the s7/Torchwood/SJA model of an alien of the week in a Holmisan period setting usually being exploited by some local hoodlum with the gang investigating then breaking the case wide open.  The characters are the draw, the naughty interplay between Vastra and Jenny whose relationship can be explored in greater detail and the sheer brilliance of Strax, played with such determination by Dan Starkey (who also writes the second story in the series) and probably offers the most laughs across these three episodes.

Till Death Us Do Part

Vastra and Jenny are finally having a wedding but the planning and ceremony are interrupted by a series of curious events with duplicates of themselves and others, creating havoc.  There is a general sense of unease throughout as characters sound almost but not exactly like themselves and the Eighth Doctor appears all over the place but not apparently in a linear order and out of sorts.  DWM's reviewer attributes this to Paul, suggesting he sounds "distracted and possibly even a little bit confused by it all" but it's obviously because the character himself is supposed to be: he's forgetful, skittish and one minute knows who Jenny is and the next has no idea.

Placement:  Like The Truth of Peladon, he's wearing his Dark Eyes leathers on the cover even though there isn't really a gap for him to be travelling along, so I'll put it next to that for now unless something else crops up.