The Black Hole, episodes 3 & 4

Early Adventures #2.3

Released: 17 November 2015

Listened: 10/1/20

Now, having returned from Season 6B, the story continues. So I have to drop at least one spoiler: Pavo is actually the Monk, which is a trick that doesn’t work well anymore, because Rufus Hound has been playing the Monk (fabulously) in a bunch of other Big Finish stories. In fact, the Doctor and Jamie return before Part 1 of the story, which sets up the fact that there’s a big ball of timey-wimey in the second half of this story. With Simon Guerrier as the writer and John Dorney as the script editor, it’s hard to expect anything else. So as not to spoil, I’ll say that there are Time Lords, regenerations, Stattenheim remote controls, and a bunch of TARDIS vs TARDIS chess, but not necessarily in that order. There’s also an unusual piece of Time Lord tech (never seen again) which masks Time Lords from others of their species, and can influence the minds of lesser species (which for the Time Lords, means everybody), including performing memory wipes, which is how the writer gets away with a story that Jamie and Victoria can’t be allowed to remember. The monsters are very nearly irrelevant, as often happens in such stories, but they have an interesting visual. This makes for a fun, memorable story, whether you accept the “Season 6B” solution or not. I have to say, I’m more inclined to do so now, especially listening to other stories in the middle, as this project allowed me to do.