Earth Aid

Lost Stories #2.6

Released: 16 July 2011

Listened: 11/18/20

This story follows closely after the previous, but a little time has passed, long enough for the Doctor and Ace to have infiltrated a human space fleet, with Ace somehow posing as a starship captain, and really not doing a great job of it. (You’d think the Doctor would have learned that this trick doesn’t work from “Bang Bang a Boom,” which wasn’t that long ago for him.) They’re reunited with Raine through a rather odd circumstance, which makes me wonder what the point was of splitting them up. She doesn’t even have all that much to do this time except boggle at what’s going on around her, as this is her first spaceship. They’re also reunited with the Metatraxi, who are still out for revenge for the events of “Crime of the Century.” Once again, the structure is rather scattered, and the ending is somewhat contrived, but all the stories in this small set have been like that. The guest cast on this one is remarkable: Ingrid Oliver, a couple of years pre-Osgood, plays a military type. Paterson Joseph, a remarkable actor who’s sometimes projected to play the Doctor, does an American accent that makes him entirely unrecognizable, but it must be said, he does American better than most Big Finish guest actors. The Metatraxi plot thread from this season wraps up, but Raine’s plot doesn’t seem to have advanced all that much, and she only has one other appearance, much later in this project. Which is a shame, because I like Raine, and I like Beth Chalmers, but at least she has other Big Finish roles. On the whole, these particular Lost Stories aren’t quite as satisfying as they could have been.