The Sirens of Time, part 1

Main Range #1

Released: 19 July 1999

Listened: 12/17/20

Now we go all the way back to the beginning, for Big Finish, anyway. This story goes here because the Seventh Doctor is traveling alone, for reasons that aren’t explained. The Doctor meets a woman named Elenya, and finds her familiar, which makes the order of the stories clever. Starting with the Seventh Doctor, the listener won’t have met Elenya’s doppelgangers yet. Unfortunately, this part of the story also features Sancroff, the elderly Knight of Velyshaa, who’s being held prisoner -- and frankly, suffering elder abuse -- by Ruthley, played by Maggie Stables with a ridiculously over-the-top accent and speech pattern. Worse, all of the aliens and robots speak in terribly slow voices that, while accurate to the classic TV series, are painful on audio. The overall plot doesn’t move a whole lot in this section, and the Doctor spends a lot of time wrong-footed, so as a stand-alone, it’s pretty poor.