A Life of Crime

Main Range #214

Released: 12 July 2016

Listened: 1/18/21

Welcome back Mel! As the previous anthology suggests, Mel is the one that the TARDIS has been trying to find, because she’s kind of in trouble. However, the TARDIS arrives early to the planet Ricosta, a retirement planet for wealthy criminals (where the natives look like raccoons, but that’s only relevant to the cover illustration). In trying to figure out what they’re meant to do, Ace ends up on the run from a mobster, and the Doctor is killed...maybe. Big Finish doesn’t do the “fake regeneration” trick nearly as often as they could do, but this time it’s done fairly effectively. Lefty Lonnigan’s gang is associated with Sabalom Glitz, and Glitz has told them about the TARDIS and regeneration, which inspires one of the gang members to pretend to be the Doctor to get Ace to fly the TARDIS for them. When that doesn’t work, she tries the same trick on Mel when she arrives, and it appears to work (except Mel’s running a con of her own). Mel is separated from Glitz, left holding considerable debts in his name, and is willing to rob a bank in order to pay them off. The Doctor is pretty disappointed, as she hoped that Mel would influence Glitz, not the other way around. However, not all is as it appears, as Mel may have been running a con on Glitz for charitable purposes. Mel still seems to have all her tech skills, and some additional experience besides, but she’s surprised at how well Ace enacts the Doctor’s plans now, and how morally righteous the Doctor seems to have become. The heist part of the story is pretty well put together, but once the layers are peeled away, the actual baddies, tentacled creatures who eat people’s quantum futures, aren’t all that impressive. Plus they’ve got that annoying slurpy voice effect that slavering creatures tend to have in Big Finish. Mel comes along at the end of the story, which Ace doesn’t seem to be wholly excited about. Incidentally, this story is clearly post-Hex for Ace, as it comes directly after “You Are the Doctor,” which follows “Signs and Wonders,” but the actors seem a bit fuzzy about that in the extras. It’s a good start to Mel’s return era.