The Shadow Heart

Main Range #167

Released: 15 September 2008

Listened: 3/1/21

This is the third part of a five-six-seven trilogy that started in “The Burning Prince” and continued into “The Acheron Pulse.” It was also the final Main Range entry I obtained to complete my collection. The first part of this story has a strong Star Wars flavor to it, with a junk-strewn universe full of strange aliens doing dodgy deals. It also introduces ruthless bounty hunter Vienna Salvatori, played by Star Trek actor Chase Masterson, with her American accent, but unfortunately that over-enunciating that Americans tend to do in Big Finish, so it sounds unnatural. The rest of the story is deeply timey-wimey, as the Doctor pops in and out of the plot several times, but not in order, while the story follows the main flow of time. He also does a number of precision landings, appearing to flee in the TARDIS but actually landing on board a nearby spaceship. There’s a direct link back to “The Acheron Pulse,” in which the Sixth Doctor programmed a bunch of robots with his own sense of morality, and it should have been fairly obvious just how badly that was going to go, which it did. Other than that, though, there’s not a strong connection; this could be a stand-alone story. The secondary characters are quite well defined, and the time-hopping is enough to keep you guessing, along with a hidden identity character. Come for the atmosphere, not for the story itself.