In Review: Big Finish: Doctor Who – Doom Coalition 2

Synopsis: The Doctor continues his series of adventures featuring The Eleven and comes into contact with a misguided Caleera who is the result of a horrendous experiment.

Review: Featuring four stories written by Nicholas Briggs, John Dorney, Marc Platt  and Matt Fitton ‘Doom Coalition 2’ features four very different adventures, which are all tied together with another appearance from The Eleven and a deadly new threat in the form of Caleera. But none count on a certain River Song making an appearance to help save the day.

The opening story ‘Beachhead’, which is written by the wonderful Nicholas Briggs sees the Doctor recuperating after his confrontation with The Eleven, which featured in the first series of adventures. Briggs uses his vast knowledge of classic Doctor Who to call back on a Third Doctor adventure. I loved how he used the Voord in this story and really enjoyed the way in which the sound people sold the action sequences. This whole story pretty much channeled the Third Doctor era of the series and did so with some really nice flourishes.

The second story ‘Scenes From Her Life’ by John Dorney is a much more dark and atmospheric story, which sees The Doctor exploring a vast Gothic  City, which is lost in space and time. While there they discover the scene of a terrible experiment which could have devastating consequences for the entire universe. The set up for this story is very creepy and features a lot of mysterious elements and certain characters that come into play more in the other two stories. This also sees the return of The Eleven who once more is the mastermind behind everything.

The third story ‘The Gift’ by Marc Platt directly follows on from ‘Scenes From Her Life’ and sees The Doctor and his friends investigating a a mysterious psychic ‘Gift’ which is hungry for power and intent on wreaking havoc and destruction. A Gift, which has the potential for massive destruction. I enjoyed the final moments of this story where The Doctor has to talk the somewhat unstable Caleera down from wielding the Gift. The close of this episode is a brilliant lead in for the appearance of River Song, which sees the Doctor finding a note, which simply says “Hello Sweetie”.

The final story ‘The Sonomancer’ by Matt Fitton sees the Doctor inadvertently coming to the aid of River Song who has sent a distress signal out to get aid in saving the indigenous people from their planet, which is in a state of total collaps thanks to various mining operations in the name of Free Enterprise. The tricky part of this adventure for River Song is that she must not meet the Doctor, this however is solved for her due to the Doctor being preoccupied with The Eleven and Coleera. But Liv Chenka and Helen get a chance to shine here as they go off with River and help her with her mission.

All of these stories are very different, but link together really well.

I particularly the story elements involving Coleera and The Eleven, which kept me guessing throughout.

The addition of River Song in the final story was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed how the writers hinted at her appearance in the penultimate story with the use of her distinctive perfume and of course the cheeky note. The second and third stories did suffer a little with slow pacing early on, but the character beats more than made up for it. In fact character wise some of the elements in ‘Scenes From Her Life’ put me in mind a little of ‘The Doctors Wife’ insofar as the characters that were conducting the experiment starting off as somewhat eccentric and rather innocent.

• You can get your copy of ‘Doom Coalition 2’ at: www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/doom-coalition-2-1222