Review: Doctor Who – Night of the Whisper / Author: Cavan Scott, Mark Wright / Publisher: AudioGo/Big Finish / Starring: Nick Briggs, John Schwab / Release Date: Out Now
With the release of September’s Destiny of the Doctor story, Night of the Whisper, Big Finish cross into the territory of Nu-Who for the first time. To mark this auspicious moment, we have a tale penned by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright. Despite being better known as the voice of the Daleks (and many other creatures), Nick Briggs steps up to the plate as narrator, Rose Tyler, Jack Harkness and a very credible Ninth Doctor; he also does the Eleventh Doctor as well. In the midst of this, John Schwab plays local police chief McNeil.
Despite being an audio, this is actually a very visual experience, as the story triggers the imagination with its rich imagery, evoking a grand comic strip as the action moves from scene to scene. As for the pleasure colony of New Vegas, imagine a mix of Judge Dredd and Batman in the visual style of the Coruscant sequences from Attack of the Clones. Into this drop Jack Harkness as a reporter, Rose Tyler as a waitress in the local gangster overlord’s casino and the Doctor as Inspector George Dixon from New New New Scotland Yard.
The story centres around the mysterious Whisper – a super-powered vigilante out to serve justice on crime lords and graffiti artists alike. This is accomplished via body-desiccating bolts of cobalt energy, an image writ strong in my imagination and justification in its own right for a comic strip adaptation of this story.
We have black limos, machine guns, murdered employees and hover-bike chases along with a distressed police chief and a heady mix of vengeance, grief and alien technology.
The pace is unrelenting and this is a full-on story dripping in Nu-Who music and production values. There are twists and turns before the ending, and having absorbed this latest instalment in the series, we can only hope that this is not a one-off. I suspect Cavan and Mark have also raised their profiles as regards future writers for the TV show.
Overall this is the best release so far in the Destiny of the Doctor range and easily worth…
