Blake transports down to a mining facility but his cover story doesn’t last long…
The final story in this first box set is the cleverly-titled Counterfeit by Peter Anghelides, which is definitely one of those stories that you don’t want spoiled before you listen to it. As with the preceding audio, the big twist becomes obvious as the story canters towards its conclusion, but it’s still fun to hear – and the little twist that builds on that makes for an appropriate ending.
The three stories have each used the “companion chronicle” format differently: The Turing Test is a straightforward narration by Avon, with interjections from Vila as appropriate; Solitary features Vila relaying a tale to Nyrron; while Counterfeit includes some third party narration in a manner that will be familiar to readers of James Patterson’s Alex Cross stories. It adds to the variety of the set, although my personal preference is for the first format – in Counterfeit, it’s a bit of a distraction, as you’ve got moments of Gareth Thomas as narrator followed by Gareth Thomas as Blake as narrator. Perhaps, as Stephen King found when writing his novel Christine, there simply wasn’t a way to relay certain scenes in anything other than third person.
Hopefully somewhere down the line, Big Finish will be able to use more than two voices in a play – the potential for recreating the Blake/Avon/Vila triangle should be mined if at all possible. But overall, these three plays have whetted the appetite for more Series A adventures. 7/10
Paul Simpson
IF YOU HAVE COME HERE PLEASE REDIRECT YOUR BROWSER TO WWW.SCIFIBULLETIN.COM 