Big Finish - The Doomsday Quatrain

This is the Big Finish Doctor Who release 151 The Doomsday Quatrain, featuring Sylvester McCoy as the seventh Doctor.

The Doctor lands in sixteenth century Florence and meets Nostradamus which allows him to make a neat joke about how his wife once knitted him a scarf, a nod back to a comment the fourth Doctor made in The Ark in Space. Of course, with the Doctor around strange things are usually going to start happen and this story is no exception.

Having said that I generally don't like the Doctor's encounters with historical characters, this had a neat twist which was very enjoyable. The seventh Doctor has a reputation for being a master manipulator and that's how he acts in this story. In a way it's classic Doctor Who with the Doctor playing two sides off against each other using no special abilities other than his wits.

I enjoyed this much more than the previous short stories. I like my Doctor Who in a serialised form with cliffhangers and the sting leading into the theme music. I also like how Big Finish use the right version of the theme music for each incarnation of the Doctor.

Overall, this is a good story with some fine performances from McCoy and the other actors. There's a monster voice that sounds a bit like a parody of a typical Doctor Who baddie but otherwise the sound design is great. I'm going to give this a solid 4 out of 5 Tardis fast return switches.

Next up is more of the seventh in The House of Blue Fire