On occasion great bounties can be found in charity shops if one is lucky and I was indeed lucky a few months back. While waiting to return to the pre-arranged meeting place where my good lady and her friend expected me I dallied in a branch of Oxfam and amid the ranks of objects I spotted some CD’s. Most of the time it is the kind of turgid rubbish that I find it hard to believe appeals to anyone but was I wrong this time. I saw a case with the Big Finish logo and it was a Doctor Who audio adventure from about ten years back called…The Sword of Orion.
I listened to the adventure over a week in the car and even stopped and sit to listen to more of it! It was very good. Paul McGann to me is a superb Doctor Who and does a great job driving the tale forward while I also adore India Fisher’s voice as the character of Charlie Pollard. It had all the elements of my favourite kind of Who story; hard sci-fi, space, monsters, action. The villains of the piece are the Cybermen who lurk and then strike aboard a mothballed battle cruiser in a space scrapyard.
The story gave me a lot of ideas for wargaming scenarios and I recommend it for wargamers and fans of Doctor Who as well. There are nine other adventures in this series and this one is the second in the list. I may well get myself more of these…but the chances of finding them in the charity shop….low indeed!
GBS
Some of the Big Finish Who audios are indeed awesome, I’m lucky enough to own every single one! You can subscribe to digital downloads on their website and they also do sales regularly where you can fill in gaps in your collection for a fiver 🙂
After Orion I’d check out Cyberman and Cyberman 2, they fit in well with what’s happening in Orion !
The Eighth Doctor ranges they do are brilliant, weirdly the Eighth Doctor is my Doctor as I watched it as a kid but was more of a Trek fan. I really got into Who after the BBC Eighth Doctor book range in the 90s. One of the best Charlie Pollard audios is Chimes of MIdnight, very Sapphire & Steel. There’s long been talk of a spin off series featuring Charlie too !
C.
Thanks for your comment Craig. You are indeed lucky my friend. I think I shall seek out some more, certainly other Cybermen ones. A spin off for Charlie Pollard would be excellent.
Audio allows stories that TV would not do and some of them look very odd and others appeal. Time will tell.
I am spending my ‘hobby’ budget just now on getting my blogger blog going and for miniatures and terrain but more on that soon.
GBS