This isn't
to say the other releases haven't been good, the worst I can honestly
say is that I thought The Highest Science wasn't as funny as
the book but it was still entertaining. Rather, its just that all
the ingredients were present in this one in just the right ratios and
just the right places.
You've got
the in medias res beginning
as we join Benny and the Doctor at the end of a mainly unseen
adventure. You've got Benny, Chris and Roz together, which was the
definitive TARDIS team of The New Adventures as far as I'm concerned
(I never got on with the guntoting space marine version of Ace). You
have a discussion of the Doctor's morality, albeit not a terribly
compelling one, with the serial killer Zebulon Pryce. Most of all,
though, there's the scenes in the Overcities of 30th
century Earth teeming with aliens and sly little reference like the
Birostrop character.
One
of the big selling points of the Virgin era was that the books had a
pretty solid sense of what the future looked like in the Doctor Who
universe but, sadly, not many of the books Big Finish have been able
to adapt have been ones using that solid future continuity. What
little we've seen of that future in the adaptations have been
isolated outposts of the Earth Empire (Love And War,
The Romance Of Crime)
or random archaeological expeditions to the edge of space in that era
(Theatre Of War, The
Highest Science) with this being
the first time the series has done the sweeping space opera I
remember from that era.
Given
that the adaptations seem to be ending with Cold Fusion
(which I am so very much looking forward to) its nice they got in one
like this before the end, a real nostalgia fest for the majestic
height of the novel line.
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