REVIEW - WE ARE THE DALEKS

Welcome back Melanie Bush!

The new Seventh Doctor trilogy kicks off with a tale that combines Daleks, video games and politics. I know right? Sounds like the beginning to a very bad joke, but I assure you it’s not. Not with Jonathan Morris at the helm! We are the Daleks is a contemporary story that in some ways serves as a spiritual prequel to Remembrance of the Daleks.

It’s been so long since we’ve heard Bonnie Langford in Big Finish and it’s a real treat to listen to her more tolerable version of Mel in audio format. Her character is one of many Big Finish has redeemed over the years and I find audio-Mel more bearable than some of the new series companions. If you don’t believe me, Fires of Vulcan, Flip-Flop and The Wrong Doctors are great Mel stories and that’s just the ones off the top of my head. 

It’s been equally as long since we heard the clownish Seventh Doctor in an audio. Don’t be frightened off, the Doctor is less clownish in this tale and leans more towards his usual cunning self, but there are a couple of scenes where that start-up persona from Time and the Rani can be felt. Thankfully it’s not blown up or dragged on. In fact, this story does a pretty good job of showcasing the link between clown and chess master and the steady descend down the latter path. Special mention goes out to the badass boast Morris has written for Sylvester McCoy's Doctor. Absolutely terrifying!

I’m not really into politics or history so while I know who Margaret Thatcher is, I can’t say I know much about her reign or whatever. What I do know is that she was some kind of Iron Lady prime minister and upset a lot of people with the way she handled her business. I’ve been told that a character in this piece is an expy of her and upon second listen, given everything I’d heard and read over the years, I can confirm that it is indeed true – and funny! The ending makes it sound like this could become a recurring character like Cuthbert from the Fourth Doctor Adventures. I hope so. 

I will confess that this story gets better and better with each episode, but the first episode can easily be misjudged as slow or boring. It was hard for me to get into the first episode and it wasn’t until episode 2 where I was like ‘bring it on Daleks!’. Be warned. If like me, you find episode 1 to be lacking in something, my advice is to power on through. It’s worth it I promise.

Rating this story: 8/10.“Let me go…and I’ll let you live.”