Of course I knew when I started listening that this was a stupid choice for my first ever experience of a full Big Finish audio drama. I was correct. There was evidently a history behind a couple of the characters that bewildered me and made the whole thing slightly confusing for me – not a great start. For those unaware, Big Finish is a company that produces audio plays based on already established franchises, and arguably their most successful is an incredibly extensive Doctor Who range that includes multiple Doctor-lite spin-off series, such as this Sarah Jane Smith series. This particular 2002 adventure follows Sarah Jane (at this time an ex-companion of the Doctor) investigating the appearance of an old man’s corpse in the River Thames, whose DNA matches that of an 18-year old boy. Timey-wimey. But not in the usual way.

All in all the play isn’t too bad, and with some prior knowledge and slightly more prior sleep I may have thoroughly enjoyed it. However when it came to it, the piece did slightly confuse and to a certain extent bore me. Barry Letts’ script was generally good though, aside from a few pace issues. His plot, all in all, was good – It would not have transferred well to a television story, but that is not necesarily a bad thing, as of course audio dramas can and arguably should be based around dialogue rather than action. Most of the acting was sound, with Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith) and Jeremy James (Josh Townsend) carrying it decently. But the real saving grace of the play and by far the pinnacle in terms of acting was Moray Treadwell as Will Butley, who was really impressively disturbing, largely due to being audio-only and thus suspending the audience’s disbelief.

In general the play is very different from anything other in the Whoniverse that I have experienced, though it was nice to experience something so casually adult for once, also presumably being one of the first Who stories to grapple confidently and well with homosexuality, while probably being the only story to touch on Taoism. It was not especially gripping but in general well thought out and not as dire as it could well have been.