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The once proud city of Excelis is now a crumbling ruin. The
population is besieged by barbarians, who catapult pestilent
animal corpses into the town to spread disease. A stranded
Professor Summerfield makes the acquaintance of an unlikely
ally: a mysterious traveller known as Iris Wildthyme...
At
the risk of sounding like the cover blurb to Douglas Adams'
So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish, this is the fourth
part of the Excelis trilogy. Plague Herds is an addendum
to the three dramas, Excelis Dawns, Excelis Rising and
Excelis Decays, that were recently released as part of
Big Finish's Doctor Who range.
Having
found the previous two instalments rather disappointing, I
was very pleased to hear the return of Katy Manning as Iris
Wildthyme. She was definitely the best thing about Excelis
Dawns. Two equally strong but very different characters,
Manning's Iris and Lisa Bowerman's Benny make a great team.
Quite
why they need to be cagey about using the "D" word and the
"T" word is a mystery to me, however - surely Big Finish is
allowed to use the Doctor's name and the word TARDIS? Perhaps
writer Stephen Cole was just trying to recapture the flavour
of Virgin Publishing's final few Doctor-less New Adventures,
when they weren't allowed to say such things!
As
it happens, we should be grateful that this is an audio adventure.
Many of the most dramatic scenes concern the contested ownership
of "the Relic". Considering that this artefact is shaped like
a handbag (hence Iris' desire to reclaim it), this could have
undermined the drama somewhat had it been told via any visual
medium.
Plague
Herds brings what has been an uneven saga to a satisfactory
resolution.
Richard McGinlay
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