“[is] he your boyfriend?” sounds like the type of mid-2000 blend of passé humor and light homophobia in some cases, but in 1952 that type of thing can get you arrested around these parts. London! What a dump. Oh, you know how it is with a Tenth Doctor Adventure in Volume 3 of the Big Finish range. Ten prances about in only the way Ten does, and Donna wanders off and starts chatting to a gay bloke about his boyfriend when that type of thing is illegal. I wonder if there is some kind of thing I could say about the progress for gay people and this month?

A lovely bit of referencing, as is always with Doctor Who, a bit of “Smith and Jones,” a bit of “The Fires of Pompeii,” “Turn Left,” “Planet of the Dead,” and “Logopolis.” The Creeping Death is a bit of a weird one, a bit of a pseudo-historical without, say, Hitler, Churchill, or Shakespeare. Just an event almost no one of the modern-day would know about, the great smog of 1952. The entire thing is strange, how do you make smog such a problem in a sci-fi adventure? Make it alien particles and call them “Fumifugium;” Now I’m all for Raxacoricofallapatorians, Romanadvoratrelundar, and Clom for weird names in Doctor Who, but for once I agree with my editor, what?

I do enjoy the reference to the World War II system for dispersing fog, FIDO, which was probably the most expensive landings outside of crashes. Nevertheless, put aside the countless references and funs bits with the gay couple fumbling about because simply being gay was grounds for imprisonment, it is a bit rough. As all three of these Tenth Doctor’s Adventures have been, it is just over the length of a typical TV episode of the modern era, especially for his run. So I’m both trying to talk about the episode and not entirely spoil it, which is hard. Especially since after 20-odd minutes we’ve got a majority of the way through.

It is one of the few times I’ve been hoping for more length rather than less; As much of an innuendo as that sounds, it is true. For a majority of the time, I enjoy the characters, the way they interact, and even the snooty old theater dame of Alice Aiken, played by Helen Goldwyn. They are all interesting, fun, or could have gone a bit further into who they were. I’d like a bit more about old Malcolm, who is a door-to-door salesman after being a young man in The Great War. I’d love to know the path that got him from the trenches in France to a bus station in 1952. I’d also like to know how Ivy doesn’t know about the NHS four years after its founding by Nye Bevan.

Ultimately, it is just a fun little adventure missing something special. The first story in this collection was something ghostly with effects on a voice to give it something different, the same could be said of The Spectre of Lanyon Moor too. Of course, you can’t throw in something visual in an audio drama. All the same, adding a bit of chorus or a flanger effect has become a bit of a formula within a few episodes. With different actors playing the roles they all sound a bit varied, but ultimately you could say they were all of the same species and I couldn’t really question it.

If you’ve been missing the Ten and Donna adventures of Series 4, this entire volume has been that of varying degrees. Maybe I am too much a fan of the Judoon, but I did enjoy One Mile Down the most out of the three, despite its misgivings here and there. That said, The Creeping Death is by far hopped into second place within minutes of its beginning. Ultimately it is just Ten and Donna going for a wander in the fog of the 1950s.

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Big Finish Doctor Who "The Creeping Death"

$8.99

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• A fun frivolous Ten and Donna adventure.
• Lovely historical and Who-based references.
• Enjoyable characters to be around.

Cons

• Fumifugium is a bit clunky as a name.
• Could have been a bit longer, adding more details to characters.