It’s time to listen to and discuss The Church and the Crown
Buy it online using the link above, or listen for free - you’ll find links where to listen free on the story page!
Once you’ve listened, talk about it below! Even if you listened to it before and just want to discuss it - dive right in! Just please use spoiler tags where appropriate.
Everyone who participates will get a coveted Audio Club badge!
Seeing as Cavan Scott and Mark Wright are the writers of the only story I have rated 1 star on this site, I’m fully expecting to have a great time with this. You have no idea how excited I am.
Need to reslisten to this one as I have got absolutely zero memory of ever ever listening to this one before… I could literally not tell you anything about it which probably means I didn’t hate it, right?
Great characters, Erimem proves her worth, the Doctor gets to have some fun, everybody acts their socks off; it’s nothing spectacular but it is a very solid story.
Plus, it includes one of my favourite bits of Big Finish dialogue:
BUCKINGHAM: You would dare to take on one of the finest swordsmen in England?
DOCTOR: Hasn’t anybody told you? We’re in France!
Though I do find it funny that Cavan Scott and Mark Wright went from the uber-serious grimdark Project: Twilight to a fun period drama in pre-revolutionary France.
Full review here. If you enjoy it, feel free to leave a like:
I was positively surprised by this audio. I’m one of those who generally struggle with Five audios, especially those with Nyssa as a sole companion (Spare Parts being the exception). So I went into this expecting a boring and forgettable adventure, but was delighted to find a fun and fast-paced historical instead!
The Church and the Crown = 8/10
I had completely forgotten that Erimem joined the TARDIS earlier on, but here she takes charge right away (turning into something of a Leela for Five), while Pero gets one of her better stories in the Main Range so far. I greatly enjoy this TARDIS team. Nicola Bryant’s double duty as Peri and Queen Anne truly shows her acting prowess, and she easily steals the show. Davison also sounds like he’s having fun.
I greatly enjoyed the Doctor Who take on The Three Musketeers with a more historically accurate Richelieu and superb performances from both him and King Louis. The music and sound effects helped bring the era to life, and they made some of the later action moments surprisingly vivid.
Feel free to read and like my full review if you want:
Oh, huh. I actually really like this one. Would’ve impossibly guessed Scott and Wright wrote Project Twilight as well. It’s not alike in the slightest tonally, and flows way better in my opinion. It doesn’t try anything spectacular but the story just… works kind of perfectly. All characters are great fun to listen to, the entire thing keeps such an excellent pace and makes you want to keep listening (maybe extra noticeable because last week was such a far cry from it), and on top it also offers some great developments for Erimem as a tardis-traveller. Fees like a story i might start liking more and more as time goes on.
Well, I wasn’t as impressed as you all seem to have been.
Maybe it’s because as soon as I realised it was a Companion doppelgänger story I rolled my eyes and never got over it.
I just don’t understand the idea behind that trope. It’s been done to death, alongside Doctor doppelgänger. I find it uninspired, unrealistic, and frankly a boring shortcut into a story. It makes no sense!
The plus side is that Nicola gets to use her English accent for some of this - oh how her fake American grates on me!
So I probably just tuned out and missed all the wonderful bits you’re all raving about. I thought it was another boring Fifth Doctor story. And I’m not a fan of pure historicals either. Sorry!
The Church and the Crown my beloved. Everything about this story is perfect. Every joke lands, there’s not a single bad performance, the dialogue sparkles, and the Doctor, Peri, and Erimem get to show why they are one of the most underrated TARDIS teams in their very first adventure together.
