That was really fun, the view to a fascist future with The Doctor struggling against it is great, especially seeing how that sort of future makes monsters out of the good intentioned rebels, and how opportunistic it makes people as well with the rebels secretly siding with those in power.
Also the character stuff with Ace and The Doctor, especially that last part with Ace having the monster inside her, but believing it’s in The Doctor, just great. Also a perfect monster for this sort of story, and a story that’s ever relevant, some things mentioned just feel so real, you could tell me this was released 24 days ago and I’d believe you, but it’s somehow 24 years??
Actually as I’m writing this, I’m upping it to a 9, originally had it as an 8 but that fact of just how it’s more relevant now than ever, and it was written nearly a quarter of a century ago, yeah it has to be a 9.
The Fearmonger is one that I liked more and more as I kept thinking about it and realised how clever it was. It’s now one of my favourite Doctor Who stories ever.
I listened to this one today, which was certainly an experience, due to, well, you know.
This is definitely a new favourite of mine! I enjoyed just about everything in it, the story was good, the twists were the right mix of surprising but foreshadowed and the performances were absolutely superb!
I think I might have been a little too distracted while listening to this one. I might try to relisten to it the next time I’m on a train, to give it the attention it deserves. As of right now, 7/10.
So, yesterday I posted about The Land of the Dead which, 27 stories into my re-listen, is still sitting at the bottom of the spreadsheet. And today? It’s The Fearmonger, which (yep, 27 stories in) is still right at the top. TL;DR: it’s a bit of a gem.
One of Big Finish’s earliest releases, and already grappling with some properly meaty stuff—political extremism, media manipulation, fear as a weapon… all wrapped up in this taut, paranoid thriller that feels just as relevant now (maybe more so, as @monkeyshaver said above) than it did back in 2000.
It’s a brilliant Seventh Doctor piece too—he’s scheming and cryptic, but never cold, and there’s a real warmth and spark to his dynamic with Ace. Plus, the sound design does a lot of the heavy lifting to keep the tension high: the scene where Mick Thompson livestreams from the centre of Part Four’s riot is horribly authentic here and now in 2025, and it’s no surprise that we go back to that as a framing device in LIVE 34. Not every early BF gets the pacing right, but this one really held me. Definitely worth a listen, especially if you’re a fan of Doctor Who stories with something sharp to say.
(Oh—and if you’re curious, The Fearmonger was actually the first review I wrote where I thought, “Hang on, maybe I should be sharing these somewhere other than a dusty old Word doc?” So if you want to get a feel for my style, this one’s a pretty great place to start.
Full review’s up on Substack here: The Fearmonger: Doctor Who’s Chilling Political Thriller —and if you fancy getting new ones (about once a week), you can subscribe for free and they’ll magically land in your inbox. Email wizardry!)
Hey all! BF newbie here, still getting used to the format and figuring out where my main interests lie. I’ve now listened to 5 stories from the main range (3 featuring 8/Charley, 2 featuring 7/Ace), and The Fearmonger may well be the first BF story I genuinely love.
It helps that it’s a 7/Ace story (a Doctor/companion duo I already have a pre-established love for), but there’s plenty else going for it too. For a story released in Feb 2000, its ideas aren’t any less relevant and if anything feel kinda prophetic (I really wish I could say a monster that feeds on fear and hysteria and grows strongest in the discourse stirred up by an increasingly powerful far-right nationalist political party was a dated concept, but… yeah), plus it just makes great use of the audio drama format. Having large chunks of the story revolve around phonecalls and a radio talk show is just clever use of your medium, and the lack of a visual aid adds to the suspense quite a bit when we’re trying to figure out who the titular monster has or hasn’t possessed in the latter part of the story.
Overall really great stuff, elevated by top tier performances from Sylvester and Sophie too. May well be one of my new favourite 7/Ace stories in general, up there with Remembrance of the Daleks and The Curse of Fenric.
This is truly an early gem in the BF catalogue! And there’s another story with similar themes down the line (LIVE-34) which I suspect you might also like.
I tend to listen to Big Finish for half an hour before sleep, and then finish the rest on the next morning during my commute. Recently, I have been re-listening to a lot of early MR stories that I haven’t revisited since the first time I finished them, and yesterday I chose this episode.
Imagine my reaction when I found out in the morning that Charlie Kirk was killed in the US. It really shows the quality of this story when it can stay relevant 25 years later, and it does not fill me with confidence for the future.
An early highlight from the Main Range. With little fuss, McCoy and Aldred leap from TV to audio—and that’s not down to acting in knockoff BBV stories a year or so prior, as the Stranger and Ms. Brown didn’t do much for me in “Whispers of Terror”. The maturity is perfectly increased from the TV series—no drug-fuelled orgies and Hazbin Hotel-tier swearing, just Ace being shot—and Jonathan Blum’s point about propaganda and hatred is just as relevant, if not more so, today.
I had been debating on listening to this one because while I have heard it was good, I also really wasn’t sure I wanted to. There is a lot of it that is extremely relevant to the real world political climate right now and I prefer to keep that out of my fiction since I am enjoying fiction to get away from it.
It was well constructed, a well made storyline and I enjoyed Ace a lot! I also thought using a radio in the beginning was very clever.
It’s a story that’s aged very well considering it’s over twenty five years old. You could make Mick Thompson a podcaster and the story could work today because immigration is a universal hot button issue. The relationship between politicians and the media getting a focus too helps, Ace noting Harper and Thompson are just as bad as each other when it comes to the blame game at the expense of what the public get.
It helps that Sherilyn, well played by Jacqueline Pearce, isn’t a pastiche of any one individual (she is based a lot on Australian politician Pauline Hanson though) the way media in the past decade has tended to use a certain politician for political parody. It means the inspiration is less of a focus and doesn’t distract from the message being conveyed. Pearce’s background as Servalan in Blake’s 7 works in her favour for this character.
A good audio drama and definitely one of Big Finish’s earlier creations that still holds up. I like the balance between political intrigue and the character dynamics, especially in the face of the monster. And the reveal that the creature was in Ace at the end, so good.
It’s been a minute since I’ve listened to this one, but I used to carry around a little iPod that I had downloaded it onto. That was so so long ago lol. I’d give it an 8/10 from memory.
The Fearmonger is a good, if unexceptional story. The writing is solid, the actors do a decent job, the special efforts (mostly the Fearmonger voice) are good, and the plot twist is well down. The big letdown is that we really never learn anything about the Fearmonger, However, as it’s really a MacGuffin that’s not important. Unfortunately, the story is probably more relevant today then when it was recorded and released.
We do get a vague backstory, the civilisation that was able to make independent manifestations of emotions, and some disaster separated them with the one for fear ending up on Earth, but that works for the story because it’s about the influence of the Fearmonger through people that the story explores, not the history of the creature itself. It’s stronger that way because the Fearmonger amplifies existing fear rather than implanting fear triggers, there’s an alien influence but the threat still comes from existing human fears that have been stirred up by other humans like Harper or Thompson.
It’s rather like the Emotional Spectrum that was introduced for Green Lantern lore at first in the 90’s, then expanded on in the mid 2000’s where there are seven Corps, each colour channeling an emotion (yellow being fear, as led by Sinestro). Ace muses on wherever Lust ended up, but it’s interesting that other emotion manifestations haven’t been explored since (the Master would be perfect for desire, or the Nine specifically for avarice).
Yes, I did hear that , but I believe it was mentioned as a possible origin. But it’s not relevant for the story to work. I just would have liked to learn a but more about the creature, for example why it’s on Earth and if it has any actual plan or if it’s more like a virus that’s just trying to survive and multiply.
I lost interest in comics in teh early ninties and totally missed the whole multi-color Corps thing. In fact, I only got back into comics during my six month convalesce after my two major surgeries in late 2024. And I’m currently only reading 9 regular and 2 limited titles, 5 of them being Superman titles.
, but I believe it was mentioned as a possible origin. But it’s not relevant for the story to work. I just would have liked to learn a but more about the creature, for example why it’s on Earth and if it has any actual plan or if it’s more like a virus that’s just trying to survive and multiply.