The Big Blue Book

"People who draw this go missing."

Writer: Lizzie Hopley

Format: Audio

Released: March 2019

Series: Eighth of March 02

Featuring: Ace, Benny

Synopsis

With the Doctor AWOL, Benny and Ace are left to their own devices, going native in a Liverpool university.

Benny accepts an invitation she really shouldn't, and Ace meets a very strange collector.

An alien library is about to gain a big, blue book... but where's the TARDIS?

Verdict

The Big Blue Book was a very good audio to continue my way through The Eighth of March collection of adventures focusing on the women of Doctor Who and Big Finish. It's such a good and fitting idea and this was another great story to be placed in the boxset. This was a terrific way to capture the era of the Seventh Doctor with Ace and Benny in shining roles, and whilst things were more focused on the former it was still good to hear them together as a pair. They really work well together and that was definitely evidenced here. I thought the setting of 1990s Liverpool was good and definitely more could have been made of that instead of just the university lifestyle, although that was really positive and a fun reminder of my recent past. Harvey made for a decent character and it was good that there was someone else other than Benny that Ace knew and cared for. I thought the presence of the TARDIS was quite fun but I have to admit that given the boxset and the fact that it is celebrating women, I thought there was too much made of the Doctor's absence. Things were clearly going wrong so we had both Benny and Ace hoping to get in touch with the Doctor to try and fix things. He was a genius and he could solve any problem and ordinarily I wold have been absolutely fine with that and I haven't let it impact my rating, but I just thought the was a little out of touch in the celebratory release. The library usage was brilliant and I really enjoyed Vassa and how her character and role developed throughout the audio. She was a creepy woman which really worked well and I thought they nailed the casting as her voice really fitted in with the characterisation. The concept of people being turned into books was certainly unique and it worked really well with there actually being a malfunction that Vassa was unable to fix. Not only were people turned into books, but they were being lured in which added to the issues. The description of the size of the library and how there were over 18,000 people who had been turned into books was extraordinary, and it was very fun to hear that all of the books were catalogued despite being blank. Ace causing the TARDIS to even end up as a book was fantastic and I loved how she was ruing telling the Doctor about this development. Ace going into the pages (I guess) and hearing the voices of Harvey and Benny was great and I really enjoyed how we could hear the desperation in their voices. Ace hearing numbers amongst all of the jumble of all those written into the book was a clever little ploy as well. Vassa knowing all about Ace and Benny from a quick scan was fun and I liked how both were immediately defensive. As a whole, I thought this flowed well and I think with a bit more excitement at the end we could have had an even higher rating! I wasn't actually expecting Sylvester McCoy to briefly feature as the Seventh Doctor at the end and it was terrific that he caught the train to Kent to fix whatever problem required him there, whilst retaining knowledge of there being some sort of incident at the library. Overall, a really strong audio!

Rating: 8/10