Project: Nirvana

"He looks happy to be dead."

Writers: Mark Wright & Cavan Scot

Format: Audio

Released: September 2012

Series: Companion Chronicles 7.03

Featuring: Seventh Doctor, Sally, Lysandra

Synopsis 

The place is Eastern Europe. The year is 2015.

The TARDIS lands in mid-air, and Captain Lysandra Aristedes is dropped into a daring mission in her own past. There are enemies and creatures out there in the night, and the Doctor is waiting at the rendezvous point.

Because this is all the part of his bigger picture. And Aristedes is going to learn something about herself...

Verdict  

Project: Nirvana was a really strong Companion Chronicles audio adventure! I must admit I completely forgot this story existed until I found myself scrolling through my unplayed list on the Big Finish app and I saw it and it clicked in my head that I was finally in a position to listen to this story with full appreciation. Whilst the events of this Chronicle take place prior to Black and White for Sally and Lysandra, I think it was good to have listen to that and the subsequent Gods and Monsters trilogy finale to fully understand where things were here and where they would head to. The timelines can get a little jumbled and that was only heightened by us meeting an earlier version of Lysandra for the bulk of the story, but that’s also fun! It was good continuity to have the TARDIS exterior as being black, although I maintain that the colour of the police really isn’t that important! It’s still fun to picture it as something other than its iconic blue though. The trio of the Seventh Doctor, Sally and Lysandra has a lot of potential and I’d love to hear more from them, though I’m not sure that will be the case given how things were left for them. So inserting a Companion Chronicle is a nice touch to catch up on their adventures. It was tremendous to actually have Sylvester McCoy voicing the Seventh Doctor in this adventure, something rather rare for this range. It really helped in making it feel authentic. The two main leads being the actresses for Sally and Lysandra themselves was terrific too and I really enjoy their dynamic. There’s a respect between the pair and an understanding of their military rank and where that places them in the hierarchy. So having Sally encounter a younger version of Lysandra from the past when she was fully ingrained in being part of the Forge was excellent. Just revisiting a time where the Forge was very powerful was fun stuff and it provided a nice history lesson. The story arc regarding the Forge has been going on for an incredibly long period of time. I really appreciated that the title was another project and the Nirvana one here was really interesting and tied in very nicely to the Monthly Adventures story arc of Elder Gods. Derleth was another of these gods and the exploration surrounding her was very good. I found it uncomfortable when Sally was laughing too much after she was essentially consumed by Derleth and that was exactly the right feeling required. It was good stuff and provided the basis for a strong villain. Having one of the Elder Gods be female was a nice touch too. This was a strong female focused story so that was rather fitting. I was a big fan of her. The action in the story was impressive, especially for the audio format and I did enjoy the train sequence to open the first episode even if it wasn’t always clear what precisely was going on. It was exciting and it peaked my interest. Lysandra being aware of the dangers of meeting and physically interacting with her past self was good and showed just how in the know the Forge were. She couldn’t understand why she didn’t remember the encounter though given that she was literally seeing her past self experience it. I thought we’d get something akin to the multi-Doctor stories with the time differential balancing out, but we had a good explanation of Lysandra taking Delerth into her own mind and that being why she couldn’t remember the past encounter. Deep trauma meant the memories were buried and that was pretty fitting. Overall, a really strong adventure!

Rating: 8/10