The Last Voyage

"Everyone has vanished, except for us!"

Writer: Pete McTighe

Format: Audio

Released: January 2010

Series: NSA Audio 06

Featuring: Tenth Doctor

Synopsis

The TARDIS materialises on board the maiden voyage of a pioneering space cruiser, travelling from Earth to the planet Eternity. The Doctor has just started exploring the vehicle when there is a loud bang, a massive jolt and a flash of light. Soon he discovers that nearly all the passengers and crew have disappeared. Unless the Doctor and flight attendant Sugar MacAuley can take control and steer the ship, they could crash-land – or stay in space forever!

Verdict

The Last Voyage was a good listen for a New Series Adventures audio! I do think that at nearly two-and-a-half hours these kind of stories are a little on the long side and even with someone as talented as David Tennant in the narrator role, it’s very difficult with just one actor. It’s a little difficult to maintain those concentration levels required to fully appreciate the content and listening to the same voice for nearly 150 minutes means the mind can’t help but wonder! Now, that’s a little negative against the format and as my rating reflects this was still a tale I enjoyed. I do think it helps when we have Tennant as the actor as when the Doctor features it’s the genuine article. His natural accent also helped in differentiating between roles and characters which is nice. There were at least efforts there to make it feel like a full cast. I really liked how the story started with the track actually titled as ‘atmospherics’ before the opening titles even hit. That really helped sell what kind of story we were going to listen to. It set the tone right from the off and that dark and eery feel never really left which I was very pleased with. That was certainly one of the biggest highlights this story had going for it. I liked the concept of the title and the Doctor arriving during the last voyage of a vessel, except this was actually the maiden voyage! I must admit that the number of times it was reiterated that they were actually on an interstitial transposition vehicle got very tiresome very quickly. It just seemed unnecessary! I was surprised it took as long as it did for the Doctor to actually feature, but when he did I thought things really kicked into gear. Sugar was a really strong character to fill in that companion role given this adventure takes place during the era of the 2009 Specials, even if it was actually released after David Tennant’s swan song! That’s some unfortunate scheduling, but she was a really good character and I definitely could have seen her coming onboard in a more permanent fashion. She had a lot of good qualities. The voyage to Eternity had a really nice ring to it on paper and the Doctor knowing of the end destination was good stuff. A maiden voyage of this kind was impressive and he was even more surprised when he discovered how quickly the interstitial travel technology had been developed. It just shouldn’t have been possible to go from quick sketches of the idea to a working vehicle in three years. The scale was uncharted territory. I’m never a fan when the enemy or just races in general don’t get a name. I can’t help but find it a little lazy and it’s hard to get familiar with them. There’s no connection there so just having mysterious interstitial beings could have been improved upon. Simply a name and a quick line on their background would have been so beneficial. It’s especially annoying when they actually knew the Doctor’s real name! That was a strong and powerful moment but even more could have been made of it in my opinion. There weren’t many, if any, people left in the universe who knew that and that should have been used to attack the Doctor more in my view. It was still audacious to go down that route but it fitted in nicely with all of the others hearing their name being called in the shadows. The Doctor working out that it was actually they who were missing was a fun twist that I didn’t see coming and that made the conclusion more simple of getting them back, rather than everyone else who was supposed missing. Overall, probably a little too long but still a strong story. A worthy listen!

Rating: 7/10