The First Question: The Final Cut

"These figures seem to be entirely comprised of electricity."

Writer: Lisa McMullin (from a story by Max Kashevsky)

Format: Audio

Released: March 2026

Series: Eleventh Doctor Adventures 1.01

Featuring: Eleventh Doctor, Eleanor

Synopsis

Hong King 1990. The Doctor answers a call for help from Eleanor Fong, CEO of Fong Enterprises. Only he's eleven years too late. And in those intervening years she's been busy – helping people to forget...

Verdict

The Final Cut was an outstanding start to the The First Question first series of Eleventh Doctor Adventures! I was excited for this release as the Eleventh Doctor is my favourite and whilst it is obviously a huge shame that we haven't had any Matt Smith yet in reprising his incarnation, I thought Miles Taylor was absolutely sublime here. His impression and take on the Eleventh Doctor was uncanny and instantly becomes one of the best impressions to come from Big Finish. We've obviously had an incredibly strong and emotionally charged series with the Eleventh Doctor before in the form of the Eleventh Doctor Chronicles alongside companion Valerie, but this looks to be something different altogether which is obviously great! This just felt different and I really enjoyed it. I thought a setting of 1990s Hong Kong was very strong and I instantly had Blade Runner kind of vibes from the atmosphere and the picture being painted of the city. I didn't expect the new companion to be coming from Asia and she has a super cool name. Eleanor Fong just rolls off the tongue and sounds interesting immediately. And she really was! I loved the concept behind Rememory and the Doctor not really hiding anything about who he was or where he came from was intriguing. He let her work out pretty quickly that he wasn't of this time and place which was good! I think the setting of this series in being set right after The Wedding of River Song was fun stuff as the Doctor tries to erase his name, but will he really be successful? There were good references here. I think a new companion starting things off by locking the Doctor up in a cell overnight was amusing and it was lovely to hear how she mellowed out a little and came to realise that she needed the Doctor's help as the course of the story went on. The Doctor knowing there was more than Eleanor at play when it came to developing the Rememory technology was fantastic because there just had to be something more. He wasn't buying that a human could build the laboratory that she had put together! I thought Eleanor's take on life with putting everything down to energy and light waves was brilliant! It was a fascinating perspective and that allowing her to think of death easier was both harrowing and impressive.  The Doctor mentioning that he was sorry for being late and actually intending on coming eleven years earlier when Eleanor was suffering from the traumatic memory that would actually spark Rememory was intriguing and I feel like 1979 might be somewhere we do visit with this new companion. The Doctor and Eleanor encountering the static man early on and then finding the ghostly figures made of essentially light waves was good stuff and it was certainly a big threat! The idea of extracting a bad memory feels impossible and it was too good to be true really as the static figures were actually those people who had been paying for their memories to be removed. Not quite the best customer service to just take the mind! I thought it all being an elaborate plan and Eleanor actually having the means to create Rememory inputted into her mind made sense and put her in a pretty difficult position! She suddenly went from feeling like a bigwig CEO to a more vulnerable character a little more suited to a companion. She thought the TARDIS interior ought to be a bit bigger as a teleporting time machine which is good fun and I just love her vibe. Her take on the universe is going to make her a very strong companion and I'm excited for the series ahead! A superb start. 

Rating: 10/10