Roof of the World (#59)

    Big Finish Main Range


Wow!  This one is better than I remembered though not exceptionally wonderful, by any means.  Erimem has been traveling with the Doctor and Peri for some time, not months yet but long enough to have grown her hair out a bit, I think.  However, does she really think that her traveling companions would desert her that quickly?  She’s pretty easily convinced that they would though perhaps that is a result of her own doubts.  But having once been pharaoh and apparently she still believes that she garners that type of respect, she doesn’t have the confidence to deny these visions and ideas?  Or at least fight them?  Something from her childhood indeed.  She must still be very young or she would’ve outgrown them by the time in her life.

I like that Peri is the one rescuing everyone but I’m not exactly convinced that it’s all that easy.  And just where the heck was this initial cricket match being held!?  At the foot of the mountain?  Seems a touch dangerous to me.  But that’s just me!  And wow but creatures from the beginning of time being frozen stiff to stop them?  They sure have mutated to go that low on the scale where something as simple as temperature defeats them.  But this isn’t without precedent in a Dr. Who audio—Land of the Dead has those ancient permians that can be destroyed by fire.  Now the cold or ice is the destructive element.  The story has a nice start with the liquid nitrogen and the pool being a skating rink and that ends up being what’s needed to stop these creatures.  But it also just doesn’t have very difficult or particularly evil villains.  As they discover to their own horror at the end—the Doctor’s not afraid of them because of that very fact.  There’s always something more evil just around the corner!  And how powerful are they, really?  More powerful than the Daleks?  How so?  Evil is relative.  Now where have I heard that one before…???

[Primeval, thank-you very much.  And I didn’t even have to look it up!]


Peter Davison, Nicola Bryant, and Caroline Morris

Writer: Adrian Rigelsford

Director: G-Russell

Release: September 2004

© Laura Vilensky 2019