Year of the Pig (#90)

    Big Finish Main Range


This audio drama sounds a lot more ominous and dangerous at the beginning, starting with everything being very strange and conversational. All words and strangeness—last human on earth? But he’s Toby the Sapient Pig, isn’t he? Mysteries on mysteries…

Yet as things move along, this story just confuses me. There isn’t much of a time period established. Someone says 1913 and there’s talk of the Boer War but it’s very confusing overall. Toby the Sapient (and paranoid) Pig is wandering about, with Nurse Albertine, running from his brother, Inspector Chardalot. They’re both pigs turned into “people” by a scientist from an unknown world, who either died or ran off a hundred years ago, leaving them to their own devices. These pigs just cause mayhem for no reason and are just very odd, personality-wise. Why does the Inspector lock Peri in a bath house and turn on the steam to kill her? Why does he plant a bomb to kill Peri, the Doctor, and Miss Bultitude? Somehow they’re threats to him? What will they “do” to him anyway? He’s just a bit paranoid, sure. So is Toby! But there’s nothing really to bring this story all together. They all make up in the end but from what?

I just find this story a bit of a mess. I just get bored or easily distracted from it. If I was just looking for a strange, out of the way type of tale, this would be it! It doesn’t fit into the Dr. Who genre neatly at all, for which I greatly respect it. But it also just seems too misfit to me and doesn’t hold my interest through the whole thing. Toby claims to be the last human and his ramblings, along with watching the movies of pigs, makes him just a bit of a kook. And where the heck do these two human-pig hybrids get their cash!? They sure have enough of it to go around… I like the story idea but overall, it doesn’t intrigue or interest me like I think it should. So just a three jelloid story for me. But this one’s definitely like poetry—one person’s good story is another’s amazing tale. So give it a listen if you dare! Definitely the most offbeat tale in the Big Finish audios!


Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant

Writer: Matthew Sweet

Director: G-Russell

Release: December 2006

© Laura Vilensky 2019