Doctor Who: …Ish on Audio CD

• Year: 2002
• Rating: 9/10
• Cat. No: BFPDWCD6Z/B
• Format: 2xCD
• Running Time: 130 minutes
• Price: £13.99

Director:
Nicholas Briggs

Writer:

Phillip Pascoe

Cast:

The Doctor: Colin Baker
Peri: Nicola Bryant
Book: Moray Treadwell
Professor: Osefa Marie Collett
Warren: Chris Eley
Cawdrey: Oliver Hume

If ever an adventure was perfect for this format, it’s …Ish. Extravagantly loquacious and tongue-trippingly lyrical, the 35th Big Finish release brought out the grand oratory skills of Colin Baker‘s Sixth Doctor with unbridled glee.

Rather than ridicule his linguistic flights of fancy within a traditional monster/evil-oriented Who scenario, …Ish provides a densely structured conundrum which plays to Baker’s strengths. Wordplay is the name of the game as an Intergalactic conference to launch the ultimate Lexicon descends into chaos, with language itself in very real danger.

In contrast to her narrowly-defined role on television in the mid-1980s, Peri is here given a greater license to verbally joust with the Doctor on a near-equal level rather than merely remonstrate and pout prettily, aghast at the Time Lord’s projected superiority and bloodymindedness.

…Ish, with its exploration of futuristic intelligentsia, keeps all manner of verbiosity tripping off the characters’ tongues without once losing its stride.

Phil Pascoe has assembled a quirky yet unforgettable array of creations; from the exalted Professor Osefa de Palabra Hftzbrn to Book, a vocoder-voiced hologlyph designed to do all the laborious donkeywork required in compiling the dictionary to surpass all dictionaries.

It’s unthinkable that a story such as …Ish would have ever been attempted during the programme’s television run, but this is the magic of Big Fin…er.. ish. Dialogue is everything, and the script is simply phenomenal, although an admittedly exhausting barrage of dexterous discourse. Exquisite, pointed, witty and – especially in Part Three – plain laugh-out-loud funny, it is nonetheless demanding on the listener’s concentrative powers.

A celebration of the intricacies, complexities and necessities of speech and communication, …Ish requires some stamina, but is richly rewarding.