One last diversion before settling into the rapids of Series 13 …
Honchos at the Tour have enormous listening needs. But even with the panoply of options available (i.e. podcasts) to people these days it is definitely worth it to stray away from even these flimsy boundaries to a welcome change (or should we say Chance) of pace. Big Finish is, and should be, a part of that of course but there is a class of audio even beyond the extended universe into the realm of, what for lack of a better term, we’ll call Who-adjacent.
In the aftermath of the soft-cancellation of the classic series in the early nineties there were a number of such productions, stuff like ‘Wartime’ or ‘The Stranger,’ which used Doctor Who actors in familiar ways just to try and scratch at the itch. ‘The Minister of Chance’ is a smart, lavish example of this in audio from 2013. The Who-hooks come in the forms of Paul McGann and Sylvester McCoy, but they’re not playing the Doctor or anything close to it, in fact they’re more-or-less bad-guys and the story gives both of them a ‘chance’ to play wonderfully against type.
Although not stated as such, the Minister as played by Julian Wadham, is the putative Doctor stand-in, and he’s wonderfully mischievous and oblique. He would be worth the price of admission alone even without all of the rich, lavish, immersive soundscapes. A condensed video version of this story was made in 2014 and the original audio is now available in podcast form.
Once Series 13 has run its course and you want to keep that certain ‘in-season’ feeling going, ‘The Minister of Chance’ is well worth a listen.
