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A review by colossal
Doctor Who: The Church and the Crown by Mark Wright, Cavan Scott
4.0
This is a fifth Doctor adventure with PerI Brown and Erimem as companions and is #38 in the Big Finish main range.
En route to take Erimem (and her cat) to refuge in the Braxiatel Collection the TARDIS instead drops them in 17th century France and the time of Anne of Austria, Louis XII, Cardinal Richelieu and the Duke of Wellington. It turns out that Peri is the spitting image of Queen Anne and the TARDIS crew gets caught up in a plot to kidnap the Queen and more. There's lot of musketeers and swashbuckling, and Erimem, Peri and the Doctor all get turns at the action.
This episode follows on from [b:The Eye of the Scorpion|2041266|Doctor Who The Eye of the Scorpion (Big Finish Audio Drama, #24)|Iain McLaughlin|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348203225s/2041266.jpg|2046158] back at #24 where Erimem fled Egypt with the Doctor and Peri. Despite being excellent in her first outing, the Doctor hasn't quite upgraded her to companion just yet, so this one has a lot of the feeling of a "companion audition" piece with Erimem getting a lot of the focus. She deals with the French royalty much better than the Doctor does and also gets to show off by leading the French army at one point; quite fitting for a martial Egyptian ruler.
This is also the first pure historical of the Big Finish line and it's lots of fun. The in-jokes with the comparison with what the musketeers are actually like and what they're like in the Dumas books are mostly funny, and the relationship between Louis XIII and Anne feels quite (prickly) authentic, and Richelieu comes across much better than he normally does in musketeer fiction as well. I'm not normally a fan of the historicals but this one feels like good solid Doctor Who to me.
En route to take Erimem (and her cat) to refuge in the Braxiatel Collection the TARDIS instead drops them in 17th century France and the time of Anne of Austria, Louis XII, Cardinal Richelieu and the Duke of Wellington. It turns out that Peri is the spitting image of Queen Anne and the TARDIS crew gets caught up in a plot to kidnap the Queen and more. There's lot of musketeers and swashbuckling, and Erimem, Peri and the Doctor all get turns at the action.
This episode follows on from [b:The Eye of the Scorpion|2041266|Doctor Who The Eye of the Scorpion (Big Finish Audio Drama, #24)|Iain McLaughlin|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348203225s/2041266.jpg|2046158] back at #24 where Erimem fled Egypt with the Doctor and Peri. Despite being excellent in her first outing, the Doctor hasn't quite upgraded her to companion just yet, so this one has a lot of the feeling of a "companion audition" piece with Erimem getting a lot of the focus. She deals with the French royalty much better than the Doctor does and also gets to show off by leading the French army at one point; quite fitting for a martial Egyptian ruler.
This is also the first pure historical of the Big Finish line and it's lots of fun. The in-jokes with the comparison with what the musketeers are actually like and what they're like in the Dumas books are mostly funny, and the relationship between Louis XIII and Anne feels quite (prickly) authentic, and Richelieu comes across much better than he normally does in musketeer fiction as well. I'm not normally a fan of the historicals but this one feels like good solid Doctor Who to me.