Big Finish Productions The Emerald Tiger

Written by	Barnaby Edwards
Format	Compact Disc
Released	2012

Starring Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Mark Stickson, Sarah Sutton

Synopsis: Calcutta, 1926. The Doctor and his companions join an expedition to locate the fabled emerald tiger: a legendary marvel shrouded in myth and mystery. They must journey to an unexplored lost world filled with wonder and wickedness. But at the centre of this terra incognita, something is stirring. Something with emerald eyes, diamond-sharp claws and a heart of darkness.

• Doctor Who goes to India by Thomas Tiley

Doctor Who goes to India by Thomas Tiley 1/12/25

Opening with a massacre of an expedition in India, we cut to the fifth Doctor and his companions --- Tegan, Turlough and an aged post-Terminus-era Nyssa arriving at a Calcutta train station for a spot of cricket only for them to get involved of the case of the Emerald Tiger.

The regulars are as usual very good. The Doctor gets to drive a Rolls Royce Silver Phantom followed by a hot air balloon, Nyssa gets infected with a case of alien rabies/were-tiger lycanthropy, Turlough gets to befriend a talking tiger with crystal claws, and Tegan gets in a train crash and befriends a Tarzan-like character. All on a quest to the Karabar caves and a hidden secret valley filled with creatures fused to crystals and minerals.

The supporting cast are very good as well. Special attention to Sam Dastor as the very nice and charming professor; Vineeta Rishi as Dawon the surprisingly nice tiger; Neil Stacy as the nasty colonial type; Major Haggard, a seemingly a superficial gentleman but really a total cad; and Cherie Lunghi as the Lady Adela Foster, the widow of the explorer killed in the opening, out on a mission of revenge.

Writer Barnaby Edwards stated in the interview that comes with the CD that he wanted this story to be an adventure story, something that he would like to see in a Doctor Who film, and I think it works rather well for the most part. I could envision the various scenes in my mind rather easily. The story contains many references and allusions to fictions of the era and adventure stories that are fun to spot and point out, like Big Game hunters, packs of wolves, Nyssa getting strangled by a snake, the lost son of an explorer being raised by animals, etc.

I will say however that while the first two parts go by rather well, by the time we get halfway through the third episode, it starts to lose steam (funnily enough, after the train has derailed) with lots of infodumps and explanations. The cast think Tegan is dead until she comes back for the twist end to part three, but the listener knows she isn't going to get killed off, so it's a bit of a waste even if we have a nice Doctor-angsting scene to go with it. The momentum of the final part is spoiled by Tegan having to flashback to how she survived the train crash (a clever bit that I didn't think of; she went into the TARDIS) and met up with Tarzan boy. There is a reveal in part three that comes from nowhere and comes with little to no foreshadowing other than the character comes from the local area and that he was the first to recover from the car crash in the first cliffhanger. Also, the central bad guy Shadrul Khan (Vincent Ebrahim) is, outside of the opening massacre, not particularly interesting or affective as a villain. Despite controlling a variety of nasty animals, it is the human villain Haggard that comes across as more of a threat. It doesn't help that he is miles away from the cats for most of the story and has to observe/attack them through the creatures he controls, and he is revealed to be literally stuck to the spot until right near the end. His motive is odd as well, wanting to kill his siblings then later absorb them, then threatening the world (even though he been around for thousands of years), so as bad guys go he is particularly dull. Even the Doctor thinks he is a bit of a drip.

Another thing I would add is that outside of the train guard and announcer, nearly every Indian character in this is infected and mutated by the alien power of the Emerald Tiger. Seems a bit odd really, but then again what is normal considering what the TARDIS crew usually run into?

So while it has a lot of good especially to start out with it goes downhill near the end, if I could rate the first half it would be an 8/10 and the second half would be a 6/10, so to average it out I would rate this as a 7/10.