“Axos calling Earth. Fuel system exhausted. Request immediate assistance.”

Many years ago, the vast space parasite Axos attempted to suck the planet Earth of its energy. Now it’s all but forgotten – a dried-up husk, marooned in orbit, still stuck in the time loop it was placed in by Earth’s defender, the Doctor.

Forgotten, that is, except by space tourism billionaire Campbell Irons – who’s hatched a plan to solve the world’s energy crisis by reviving Axos, and transmitting its power back to Earth. But the crew of the spaceship Windermere aren’t alone aboard the parasite. The Doctor has returned, to correct an error of decades past…

And Axos is waiting.

I'll admit that it was Axos that partly lured me back to Big Finish after a considerable break. It's the same with any so-bad-its-amazing comeback idea - yes, it's a bit shameless but my God I want to hear it! The downside of this is that the pay-off has to be worth it - they'd better have gone to town on the sound effects.

The story starts off, alas, in unpromising fashion, with the resolution to a cliffhanger that I hadn't heard. It does bring to mind that the recent habit of these plays for grouping into three's can be somewhat irritating if you don't know how much they depend on each other. Perhaps some kind of sub-title is in order? That said, I was pretty confident that the shock recapped at the start of Episode 1 wouldn't spoil my enjoyment of the play, even if it did ruin the end of the previous one (which, ironically, I eventually discovered concerned the Doctor encountering someone in the wrong chronological order). Nothing much else has changed in Big Finish Land since I lapsed, other than Nick Briggs intoning "Subscribers get more, at Big Finish.com!" at the start of every CD, in a way that for some reason seemed as if it was intended to be seductive. Ever since I heard it, I've wondered if he invents variations on this silky phrase in order to get his wife into bed, but I won't at this point share with you any of my suggestions.

And so it was to be, as Episode 1 of "The Feast of Axos" proceeded a bit like "Red Dawn" (no, wait) with lots of atmosphericcy space sounds (you know the thing, crackly space radios and the like) and some undistinctive sounding people on a spaceship. A time-killing journey of discovery, in other words. Axos seems to be saying "Axos calling Earth" which must be because the Space Vampire (that working title gets a winked name check as well) is in search of a catchphrase, as it certainly wasn't actually calling Earth. The writer seemed to be focussing on Axos being organic, as the fact that it bleeds is noted (a somewhat gruesome and unwelcome addition to the "myth" - would this be practical for a space-bound organism?) as is it's smell of "wet dog". Alas, when it came to the "taste test", they blew it. Axos doesn't SOUND as impressive as it did on TV - the audio speakers should have been exploding with the cascading bleeps and psychadelic whoops of the Pertwee original (I'd have even used the original score). Alas, it's rather muted. So what was the point of all this?

Things eventually get going in Part 3, with the play's peak - a very well done 'space walk' sequence that culminates in a highly effective cliffhanger. This play was listened to, for the first time in many years, in company and on a sofa with nothing else to do but stare at a blank television screen. At this point, for the first time, we both perked up and drew in breath.

Unfortunately there's some shaky business to wrap things up, and it all focuses, somewhat oddly, on the time loop set up to trap Axos at the end of "The Claws of Axos" forty years ago. It was a device which doubtless Bob and Dave inserted into the original to finish off their script and ensure a quick and happy ending for the Doc and his UNIT chums. Would but they have known that four decades later another gaggle of characters and actors would be navigating that same time loop. That poor Pertwee (dead, remember, so unable to defend his actions) would be criticised for not having set up the time loop properly, and that people would be able to traverse the "edge" of the time loop, and duck around it. In short, that time loop has become like a gigantic inflatable rubber banana in space, tangible and with people able to pop in and out and through the middle of it. I suppose we should be thankful that nobody "boosts the circuits and breaks free" of its grip this time.

It is, then, something of a lost opportunity. Bernard Holley is excellent, but Axos never leaves the place where Pertwee trussed it up all those years ago, neither is the humans plans to exploit it (reversing the premise of the original tale) fully realised; there should have been more emphasis placed on the devious side of Axos, with the humans lured into thinking the enormous wet dog spaceship was playing ball; instead none of the various motivations ever reaches fruition. Nobody quite arrives at the cusp of their plans, and instead Axos launches some half-baked scheme to nick the Doctors TARDIS and is defeated. There's some good material with the deceitful Thomas Brewster and an Axon (here renamed Axonoids, for no reason) but no-one can quite decide on what the focus of this story is, so it remains something of a misfiring runaround.

It comes back to the hazards of doing a sequel. If they'd given Holley more to do than bellow his new catchphrase occasionally (like perhaps devise some variations on it - "Axos calling TARDIS" perhaps), ramped up the sound design and let us HEAR a pulsing, organic spaceship in all its glory, all would probably have been forgiven. Unfortunately the sight of Colin Baker-Axon on the cover is just not enough to forgive a mediocre and uneventful space romp. Something tells me there won't be too many more sequels. (SH)