I once remember describing Embrace the Darkness as having a lot of atmosphere without much tension. M’chum said she didn’t see how that was possible. She is not versed in all things Nick Briggs. Mr Briggs has become something of a figure within Doctor Who circles. Or should that be neo-Doctor Who circles for his trade has been ploughed in audios and spin-off videos without anything more genuinely BBC than a Dalek voice cameo in Coupling. It is trendy to make jokes at Nick’s expense. Someone once did a mock DWM entitled "Nick Briggs Magazine". This own site has featured him in "The Convention" and "Unbound Unbound". I once wrote a Big Finish audition sketch which had Gary Russell say "Nick’s stories are the reason we introduced the free CD in each subscription".

Perhaps our antagonism by the Briggs is that he is so versatile. And that bothers us. Partly from envy but also a sneaking suspicion than someone who can write, act, direct, produce, compose and do Dalek voices should be doing something more impressive than working virtually full time for Big Finish. His entire TV career seems to amount to a brief part in a League of Gentlemen episode, a performance that his chum Mark Gatiss didn’t even acknowledge on the DVD commentary. What are DVD commentaries for if not for pointing out the friends you gave jobs to? Eccleston got pointed out.

Briggs is a frustrating writer. Sword of Orion was two painfully dull hours. He had the return of the Cybermen and the still-new McGann Doctor to play with and he turned in two discs of tedium. Creatures of Beauty on the other hand was a magnificent piece of work with a superb use of the time shift gimmick. I’ve heard a lot of good things about his Dalek Empire serials but I found The Mutant Phase to be pretty awful and with the ultimate cop out ending (maybe even as bad as The Harvest’s damp squib of a finale). Embrace the Darkness falls somewhere between these two pillars. It’s not great but it’s not dire either.

How one reacts to Embrace the Darkness may depend on whether you are like me and are very squeamish about all things to do with eyes. The science base’s staff having their eyes burned out (and not being aware of it until Charley tells them) is perhaps Big Finish’s most horrific moment. The horror and shock eclipses worlds being destroyed and all manner of other cosmic evil because we can all relate to it. We all have eyes and we all know how fragile they are. When Charley’s eyes begin to tingle and then shoot with pain, we feel her anguish. So much of the torturer’s work is done by the mind anticipating far worse than they are currently enduring. For Charley, pain is nothing compared with what she knows is to come after the pain. But it is too close to the ick factor for me to enjoy it as first class horror. The science behind it (lots of vague uses of the word "particles") may be on the level of The Ark’s "galaxy accident" but it still makes me squirm. Which is a shame as it is one of the very best things about Embrace the Darkness.

At first I was bored and slightly repulsed by it. The whole story seemed designed to bore me, freak me out and then bore me again. Second time it got a bit better. Third time it was a nice little story. Best listened to in bed, all alone in the darkness, because it will heighten the atmos without making you too scared to go to sleep. I might even go so far as to say it is mildly soporific. But in a good way.

CD Facts

Part 1 - Tracks 1-7

Part 2 - Tracks 8-20

Part 3 - Tracks 1-7

Part 4 - Tracks 8-17