The blurb on the back of the Dark Flame sums it up far better than I could.

Ok so I added the last one myself. But it had to be done. The Dark Flame is one of those stories which tend to be called "Traditional" by which they mean it is terribly ordinary. Nothing even approaching ambition is present in either the script or the ideas. With a cave, a laboratory and some corridors it could easily have been made on television in 1989. Only the army of skeletons would’ve been beyond their means and that, ironically, belongs to an even earlier age of film making – that of Ray Harryhausen. Can you honestly say that the image in your mind was anything other than the jerky stop-go animation of Jason & The Argonauts? There was no CGI in my head during the Dark Flame. It must’ve been my subconscious not bothering to even try to imagine this as the work of the twenty first century.

Like the Shadow of the Scourge, The Dark Flame is a "New Adventure" on audio CD. I never read many of the NAs and still have to work for a living having failed to buy enough of them to keep me in the lifestyle to which I am accustomed. But I know enough to know that their tone was different from the TV series. "Too broad and too deep" was a motto I remember reading on the back of a book in WHS. At times that was taken too literally and all manner of naughtiness was got up to by the hormonal characters within. They were a far cry from the Target novels that we all grew up with. The NAs came and went (as did the characters within them) and were replaced with the EDAs. Several of which were penned by one Trevor Baxendale who committed the Dark Flame. In other words he isn’t a Philip Martin who was unaware that things had moved on in Doctor Who writing since the mid-80s. So what made Baxendale write a Target novel with 142 pages of two dimensional running about?

It is just a bombardment of clichés. The first mad scientist has an evil purring voice and is called Slyde. A name which signposts him as being a baddie from the word go. He is played with all the depth and subtlety of Paul Darrow’s Tekker. The cliff-hanger to part two is – gasp – the other scientist is also a member of the cult. Shock horror. A betrayal. We never saw that one coming. We heard it a mile off but we didn’t see it due to the limitations of audio. The third cliff-hanger is even more shocking. Benny has been possessed by the evil and betrays the Doctor to join the cult of the dark flame and… oh spare me the agony.

Old friend of Doctor’s… dangerous scientific experiment… ancient relic… mad scientist… angst from Ace… betrayal of goodie… evil cult… betrayal of friend… an innocent channelling the spirit of a long dead malevolence…

It’s like Trevor Baxendale walked into a Doctor Who branch of Woolworths and helped himself to three quid’s worth of Pick and Mix.

Next time he’s invited to submit a proposal he should do his best to avoid clichés like the plague.
 

CD Facts

Part 1 - Tracks 1-7

Part 2 - Tracks 8-14

Part 3 - Tracks 1-8

Part 4 - Tracks 9-16