Doctor Who: Something Inside

Big Finish: Monthly Range #83

by Trevor Baxendale, Paul McGann (Narrator), India Fisher (Narrator)

WARNING
YOU ARE ABOUT TO ENTER THE CUBE

ALL FORMS OF TELEPATHY ARE PROHIBITED.

DO NOT ATTEMPT TELEPORTATION UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES

PSYCHIC POWERS WILL BE FORCIBLY REMOVED

(MENTAL SURGERY IS COMPULSORY)

CAUTION
YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS

YOU HAVE NO POWERS

YOU HAVE NO DEFENCE

YOU ARE NOW INSIDE THE CUBE

Genres: Doctor Who, Audiobook, Science Fiction, Time Travel

Audio CD

First published June 19, 2006

About the author

Trevor Baxendale is a novelist who has penned several Doctor Who tie-in novels and audio dramas. He lives in Liverpool, England with his wife and two children.

Reviews

[Ken · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another amnesia story featuring The Eighth Doctor...

There’s some good moments during this audio play as The Doctor, Charley and C'Rizz are trapped in a psychic prison but unfortunately I found this to be dull and uneventful.

The audio itself is quite atmospheric and the cast help sell the Brain Worm.

[Lady Nerd · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 🌟

[Emilija · Rating 3 out of 5]

2024 52 Book Challenge - Summer Olympics Mini Challenge - Cycling - 2) Featuring A Group Of Friends

How many times must the Eighth Doctor suffer amnesia?

I did find the psychic stuff interesting, but the brain worm was a bit too far for me. Nothing significant really happened so the audio was pretty skip worthy, unless you like amnesiac Eighth Doctor, an un-break-out-able prison and telepathic soldiers.

[Gabriel Mero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not bad

[elise barber-wixtrom · Rating 4 out of 5]

oh, mental torture? BO-RING!!!

[Devin Harvey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Something Inside was a bit of a letdown, mainly due to the fact that I had read one of Trevor Baxendale's Doctor Who Books (Fear of the Dark) and in comparison this was a total letdown, though I guess you can't expect everything a writer writes to be amazing. I mainly felt it was a letdown just due to how bland it was, it was not utterly horrible like Scaredy Cat, just rather boring as 90% of it was just the TARDIS team running around in circles, being chased by a Brain Worm and meeting some Psychic prisoners and their boss and torturer. The final episode was great however, as it wrapped the story up very good and was just extremely interesting and quite disturbing in a way. I must also admit I had to read Part 3 as the actual audio for that part was not available to me at the time. Not crap, I certainly wouldn't tell you to stay away from it, but just don't expect anything too great.

[Sara Habein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another "amnesia" story. Man, that whole "regenerating under anesthetic" thing is rough on a Time Lord! The brain worm seems like a precursor to the memory worm used on the show, and it's a little bit funny to hear things like, "It's the brain worm!" and take it seriously, but this is a pretty good story all the same.

[Finlay O'Riordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm gonna go against the majority here and say that this is actually a superb BF audio. It perfectly fits and maintains the ongoing ominous and eerie tone of all the Eighth Doctor main range stories.

The Cube is built well as a scene, feeling very claustrophobic and actually a genuinely scary setting, and I do think the performances from both the main and guest casts are really strong as well. I actually liked the Brainworm villain too, felt very much like it could've been the inspiration for Midnight or Listen.

The conclusion is strong yet simple as well. Everything from start to finish works in a very good rhythm.

I will admit, however, there is a certain theme of repetition coming into place for this incarnation now. Most obviously, this is yet another case of the Eighth Doctor getting a dose of amnesia, and between Big Finish and the EDAs, I'm surprised this incarnation is able to remember anything at this point. To make matters worse his amnesia seemingly just goes away midway through the final part. It's not explained how but I think we're just suppose to assume it happened during the Brainworm transfer.

Likewise, this is now the third Eighth Doctor main range story to be told across two different timeframes in the first half. We had the same thing in "Scaredy Cat" and "Time Works", and while it easily works the best here and was probably the most thematically appropriate way to tell this script, it is a little redundant at this point to have it happening yet again. It does make you very confused having to keep up with all the time hops, even if it is a time travel franchise.

[Kelly McCubbin · Rating 1 out of 5]

In a period where Big Finish's investment in unique companions seems to be flourishing in every Doctor's run, for some reason their most emblematic line, The Eighth Doctor and Charlie, continues to flounder. They seem to have decided that the Fifth Doctor is about historicals, the Sixth about personal crises, the Seventh about creepy horror and the Eighth about high concept logic puzzles. But therein lies a problem because, as in this play, the puzzles have to be really well thought out to remain interesting and, pretty much since Zagreus, they grab the germ of a good idea and then don't bother to develop it past that point.
This is the worst example of it thus far. The Doctor, Charlie and C'rizz (Oy, do they have NO IDEA what to do with C'rizz!) materialize in a prison for psychically modified soldiers. Fair enough. And then, well, there's a sort of invisible worm that jumps around eating brains.
That's pretty much it.
The Doctor using football scores to argue points is particularly painful.

[Xander Toner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm usually not a fan of the grimmer Doctor Who stories - so I wasn't particularly looking forwards to this one; the story's bio really didn't help to entice me any more. I did enjoy it, however. These few releases after the Divergent arc came to a close - Terror Firma to The Girl Who Never Was are a really interesting bunch, and this one more since it gave Paul McGann something much different to work from. I know the Eighth Doctor getting amnesia is literally a meme at this point, but I think his missing memories are handled quite well considering. Seeing this Doctor completely stripped down, to the point where he's barely even the Doctor anymore was really fun to listen to, and I think you can tell that McGann is enjoying himself as well. The side cast aren't really memorable, the girl with the Welsh accent was nice but that was about it - and I got a really The Happiness Patrol vibe from the villains at some points.
Still, enjoyable. I might take a little break and do a more optimistic story before heading into the final Eight/Charley/C'rizz releases.

[Reggie A · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cube. Worm. Doctor. Best setup ever.

Generally I like ‘trapped in a box’ stories. This one was perfectly serviceable and I really enjoyed the conclusion. That said, I can’t help but feel that a lot of this episode is retread ground.

The Doctor can’t remember who he is and the baddies are doing evil experiments on him? It’s very similar in premise to Minuet in Hell; a story also starring Eight.

That said there’s a worm. And an evil cube jail. They really put the Doctor in a box this time. Awesome.

Speaking on the Cube I was a little confused as to its construction; what is the inside of the cube actually like? It’s a nice touch that it’s a cube but the cubic elements end up not meaning anything. I kind of wish they had factored into the escape somehow.

The psychic plot was kind of giving Maximum Ride but honestly I love it for that. This was a good episode; stand-alone but not worth a skip if you like lab rat prison breaks.

[H.K. · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Doctor and his friends get captured in an inescapable place. The Doctor loses his memory for some time. The bad guys want to use the Doctor's mind for their own nefarious purposes and tortures him by threatening his friends. There's a lot of running, crying, and hysterics by his companions and of course, the minor characters. Stop me if you've heard this Doctor Who story before...
Meh, not my favorite audio for sure.

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

戦争のために軍が作り出したESPを持った兵士たちが戦争が終わって不要かつ危険とみなされキューブ呼ばれる牢に閉じ込められ、何かに追われ続ける。その中に飛び込んでしまったドクターとチャーリーとケリス。ドクターは軍の研究者にとらえられ、どこから侵入したのかと拷問されるがドクターは記憶をすっかり失ってしまっていた。

というところから始まって、超能力者を処刑する手段を開発中に生まれたワームは超能力者を処刑するどころかその力を増幅させてしまうことが判明。しかもワーム自身も意思を持ち、キューブから抜け出そうとしている。
誰の中にワームが取り憑いているかどうかというところでドキドキする感じの流れだけれども、でも言われるまではわからないので「ふーん」という感じで。ものすごくわかりやすかったので英語学習者としてはありがたかったかな。一発ですんなりストーリーがわかるって初めてぐらいじゃないかしら。わーい！

[Danny Welch · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very slow moving story with not much really happening but manages to pick up in Part 3 and to conclude with a very well written final episode that is one of the few times I've felt slightly scared by a Big Finish audio, could of done with it being the same length as Scaredy Cat but I do appreciate what Trevor Baxendale was doing here and it's way better then The Dark Flame. 7/10

[Steven Shinder · Rating 3 out of 5]

An amnesiac Eighth Doctor isn’t new, obviously. But this had its moments. There was an awful lot of loud screaming though.

[Alyce Caswell · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a surprise. The 8th Doctor is suffering from amnesia yet again. The story also went around in more circles than the characters themselves did.

[Alice Lamora · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not very interesting, but the last part bumps it up to 2.5

[Finn Chamberlain-Page · Rating 3 out of 5]

This guy loses his memory more than I've had hot dinners.

[Tabitha · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted better from this duo

[AccidentalStu]

Paul mcgan lost his memory again

[Evie · Rating 4 out of 5]

another underrated one, in part maybe because it’s funny and lightweight. just a good, pacey time!!

[Plingsben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the best but still very unique

[luckey · Rating 3 out of 5]

The telepathy aspect was nice and I really liked the last part paranoia arc where they couldnt decide who has the brainworm, but overall it wasnt that good.

[Zach · Rating 3 out of 5]

Messy scifi who dun it. Just ok

[April · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was pretty awful. Repetitive, over-long, over-dramatic, and could have been interesting if it had been cut pretty much in half. As it was; the very thin plot of the Doctor being tortured for information a brain worm has erased from his mind while his two companions meet a bunch of former military physics in a big cube prison is not enough to merit two audio discs of running and screaming and repeating the same facts over and over. Skip this one unless you're determined to listen to every Dr Who story.

[Nicholas Whyte]

Something Inside brings Eight and company to a mysterious prison where the maimed survivors of a vicious conflict - the veteran psychic soldiers who were discarded after the war - are imprisoned, awaiting death or insanity. It teeters on the edge, but in the end works rather well.

[Caleris]

The story doesn't feel quite new or original, but I guess it's still rather engaging. Too much talking at times though. And the music is quite different than usual and seems an odd choice for the mood and story, however, I quite like it.

[Jamie Revell · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you believe that the primary point of Doctor Who is to run down corridors a lot, this is quite probably for you. There is other stuff that happens, and enough to get it that third star, but, honestly, it's not all that memorable.

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

5/10
Verdict: Optional

I found the setting dull and while the main enemy was mildly interesting in concept, I found it to be quite boring in execution. I felt nothing for the side characters and didn't feel like the main cast were at any threat.

[Charlotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Odd complaint about the background music aside, solid play.