Doctor Who: Assassin in the Limelight

Big Finish: Monthly Range #108

by Robert Ross, Colin Baker (Narrator), Maggie Stables (Narrator)

Ford's Theatre, Washington. Friday, 14th April, 1865. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

The place, the date and the event which made history. Or did it? Someone has been tampering with time, muddying the waters of history for his own purposes. Time itself is out of joint and the chief culprit is the enigmatic Doctor Knox.

Somehow the Doctor and Evelyn must put history back on track before the future dissolves into chaos. But Knox, it turns out, may be the least of their worries...

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

Audio CD

First published May 1, 2008

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Robert Ross wears many different hats: consultant, researcher, writer and audio commentary moderator, working for television and radio.

Reviews

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Weird little sequel to Medicinal Purposes involving the assassination of President Lincoln. For what looked like a bland nothing story, I was pleasantly surprised that it turned out so great.
Evelyn is great in this. 6 has a lot of fun here. And all the side characters are enjoyable.

[Steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dr Knox puts time out of joint and prevents Lincoln's assassination.

[Shaun Collins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Phenomenal acting (as always) by Colin Baker and Maggie Stables. The plot makes for a refreshing change of pace from the usual bad guy teaming with aliens but falls in love with girl bit, though it does get a bit muddled in the middle with how things work.

[Ellen Schoener · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was okay, entertaining, but nothing ground-breaking and nothing special.
Great to meet up with Evelyn again.
I think it would have helped if I remembered who the villain of this story was- I really need to do a re-listen of the 6th Doctor audio range.

[Linnea Gelland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everybody down, Leslie Phillips is back!

[Sara Habein · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good Sixth Doctor/Evelyn historical revolving around the assassination of Lincoln.

[Steven Shinder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very engaging. And I'm glad I listened to Medicinal Purposes recently prior to getting to this one. The ending doesn't flow quite well, though. And yes, I did listen to this on Friday, April 14.

[Tabitha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Weird but fun. Unfortunately the ending just seemed out of place, like it was an afterthought.

[Miguel Gutierrez · Rating 3 out of 5]

las primeras 3 partes son muy buenas, pero la resolución si se cae lo suficiente para sentir que el resto del guión necesitaba una revisión más, aún así siempre grandes actuaciones y produccion.

[Jamie Revell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mysterious time traveller wants to prevent the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and it's up to the Doctor and Evelyn to save history. In fact, the identity of the villain is apparent to both the listener and the Doctor almost from the beginning, and the real mystery is his motive.

The story manages to be quite engaging, and hews reasonably close to the historical facts, visiting time travellers aside. Picking the Lincoln assassination is a sensible choice; we know less about it than that of Kennedy, and yet still know that it's significant in a way that, say, the Garfield assassination isn't.

I really didn't like Ross's previous DW audio play Medicinal Purposes at all, but, despite using the same villain (as I say, that's revealed pretty much at the beginning) this doesn't fall into the same trap. There the main problem is the ahistorical apologetics for the serial killers at the heart of the story, and the callous way in which the Doctor ensures that one of their victims is murdered on schedule.

Here, admittedly, the outcome is similar, in that Lincoln has to die, and a second murder also has to occur as history records it. But that's far less the focus of the piece, and the Doctor is not made so directly complicit in the deaths. It becomes a tragedy, at which we're intentionally kept at some slight remove (we never see President or Mrs Lincoln, for instance), but one in which the Doctor is less obviously complicit.

Given the writer's previous offerings, I liked this rather more than I expected to. That's not to say that it's perfect - the monster, when it turns up, is rather dull, and the resolution of why the assassination still happens is, quite frankly, unbelievable. But it's better than it could have been. 3.5 rounded up to 4.

[Nicholas Whyte]

Assassin in the Limelight totally fails to capitalise on its setting. I was not wildly impressed by either of Ross's earlier Six/Evelyn/Knox plays (the one in Edinburgh with David Tennant being a deranged Scotsman, or the one in Brighton with Roy Hudd as Max Miller), and, alas, this is a desperate attempt to fit a time-travel drama about the very real events of this day. My complaint about the villainous Robert Knox remains that his means and motivation are pretty obscure. One of my many complaints about Assassin in the Limelight is that The Talons of Weng Chiang did nineteenth century theatre better, twenty years before (and that too was, er, not without its problematic aspects). The cliff-hanger to an early episode - where a key character is apparently poisoned early on the afternoon of the assassination day - turns out not to matter, because the poisonee was only pretending. The character in question is John Wilkes Booth. Which gives you some idea of the contempt the author is expressing toward the audience.

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

"This Wilde fellow as straight as they come!"
I don't normally like it when Big Finish do American stories but this one had enough American actors and an American writer so that it felt much better. It was a fun historical, with twists and turns. Things that made you wonder in the beginning were explained quite satisfactorily. I do like how when the Doctor travels with Evelyn She's the expert on the time period not him! This being no exception. Though I also liked that it took her awhile to get up to speed as this wasn't her specialised area or time period. It was also nice that the adventure didn't split them up right away but that they got lots of scenes together.

[Ritchie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finally, Big Finish does an adventure set in the USA that isn't rife with stereotypes and Foghorn Leghorn imitations. John Wilkes Booth is killed hours before the assassination of Abraham Lincoln is supposed to happen. Or is he? Oscar Wilde shows up decades before he is born. Obviously, there's a Time Meddler involved. Six and Evelyn investigate.

[Kate Sherrod · Rating 5 out of 5]

Further evidence that Sixth Doctor + Evelyn Smythe + Historical event = Who Perfection. Here events center around Ford's Theater in 1865, and do involve John Wilkes Booth, but not in any way you're expecting. Unless you're expecting Who Perfection!

[Michael Holloway · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most I've laughed at a Big Finish story since Doctor Who: The Kingmaker, but the plot is too convoluted and the number of death scenes is a little ridiculous.

[Debra Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Doctor and Evelyn land in 1865 just before the killing of Lincoln… or will he be killed?