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Big Finish: Monthly Range #120
Doctor Who: The Magic Mousetrap
Switzerland, 1926: the Doctor finds himself halfway up an Alpine mountainside, on his way to an exclusive sanatorium for the rich and famous run by the Viennese alienist Ludovic ‘Ludo’ Comfort. In between bouts of electric shock therapy, Ludo’s patients – including faded music hall turn Harry Randall, chess grandmaster Swapnil Khan and Lola Luna, darling of the Weimar cabaret scene – fill their time with endless rounds of Snap!, among other diversions.
But the Doctor soon suspects that someone’s playing an altogether more sinister game. Someone with a score to settle…
But the Doctor soon suspects that someone’s playing an altogether more sinister game. Someone with a score to settle…
Audio CD
First published April 1, 2009
About the author
Matthew Sweet
51 books39 followersMatthew Sweet is an English journalist, broadcaster, author, and cultural historian. A graduate of the University of Oxford, where he earned a doctorate on Wilkie Collins, he has contributed to The Oxford Companion to English Literature and served as a film and television critic for The Independent on Sunday.
Sweet has written extensively on British cinema, most notably in Shepperton Babylon: The Lost Worlds of British Cinema (2005), a history of Shepperton Studios and the early British film industry, which was later adapted into a television documentary. His other books include Inventing the Victorians (2001), which challenges common misconceptions about the Victorian era, and The West End Front (2011), a history of London’s grand hotels during World War II. He has also explored Cold War intrigue in Operation Chaos (2018).
A prominent broadcaster, Sweet has presented numerous BBC television and radio programmes, including Silent Britain, Checking into History, and British Film Forever. He is the host of BBC Radio 3’s Sound of Cinema, which examines film scores and composers, and has been a regular presenter on Free Thinking (formerly Night Waves). His BBC Radio 4 series The Philosopher's Arms explores philosophical themes before a live audience.
A lifelong Doctor Who fan, Sweet has written several audio dramas and short stories set in the Doctor Who universe and has presented numerous documentaries on the series, including Me, You and Doctor Who for the 50th anniversary. He has also conducted in-depth interviews with key figures from the show for its DVD and Blu-ray releases.
Sweet has written extensively on British cinema, most notably in Shepperton Babylon: The Lost Worlds of British Cinema (2005), a history of Shepperton Studios and the early British film industry, which was later adapted into a television documentary. His other books include Inventing the Victorians (2001), which challenges common misconceptions about the Victorian era, and The West End Front (2011), a history of London’s grand hotels during World War II. He has also explored Cold War intrigue in Operation Chaos (2018).
A prominent broadcaster, Sweet has presented numerous BBC television and radio programmes, including Silent Britain, Checking into History, and British Film Forever. He is the host of BBC Radio 3’s Sound of Cinema, which examines film scores and composers, and has been a regular presenter on Free Thinking (formerly Night Waves). His BBC Radio 4 series The Philosopher's Arms explores philosophical themes before a live audience.
A lifelong Doctor Who fan, Sweet has written several audio dramas and short stories set in the Doctor Who universe and has presented numerous documentaries on the series, including Me, You and Doctor Who for the 50th anniversary. He has also conducted in-depth interviews with key figures from the show for its DVD and Blu-ray releases.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
June 19, 2023
The Magic Mousetrap - Well, I’m a bit … annoyed, and a bit frustrated with this one. This wasn’t at all what I was expecting, which is a good thing. See, I usually don’t do a lot of reading about what is in these episodes, I once read the flaps of a new hardcover and then read the book and the flap teaser basically gave away every twist in the book (which was a James Bond thriller) except the last chapter or two. I was furious. So at that point, I pretty much stopped reading the advertisements and the teaser materials, at least for books that I know I'm going to want to read anyway. And the reason I was going to listen to this one was that the character of Thomas Brewster was listed in the credits. So I bought all the Thomas Brewster stories and started listening to them. Except, Thomas Brewster does not actually appear in this story. And that’s why I’m annoyed, here I spent all that money (not really all that much) and now I’m wondering if Brewster will actually be appearing in any of these other stories. And thus I’m enormously frustrated as well. Further, this is the first story I’ve listened to with the character of Hex, who’s apparently been traveling with the (Seventh) Doctor and Ace for some time, but I knew I was jumping into the middle of that particular character arc. And then there’s the presence (return?) of the Celestial Toymaker. So there’s a lot of potential and a lot of interesting stuff going on, but my frustration and annoyance are really all I’m left with.
This release also includes an additional short story. Companion Chronicles: The Three Companions: Polly’s Story - This is an epistolary narrative that offers Polly Wright beginning an exchange of letters and emails with the Brigadier. She begins relating an adventure that had occurred while she was traveling with the (Second) Doctor, Ben and Jamie. But the narrative seems to get abruptly and rudely interrupted by … none other than Thomas Brewster (so I guess this is why he’s listed in the credits, frustrating that the actor credits for both stories are listed together as if they’re all in the same story). So it starts out as an interesting narrative that seems to be connecting some former companions and then … I don’t know what to make of it. It’s incomplete and seems to be a cliffhanger.
Update: I’ve since learned that this short, is the first chapter of a serial featuring Polly, the Brigadier and Thomas Brewster that ran month-by-month for about a year, threading through the Doctor Who Monthly range.
This release also includes an additional short story. Companion Chronicles: The Three Companions: Polly’s Story - This is an epistolary narrative that offers Polly Wright beginning an exchange of letters and emails with the Brigadier. She begins relating an adventure that had occurred while she was traveling with the (Second) Doctor, Ben and Jamie. But the narrative seems to get abruptly and rudely interrupted by … none other than Thomas Brewster (so I guess this is why he’s listed in the credits, frustrating that the actor credits for both stories are listed together as if they’re all in the same story). So it starts out as an interesting narrative that seems to be connecting some former companions and then … I don’t know what to make of it. It’s incomplete and seems to be a cliffhanger.
Update: I’ve since learned that this short, is the first chapter of a serial featuring Polly, the Brigadier and Thomas Brewster that ran month-by-month for about a year, threading through the Doctor Who Monthly range.
February 15, 2025
I swear some of these audios just exist to show up rtd…this story reintroduces the celestial toy maker, much like the 2023 tv story ‘the giggle’, but my god, if this isn’t so much more complex, intricate, intriguing, well written, exciting - and actually makes the toy maker seem like a credible threat!
July 19, 2012
My reading device has been broken for a while now, and all the stuff available in braille here is old hat to me, or books I'm working on in the production area of the library (mostly of little interest), so I've been dividing my "reading" time between Joe Frank's excellent radio shows and these Doctor Who audio dramas.
I used to say that Colin Baker's Doctor got the best scripts and put in the best performance. I still think Colin's performance is top-notch, but lately I think Big Finish has really hit their stride with the stories featuring Sylvester Mccoy as the Seventh Doctor. The television show ended in 1989 just when it was starting to get great again after several years of floundering with only the occasional masterpiece showing up, and it's nice to see some of these audios picking up essentially where things left off back then, only introducing some interesting new elements.
This story really worked for me. it's macabre and creepy, but in a quiet, understated sort of way. The script is full of clever wit and the actors are of a uniformly high calibre. A story set in a 1920s Swiss sanitorium where people are forced to play twisted games with very high stakes just invites the gothic stereotypes, and they do appear, but I've always been rather fond of such things, myself, and their inclusion here is far from unwelcome. The story features a villainous character from a 1966 television serial that barely anybody has seen, The Celestial Toymaker. It plays with the concept of the Toymaker in a really novel way and even comments on his problematic (to some) depiction in the original story as a "mysterious and evil oriental" archetype. One of the characters here even compares him to Fu- Manchu, who was of course very popular in the 1920s. The Toymaker has now been turned into one of his own creations, sort of, and is forced to quietly manipulate things in the form of a talking doll with an eerie voice. You can even hear the mechanical clicking and whirring whenever his mouth moves!
The story also offers an interesting inversion of the usual tropes, in that at the outset the Doctor has the least idea of anybody what is going on, and over halfway through the story his companions have to fill in his lost memory. I was pretty lost through the first episode myself, though I certainly enjoyed the ride....and once the story started to come together it all began to make perfect sense. I think the cliffhanger ending to episode one is a bit misjudged, myself (a common problem with these audios, I find)....the script seems to be working to underplay associations with past stories in a way and is the opposite of an obsessed continuity-fest, so having the reveal of the Toymaker act as the "sting" at the end of the first part doesn't too clever, especially as it would only really mean much to the old diehards.
Once again, McCoy's stories come out on top in audio form, and this one's a riveting way to enjoy an hour and a half, if you're a Doctor Who fan who also feels a connection with a bit of gothic horror.
Oh, and that musical chairs song is about the most genius annoying piece of music I've ever heard. If I could make it a maddening background noise to this review, I'd do it!
I used to say that Colin Baker's Doctor got the best scripts and put in the best performance. I still think Colin's performance is top-notch, but lately I think Big Finish has really hit their stride with the stories featuring Sylvester Mccoy as the Seventh Doctor. The television show ended in 1989 just when it was starting to get great again after several years of floundering with only the occasional masterpiece showing up, and it's nice to see some of these audios picking up essentially where things left off back then, only introducing some interesting new elements.
This story really worked for me. it's macabre and creepy, but in a quiet, understated sort of way. The script is full of clever wit and the actors are of a uniformly high calibre. A story set in a 1920s Swiss sanitorium where people are forced to play twisted games with very high stakes just invites the gothic stereotypes, and they do appear, but I've always been rather fond of such things, myself, and their inclusion here is far from unwelcome. The story features a villainous character from a 1966 television serial that barely anybody has seen, The Celestial Toymaker. It plays with the concept of the Toymaker in a really novel way and even comments on his problematic (to some) depiction in the original story as a "mysterious and evil oriental" archetype. One of the characters here even compares him to Fu- Manchu, who was of course very popular in the 1920s. The Toymaker has now been turned into one of his own creations, sort of, and is forced to quietly manipulate things in the form of a talking doll with an eerie voice. You can even hear the mechanical clicking and whirring whenever his mouth moves!
The story also offers an interesting inversion of the usual tropes, in that at the outset the Doctor has the least idea of anybody what is going on, and over halfway through the story his companions have to fill in his lost memory. I was pretty lost through the first episode myself, though I certainly enjoyed the ride....and once the story started to come together it all began to make perfect sense. I think the cliffhanger ending to episode one is a bit misjudged, myself (a common problem with these audios, I find)....the script seems to be working to underplay associations with past stories in a way and is the opposite of an obsessed continuity-fest, so having the reveal of the Toymaker act as the "sting" at the end of the first part doesn't too clever, especially as it would only really mean much to the old diehards.
Once again, McCoy's stories come out on top in audio form, and this one's a riveting way to enjoy an hour and a half, if you're a Doctor Who fan who also feels a connection with a bit of gothic horror.
Oh, and that musical chairs song is about the most genius annoying piece of music I've ever heard. If I could make it a maddening background noise to this review, I'd do it!
April 29, 2009
This audio starts out with a real puzzle: It's set in a sanitarium where everyone is behaving very oddly. The Doctor's lost his memory, and everyone seems to be trying very hard to make sure he doesn't get it back. The first half of this story really kept me engaged with trying to figure out what was going on.
As is often the case, I found it slightly less engaging towards the end when the explanations started to come out. But this was still a terrific story, and probably Big Finish's best so far this year.
This also features the first segment of the "Three Companions" bonus story. The first bit is mostly a nice little shot of nostalgia as Polly and the Brigadier get to know each other and reminisce about their times with the Doctor. Then we get a brief appearance from Thomas Brewster, and I get the distinct impression that the fellow is still up to no good.
As is often the case, I found it slightly less engaging towards the end when the explanations started to come out. But this was still a terrific story, and probably Big Finish's best so far this year.
This also features the first segment of the "Three Companions" bonus story. The first bit is mostly a nice little shot of nostalgia as Polly and the Brigadier get to know each other and reminisce about their times with the Doctor. Then we get a brief appearance from Thomas Brewster, and I get the distinct impression that the fellow is still up to no good.
September 8, 2025
In all honesty, I actually wasn't too sure whether or not I would like this story as I went through Part 1. I felt it started too in media res, and I was concerned that having to work the plot out backwards through exposition was going to become a chore.
However, as the story progresses, it very quickly picks up the pace, with Ace and Hex swapping roles with the Seventh Doctor so far as the companions get to be the master manipulators this time while the Doctor is none the wiser and unintentionally screws up his own plan; it's refreshing to see, for a change, the incarnation of the Doctor who is normally always five steps ahead suddenly put out on the back foot.
This story also features the return of a classic villain. They aren't revealed until the end of Part 2, but it's fairly obvious who it is, though it is still a more than welcome match-up to have this particular villain go up against this particular Doctor - and the games in Part 4 are really fun, although the conclusion was a bit rushed for my liking.
I don't think much of the supporting cast aside from Dr Ludovic Comfort. Queenie is too annoying and the rest are all forgettable. It's really only the three regulars (plus Anthony Barber) who made an impact in this story; Aldred and Olivier in particular with their immaculate British RP impressions.
However, as the story progresses, it very quickly picks up the pace, with Ace and Hex swapping roles with the Seventh Doctor so far as the companions get to be the master manipulators this time while the Doctor is none the wiser and unintentionally screws up his own plan; it's refreshing to see, for a change, the incarnation of the Doctor who is normally always five steps ahead suddenly put out on the back foot.
This story also features the return of a classic villain. They aren't revealed until the end of Part 2, but it's fairly obvious who it is, though it is still a more than welcome match-up to have this particular villain go up against this particular Doctor - and the games in Part 4 are really fun, although the conclusion was a bit rushed for my liking.
I don't think much of the supporting cast aside from Dr Ludovic Comfort. Queenie is too annoying and the rest are all forgettable. It's really only the three regulars (plus Anthony Barber) who made an impact in this story; Aldred and Olivier in particular with their immaculate British RP impressions.
May 27, 2017
That was unexpected. Almost like an episode of "The Twilight Zone" rather than "Doctor Who", but that is hardly a bad thing as the mixture of fun slapstick and creepy talking dolls are a pretty great combination.
Half the time I had no idea what was going on, and neither did the Doctor, constantly finding himself electrocuted, poisoned or hit on the head with a blunt object. The villain was perfect, and it would be nice to encounter him again some day. Well, I say nice...
Then there are Ace and Hex and their interesting accents... I'll leave it at that.
This is truly a time when the Doctor's masterplan backfired, quite heavily. It's fun to see him rattle his way out of it.
Half the time I had no idea what was going on, and neither did the Doctor, constantly finding himself electrocuted, poisoned or hit on the head with a blunt object. The villain was perfect, and it would be nice to encounter him again some day. Well, I say nice...
Then there are Ace and Hex and their interesting accents... I'll leave it at that.
This is truly a time when the Doctor's masterplan backfired, quite heavily. It's fun to see him rattle his way out of it.
September 1, 2019
This is a very well put together story. It features the return of the Celestial Toymaker. This villain was only featured once, during the First Doctors tenure, during the original series run. For much of the story, the Doctor has amnesia. Another difference is that Ace is the master planner in this story.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 2, 2020
Hey guys! Hey guys! Heeeeeeey! Did you know that the Seventh Doctor is a manipulative chessmaster who puts his companions in danger on the regular just for kicks and giggles?
But this time the writers pitted him against the Celestial Toymaker, which helps the narrative somewhat. So that's okay.
But this time the writers pitted him against the Celestial Toymaker, which helps the narrative somewhat. So that's okay.
April 10, 2022
The Seventh Doctor gets amnesia and becomes the one who's manipulated, which is kinda funny and obviously ironic. The Toymaker was a surprise, though I think The Nightmare Fair was the better audio featuring him.
October 14, 2025
This has a distinct ‘Chimes of Midnight’ feel, and it’s nice to hear Big Finish try something other than run-of-the-mill. That said, some of the story elements are a little too affected in their oddness, favouring strangeness for the sake of it.
3.5★
3.5★
June 17, 2019
Such a Mobius strip of a story, it falls apart a bit toward the end, but still works. For our full review, visit https://travelingthevortex.com/?p=8753
February 1, 2024
The Magic Mousetrap **** this one freaked me tf out
Polly's Story ****
Polly's Story ****
August 6, 2024
This might actually be the best one wow that's amazing
February 4, 2025
Was overall a surprise, but a good one
Read
December 23, 2009"Matthew Sweet wrote an earlier Doctor Who play, The Year of the Pig, which brought the Sixth Doctor face to face with Marcel Proust in Ostende. Thomas Mann doesn't make as overt an appearance in The Magic Mousetrap, but by mooring his story in Mann's Magic Mountain, Sweet has managed to take a lot of the things that tend to annoy me about Seventh Doctor plays - the Doctor as arch-manipulator, the pocket-universe-under-siege plots - and turned them into a rather good piece. The identity of the chief baddie came as a pleasant and well-executed surprise to me (I'd downloaded it without reading the blurb), and although it's a rather silly concept it is executed well. Recommended, but not for the novice fan.[return][return]The second CD also includes the first installment of The Three Companions, an ongoing series featuring Anneke Wills as Polly, Nicholas Courtney as the Brigadier and John Pickard as Thomas Brewster. Brewster is certainly my least favourite of the audio companions, but the other two are sheer delight, and I found I had something in my eye as Polly and the Brigadier exchanged notes on their time with the Doctor."
June 29, 2017
By this point in the line, there had been rather a long run during which the 7th Doctor stories were quite consistently the weakest - looking back, it's been quite a while since I last gave one more than three stars. The Magic Mousetrap is not a triumphant return to form, but it is at least the best in a long time.
The story is set in an isolated sanatorium in the Swiss Alps, in which everybody is acting very strangely indeed, not least Ace and Hex. The Doctor meanwhile, has lost his memory (again) and is trying to put it all together. The story is certainly rather surreal, and features some genuinely creepy moments, such as whatever it is that's moving about inside the walls. It is, on the other hand, let down by the villain, who, when he finally appears, isn't all that interesting. Still, the story does manage to fit in quite a few unexpected twists and turns, and is well acted.
Although it's not advertised in the blurb, the CD rounds out with a short segment with two of the Doctor's old companions meeting up online. Nothing much happens, except a bit of chat, and it's clearly a teaser for something else further down the line, but it's nicely done for what it is.
The story is set in an isolated sanatorium in the Swiss Alps, in which everybody is acting very strangely indeed, not least Ace and Hex. The Doctor meanwhile, has lost his memory (again) and is trying to put it all together. The story is certainly rather surreal, and features some genuinely creepy moments, such as whatever it is that's moving about inside the walls. It is, on the other hand, let down by the villain, who, when he finally appears, isn't all that interesting. Still, the story does manage to fit in quite a few unexpected twists and turns, and is well acted.
Although it's not advertised in the blurb, the CD rounds out with a short segment with two of the Doctor's old companions meeting up online. Nothing much happens, except a bit of chat, and it's clearly a teaser for something else further down the line, but it's nicely done for what it is.
May 9, 2014
4.5. Creepy, and I liked that it took a while to reveal what was going on and kept the listener guessing. Few good twists, and a clever ending. Began to suspect who the villain was, but wasn't totally sure until it was revealed.
July 27, 2015
Seven, Ace and Hex encounter the Celestial Toymaker (who featured in one of those long lost First Doctor episodes). It did get better in the end and it all made sense but the first half of the story really annoyed me. I'd almost give it 3 stars...
November 6, 2015
I've been surprisingly disappointed by the stories given Seven and so I'm pleasantly surprised by this one. The freaky cabaret singer and, of course the [REDACTED] make this one wonderfully creepy and vivid.
January 21, 2016
The Doctor, Hex and Ace battle the Celesrial Toymaker in a Swiss Asylum.
December 8, 2021
yeah this was weird
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews