Doctor Who: Unregenerate!

Big Finish: Monthly Range #70

by David A. McIntee, Sylvester McCoy (Narrator), Bonnie Langford (Narrator)

In a run-down asylum, screams echo in the halls as mysterious creatures roam, terrorizing the staff. Patients complain of betrayal rather than illness, and no-one is quite what they seem.

Mel knows that the Doctor is the best person to find the answers – but she is stranded on Earth, and the TARDIS has returned without him...

Why does a medical facility need to be under armed guard? What procedures are the staff carrying out, and to what purpose? What is the price that must be paid for making an agreement with those who run the asylum?

As the answers begin to be uncovered, the Doctor finds that the past may yet come back to haunt him...

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

Audio CD

First published June 1, 2005

About the author

David A. McIntee was a British author who specialised in writing spin-offs and nonfiction commentaries for Doctor Who and other British and American science-fiction franchises.

Reviews

[Emilija · Rating 3 out of 5]

2025 Alphabet Challenge - The Letter U

I haven't read many 7th Doctor novels, and I don't really know his Doctor well enough to comment on whether he was in character in this or not. I thought it would be a good audiobook to start with, as the concept was pretty cool. Alas, the execution was a bit poor and so this was a bit hit and miss.

[Gabriel Mero · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a hard time following this one.

[Frank Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unregenerate was significantly unwow for most readers. Skimming other reviews, I would tend to agree with the consensus that this was a pretty good concept with underwhelming result. Significantly unimpressive for me was having to deal with Seven crying - ok it fit the narrative, but writer's should consider the story's medium and it certainly didn't appeal in an audio drama.

I was a little thrown off because last time we saw Mel Bush in audio drama she was with Six and I'd forgotten that she was a cross-over companion - therefore I kept anticipating that Seven would unregenerate into Six as a part of this story.

With all of that laid out, I still enjoyed the story.

[Chrissy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of a slow burn. I've found these Seventh Doctor audios to be really high-handed and hard for me to connect with. I'm hoping that as I catch up, I'll find some that are a bit lighter in tone and story. But I did like how Mel got more to do than she typically did on TV (Big Finish's version of Mel is actually quite delightful and has enough personality and backstory to make her interesting, so I do appreciate that).

[Gareth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good story, full of mystery for the first two episodes, and reasonable amount of suspense throughout. It certainly had me guessing for a while for what exactly what was going on, though unfortunately this led to a fair amount of exposition in the 3rd episode, which slowed the pace down somewhat, and while probably necessary, did lower my rating for the story. Mel and the Seventh portrayed strongly here, and the other characters were also good here, I especially liked the taxi driver.

[Kelly McCubbin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This shouldn't work. Giving Sylvester McCoy this much scenery to chew often has disastrous effects, but he is so unhinged here that it comes back around to legitimately frightening. It's a complicated story that would be a mess if there weren't enough fascinating twists to keep it rolling.
And Bonnie Langford's Mel just steals the show here. She's so good, particularly as a double act with Toby Longworth's "Cabbie". I'd love to see more adventures just with the two of them!

[Lewis Simpson · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5

Generally enjoyable, with a slow and mysterious pace and interesting villains, but falls into the typical Big Finish trap of relying on easy drama and debates about nonsense to fill out the runtime.

[April Mccaffrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not sure how i feel about this one. Interesting concept with timelords running a mental asylum.

[Steven Shinder · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting concepts that ultimately don't add up to a satisfying whole. All of Seven's yelling got really annoying.

[Tabitha · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good premise, but i just didn't care for it

[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first half is hard to track but the second half twist I feel works well and pays off.

[Seb Hasi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This monthly adventure was written in the early days of Big Finish, where they had more scope to explore dark themes and concepts. This time we have the Doctor sectioned, Mel paired up with a violent cab driver, and some weird Time Lord experimenting kind of stuff going on. The story is incredibly strong in part one with an immediately established dark tone and some great dialogue, but as the story progresses and the Doctor slowly returns to normal the quality gets worse and worse. As he becomes more coherent it is obviously nice to have our protagonist back but given I was enjoying the horror of where he was and Mel leading this time, it just ended feeling like any other story. It is also really impossible to balance the silly and whimsical 7th Doctor of Season 24 with a story that has themes as dark as this. The story makes no affronts to be campy like season 24, it’s just the Doctor sectioned and bodies being experimented on right from the start. The problem is that the latter half of this story is purely just monologues from the villains, with the occasional interjection by the Doctor, so once they’ve explained their plan over ten minutes; it becomes really obvious to see what’s next. That, paired with the fact that the ending itself is so sudden and a bit dull; really detracts from what is at its core a great idea.

The story ends with a generic bit of horror clearly written with ‘you get what you give’ in mind, but considering I do not care about these random people I was hardly ecstatic or devastated by the way the die, or that they die at all. Mel actually gets to be a strong character here, and do more than just scream which is great, but it’s just a shame that pretty much only the bad guys get anything to do in this one. She puts the pieces together and helps in small ways but ultimately she doesn’t do much more than provide exposition on the protagonist side. The strength of her character comes through with her companion the cab driver, played by the superb Robert Jezek. She doesn’t stand for his gruff and intimidating front so by episode two she’s clearly in control of the relationship, so there was some comedy in the story in the end. The villains plan ends up being quite generic, but the main problem I had with the story is that the Doctor is returned to normal very easily and the reason for his madness is so unimpressive. The story has its great moments so they do offset this but it’s still just a shame given the idea itself was really really interesting. This release is not terrible by any means, but if persuaded to buy by the cover and synopsis, don’t go in expecting anything as mature and dark as promised.

[Nicholas Whyte]

Unregenerate!, by David McIntee, has Mel trying to make contact with a newly regenerated Seven, and finding herself and her taxi driver sucked into an illicit Gallifreyan research centre where Tardis brains are transplanted into the bodies of the dying. There was one particularly memorable mental image, when Mel penetrates the evildoers' headquarters on earth and dicovers that it is merely a shell, the real business going on elsewhere. The taxi-driver is a memorable character too. But apart from that, I wasn't wowed by the Doctor saving the day because his brain is just so special (though McCoy plays it well), and not really confident about how it all fits in to what else we know of the Time Lords.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

When an empty TARDIS greets Mel, the trail leads to a decrepit asylum, guarded by armed personnel and populated by screaming inmates… with its most recent addition a mysterious patient known as the Doctor.

[Debra Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Doctor stumbles on Time Lords who are playing around with human minds and its up to him and Mel to save the day.

[Ritchie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seven, Mel and an English cabbie in a mental hospital... sort of.