As a fan of Liz Shaw I have to say I enjoyed this. The plot was simple with a twist that was ever so similar to Open After Hours.

Caroline John tells the story well. It begins mostly about her but then the Doctor and the UNIT team all join in. For the first season of CCs, its good. The series has a lot of development yet to do, but even the simple aspects of this works well.

THE BLUE TOOTH - #7

It was average.

At this stage the companion chronicles are at a very early age, it's clearly obvious of that. Therefore I see series 1 and 2 of the companion chronicles more of...pilot than anything testing to see if it will work, to see what went well and what doesn't (I may be wrong) but that's the way I see it. It clearly has done well because of the amount of series it’s done, but this story is as I said before average. Big Finish need to do work on it if it is to succeed, which they did so...thumbs up to them!

What The Blue Tooth does well is that it suites the era perfectly with the tinny music of the late 60's and early 70's it also has some interesting themes of emotion as the whole premise of the story is the background information of Liz's friendship with Jean which makes up for an emotional ending for Liz as this story really brings out the horror side of the Cybermen whom have a really good plot twist in this story, Also The Blue Tooth is a nice addition to The Invasion as it is linked with it. Although this story is very visual with its dark themes of suicide and death I did feel lost with its switching between 1st and 3rd person (something they rectified in the later companion chronicles) I had to keep rewinding this one because it was hard to visualise throughout, it was odd because it kept on switching between dream to reality then to memory and it just couldn't decide where it was going to go and I ended up just being confused. I suppose this was Big Finish trying to see what worked well? There was one particular moment though that worked well and that was the talk between Liz and the half converted Jean as that scene was the most dark but at the same time it was amusing to hear a Cyberman say "I forgot my keys" and then there was those moments where (referring to the 1st person) fast breathing presumably Liz kicked in and I was just sat there like "urm...what the hell is going on?" Although the third doctor never faced the Cybermen in the TV series, The Blue Tooth does work well and does suit the third doctor with the cliché of scientists disappearing, clues to be found and an impending invasion. However I can’t understand why it’s done into 4 parts of 15 minutes? it would of been better as 2 and the end of part 4 there is only the shortened end credits (just to nag a bit)

Overall this audio yet again was average; a lot of work needs to be done in deciding what descriptions and imagery are to be used and what person’s perspective is to be used as well. So I may be harsh in doing this but I believe it fair.

5/10

Really didn't like this - a good performance from Caroline John lifts it from 1/5. Listen to Shadow of the Past instead - that's excellent