Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #580353 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10
• Format: Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 2
• Binding: Audio CD

Customer Reviews

An improvement
The eighth doctor seemed to have lost his way in the last season of audios from Big Finish. The stories on the whole were sloppy and failed to engage the listener. The overall feeling ever since 'Zagreus' has been that the authors have become too clever for their own good, this is Doctor Who not George Orwell...

Faith Stealer feels more traditional, and this is a good step. The story is solid as conatins some interesting concepts taking place as it does in a settlement in which hundreds of religion compete for converts. Aside from a few poorly written attempts at humour (the cult who consider accidents to be lucky...) this is a good solid story.

If you were put off by the last season give this a shot. Or if you're new to Big Finish get a copy of Storm Warning and start from the beginning of the Paul McGann seasons...

Faith, hope and...The Doctor!
From 'The Sunmakers' to 'The Long Game', satire has long been at the core of some of Doctor Who's most memorable stories and Faith Stealer is a pleasing addition to this canon.
This time, as the title suggests, the satire is religious; the time-travellers continue to be trapped in The Kro'ka's universe and arrive in 'Multihaven', nicely descibed by Charley as 'some kind of spiritual stock-exchange!'. C'rizz is suffering from mental strain, hounded by flashbacks of him murdering his lover and Charley is bemused and disturbed by the variety of 'Gods' for sale. Apart from a somewhat uncertain tone - slapstick comedy rubs shoulders with attempts at pathos - this is the best in the Eighth Doctor 'story arc', Paul McGann is at his insouciant, unruffled and meandering best and Charley and C'rizz's strained relationship is further battered.
Who or what is 'Miraculite'? Why is it trapping priests and what is its ultimate purpose? In parts reminiscent of a Terry Pratchett novel with its ludicrous religions and feeble failures, the story immediately grips and makes us care about The Eighth Doctor and his crew in a way that has rarely been achieved before now.

A matter of faith
This is the first story in what we are now told will be the 3rd and final season of 8th Doctor audio's by Big Finish, and continues with the (rather boring) quest of the Doctor, Charley and C'rizz through the mysterious interzones to find the missing TARDIS. Beyond this rambling backstory the main thrust of this adventure concerns the Multihaven - a settlement where the multiplicity of different faiths is celebrated, but the mysterious cult leader Laan Carder is rapidly converting all to his own religion...

The story deals with some interesting issues of blind faith, with some clever plays on people being literally 'converted' after 'seeing the light', and it hits all the right dramatic notes, but ultimately it turns out to be a fairly predictable Doctor Who romp, with a poorly explained parasitic evil alien being revealed as the menace. On the positive side new (ish) companion C'rizz gets a fairly healthy amount of action for once, with the murder of his girlfriend back in his introductory story finally being addressed (better late than never), though the fact that he is himself a monk is never really addressed, which for a play about religion is odd.

Well performed, with some nice underlying ideas, but ultimately a fairly standard adventure.