With Lucie having departed the TARDIS in December's Death in Blackpool, the eighth Doctor finds himself having to acquire a new companion-- and he does so in a very unusual fashion in Eddie Robson's Situation Vacant, picking between four candidates in a set-up fairly similar to the reality television show The Apprentice. The upshot of this is that, unlike with previous new companion stories, the listener has no idea which of the four will be joining the Doctor in the TARDIS until the very end.

The premise itself has a couple problems, unfortunately. The first is that is just doesn't feel like something the Doctor would actually do. As he points out in the story itself, he travels with "friends," and this is not how one acquires friends! There's actually an explanation for this strange behavior later on, which I guessed at while listening, but it’s an explanation that works to the story's disadvantage, as it requires the Doctor to know something that the story keeps from the listener, making the character a little too distant.

The other problem is that the story seemingly wants the listener to not know who to root for as a new companion. It doesn't do this by making all of the candidates equally appealing, however, but by making all of the candidates equally unappealing. It's not so much a problem of acting as writing-- they range from selfish to dull to buffoonish, and all are a bit bland. There were two female candidates, and two male, and it took me a while to sort out which ones were which. Making them more interesting as people would have helped Situation Vacant a lot, because as it was, it's about a group of characters the listener doesn’t care about competing for a prize that seems out-of-character for the Doctor.

You can read a longer version of this review at Unreality SF.

Yet another new series starting from Big Finish, this time with Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor auditioning four potential new companions in a set-up intended more for comedy than common sense. Not all of the potential companions are exactly who or what they say they are; I thought the show was stolen by Joanna Kanska as the manager at the hotel where it all took place, rather than by any of the formal contestants. Lots of stuff happening but it didn't quite hang together for me. ( )