November 1963, and the Soviet space programme reigns supreme. Having sent the first animals, then the first men beyond Earth’s atmosphere, now they’re sending a manned capsule into orbit around the Moon. Just as Vostok Seven passes over into the dark side, however, its life support system fails. Only the intervention of the Sixth Doctor and Peri, adopting the identities of scientists from Moscow University, means that contact with the capsule is regained. But something has happened to the cosmonaut on board. She appears to have lost her memory, and developed extreme claustrophobia. Maybe she’s not quite as human as she used to be…
Big Finish’s second entry into their 1963 trilogy (or Quadrilogy if you count The Light at the End) is the four-part Sixth Doctor and Peri adventure The Space Race by Jonathan Morris, released at the end of this month.
Landing in Kazakstan in November of the titular year, our TARDIS team become involved in a plot of intrigue that surrounds the Soviet space programme at the Baikomur Cosmodrome. Involving double agents, murders and a peculiar incident on the dark side of the moon, all is not what it seems however and just as you think you know what’s going on, the story turns completely on it’s head!
The Space Race is a big science-fiction story in the tradition of Quatermass, with shades of Issac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and The Ambassadors of Death. It focuses on the very early days of space flight, the pioneering age of Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard where men were put into space with technology now eclipsed by our mobile phones. The plays author Jonathan Morris carried out extensive research on the space programmes of the age, wanting to create a realistic tone for the piece
“It’s about rockets and pioneers and that whole White Heat of Technology era, where scientists achieved fantastic results with, by our standards, very primitive machines. It involved a bit of research, listening to transcripts of the old Vostok missions in order to get the jargon exactly right.”
The 50th anniversary celebrations look to continue in style as we visit the year of the shows birth once more, but The Space Race takes a very different look into the era. Out of Britain and across the Iron Curtain, The Space Race finally tells the tale of just what happened to the Russian space programme that fateful month in 1963…
Buy this if you like: Quatermass, The Ambassadors of Death, IDW’s Space Oddity
1963: The Space Race will be released on October 31 and is available to preorder now over at bigfinish.com
Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Nicola Bryant (Peri), Karen Henson (Larisa Petrov), David Shaw-Parker (General Mikhail Leonov/General Paterson), Tom Alexander (Captain Alexei Kozlov/Lieutenant Andrews), Stuart Denman (Sergeant Leonid Kurakin/Scientist), Samantha Béart (Marinka Talanov/Female Worker)
Written By: Jonathan Morris
Director: Nicholas Briggs
Sound Design: Howard Carter
Music: Howard Carter
Cover Art: Anthony Lamb
Number of Discs: 2
Duration: 120′ approx
ISBN: 978-1-78178-079-4
Recorded Dates: 28 and 29 May 2013
Recorded At: The Moat Studios
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