Presenting a far more traditional tale than the previous webcast, Real Time instead goes for the more fan-pleasing route, bringing back a familiar big bad, in this case the Cybermen, and treading on familiar storytelling ground for Big Finish, who have now taken over production. It's a grisly, splatterpunk look at the horrors of conversion. Hot off the success of Spare Parts. It's made all the more terrifying by Lee Sullivan's fabulous illustrations and slightly more glossy animation. Unfortunately, Gary Russell writes and directs a convoluted tale that includes ancient temples, time-travelling Cybermen, a mysterious expert and even a time paradox. He also uses the conceit that most of the action happens in real time, hence the title. The story is far too complicated, and too much time is spent with the Doctor or various other characters standing around explaining the plot to each other instead of doing anything. Russell doesn't appear to have rumbled that a real-time story doesn't have to be restricted to a handful of adjacent locations. It feels far too much like Colin Baker's TV era, a thing Big Finish had successfully distanced his Doctor from in the audios up to this point. Colin has always been my least favourite of the Classic Doctors, but performance-wise, he is great here, demonstrating both the pragmatism and passion of the Sixth incarnation of the Doctor. Similarly, Maggie Stables is also excellent, although Evelyn herself gets very little to do bar stand around and talk to the supporting players, the only standout being Yee Jee Tso as Goddard. Backed by a decent score by Alistair Lock, Real Time is a somewhat traditional, if flawed, Doctor Who tale. There's a lot of shouting and running about, but not much is achieved, and, instead of being an advantage, the real-time aspect makes it very slow. It works more as an action piece than anything else, far from Colin's finest outing, but solid nonetheless.
