Doctor Who: The Witch from the Well
by Rick Briggs (Big Finish, 2011)
As ever, Big Finish have gone beresk with their screeching creature effects. Notwithstanding such overindulgence, this pseudohistorical take on the seventeenth-century witch trials offers uncommon nuance and character depth. A particularly good story for Paul McGann and Julie Cox (as Mary Shelley).
Doctor Who: The Silver Turk
by Marc Platt (Big Finish, 2011)
Mary Shelley encounters badly damaged Cybermen; thus, Frankenstein. The idea would later find its way to television in The Haunting of Villa Diodati (2020), but Mary also echoes Rose Tyler’s empathy from Dalek (2005), the resonances circling back through TV and literature.
I, Frankenstein
dir. Stuart Beattie (2014)
With its heavy-handed heaven versus hell scenario, over-expositive dialogue, demons no more robust than rotten tomatoes, and a central character disinterred from Mary Shelley’s novel and given to brooding, mercurially existentialist angst, I, Frankenstein has been pieced together without substance or style.