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The Raincloud Man is one of those Big Finish audios where I can practically hear the writers shouting “no no this is a GREAT idea, trust us” as another plot thread is hurled into the pile. This is Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor with Charley Pollard, and on paper it sounds glorious. Manchester noir. Alien gang warfare. A mysterious figure whose very presence heralds disaster. The return of DI Patricia Menzies. All the ingredients are here. The problem is that they are all thrown into the same pan at once and nobody ever quite stirs. Or perhaps they over-stir, just a bit too frantically, and get everything all over the table.
The story opens promisingly. The Doctor and Charley stumble into a murder investigation in Manchester, with Charley rapidly becoming a suspect thanks to some extremely inconvenient evidence. Enter DI Menzies, back with her dry scepticism and weary competence, and immediately the whole thing feels grounded. This first stretch plays like a grimy urban thriller with sci fi edges. Strange coins that should not exist. People who seem to know too much about time. Hints of something vast looming just out of sight. It is tense and intriguing and for a while I was genuinely hooked.
Then the plot detonates. We are suddenly dealing with an interstellar war between two alien factions, the Tabbalac and the Cyrox, a sentient gambling yacht that teleports across the globe, and a shadowy figure known as the Raincloud Man who is tied into everything and also somehow nothing. Scenes start crashing into each other with very little breathing room. Explosions happen. Revelations are shouted. Characters urgently explain what just happened while also trying to be witty, and that tone clash means you are never entirely sure what information is vital and what is flavour text. There’s an entire several-minute long exposition scene where characters calmly explain events to one another while background extras scream in terror over and over and over, on loop, and nobody seems to notice.
The Raincloud Man himself is a fascinating concept. A tragic, cursed presence whose life and identity are bound up in chance, loss and inevitability. He should be the emotional spine of the story. Instead he feels like another brilliant idea competing for attention. Likewise the alien war hinges on a genuinely clever notion involving identity being gambled to end a conflict, but it arrives so late and so densely wrapped in exposition that its impact is blunted.
What does work consistently is the character material. Colin Baker is on fire here, all bombast and irritation and wounded moral certainty. You can feel the Doctor getting angrier as the universe refuses to behave rationally. Charley continues to be excellent, clever and emotionally raw, with the ongoing tension about her secret knowledge of the Doctor’s future bubbling ominously under the surface. Menzies is a delight, anchoring the madness with a human perspective and reminding us what actual consequences look like when aliens turn a city into a battleground.
Thematically the story wants to be about chance versus control, about how much of identity is chosen and how much is imposed by circumstance. It also brushes against ideas of exploitation, especially in how people are used as pieces in larger cosmic games. All of that is solid Doctor Who territory. It just needed space to breathe.
Final Thoughts:
I admire the ambition enormously, and there are individual scenes I genuinely loved. But ambition without focus can turn into noise. This one needed grounding, clarity and maybe one less exploding subplot.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 cursed alien casino tokens rattling sadly in the rain.