Doctor Who Audios
Apr. 12th, 2008 09:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakHaving finished the day's work and while waiting for certain tv episode, it's as good a time as any to get some more reviews written down. I've enjoyed most of the audio plays Big Finish produces for Doctor Who (all eras), and the three I recently acquired were no exception. They were all different from each other, featuring different incarnations of the Doctor, and all in their way used the audio format for doing things the tv show couldn't or wouldn't.
After hearing praise for audio Companion Evelyn Smythe in general and this introduction adventure of her in particular, I finally managed get my hands on The Marian Conspiracy, and found the praise fully justified. Rather boringly, I also find myself agreeing with the idea that the Sixth Doctor comes off far better on audio with an excellent script and the right Companion. Pairing him with a 55-years-old opinionated historian who treats him like an uppity student if he blusters makes all the difference between coming across as a bully and coming across as a cranky yet deeply humane man fond of verbal sparring. Also, as someone who knows the Tudor period fairly well, it was a great delight to see a script that gets it right, and doesn't take the easy way out into clichés. And uses a historical figure for some neat character exploration of the Doctor. Setting the adventure during the reign of Mary, it could have simply been an evil Catholics/brave Protestants cliché. Instead, the key scene has the Doctor ponder the paradox of Mary - a woman who is kind in personal interaction, was willing to die for her beliefs in the previous reign, and seriously, honestly believes she needs to save her subjects' souls. And is willing to kill them for that belief. And then he makes the unexpected yet illuminating comparison to himself, asking how much of a difference good intention and the belief you're acting for the greater good make if you for that belief have led people to their deaths, got peaceful people to take up arms, destroyed invidual lives. And the script is good enough not to give a pat answer to that question, either via another character or via the Doctor himself, but to let it stand.
Colin Baker is in fine form, Maggie Stables who plays Evelyn is superb, and as I said, the script has a great sense of period. Tv being what it is, we'll never see a 55-years old woman in a cardigan and with a fondness for chocolate as a companion on the screen (at least not for longer than an episode), and that's shame, because the dynamic with the Doctor that develops here is truly wonderful.
Sympathy for the Devil is one of the "What If?" audio adventures that present AUs developing from one particular change in canon; in other words, just the concept fanfiction adores. In this case, the change is the Third Doctor not arriving at an unspecified point in the early 70s after being exiled and forced to regenerate from the Second, but, by accident, in 1997. (Sidenote: I wasn't entirely clear whether the Doctor as presented here was meant to be genuine Three, just with David Warner replacing the late Jon Pertwee, or another version. The script gives him some Pertwee-isms, like "...now listen to me!", "now look here" or the habit of attaching "...,you know" at the end of a sentence, but since this is an AU anyway, it could also be a different regeneration.) This makes for a slightly different world he arrives in, and here I have to congratulate the choices Jonathan Clements' script makes. Because if the world had been entirely lost, then you'd say humans really aren't capable of saving themselves without the Doctor, which is too hero-worshipping and too much the Great Man view of history, but if there would be no difference at all, then your main character and his efforts look somewhat superfluous. As it is, Sympathy for the Devil postulates that the Brigadier and UNIT have managed to deal with the Autons and the various other threats without the Doctor, but at a much, much higher body count (in one case, they had no choice but to use a nuke in the London area), and one of the fallouts is that the Brigadier is currently a bitter and retired man living in Hongkong.
Which is where the action of the story takes place, during the last day before the Chinese take-over. The script uses various tropes from Third Doctor adventures - notably Mind of Evil, but also Claws of Axos and gives them a new twist. It isn't hard to guess that the Master will be around (especially if you've heard a scientist named Keller became Ke Le when defecting to the Chinese with his mind-controlling tech); turns out Alt!Master (played by Sam Kisgart) got stuck on Earth due to TARDIS loss in the early 70s and has been waiting for the Doctor to show up ever since, using his time for evil, of course. The script has a great time playing with expectations - and genuinely thinking through its "what ifs", because the Brigadier, who only met the Second Doctor two times, does of course not yet have the intimate friendship with him the Third Doctor years in "our" universe produced and tries to stay out of hero-ing anyway. (Naturally, this does not stick.) He gets his own foil and nemesis in the form of his successor at UNIT, Colonel Brimmincombe-Wood (played by a certain David Tennant), who is not evil, just obnoxious, and then turns out to be far more competent than we first thought, just different from the Brig. There is a great sequence where we cut between Time Lord bickering and UNIT (ex-)leaders bickering. There is Buddhism as a key to world-saving as in the 70s, a new explanation for nuclear tests, and a dig of sorts at something that I mentioned in my review of Mind of Evil (where we got a favourable Mao reference, thus proving the scriptwriter, like many a contemporary, had a rosy-eyed view of the Chairman in 1972); during said Time Lord bickering, the Master gets in a true burn when he, in reply to the Doctor's claim of being anti-tyrants, says "well, Mao was really complimentary about you", leaving the Doctor to say defensively "when I knew him he was a librarian!".
One can quibble about individual details, but all in all it's a very well plotted AU, and how can one not love a story where the Brig ends up as the Doctor's Companion?
Master was written by Joseph Lidster, who has since gone on to write for tv and this season contributed what was one of my favourite Torchwood episodes, A Day in the Death. It was meant as an exploration of one of DW's iconic villains, similarly to another Big Finish production, Davros, and the result fascinatingly manages to simultanously fail and succeed. And, since this was produced in 2003, to pre-empt several ideas that since have shown up on New Who.
What I regard as failure: as an offered explanation of why the Master is how he is, and an exploration of what makes him tick, it doesn't really convince. Which is partly due to the chosen format. On the other hand, as an exploration of the whys and wherefores of the Doctor's behaviour vis a vis the Master, it offers some fascinating stuff.
It makes for an interesting compare/contrast to the New Who episode Utopia, because here, too, the Master spends the majority of the story in a state of amnesia, being a kindly old man, intent on saving lives and having dedicated his past remembered existence (in this case, only ten years) to the public welfare. But the reason for it is quite different, and so is the fallout once the amnesia stops. This being a Seventh Doctor story, we're in allegorical territory, complete with mythic figures and anthromorphic personifications. It's also an exercise in layered storytelling, as we start with the Doctor telling this story to someone else and warning, repeatedly, not to take everything he says for granted. (And within the story, the Doctor at a crucial point also tells a story.) Framing narration aside, we open with Dr. John Smith, dedicated surgeon living in a city that has modelled itself on Edwardian society (but is on another planet), greeting his dear friends, the Schaefers, as they come to dinner. Among other things, this is a haunted house story, a murder mystery (which isn't that hard to figure out if you know your murder mysteries and thus know the obvious red herring can't be the killer), and a morality play. Complete with mysterious stranger showing up at the end of the first act. (And here the audio is teasing us by drawing out the point where the man utters his first clear words and thus we know that it's Sylvester McCoy, though really, it had to be the Doctor - who else?) What happened, apparantly is that the Doctor made a deal with Death herself. (Yes, Death shows up in - female - person. Also in disguise at first. Going by the debates a recent Death appearance has caused, I imagine this alone made it a love it or hate it case for DW fans, with the whole sci fi versus fantasy thing.) The Master would get ten years living without the burden of his past, a new chance at life, and in return, the Doctor had to promise to kill the Master. Which of course he refuses to do now. Lots of mind games by Death ensue.
As I said, this is among other things an exercise in storytelling, and one of the stories we get from the Doctor addresses a favourite subject of fannish speculation - what happened between the Doctor and the Master back on Gallifrey, and by the way, Sylvester McCoy does a great job with that little monologue about two boys living in "a land far, far away" who dream of leaving their society full of rules and confinement and explore the universe, and are best friends until one day, another boy who always bullies them does that once too often, holding one them under the water, and rage rises in the other to the point where he kills the bully with a stone. They could have claimed self defense, but they were convinced that if the death came to light, they would never be allowed to leave the planet, and so they burned the body, holding hands as they watched the pyre they made. And that changed everything. The second version of the story doesn't come until the climactic scene, which, in short form, goes something like this, after a traumatic event has happened that causes the old Master-personality to break through the John Smith one:
Master: I don't believe it. Ten years as a goodie two shoes. This is just typical for you, Doctor.
Death: My servant is back!
Master: Think again. I'm not after death, I'm after power and knowledge. I just don't care who dies so I get it.
Doctor: But I do, so could you please stick with the career change?
Master: No. By the way, why did you never kill me no matter how often you had the chance?
Doctor: ...because I feel guilty for deserting you?
Death: Ah, but this where we get the big surprise, boys. Doctor, I shall now give you back the memory you've always surpressed. You were the one who killed the bully, not the Master. And after that, I came to you in your dreams and showed you just how ghastly your future life as my Champion would be, and you went Winston Smith and said do it to him instead. Your entire life-saving career is based on that act of betrayal of your best friend!
Doctor: *has breakdown as he realizes this is indeed the true memory*
Master:...
Doctor: ...
and the next bit I must quote verbatim as I remember it because I can't do it flippantly. It's played out so movingly that just for this scene, I can lay my principle "this whole "Death's champion" talk does not explain a supervillain career, Lidster!" objection aside. The Master asks whether if Death hadn't come between them, they'd still be friends.
Doctor *in maximum self-loathing mode*: I can't think why you would want to be my friend.
Master: We were children. It was one act.
Doctor: There is no one I would rather be friends with.
At which point Death had enough of Time Lord reunions and breaks them up again by separating them, and the whole story wraps up with her getting John Smith in a situation where he is willing to commit a murder, thus forfeiting his protection against her and becoming entirely consumed again by the Master persona, and the Doctor vowing that one day, "I'll save you, old friend."
Now obviously, the audios are only canon if you want them to be. And as I said, despite some debates of what makes people commit evil acts between the various dramatis personae (especially the Doctor and "John Smith" pre-amnesia breakthrough, but at a point where John Smith fears he might be the killer in the local murder mystery because he can't remember his past and thus doesn't know whether or not he'd be capable of it), settling it with "he became Death's champion after one transferred memory" is somewhat lame if you think about it. But as a drama, as long as you listen, it really works. The guest characters, especially Philip Madoc as Victor Schaeffer, are good; Geoffrey Beevers - who did play the Master on screen, between Delgado and Ainley - is good though not as good as Derek Jacobi in pulling off a complete transformation in a single scene, and Sylvester McCoy is outstanding, whether he bonds with Smith (having to choose another pseudonym for himself this time), smoothly evades questions with the guest characters, fences with Death or guilts, which he does throughout the story in subtle ways and then of course has the big breakdown scene. This being a very meta kind of play, we also get Death taunting him about no longer playing the spoons and mangling his metaphors because he's too busy "destroying planets and cleaning up the mess you made by not being able to go through with it the first time around", which sums up the Seventh Doctor's transformation during his run, from the start in a clown persona to the dark state that allowed him to cooly trick Davros and the Daleks into blowing up Skaro. And of course her gloating that she always knew he wouldn't be able to kill the Master and that she'll make him pay for the rest of his existence for this works ever so well with New Who canon, as does the saving-the-Master-idea (which Three arguably expresses at the end of The Daemons but no later incarnation until Ten).
After hearing praise for audio Companion Evelyn Smythe in general and this introduction adventure of her in particular, I finally managed get my hands on The Marian Conspiracy, and found the praise fully justified. Rather boringly, I also find myself agreeing with the idea that the Sixth Doctor comes off far better on audio with an excellent script and the right Companion. Pairing him with a 55-years-old opinionated historian who treats him like an uppity student if he blusters makes all the difference between coming across as a bully and coming across as a cranky yet deeply humane man fond of verbal sparring. Also, as someone who knows the Tudor period fairly well, it was a great delight to see a script that gets it right, and doesn't take the easy way out into clichés. And uses a historical figure for some neat character exploration of the Doctor. Setting the adventure during the reign of Mary, it could have simply been an evil Catholics/brave Protestants cliché. Instead, the key scene has the Doctor ponder the paradox of Mary - a woman who is kind in personal interaction, was willing to die for her beliefs in the previous reign, and seriously, honestly believes she needs to save her subjects' souls. And is willing to kill them for that belief. And then he makes the unexpected yet illuminating comparison to himself, asking how much of a difference good intention and the belief you're acting for the greater good make if you for that belief have led people to their deaths, got peaceful people to take up arms, destroyed invidual lives. And the script is good enough not to give a pat answer to that question, either via another character or via the Doctor himself, but to let it stand.
Colin Baker is in fine form, Maggie Stables who plays Evelyn is superb, and as I said, the script has a great sense of period. Tv being what it is, we'll never see a 55-years old woman in a cardigan and with a fondness for chocolate as a companion on the screen (at least not for longer than an episode), and that's shame, because the dynamic with the Doctor that develops here is truly wonderful.
Sympathy for the Devil is one of the "What If?" audio adventures that present AUs developing from one particular change in canon; in other words, just the concept fanfiction adores. In this case, the change is the Third Doctor not arriving at an unspecified point in the early 70s after being exiled and forced to regenerate from the Second, but, by accident, in 1997. (Sidenote: I wasn't entirely clear whether the Doctor as presented here was meant to be genuine Three, just with David Warner replacing the late Jon Pertwee, or another version. The script gives him some Pertwee-isms, like "...now listen to me!", "now look here" or the habit of attaching "...,you know" at the end of a sentence, but since this is an AU anyway, it could also be a different regeneration.) This makes for a slightly different world he arrives in, and here I have to congratulate the choices Jonathan Clements' script makes. Because if the world had been entirely lost, then you'd say humans really aren't capable of saving themselves without the Doctor, which is too hero-worshipping and too much the Great Man view of history, but if there would be no difference at all, then your main character and his efforts look somewhat superfluous. As it is, Sympathy for the Devil postulates that the Brigadier and UNIT have managed to deal with the Autons and the various other threats without the Doctor, but at a much, much higher body count (in one case, they had no choice but to use a nuke in the London area), and one of the fallouts is that the Brigadier is currently a bitter and retired man living in Hongkong.
Which is where the action of the story takes place, during the last day before the Chinese take-over. The script uses various tropes from Third Doctor adventures - notably Mind of Evil, but also Claws of Axos and gives them a new twist. It isn't hard to guess that the Master will be around (especially if you've heard a scientist named Keller became Ke Le when defecting to the Chinese with his mind-controlling tech); turns out Alt!Master (played by Sam Kisgart) got stuck on Earth due to TARDIS loss in the early 70s and has been waiting for the Doctor to show up ever since, using his time for evil, of course. The script has a great time playing with expectations - and genuinely thinking through its "what ifs", because the Brigadier, who only met the Second Doctor two times, does of course not yet have the intimate friendship with him the Third Doctor years in "our" universe produced and tries to stay out of hero-ing anyway. (Naturally, this does not stick.) He gets his own foil and nemesis in the form of his successor at UNIT, Colonel Brimmincombe-Wood (played by a certain David Tennant), who is not evil, just obnoxious, and then turns out to be far more competent than we first thought, just different from the Brig. There is a great sequence where we cut between Time Lord bickering and UNIT (ex-)leaders bickering. There is Buddhism as a key to world-saving as in the 70s, a new explanation for nuclear tests, and a dig of sorts at something that I mentioned in my review of Mind of Evil (where we got a favourable Mao reference, thus proving the scriptwriter, like many a contemporary, had a rosy-eyed view of the Chairman in 1972); during said Time Lord bickering, the Master gets in a true burn when he, in reply to the Doctor's claim of being anti-tyrants, says "well, Mao was really complimentary about you", leaving the Doctor to say defensively "when I knew him he was a librarian!".
One can quibble about individual details, but all in all it's a very well plotted AU, and how can one not love a story where the Brig ends up as the Doctor's Companion?
Master was written by Joseph Lidster, who has since gone on to write for tv and this season contributed what was one of my favourite Torchwood episodes, A Day in the Death. It was meant as an exploration of one of DW's iconic villains, similarly to another Big Finish production, Davros, and the result fascinatingly manages to simultanously fail and succeed. And, since this was produced in 2003, to pre-empt several ideas that since have shown up on New Who.
What I regard as failure: as an offered explanation of why the Master is how he is, and an exploration of what makes him tick, it doesn't really convince. Which is partly due to the chosen format. On the other hand, as an exploration of the whys and wherefores of the Doctor's behaviour vis a vis the Master, it offers some fascinating stuff.
It makes for an interesting compare/contrast to the New Who episode Utopia, because here, too, the Master spends the majority of the story in a state of amnesia, being a kindly old man, intent on saving lives and having dedicated his past remembered existence (in this case, only ten years) to the public welfare. But the reason for it is quite different, and so is the fallout once the amnesia stops. This being a Seventh Doctor story, we're in allegorical territory, complete with mythic figures and anthromorphic personifications. It's also an exercise in layered storytelling, as we start with the Doctor telling this story to someone else and warning, repeatedly, not to take everything he says for granted. (And within the story, the Doctor at a crucial point also tells a story.) Framing narration aside, we open with Dr. John Smith, dedicated surgeon living in a city that has modelled itself on Edwardian society (but is on another planet), greeting his dear friends, the Schaefers, as they come to dinner. Among other things, this is a haunted house story, a murder mystery (which isn't that hard to figure out if you know your murder mysteries and thus know the obvious red herring can't be the killer), and a morality play. Complete with mysterious stranger showing up at the end of the first act. (And here the audio is teasing us by drawing out the point where the man utters his first clear words and thus we know that it's Sylvester McCoy, though really, it had to be the Doctor - who else?) What happened, apparantly is that the Doctor made a deal with Death herself. (Yes, Death shows up in - female - person. Also in disguise at first. Going by the debates a recent Death appearance has caused, I imagine this alone made it a love it or hate it case for DW fans, with the whole sci fi versus fantasy thing.) The Master would get ten years living without the burden of his past, a new chance at life, and in return, the Doctor had to promise to kill the Master. Which of course he refuses to do now. Lots of mind games by Death ensue.
As I said, this is among other things an exercise in storytelling, and one of the stories we get from the Doctor addresses a favourite subject of fannish speculation - what happened between the Doctor and the Master back on Gallifrey, and by the way, Sylvester McCoy does a great job with that little monologue about two boys living in "a land far, far away" who dream of leaving their society full of rules and confinement and explore the universe, and are best friends until one day, another boy who always bullies them does that once too often, holding one them under the water, and rage rises in the other to the point where he kills the bully with a stone. They could have claimed self defense, but they were convinced that if the death came to light, they would never be allowed to leave the planet, and so they burned the body, holding hands as they watched the pyre they made. And that changed everything. The second version of the story doesn't come until the climactic scene, which, in short form, goes something like this, after a traumatic event has happened that causes the old Master-personality to break through the John Smith one:
Master: I don't believe it. Ten years as a goodie two shoes. This is just typical for you, Doctor.
Death: My servant is back!
Master: Think again. I'm not after death, I'm after power and knowledge. I just don't care who dies so I get it.
Doctor: But I do, so could you please stick with the career change?
Master: No. By the way, why did you never kill me no matter how often you had the chance?
Doctor: ...because I feel guilty for deserting you?
Death: Ah, but this where we get the big surprise, boys. Doctor, I shall now give you back the memory you've always surpressed. You were the one who killed the bully, not the Master. And after that, I came to you in your dreams and showed you just how ghastly your future life as my Champion would be, and you went Winston Smith and said do it to him instead. Your entire life-saving career is based on that act of betrayal of your best friend!
Doctor: *has breakdown as he realizes this is indeed the true memory*
Master:...
Doctor: ...
and the next bit I must quote verbatim as I remember it because I can't do it flippantly. It's played out so movingly that just for this scene, I can lay my principle "this whole "Death's champion" talk does not explain a supervillain career, Lidster!" objection aside. The Master asks whether if Death hadn't come between them, they'd still be friends.
Doctor *in maximum self-loathing mode*: I can't think why you would want to be my friend.
Master: We were children. It was one act.
Doctor: There is no one I would rather be friends with.
At which point Death had enough of Time Lord reunions and breaks them up again by separating them, and the whole story wraps up with her getting John Smith in a situation where he is willing to commit a murder, thus forfeiting his protection against her and becoming entirely consumed again by the Master persona, and the Doctor vowing that one day, "I'll save you, old friend."
Now obviously, the audios are only canon if you want them to be. And as I said, despite some debates of what makes people commit evil acts between the various dramatis personae (especially the Doctor and "John Smith" pre-amnesia breakthrough, but at a point where John Smith fears he might be the killer in the local murder mystery because he can't remember his past and thus doesn't know whether or not he'd be capable of it), settling it with "he became Death's champion after one transferred memory" is somewhat lame if you think about it. But as a drama, as long as you listen, it really works. The guest characters, especially Philip Madoc as Victor Schaeffer, are good; Geoffrey Beevers - who did play the Master on screen, between Delgado and Ainley - is good though not as good as Derek Jacobi in pulling off a complete transformation in a single scene, and Sylvester McCoy is outstanding, whether he bonds with Smith (having to choose another pseudonym for himself this time), smoothly evades questions with the guest characters, fences with Death or guilts, which he does throughout the story in subtle ways and then of course has the big breakdown scene. This being a very meta kind of play, we also get Death taunting him about no longer playing the spoons and mangling his metaphors because he's too busy "destroying planets and cleaning up the mess you made by not being able to go through with it the first time around", which sums up the Seventh Doctor's transformation during his run, from the start in a clown persona to the dark state that allowed him to cooly trick Davros and the Daleks into blowing up Skaro. And of course her gloating that she always knew he wouldn't be able to kill the Master and that she'll make him pay for the rest of his existence for this works ever so well with New Who canon, as does the saving-the-Master-idea (which Three arguably expresses at the end of The Daemons but no later incarnation until Ten).
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no subject
Date: 2008-04-12 08:13 pm (UTC)Of course, I am of the persuasion that all Deaths are Death of the family Endless as well, so I am sorely tempted to get this one. It sounds like you could slot it in very well in a Gaiman worldview.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-13 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-13 04:53 am (UTC)Oldest Story: yes, I was thinking that, too, and that part definitely had a Gaiman ring to it, both in the way it was written and performed.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-13 05:04 am (UTC)Re: the last - mind you, it also has all sorts of biblical overtones, but yes, that "there is no one I'd rather be friends with" comes across as one of these ever so British and restrainedly phrased but therefore all the more intense love declarations, and of course creating a situation where the Master forgives the Doctor = stroke of genius.
Well, you should meet Seven in any case. I already gave you my list of "must" episodes from the Seven era, didn't I? But I actually listened to my first audio featuring Seven - The Fearmonger - before I had watched more than one episode, and this particular one doesn't have any other DW regulars but the Doctor and the Master, so I suppose you could listen to it first.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-13 05:28 am (UTC)I'd like him to write one, but I know it'll never happen. Alas.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-13 02:10 pm (UTC)Okay, I should stop metaing on this until I've actually listened to it.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-13 05:13 pm (UTC)Re: self annihilation - you know, there was actually no reason why the Doctor shouldn't have transported with Martha back to Earth at the end of Sound of Drums. They could have come back to liberate Jack and her family later via the teleport, and the Doctor didn't need to be on the Valiant in order to weave himself into the Archangel network telepathically. By staying, he basically volunteered for a year of whatever torture the Master would deal out, even if he was sure the Master wouldn't actually kill him, and it's hard not to read that as self-punishment coupled with a guilt-ridden, self-annihilating affection. (Though the Doctor's most suicidal s3 gesture remains jumping in front of the Daleks and screaming at them to finally kill him in Daleks in Manhattan.) And of course the very fact the Master didn't kill him through the year despite knowing, with their track record, that the Doctor would sooner or later find a way to defeat him if he didn't is its own flirtation with death.
BTW, some vids which I might have already recced to you and a new one:
Did you forget? (http://omphalos.livejournal.com/41642.html) - the Master through his incarnations
Space Dementia (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3uTMBLnAwA) - the Doctor and the Master through the ages
Karaoke Soul (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POa4RBXrimQ) (the new one)
here from who-daily
Date: 2008-04-13 08:10 pm (UTC)And also, in case you didn't know: turns out Alt!Master (played by Sam Kisgart) - that's a cunning acronym for Mark Gatiss!
no subject
Date: 2008-04-13 09:55 pm (UTC)But one more thing about 'Master', because I can't help myself...wasn't it in fact the Doctor who became Death's champion? I mean, the Master has a higher body count, I suppose, but only if you include the one-third of the universe that he destroyed in two lines in Logopolis (which I have a hard time working myself up to care much about, since the script doesn't). But more to the point, it's the Doctor who is constantly making those speeches about how really everyone has to die, and everything has to die, and sometimes you just have to let people die...over and over again he gets into situations where someone else wants to save lives and he says no, you can't. So in a literal sense he *is* Death's Champion, he advocates for death over and over.
...okay, I need to listen to this story.
Also, thanks for the vid recs. And this:
the two boys holding hands and their secret funeral pyre
ouch.
no subject
Date: 2008-04-14 04:28 am (UTC)Re: here from who-daily
Date: 2008-04-14 04:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-15 12:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-15 04:13 am (UTC)You're welcome!
finally listened to 'Master'
Date: 2008-04-22 02:49 pm (UTC)The ending, yes, seemed a bit half-baked - why does Death need a champion? And why this kind of champion? What does the Master do that the universe needs? I mean he kills lots of people, but, well, he's hardly unique in that. But I like very much the suggested answer to the implied question of 'why is the Master such a good person (better, arguably, than the Doctor) when he's a human?' The ending implies that one possibility is that he is in fact actually a better person, but in a way that we can't understand. He's willing to take on the responsibility of being Death's champion, with all that entails, rather than allow the Doctor to do it. (That's what their conversation implies, anyway, that this was the reason for his decision as much as or more than his One!True!Implausible!Love!) And that we can't understand why this is necessary at all, well, maybe that's part of the point.
Re: finally listened to 'Master'
Date: 2008-04-23 06:37 pm (UTC)*nods* Which is why I called it a failure and a success at the same time. I'm happy to report that the scriptwriter has improved, though, based on A day in the death in Torchwood which I thought was quite brilliant and had none of the weaknesses of Master but a lot of the strengths.
Jacqueline as the Master's One True Love (not): what you said. Though perhaps the whole subplot about Victor serves to underline the fact that love does not inevitably save the day or make you a better person - Victor loved Jacqueline and it only contributed to making him into serial killer, instead of preventing it.
Although I can sort of see the *Doctor* believing that, as part of his utterly plausible self-loathing - what if someone had loved the Master the way the Doctor failed to?
I think this is what his line to Jacqueline earlier when she says "we'll not desert him", and the Doctor falls in with "the way I did?" implies - that this is what he thinks (and thinks before he remembers the truth about the day of death).
As said above, as an answer to "what makes the Master tick" this doesn't work too well, but the Doctor-Master interaction and the interpretation of how the Doctor at this point feels about the Master does work. And I can see why they used Seven for this script, of the available actors; not only because he's one of the most self-aware Doctors but because he's arguably the darkest one in Old Who. Just as a point of comparison, when he meets a Dalek who is in a similar situation to the one in New Who's Dalek, he doesn't either try to save him or to kill him, he talks him into committing suicide. There is a great fanfiction set post Survival starring the Doctor, Ace and the Master (which I'd link but you really need to watch both Curse of Fenric and Survival first to understand it), and the author has the Master reflect that the difference between this particular regeneration and the previous ones is that this one is not just aware but willing to use his own darkness in order to save the day.
Re: finally listened to 'Master'
Date: 2008-04-25 11:15 am (UTC)So yeah, loved that line about playing with spoons.
I do like the idea that the Master's evil comes not from something in his nature but from the Doctor (and the Master - he must've had some choice in this as well) deciding that the Master was going to be the evil one because someone had to do it and the Doctor wasn't able to handle it. I also really, really like the idea that his evil comes from a false narrative that he tells about himself, and that (more to the point) the Doctor tells about him. And yes, from the little I've seen of Seven, it strikes me as very Seven to destroy someone by telling stories about him.
Have you listened to 'Omega' yet? You must, it's brilliant - much better written than 'Master' IMHO and dealing with some of the same themes.
Re: finally listened to 'Master'
Date: 2008-04-26 10:20 am (UTC)The Doctor clowned his way into genocide. He got the Daleks to blow up Skaro while joking about rice pudding. Rice pudding. I had to put my face back together and re-watch that scene a half-dozen times.
*nods* That is where the entire "Oncoming Storm" reputation comes from and why the Daleks fear him. Seven because of his short stature, mild manner and comedy routine is so deceptively harmless, but as I said in many ways the most ruthless of the Doctors so far.
Nostalgia: Fanwanking it, there's a certain logic in getting the more openly manipulative Seventh Doctor after Five got screwed over by the universe and Six went a bit too far the other way and couldn't relate all that well at times.
Andraste: I think the personality the Doctor takes on when he regenerates is always a reaction, to some extent, to the problems he faced in the previous incarnation. Six gets more selfish and less wibbly, Seven gets organized. Earlier on, I think the reason Three deals better with authority than Two ever could is that he has to become someone who can deal with authority in order to cope with exile. Then he turns into Four and wants nothing more than to run away from any kind of responsibility and explore the universe again.
Re: Seven and the telling of stories as a mode of destruction - or salvation, come to that: yes. I recommend watching Curse of Fenric next, which deals with this theme and also will please you because among other things, it deals with various forms of faith and what sustains it. One thing though, the sound isn't always at top level, and in a crucial scene you see the Doctor just moving his lips - what he says there is a recitation of the names of his companions, all of his companions from Susan unwards up to this point of DW history. You'll understand why when you watch it.
The main reason why I thought it was a good choice for Lidster to use Seven, instead of the other available Doctors at that point (i.e. Colin Baker, Paul McGann or Peter Davison) for his story is that Seven is in acknowledgment of the dark side of himself, which would make him far better equipped to draw the conclusion that now he must save the Master than any of the other Doctors - can't quite see Five or Six doing it; Eight might, but otoh Eight wouldn't have gone for the ten years amnesia/good life bargain to begin with.
Spoon line: also, the "cleaning up your old messes" refers to Four not being able to wipe out the Daleks in Genesis of the Daleks (cue Tom Baker rolling his eyes a lot over two pieces of wire which would do the trick), which more or less triggers the Time War. (The Time Lords had sent him back to wipe out the Daleks before they could get created from the Kaled, and he can't bring himself to commit genocide at this point. See Andraste's theory as to what this results in.)
Re: finally listened to 'Master'
Date: 2008-04-29 02:22 am (UTC)And now the Master's stuck on Earth, working with Colonel Wood. Do you know, is there any hope of a sequel? What an excellent setup for an Alternate-Three series!
Re: Seven: is there something you can recommend that might make me appreciate Ace more? I'm having a hard time warming to her, for obvious reasons, and it's getting in the way of my enjoying Seven as much as I'd like to.
Re: finally listened to 'Master'
Date: 2008-04-29 08:27 am (UTC)Not what one expects from Three, but I suppose that's the point: his experiences with UNIT made him who he was.
His first instinct when able to move in Spearhead from Space is to flee, which considering what come immediately before (i.e. the forced regeneration and memory wipe by the Time Lords) is understandable, so Alt!Three running after the immediate crisis is solved here worked for me, as the same would apply to him. As you say, the experience of being stuck on Earth for years and working with UNIT on a day to day basis is something this Doctor has not experienced yet.
And the Master ripping into the Doctor was just gorgeous. So many of the atrocities he yells at the Doctor for not preventing were real-world atrocities, which I suppose that since they occurred in our time line as well we can assume the Master didn't cause.
That would be my guess, though when he said "Pol Pot killed every doctor except you" I had to wonder where Pol Pot got the idea of searching for a doctor from. Also, there is the irony that the audience knows, but Alt!Doctor does not, that every not real life atrocity the Master mentions was actually caused by the Master. (As in "Where were you doing the Plastic Purges?" That would be an allusion to Terror of the Autons, which was the Master's fault entirely, and translates into "I had this nice evil plot going and you did not show up!" So my sympathy for him living through said plastic purges is non-existant. If you break something, you can't complain it's broken.) As for the real life atrocities, they brought up again the question of what is inevitable and what is not, and when does the Doctor interfere and when doesn't he, very apropos in the light of The Fires of Pompeii. (Though also addressed as early as the First Doctor era adventure The Aztecs) What I loved about the entire speech was that the Master knew this would get to the Doctor. Being accused of meddling by other Time Lords? Pfff. Makes one feel good. Being accused of NOT preventing by the Master? Results in a shouting match in two seconds flat.
(It also amused me how this was cross cut and paralleled with the Brig/Wood arguments.)
Sequel: I believe there is one planned, yes, but I suppose it's a question of actor availability. David Warner wouldn't always be, Nicholas Courtney isn't getting any younger, and, err, the actor playing Wood is kind of busy.
(The Master is played by Sam Kisgart who as a commenter pointed out is Mark Gattiss, aka the yet another Old Who fan who ended up as a New Who creator and actor - Mark Gattiss wrote several audios, the third season ep The Lazarus Experiment and played Lazarus himself.)
Ace: if you don't like her after Curse of Fenric I doubt you'll ever. Now I love her for her blowing things up penchant, for being an emotional mess, for having mommy issues instead of daddy issues which is all too rare on tv, for taking on Daleks with baseball bats and when told to get into Victorian costume dressing in a male dinner jacket & trousers, and for having the best chemistry with her doctor since the Four and Romana combination. (My Tom Baker difficulties aside, those two do undeniably click.) She also was the first companion to actually get a genuine narrative arc, which was nifty. There is an Ace post here which gets into more detail:
http://community.livejournal.com/loves_them_all/52861.html
But you know, sometimes characters just don't click. It happens. I wasn't that interested in any of the Minbari the first time I watched B5, and your enthusiasm was one of the things that caused me to look again.
Re: finally listened to 'Master'
Date: 2008-04-30 01:31 pm (UTC)That line about Pol Pot killing doctors was the most chilling in the whole piece. As far as a sequel, I would most love to just see a story about the adventures of the Master on Earth, either before or after the episode. There are so many unanswered questions, both about what he did and what sort of person he's become. And isn't Gattiss!Master one of the best ever? Lovely, hypnotic voice, not too much giggling, and schemes that almost-but-not-quite make perfect sense.
As far as sympathy for him...after the audio 'Master' it is now firmly lodged in my personal canon that in childhood the Doctor and the Master divided roles so that the Doctor would be Good and the Master would be Evil. (And that the Master took the more difficult role because he was stronger.) So the Master is playing his role, and the Doctor isn't around to play his, and yes this gives me some sympathy for him.
In religious terms, the Devil basically exists as a solution for the problem of theodicy - the question of how a good and infinitely powerful God can allow evil. So the Devil really exists for God's benefit - if there's an alternative source of evil in the world, another being who is malevolent and infinitely powerful, then God gets to stay completely good and people can continue obeying God's will without actually having to worry about why they are following a deity who sometimes allows evil to happen. (Just like if young!Master really killed Torvik then the Doctor can imagine himself to be Good and doesn't have to face that he is a killer. Seven *does* accept that he is a killer, so he doesn't need the Master to be evil any more, which is why he can try to redeem him.) We do get a question like this in this audio - if the Doctor is Good and can solve all problems, why have there been such atrocities in the twentieth century? And I love that the Master doesn't distinguish between disasters he caused and those he merely watched. But more to the point - if God is absent then the Devil has no purpose. So, what is the Master going to do at the end, when it is clear that the Doctor wasn't just absent in the past but plans to continue to be absent in the future?
As for the real life atrocities, they brought up again the question of what is inevitable and what is not, and when does the Doctor interfere and when doesn't he, very apropos in the light of The Fires of Pompeii.
Does Three ever pull out the 'I can't interfere so you all have to die' card? I haven't watched all his stories, but I don't offhand remember it. For other Doctors (particularly Ten) that's the great (um) solution to the 'theodicy' problem: the Doctor has the power to solve all the evil in the universe but chooses not to because doing so would destroy the fabric of the universe. Three doesn't skip around in time so really doesn't have the same kinds of questions. There are times when he's not able to fix things, but does he ever refuse?
As far as Ace: Haven't seen Fenric yet, so that might change things. She did nothing for me in 'Ghost Light', which I didn't enjoy because it pushed too many of my anti-buttons, although I could recognize that it was well written and might like it better on a rewatch. My main problem with Ace, I think, is that she comes across as too young to be morally responsible for her actions, which to my mind makes her an annoying foil for the darkest Doctor yet. She can be 'badass' but only in a somewhat cute way. I might like her better as an adult - does she grow up in the audios?
I.
Date: 2008-04-30 03:15 pm (UTC)Now, the lazy way out of this - which annoys me on various Trek shows, though otherwise I love most of them dearly - is by presenting our heroes exclusively with situations where there has been a change in the time line for the worse when they arrive, and they have to rectify it and put it better. (I.e. they keep getting presented with Alt!Earths where the Nazis won, and have to put it back so the Allies do, which allows everyone feeling nice and good about themselves. With the one exception of "City at the Edge of Forever" where Kirk has to let a good and sympathetic woman die because she's supposed to die and if she doesn't, she'll present America joining WWII.) DW mostly goes for these situations - i.e. for example Ten finds Carrionites in Elizabethan England and can fight them because they're not supposed to take over Elizabethan England or the world, Nine can fight Daleks at the Gamestation because they're not supposed to rule humanity in the 25th century, the Luddites aren't supposed to stop the Industrial Revolution so Six can interfere etc. - but not exclusively, and that's an important difference, because every so often one of the Doctors is confronted with an event/ a situation that is awful but not the result of alien interference, just the course of history as we know it. (Other than the most recent one with Pompeii, the two most notable occasions I remember were with One, The Aztecs and The Massacre - the later is about the St. Bartholomew Massacre.)
As for Three, as you say he rarely time-travelled due to circumstance, so no, he didn't get a "historical disaster" type of situation - with one exception, the fall of Atlantis in The Time Monster, but here the question of stopping it or not doesn't arise, because he's not aware he arrives shortly before it happens, or that the Master actually is causing it to happen, plus he spends the short time he's on Atlantis chased by the Minotaur, being tied up or escaping.
New Who has of course Father's Day as the episode which illustrates what happens if a fixed event is changed - i.e. reapers appear, universe starts to tear apart until fixed event, the death of Rose's father in that case, does happen - and the audios play out an entire storyline over several "episodes" to the same effect, i.e. what happens if the Doctor saves someone who is a fixed point and absolutely not meant to be saved (again, cosmic disaster - and the almost destructrion of Gallifrey, ironically enough). I consider this fairer than the ST option because this way, the time traveller in question isn't spared the awareness that some situations don't have a good or bad but only two bad options with a higher degree of bodycount for the one he doesn't take.
Mark Gatiss speaks a fine Master, yes. Never over the top, just right.
II
Date: 2008-04-30 03:16 pm (UTC)Ace's youth and/or lack of maturity: yes, she does become an adult in the audios (doing some mentoring of her own of the newest arrival on the TARDIS, a male nurse nicknamed Hex), though I'd say we already see maturing from the point where she meets the Doctor to the point where the show breaks off (Survival); but given the show plays this explicitly as a mentor/student, father/daughter relationship (with the planned end result of Ace departing as an independent agent for good travelling through time once she "graduated", so to speak), I don't think an older Ace would have worked (again, within those two seasons on the show).
Now, the show started with the Doctor in a family type of relationship (with his granddaughter, Susan), but never went there again - until Ace. Which isn't to say the other companions weren't close in varying degrees, or that he didn't sometimes play a mentor role (with Leela, say, or with Adric) - but Ace he basically adopts, and that is both unusual (with his thing about domesticity) and brings the story full circle, so I've always found it fitting Old Who should end this way. To use a Minbari comparison, they're young Delenn and Dukhat?
Lastly: I usually don't recommend WIPs before they're finished, but this will take a while and it's just too good to miss.
Re: I.
Date: 2008-05-01 02:31 pm (UTC)I do tend to be most fond of the Doctor when he's *not* godlike (::waves to trapped!employee!Three, helpless!Five and out-of-his-depth!Six::), because then he has to do the best he can with the limited resources he's got. Lonely!God!Ten is most interesting when he's most morally ambiguous, and that is why it was the Doctor/Master episodes that finally sold me on his character. But the more powerful he is, the less good he has to be. Because otherwise you have to resort to these lame-ass excuses that don't work too well even after millennia of theological refinement.
In other news, apparently there will be a 'Sympathy' sequel:
http://community.livejournal.com/bigfinishlove/19414.html
Alt!Three and his companion the Brigadier meet Davros!
Re: Ace - I'll check out some of the audios with Hex, then. Any you recommend?
Re: I.
Date: 2008-05-02 04:56 pm (UTC)http://x-los.livejournal.com/181322.html
Re: I.
Date: 2008-05-02 06:25 pm (UTC)