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selenakOne result of my trip to Britain: new audios to listen to!
Sadly, there aren't many Big Finish audios set in the Three era, mostly because of the distinct lack of the late Jon Pertwee. However, Old Soldiers, which is a wonderful Brigadier character study, finds a way around this by letting the Brig narrate the story, and Nick Courtney makes the most of it. I mean, he's always reliably good, but here he excells. Writer James Swallow is also to be congratulated, because not only does he get the Brig right and provides a good DW adventure but his Three voice is dead-on as well. (For compare and contrast, see Doctor Who Unbound: Sympathy for the Devil, which I do love but which has an oddly generic Doctor as voiced by David Warner. He's an Alt!Three, but still. He basically could any number, and I'm with andrastewhite: the best DW stories are those where just one specific incarnation of the Doctor works. You couldn't take Three out of Sea Devils, Four out of City of Death, Five out of Caves of Androzani, Seven out of Curse of Fenric and interchange them with each other, no matter how much they are the same character in different regenerations - these stories are specifically designed for one particular regeneration.
Back to Old Soldiers: the Doctor only has a supporting role here as, like I said, this is primarily a Brigadier story, and not just because the Brig is the one telling the tale. It's set shortly after The Silurians, when relations between the Doctor and the Brig are at their most strained, and has the Brig answering an old friend's call for help. Said old friend is a German UNIT commander, and here I must say I braced myself for certain clichés and found myself happily disappointed. I mean, I doubt any fortress within Germany would be called "Kriegeskind" (= "child of war"), but what the hell. The dilemma the Brig's old friend, Colonel Heinrich Konrad, is in does, lo and behold, not result from anything WWII related but is a very 70s era Doctor Who kind of thing, and, come to think of it, also ties with the whole Osterhagen subplot of the recent New Who season finale. The Brigadier, who remains convinced he did the right thing with te Silurians, gets faced with the consequences of taking that choice one step further, and while this does not change his original opinion re: Silurians it makes him very conscious of where "we need to do anything to safe the Earth from alien attacks, no matter what" could lead to. It's also a story of friendship; the one between the Brig and Konrad, and those scenes are very touching (as Konrad is a sympathetic and tragic character), and the one between the Brig and the Doctor, whom he calls for help as soon as he realizes what might be going on at Kriegeskind, though he's not sure the Doctor will show up due to their Silurians-related fallout. Other than Nicholas Courtney doing a great Jon Pertwee without this going into parody, these scenes also bring across the mixture of acerbic affection and deep respect between the Brigadier and the Doctor beautifully. I've said it before, I'll say it again: the relationship between the Doctor and the Brigadier is my favourite as far as the Doctor and a human is concerned, much as I adore various Doctor/Companion combinations.
In conclusion: if you've any fondness for Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, go get that audio at once!
Big Finish has been in business with the Doctor Who audio plays for quite a while now, and for their 100th audio drama, they commissioned four of their top writers to write four short playlets around that centennial theme, all featuring the Six and Evelyn team: Jacqueline Rayner wrote 100 BC, Rob Shearman wrote My Own Private Wolfgang, Joseph Lidster wrote Bedtime Story and Paul Cornell wrote 100 Days of the Doctor. It made for a lively production, though I must say the weakest part comes right at the start. Considering she wrote the superb Marian Conspiracy, I was disappointed with 100 BC, which not only has an inane premise but also makes for a lot of headdesking if you're in the least historically inclined. (No way am I going to find it believable a professional historian like Evelyn would assume that two millennia of patriarchy would have vanished if Julius Caesar had been born a woman.) So my advice is to skip over this and go straight to the other three adventures, which are great fun.
My Own Private Wolfgang, by Rob Shearman of New Who Dalek and Big Finish Jubilee and Chimes of Midnight fame, is probably the most outrageous and creative of the contributions. It picks up Mozart's death conspiracy theories and makes them look modest and tame. Turns out that Evelyn and the Doctor have been living in a reality where Mozart didn't die at 35 but survived to become literally immortal.... and mediocre. The Doctor thinks Mozart jumped the shark when he turned to Hip Hop, Evelyn has horrible memories of his Eurovision entries, you get the picture. They attend his 100th birthday party in the 18th century, a point where his reputation is already in sad decline, and discover the truth, which is something quite clever and bizarre I'm not going to spoil for you. Suffice to say that John Sessions, who plays Mozart, has an outrageous amount of fun. And no prices for guessing that when this adventure ends, history is as we know it, i.e. Mozart dies young and is considered the greatest musical genius that ever lived. I might be wrong, but I think that's the first time the original reality the Doctor & Companion are familiar with is not the same the audience is familiar with.
Next we get Bedtime Story, which is a creepy, creepy horror story by Joseph Lidster. Joseph Lidster wrote the interesting but seriously flawed Master for Big Finish and one of my favourite Torchwood episodes, the brilliant A Day in the Death for tv. Listening, it occured to me that all three have something in common: they play with the concept of the unreliable narrator, or rather the narrator telling you something that changes meaning as you listen/watch. In Master, you have the (Seventh) Doctor telling a story to a nameless assassin who actually is Death in disguise, and the story the Doctor tells contains in itself another story that might or might not be true, plus we get the Doctor saying at various points that the listener shouldn't take his word for events happening the way he describes them. In A Day in the Death, we get Owen Harper telling a story to a young woman on the verge of committing suicide, and while at first he appears to encourage her the story actually reveals him overcoming his own depresssion (to a degree) and saving her life. In Bedtime Story, the narrator appears to be one person but in the end reveals himself to be quite another, and similarly the listener of the story is someone else than you think at the start, in a great punchline manner. As with Lidster's other stories, death, self-deception and guilt are big themes as this story deals with a family where each time a grandchild is born the grandparents die (or do they?), and the reasons which the Doctor and Evelyn find out. This story is a showcase for Maggie Staples, as Evelyn at one point becomes, shall we say, someone else, and this makes for a great showdown scene with the Doctor. And then there is the punchline which I already mentioned, and which I'm not going to spoil. Oh no.
Lastly, there is 100 Days of the Doctor, which is Paul Cornell basically doing D.O.A. as the Doctor becomes infected with lethal nanites and has only a hundred days to find out by whom and when it happened. Mostly, this is an excuse for great Doctor-Companion interaction and lots of thinly disguised meta, as the Doctor and Evelyn on their quest to find out when the poisoning happened encounter various other selves (this being an audio anniversary story, they only encounter regenerations and companions that have appeared in Big Finish productions), and get to comment and exchange views on them. Behold Six being juuuust a bit irritated at Evelyn eying pretty Five and prettier Eight with approval and notes they appear to be liked by everyone. ("Being universally popular is not what I'm about!") Also, Paul Cornell, who created Bernice Summerfield, can't resist letting Evelyn sum up her life (and admire her, though Evelyn can't help noticing Benny drinks like a fish), and letting Six grumble about how Seven, that "jolly little man" (tm Evelyn) is about to blow up planets ("and people say I'm the ruthless one!") and in general doing stuff he, Six, wouldn't be capable of. Both interestingly and touchingly, he lets the Doctor become nostalgic whenever he and Evelyn observe a regeneration that hangs out with more than one companion; Six comments wistfully that Peri and Erimem brought out the best in each other, and that he envies the fellow with the hat (i.e. Seven) his two young companions (Ace and audio companion Hex), as "present company excepted", he always was happiest when the TARDIS was crowded. It's an intriguing interpretation on Cornell's part; though Doctor/ one companion team-ups like Four/Romana or Seven/Ace probably would argue against it. I can still see his point. In the end, Evelyn, who started the story by wishing the Doctor wouldn't be always so himself, concludes she's best off with the Doctor she has, in all his Six blustery glory, even if he's occasionally faking it to get sympathy, and of course the listener agrees. Though, you know, to quote the Brig: splendid chap, all of them!
Sadly, there aren't many Big Finish audios set in the Three era, mostly because of the distinct lack of the late Jon Pertwee. However, Old Soldiers, which is a wonderful Brigadier character study, finds a way around this by letting the Brig narrate the story, and Nick Courtney makes the most of it. I mean, he's always reliably good, but here he excells. Writer James Swallow is also to be congratulated, because not only does he get the Brig right and provides a good DW adventure but his Three voice is dead-on as well. (For compare and contrast, see Doctor Who Unbound: Sympathy for the Devil, which I do love but which has an oddly generic Doctor as voiced by David Warner. He's an Alt!Three, but still. He basically could any number, and I'm with andrastewhite: the best DW stories are those where just one specific incarnation of the Doctor works. You couldn't take Three out of Sea Devils, Four out of City of Death, Five out of Caves of Androzani, Seven out of Curse of Fenric and interchange them with each other, no matter how much they are the same character in different regenerations - these stories are specifically designed for one particular regeneration.
Back to Old Soldiers: the Doctor only has a supporting role here as, like I said, this is primarily a Brigadier story, and not just because the Brig is the one telling the tale. It's set shortly after The Silurians, when relations between the Doctor and the Brig are at their most strained, and has the Brig answering an old friend's call for help. Said old friend is a German UNIT commander, and here I must say I braced myself for certain clichés and found myself happily disappointed. I mean, I doubt any fortress within Germany would be called "Kriegeskind" (= "child of war"), but what the hell. The dilemma the Brig's old friend, Colonel Heinrich Konrad, is in does, lo and behold, not result from anything WWII related but is a very 70s era Doctor Who kind of thing, and, come to think of it, also ties with the whole Osterhagen subplot of the recent New Who season finale. The Brigadier, who remains convinced he did the right thing with te Silurians, gets faced with the consequences of taking that choice one step further, and while this does not change his original opinion re: Silurians it makes him very conscious of where "we need to do anything to safe the Earth from alien attacks, no matter what" could lead to. It's also a story of friendship; the one between the Brig and Konrad, and those scenes are very touching (as Konrad is a sympathetic and tragic character), and the one between the Brig and the Doctor, whom he calls for help as soon as he realizes what might be going on at Kriegeskind, though he's not sure the Doctor will show up due to their Silurians-related fallout. Other than Nicholas Courtney doing a great Jon Pertwee without this going into parody, these scenes also bring across the mixture of acerbic affection and deep respect between the Brigadier and the Doctor beautifully. I've said it before, I'll say it again: the relationship between the Doctor and the Brigadier is my favourite as far as the Doctor and a human is concerned, much as I adore various Doctor/Companion combinations.
In conclusion: if you've any fondness for Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, go get that audio at once!
Big Finish has been in business with the Doctor Who audio plays for quite a while now, and for their 100th audio drama, they commissioned four of their top writers to write four short playlets around that centennial theme, all featuring the Six and Evelyn team: Jacqueline Rayner wrote 100 BC, Rob Shearman wrote My Own Private Wolfgang, Joseph Lidster wrote Bedtime Story and Paul Cornell wrote 100 Days of the Doctor. It made for a lively production, though I must say the weakest part comes right at the start. Considering she wrote the superb Marian Conspiracy, I was disappointed with 100 BC, which not only has an inane premise but also makes for a lot of headdesking if you're in the least historically inclined. (No way am I going to find it believable a professional historian like Evelyn would assume that two millennia of patriarchy would have vanished if Julius Caesar had been born a woman.) So my advice is to skip over this and go straight to the other three adventures, which are great fun.
My Own Private Wolfgang, by Rob Shearman of New Who Dalek and Big Finish Jubilee and Chimes of Midnight fame, is probably the most outrageous and creative of the contributions. It picks up Mozart's death conspiracy theories and makes them look modest and tame. Turns out that Evelyn and the Doctor have been living in a reality where Mozart didn't die at 35 but survived to become literally immortal.... and mediocre. The Doctor thinks Mozart jumped the shark when he turned to Hip Hop, Evelyn has horrible memories of his Eurovision entries, you get the picture. They attend his 100th birthday party in the 18th century, a point where his reputation is already in sad decline, and discover the truth, which is something quite clever and bizarre I'm not going to spoil for you. Suffice to say that John Sessions, who plays Mozart, has an outrageous amount of fun. And no prices for guessing that when this adventure ends, history is as we know it, i.e. Mozart dies young and is considered the greatest musical genius that ever lived. I might be wrong, but I think that's the first time the original reality the Doctor & Companion are familiar with is not the same the audience is familiar with.
Next we get Bedtime Story, which is a creepy, creepy horror story by Joseph Lidster. Joseph Lidster wrote the interesting but seriously flawed Master for Big Finish and one of my favourite Torchwood episodes, the brilliant A Day in the Death for tv. Listening, it occured to me that all three have something in common: they play with the concept of the unreliable narrator, or rather the narrator telling you something that changes meaning as you listen/watch. In Master, you have the (Seventh) Doctor telling a story to a nameless assassin who actually is Death in disguise, and the story the Doctor tells contains in itself another story that might or might not be true, plus we get the Doctor saying at various points that the listener shouldn't take his word for events happening the way he describes them. In A Day in the Death, we get Owen Harper telling a story to a young woman on the verge of committing suicide, and while at first he appears to encourage her the story actually reveals him overcoming his own depresssion (to a degree) and saving her life. In Bedtime Story, the narrator appears to be one person but in the end reveals himself to be quite another, and similarly the listener of the story is someone else than you think at the start, in a great punchline manner. As with Lidster's other stories, death, self-deception and guilt are big themes as this story deals with a family where each time a grandchild is born the grandparents die (or do they?), and the reasons which the Doctor and Evelyn find out. This story is a showcase for Maggie Staples, as Evelyn at one point becomes, shall we say, someone else, and this makes for a great showdown scene with the Doctor. And then there is the punchline which I already mentioned, and which I'm not going to spoil. Oh no.
Lastly, there is 100 Days of the Doctor, which is Paul Cornell basically doing D.O.A. as the Doctor becomes infected with lethal nanites and has only a hundred days to find out by whom and when it happened. Mostly, this is an excuse for great Doctor-Companion interaction and lots of thinly disguised meta, as the Doctor and Evelyn on their quest to find out when the poisoning happened encounter various other selves (this being an audio anniversary story, they only encounter regenerations and companions that have appeared in Big Finish productions), and get to comment and exchange views on them. Behold Six being juuuust a bit irritated at Evelyn eying pretty Five and prettier Eight with approval and notes they appear to be liked by everyone. ("Being universally popular is not what I'm about!") Also, Paul Cornell, who created Bernice Summerfield, can't resist letting Evelyn sum up her life (and admire her, though Evelyn can't help noticing Benny drinks like a fish), and letting Six grumble about how Seven, that "jolly little man" (tm Evelyn) is about to blow up planets ("and people say I'm the ruthless one!") and in general doing stuff he, Six, wouldn't be capable of. Both interestingly and touchingly, he lets the Doctor become nostalgic whenever he and Evelyn observe a regeneration that hangs out with more than one companion; Six comments wistfully that Peri and Erimem brought out the best in each other, and that he envies the fellow with the hat (i.e. Seven) his two young companions (Ace and audio companion Hex), as "present company excepted", he always was happiest when the TARDIS was crowded. It's an intriguing interpretation on Cornell's part; though Doctor/ one companion team-ups like Four/Romana or Seven/Ace probably would argue against it. I can still see his point. In the end, Evelyn, who started the story by wishing the Doctor wouldn't be always so himself, concludes she's best off with the Doctor she has, in all his Six blustery glory, even if he's occasionally faking it to get sympathy, and of course the listener agrees. Though, you know, to quote the Brig: splendid chap, all of them!
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-05 04:52 pm (UTC)And once again you part me from my money *g*. Sounds intriguing and definitely going on my To Be Listened To list.
The Doctor thinks Mozart jumped the shark when he turned to Hip Hop
Bwahahaha. That sounds too deliciious to miss too. Many thanks for the reviews.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-05 05:19 pm (UTC)Sorry about parting you from your money, but I parted from mine as well, and the Brig is worth it!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-05 10:13 pm (UTC)As for 100, again you are spot on. 100BC was pretty crap. I re-listen to this audio rather regularly but I generally just skip that story. The other 3 parts are magical.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-06 05:49 am (UTC)I wonder whether J. Rayner had an off day? Though the editor really should have challenged her to deliver something that matched the other three.