![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakMore results from my trip to England were several Doctor Who audio books, which by now I've heard.
Dust Breeding was something of a disappointment, given all the promising ingredients. It's a Seven and Ace story, it has Caroline John and Geoffrey Beevers as guest stars, there's Munch's The Scream in a key role, but... somehow they make all for an unexciting whole. Granted, maybe I was simply tired when I listened, but I don't think that was all. For starters, there are the ridiculous accents. One of my pet peeves: people talking in accents when we're safe in assuming they're talking to each other in their own language, we simply hear it as English. The Norwegian wannabes are bad enough; then there's Caroline John, who plays not Liz Shaw but a new character named Madame Salvadori, complete with horrible cliché gypsy accent. Secondly and now I'm going to give away a big spoiler, so if you intend to listen unspoiled, stop reading now - there's that thing you might suspect was in the offering given Geoffrey Beavers is among the cast. You've got to love the way the leaflet coyly simply say he has "a couple of credits to Doctor Who credits to his name". Geoffrey Beavers of course played the Master in The Keeper of Traken, and voiced him again for the Big Finish audio Master. And sure enough, his character here, Seta, is the Master, revealing himself in tried and true tradition well into the the story. In terms of Big Finish continuity, this even serves as a sort of explanation of how get from Ainley!Master, last seen in Survival, to Beavers-voiced Master in Master which is clearly set post Survival (Seven is without Ace or any other companion there) - Tremas' stolen body broke down, leaving the Master with his own crispy (i.e. Geoffrey Beavers) version once more. Now given that Seven and the Master encountered each other on screen only once, in Survival, and that their audio, Master, might be a fascinating failure in terms of attempting to provide the Master with a backstory but not where their scenes are concerned, you'd think this was bound to be interesting. Except, somehow, it fails to be. Beavers!Master (sans amnesia here) is doing one of those usual Master things of trying to exploit an alien menace which proves beyond his control (if he ever learned, we'd miss out of the majority of Master episodes), but he and Seven sound almost bored when encountering each other, and there is nothing of the intensity which, for all its faults, the audio Master has. He's standard Evil Overlord No. 24443#, basically.
The only thing I liked about this story was the premise that the Doctor nicks great works of art moments before they're historically destroyed and keeps them in the TARDIS.
The Nowhere Place, a Six & Evelyn adventure, written by Nicholas Briggs (yes, that one), by contrast, is great to listen to. Both because the Six and Evelyn interaction is great to listen to as ever - seriously, Six & Evelyn are so among my all time favourite Team TARDISes -, and because it's genuinenly suspenseful (and stupid accents free). In a neat unintentional parallel to Recent Events, it also features a tough female early space exploration pioneer, who is extremely sceptical towards the Doctor in one time period, and two Honest Veterans in another. And then there's the alien species who wants to come back at humanity's and a whole lot of other species' expense, leaving the Doctor with the crappy choice of either one genocide or a whole lot of genocides more. The only thing which didn't quite work for me was the Doctor being surprised at the idea of a pre-human civilisation on Earth, because that's a big continuity failure on Nicholas Briggs' part. The whole deal about the Silurians was pretty important. Other than that, I loved this one.
Read by Bernard Cribbins, written by Gary Russell, this is one love declaration to the Noble-Mott clan as Wilf is the central character, the action takes place during one of Donna's visits back home while travelling with the Doctor, and the balance between Sylvia's sharp tongue and dysfunctional relationship with her daughter and her genuine affection for her is well kept. Bernard Cribbins' can't do dead-on impersonations the way Catherine Tate did for the Doctor in The Forever Trap, but his narrating voice is very pleasant (duh, it's Cribbins), and his Wilf of course as moving as ever. There is an OC, a friend of Wilf's, who has Alzheimer's, and as with a similar character in the first season of The Sarah Jane Adventures, there is no magical cure for this, which I think is quintessential when you deal with a real life illness like this. Also, this character is very important for the solution of the story, which features one of these morally ambigous ways to save the day and defeat the villain of the hour which make the Doctor such a layered character. Highly recommended.
Dust Breeding was something of a disappointment, given all the promising ingredients. It's a Seven and Ace story, it has Caroline John and Geoffrey Beevers as guest stars, there's Munch's The Scream in a key role, but... somehow they make all for an unexciting whole. Granted, maybe I was simply tired when I listened, but I don't think that was all. For starters, there are the ridiculous accents. One of my pet peeves: people talking in accents when we're safe in assuming they're talking to each other in their own language, we simply hear it as English. The Norwegian wannabes are bad enough; then there's Caroline John, who plays not Liz Shaw but a new character named Madame Salvadori, complete with horrible cliché gypsy accent. Secondly and now I'm going to give away a big spoiler, so if you intend to listen unspoiled, stop reading now - there's that thing you might suspect was in the offering given Geoffrey Beavers is among the cast. You've got to love the way the leaflet coyly simply say he has "a couple of credits to Doctor Who credits to his name". Geoffrey Beavers of course played the Master in The Keeper of Traken, and voiced him again for the Big Finish audio Master. And sure enough, his character here, Seta, is the Master, revealing himself in tried and true tradition well into the the story. In terms of Big Finish continuity, this even serves as a sort of explanation of how get from Ainley!Master, last seen in Survival, to Beavers-voiced Master in Master which is clearly set post Survival (Seven is without Ace or any other companion there) - Tremas' stolen body broke down, leaving the Master with his own crispy (i.e. Geoffrey Beavers) version once more. Now given that Seven and the Master encountered each other on screen only once, in Survival, and that their audio, Master, might be a fascinating failure in terms of attempting to provide the Master with a backstory but not where their scenes are concerned, you'd think this was bound to be interesting. Except, somehow, it fails to be. Beavers!Master (sans amnesia here) is doing one of those usual Master things of trying to exploit an alien menace which proves beyond his control (if he ever learned, we'd miss out of the majority of Master episodes), but he and Seven sound almost bored when encountering each other, and there is nothing of the intensity which, for all its faults, the audio Master has. He's standard Evil Overlord No. 24443#, basically.
The only thing I liked about this story was the premise that the Doctor nicks great works of art moments before they're historically destroyed and keeps them in the TARDIS.
The Nowhere Place, a Six & Evelyn adventure, written by Nicholas Briggs (yes, that one), by contrast, is great to listen to. Both because the Six and Evelyn interaction is great to listen to as ever - seriously, Six & Evelyn are so among my all time favourite Team TARDISes -, and because it's genuinenly suspenseful (and stupid accents free). In a neat unintentional parallel to Recent Events, it also features a tough female early space exploration pioneer, who is extremely sceptical towards the Doctor in one time period, and two Honest Veterans in another. And then there's the alien species who wants to come back at humanity's and a whole lot of other species' expense, leaving the Doctor with the crappy choice of either one genocide or a whole lot of genocides more. The only thing which didn't quite work for me was the Doctor being surprised at the idea of a pre-human civilisation on Earth, because that's a big continuity failure on Nicholas Briggs' part. The whole deal about the Silurians was pretty important. Other than that, I loved this one.
Read by Bernard Cribbins, written by Gary Russell, this is one love declaration to the Noble-Mott clan as Wilf is the central character, the action takes place during one of Donna's visits back home while travelling with the Doctor, and the balance between Sylvia's sharp tongue and dysfunctional relationship with her daughter and her genuine affection for her is well kept. Bernard Cribbins' can't do dead-on impersonations the way Catherine Tate did for the Doctor in The Forever Trap, but his narrating voice is very pleasant (duh, it's Cribbins), and his Wilf of course as moving as ever. There is an OC, a friend of Wilf's, who has Alzheimer's, and as with a similar character in the first season of The Sarah Jane Adventures, there is no magical cure for this, which I think is quintessential when you deal with a real life illness like this. Also, this character is very important for the solution of the story, which features one of these morally ambigous ways to save the day and defeat the villain of the hour which make the Doctor such a layered character. Highly recommended.
