selenak

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

About a month ago, I bought the Big Finish episodes around the War Doctor in which the late John Hurt reprises his role. They're basically three episode storyarcs - "Only the Monstrous", "Infernal Devices", "Agents of Chaos" and "Casualties of War" - all set during the Time War. Now, because of the setting, the usual Doctor-Companion combinations are out, though the Doctor meets a likeable idealistic person in each of these three episode adventures (and can save some though not all). But the great charm of any Doctor Who tale are those relationships. So what did Big Finish do? It had the inspired idea of pairing up John Hurt with Jacqueline Pearce, playing, no, not Servalan, but a ruthless female politiician nonetheless, a member of the Gallifreyan War Council named Cardinal Ollista. She and the Doctor are the sole characters in all the four story arcs I've listened to, and the way their relationship develops was probably my favourite aspect in these stories.

Because this is the Time War, and this regeneration of the Doctor specifically is on a self loathing maximum while fighting it, Ollista is initially a good foil because she, who really does only prioritize Gallifrey and initially sees everyone not a Time Lord as expendable, shows that despite what he's telling himself, he is still the Doctor, he still has ethics and lines he won't cross and will fight for and have another way. But Ollista isn't simply an Evil McEvil megalomaniac, either, hence me saying "Gallifrey" and not "her personal power", and so the Doctor in the course of those stories develops a grudging respect for her while she while denying she does so finds herself defending, in the last story arc, precisely the kind of (non-Gallifreyan) people she in the first story arc would have dismissed as necessary casualties of war. Whether they argue or work together, all the Doctor-Ollista scenes are golden, and with both John Hurt and Jacqueline Pearce now gone, I am really glad they had the chance to work together near the end of their lives and create two more remarkable characters for us to appreciate.

Current Mood: impressed
Current Location: Bamberg

I only rarely bring up politics - this is supposed to be my fannish journal - but let's just say this week had started really badly in real life terms (not that it was unexpected, but the European Election results were really as terrible as feared), so I have to say it was oddly charming and relieving to be reminded of positive European interaction again when returning to Munich on Friday. Because: never have I ever seen and heard this many Scots outside of Scotland. Friday was the first game of the EM, Germany versus Scotland, which meant lots and lots of Scots. In t-shirts and kilts. And a punning headline: "Schotten rocken München" (Scots rock Munich, only the German word for "skirt" is "Rock", so it's a pun on the kilts as well.) The Scots were cheerful and fun, and seemed to be universally embraced, not that there also wasn't much joy when Germany won the football match. None of which makes up for the election results, obviously, but even for not football fans like myself, it caused smiles and cheer. Thank you, Scots!

On to Doctor Who. In several incarnations. Last weekend there was a reduced prices sale at Big Finish for historicals, so in honour of the late William Russell I went and bought a couple of First Doctor era historicals narrated (mostly) by William Russell/Ian Chesterton. There's were:

Transit of Venus: Set after The Sensorites. Team TARDIS gets split up, with the Doctor and Ian ending up with Captain James Cook on the Endeavour while Susan, Barbara and the TARDIS appear to have had a watery fate. (Obviously not.) Ian is increasingly convinced that the ship's scientist and botany fan extraordinary, Joseph Banks, is behaving weirdly and Up To No Good. This story (written by Jacqueline Raynor) went for a bit of an Edgar Allen Poe flair where the question is whether our narrator or everyone around him is bonkers, with the mystery resolved in a Whovian way. (Sidenote: given I knew Joseph Banks would have to go on and became the grand old man of expedition financing in his later years, I was a bit less inclined to believe that Ian had to be right than I otherwise would have been.) Cook, interestingly enough, is hardly in it (though Russell does a Yorkshire accent for him when he does appear), but there is a great and silent scene between Ian and the Doctor which captures this early stage of their relationship very well.

The Fires of Cadiz (by Marc Platt): This time, our foursome have ended up in pre-Armada launching Spain, and William Russell shares narrator duties with Carol Ann Ford as Susan. I was a bit disappointed by the first half beause the opening monologue by Ian looking back seemed to foreshadow that would go for something more complicated than Evil Catholic Spaniards versus Heroic Protestant Brits, and then we promptly went into a story that seemed to tick all the cliché boxes - Spanish Inquisition, going from accusation to instant torture and execution (this is not how these trials worked!), fanatic population, with Ian's "I had to remind myself that in England, Catholics were persecuted in this era" as the sole nod outside the cliché. True, there were non-evil Spaniards included, too - the Morisco Esteban whom Ian befriended and defended, and the couple where Barbara, Susan and the Doctor found shelter with, Catalina and Miguel -, but still, I was somewhat discontent.... and then we had the grand rescue-from-the-autodafé already mid story, with the second half indeed devoted to making things more complicated, not solely but also by showing the attack of Ian's hero Sir Francis Drake from the pov of the terrified Spanish population of Cadiz. Plus this story also checked (in the most agreeable way) a lot of First Doctor era boxes: Ian is heroic and compassionate, Barbara and the Doctor clash and she gives him a What's What speech, the Doctor pulls off a fun impersonation and a madcap rescue, and it's a historical without any alien involvement, and unlike alas too many early serials gives Susan lots to do instead of letting her twist her ankle again. Oh, and if you haven't figured out who Don Miguel is by the time he makes the Doctor ride on a mule named Sancho, you really don't know anything about the era. ;)

The Library of Alexandria: My favourite of the three! (Written by Simon Guerrier, whom I knew from the Cromwell + Seventh Doctor, Hex and Ace story The Settlement): Narrated by Russell again, and by Susan Franklyn as Hypatia. For verily, our heroes decide to take a break from adventuring and stay for a weeks when the TARDIS arrives in late antiquity Alexandria. Though I have to say, given Hypatia's terrible (historical) ending, I was wondering how the story would work around that, and the answer is, it's not a question because Hypatia doesn't die in this story, which is set years before her death and shows her in her prime. (It does, however, feature the burning of the Library of Alexandria.) One thing I very much appreciated in all three serials was that the fact Ian was originally a science teacher is a constant part of his characterisation, and here he happily geeks out at the chance to chat with Hypatia of Alexandria, while Barbara is in history teacher bliss at the chance to be in the famous library. Guerrier's story also does a great job of showing Hypatia's brilliance by the way she deduces various things about the Doctor and the menaces du jour, and by the end I was sad continuity and history didn't allow for her to join Team TARDIS and escape her gruesome fate a few years later. (I mean, given that Big Finish gave the Fifth Doctor lots and lots of adventures with Peri and Eminem between his last but one and his last tv adventure, I suppose she could have, but the First Doctor wasn't able to steer the TARDIS yet and couldn't have brought her back in time, not to mention that bringing a friend back to be torn apart by a mob is something I have a hard time seeing even the First Doctor doing...) Anyway, Russell again does a great job both narrating as old Ian looking back and speaking the younger Ian within the story, and it's a story I certainly will listen to again.

And now for this week's tv episode.

( Speaking of Ancient Egypt.... )

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: Munich

In recent weeks, there were a couple of sales at reduced price at Big Finish I was interested in, and thus I ended up listening to some Torchwood audios featuring Gwen Cooper and/or husband Rhys, and something created during the 2020 lockdown - "The Tenth Doctor and River Song", three adventures set shortly after the fourth season (for the Doctor) and at a time River is already Professor rather than Doctor Song (for her). These were my first Big Finish audios for years, and now I must keep away from the website, since I enjoyed them so much and would spend way too much money there (there isn't always a reduced rate for the ones I'm most interestedin).

The Torwchood audios I scooped felt tailored just for me, because I was always out of tune with the majority of TW fandom in various regards. 1) I had and have no interest in Ianto, or the Jack/Ianto relationship, 2) I loved Children of Earth and thus 3) while of course I'm interested in the s1-2 era when Owen and Tosh are alive, or in the between s2 and pre CoE era when the team consists of Jack, Ianto and Gwen, I do want stories which are set past CoE - or for that matter past Miracle Day, and take into account what happened. Oh, and 4) I adore the Gwen/Rhys relationship. The stories I bought were set at different points in the TW timeline, with Dissected (post s2, pre CoE, starring Martha and Gwen in a tale that provides Martha with some background and reason for her change of state from where The Stolen Earth leaves her as compared to her cameo appearance in the Tenth Doctor's last outing) the earliest, and Forgotten Lives (four years post Miracle Day, Gwen and Rhys are called to a Residential Home where an old man neither has seen before insists on being Jack Harkness, and things go weirder fromt here) the latest. (The others were: Made you look (Gwen has to investigate people's disappearances at a lonely seaside town), Visiting Hours (Rhys visits his mother in hospital when realsiing something is seriously wrong) and We always get out alive (Gwen and Rhys on their way back from something can't seem to arrive, and after a while figure out they're not alone in the car; the story is also a rapid fire dialogue only tour de force for the actors having to convey both the text and subtext of what's going on). It was lovely listening to Eve Myles' and Kai Owen's Welsh accents again, and as for the stories, they struck me as having a very Torchwoodian mixture of suspense, daftness and in the midst of bizarro szenarios very real emotions. ( Spoilery examples follow. )

The three stories that make up "The Tenth Doctor and River Song" are: :Expiry Dating (written by James Goss) Precious Annhilation (by Lizzie Hopeley) Ghosts (by Jonathan Morris). I was curious how the writers would cope with the in-built storytelling restraint that when the Elventh Doctor encounters River in "Time of the Angels", he's not as stand-offish as Ten was in the Library episodes (where he has no idea who she is) but still doesn't really know her very well, only truly getting to know her from that point onwards. I need not have worried: they make the best of it. Expiry Dating is a hilarious tale which uses the comic timing of Alex Kingston and David Tennant to great effect in a way the Library episodes for in-story reasons could not, and also: it's basically letters fiction! As the premise is that when River, via psychic paper as at the start of the Library episodes, tells the Doctor to meet her at a certain point in time, the Doctor (with River's fate in that episode fresh in mind and determined not to get close in the first place) refuses and writes back instead, and from there we get an increasigly madcap and funny exchange of messages. I must say at one point I wondered "but why doesn't she just ask one of the other versions of the Doctor to do x for her?", but then the story took care of that plot point why revealing River's true goal and I went "of course!". Precious Annihilation is a historical adventure where the Doctor and River have to focus on the mystery du jour, but he does get to know her a little better (still not as much as he will), while the basic premise in Ghosts, which you can figure out if you've watched at least two prominent movies in the last two decades dealing with ghosts, ensures the main events there don't impact Eleven's continuity. Ghosts is also, going by the "Behind the Scenes" special, the most consciously written as "Moffatian" story, though I have to say, while all three writers profess great admiration for the Moff, at least two of them have clearly issues with River's eventual fate. Jonathan Morris describes it as ( something spoilery ) From a writing pov, I also found it interesting which episode they said they rewatched to get into the Doctor's and River's voices from that particular point of their respective tiimelines - for River, it was the obvious - the Library episodes and "Time of the Angels", but for the Tenth Doctor, it was Midnight.

Listening to these three stories made me glad, not for the first time, that Big Finish now has the license to use New Who characters, and thus can do combinations on audio we couldn't watch, or couldn't watch this way. Did I mention Alex Kingston and David Tennant have terrific timing together? And the verbal sparring is fantastic, too. As was going back in the era when River knew far more about the Doctor than he about her....but still can be surprised by him....

Current Mood: excited
Current Location: Munich

Two audio series I recently listened to:

Cicero, season 1, produced by Big Finish, written by David Llewellyn. The first episode is directly based on the Sextus Roscius case that made young (27 years old) Cicero famous, and which also forms the basis for Steven Saylor's novel Roman Blood, the first of his Roma Sub Rosa series, which has a diametrically opposite characterisation of Marcus Tullius Cicero. The remaining five episodes of the Big Finish audio series also use some real elements from Cicero's early life but with far larger fictionality; also, it's not a case per episode, but some overreaching arcs, so to speak, and an increasing emphasis on character relations over law and politics. Llewellyn starts out with the Cicero brothers, Marcus and Quintus, as the leads and the key dynamic, but later branches out and widens the core ensemble to include Marcus' new wife Terentia, and in the last few episodes a character named Marcus Piso whom I couldn't immediately recall from history and therefore had to google, - can he be meant to be Marcus Pupius Piso? Since the series starts when Sulla is still Dictator, and continues when he has stepped back but is still very influential, you immediately have a dangerous environment and high stakes.

Llewellyn's Cicero is a righteous idealist, as opposed to Saylor's, but he's not written as in the right all the time, or brave all the time, and the fraternal dynamic with the more easy going and impulsive Quintus is very endearing, especially since Quintus is also written as smart - for example, he's shown to be a great beta-reader, err, sounding board and constructive critic - when Cicero is practicing his speeches for the court. And I'm very happy the series chose to make Terentia a sympathetic, clever character and go for a "arranged marriage between people who turn out to work well together" trope for hers and Cicero's early marriage. (The way it ended decades later is depressing, but Terentia being accused of bossiness and political interest isn't a downside for current day people the way it was for ancient chronists.) More observations are spoilery for this paritcular series, not history as such, and thus I'll hide them beneath a spoiler cut.

( Spoilers were torn between muttering hey, that's clever! and But it didn't work that way! )

Now, I hear Big Finish also did a Doctor Who crossover where this version of Cicero meets the (Fifth) Doctor. Has anyone listened to that yet?

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Munich

Attenion Whovians: Big Finish will provide one of their Doctor Who audios per week for free. This week, it's the first War Doctor story, "The Innocent", starring John Hurt and Jacqueline Pearce. I downloaded already.

(One of various great things about Doctor Who: dissatisfaction with a current canon does not mean you can't get new installments from other canon eras, courtesy of the audios.)

The Way to the Stars is an essay by Una McCormack describing her road from the Blake's 7 mailing list to writing novels for various incarnations of Star Trek (most recently Disco and Picard) as well as Doctor Who.

Also, while looking up something else I saw that US Amazon Prime Video has Kästner and Little Tuesday, which is a movie I raved about when I saw it at the Munich Film Festival four years ago here, telling you all why you need to see it. (Short pitch: brilliant author of satires, poetry and children's books & kid, neither fictional, try to survive and keep their integrity throughout the Third Reich.)

Meanwhile, Netflix (at least German Netflix, and I hope in other regions, too) has The People vs Fritz Bauer, another awesome film, which is praised and reviewed by yours truly here. (Short pitch: Gay Jewish Social Democrat Attorney vs Nazis - after WWII. And not the Quentin Tarantino way, because Fritz Bauer was a real and truly heroic person.)

Current Mood: determined
Current Location: Munich

Having acquired the licence for Twelfth Doctor era characters, Big Finish wasted no time and went for Missy first, which means she now showed up both in the big "River Song vs the Masters" Vol.5 installment of The River Song Diary and got her own audio series, the first volume of which was released only in February this year.

The Diary of River Song, Vol. 5: consists of the episodes The Bekdel Test by Jonathan Morris), Animal Instinct by Roy Gill, The Lifeboat and the Deathboat by Edie Robson) and Concealed Weapon by Scott Handcock. In each of these stories River Song meets a different incarnation of the Master, but because she's River, she does not meet them in linear order.

( Spoilers, Sweetie )

When I heard there would be a Missy audio series, I looked forward to it but was also a bit worried it would do what, say, the Harry Lime radio series did with Harry Lime as opposed to his characterisation in The Third Man, i.e. take an attractive villain and downplay or ignore what makes this character a villain rather than an antihero. I'm happy to report this wasn't the case here, and as a whole, this first installment keeps a balance between what makes Missy fun and sympathetic and what makes her so dangerous and at times revolting. As with the four River Song vs the Master installments, the four Missy solo episodes start off on a light and cheerful note and get gradually darker and darker.

Missy, volume 1, consists of A Spoonful of Mayhem by Roy Gill, Divorced, Beheaded and Died by John Dorney, The Broken Clock by Nev Fountain, and The Belly of the Beast by Jonathan Morris.

( Spoilers say something nice )

All in all, two captivating volumes doing much to help my yearning for new DW content this year.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Munich

Turns out my Doctor Who muse wasn't done yet with me. This is the other result of my recent months of rewatching. Could be alternatively summarized as: he loves them all. Though his methods of showing it...

Signs on the slow path (5638 words) by Selena
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Twelfth Doctor & Missy, Twelfth Doctor & Nardole, The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Sixth Doctor & Evelyn Smythe, Twelfth Doctor & Evelyn Smythe, Ashildr | Lady Me & Twelfth Doctor, Twelfth Doctor & Sarah Jane Smith, Twelfth Doctor & Jack Harkness, Twelfth Doctor & Ace McShane, Seventh Doctor & Ace McShane, Twelfth Doctor & Donna Noble, Tenth Doctor & Donna Noble, Twelfth Doctor & Susan Foreman, First Doctor & Susan Foreman
Characters: Twelfth Doctor, Missy (Doctor Who), Nardole (Doctor Who), Evelyn Smythe, Ashildr | Lady Me, Sarah Jane Smith, Jack Harkness, Ace McShane, Audrey McShane, Donna Noble, Susan Foreman
Additional Tags: Character Study, The Vault (Doctor Who), Friendship/Love, Past Relationship(s)
Summary:

The Doctor has a lot of reasons for choosing the twentieth and twenty-first century on Earth when guarding the vault. Some he even admits to. Though not necessarily to the people in question.

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: Munich

It's been a while sice I last had the chance to delve into Big Finish audios, but in recent weeks I did. Not least because Big Finish picked up Class, aka my much beloved, much mourned Whovian spin-off that only got one season, and I've been meaning to listen to the results for months. They're not the only audios I've been listening to, but I shall review them first.

Class Volume 1, and Class, Volume 2:

Three stories in each volume, all set during the show's first and only season, not afterwards. As a whole, they're entertaining, at times clever, and there's at least one story I adored and would call an instant audio classic, but in general they didn't feel as good or original as the tv s how to me, which is partly due to two premise problems. Since they are set in the first season, this means they can't do what the tv show already did, develop a narrative arc and relationships further. (More about this, and one exception, in the detailed reviews.) The other premise problem is that while Big Finish got the entire Class cast back, they always use just two or at maximum three of them per story. On the one hand, this allows focus on just these two (or three) characters. On the other, not only does it demand, and rarely gets, an explanation as why these characters don't the others for help with the problem du jour, and also, it means the sense of an ensemble gets lost. Meaning: if a tv episode was centred around, say, April and Ram, this still meant Tanya, Charlie, Matteusz and Miss Quill would get some brief but often significant character stuff to do as well. This isn't the case in the audio format, which pairs up the two or three Class characters with the guest characters. and thus feels more like a loosely connected anthology series of individual stories set in the same universe than a series about a specific group of people.

Bearing these drawbacks in mind, here are my reactions to the individual stories:

( Spoilers meet Queen Mab, lots of aliens, and Ace )

Since Volume 2 ends on such a high note, I really hope that Big Finish does more with Class, ups and downs in both volumes not withstanding, and moves on to tackling the aftermath of the s1 finale, and maybe rethink their "use only two or three regulars per story" policy.

On to stories from the Doctor Who main range:

The Peterloo Massacre by Paul Magrs: Content as advertised by the title: this is a straightforward historical with the (Fifth) Doctor the only alien in it. He, Nyssa and Tegan end up by TARDIS accident in the Manchester area, in the August of 1819, which means they inevitably get involved in the upcoming darkest hour of Manchester history, as the Doctor at one point calls it, when cavalry charged into a crowd of 60,000–80,000 who had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation, killed 15 and critically injured 400 to 700 of them (the numbers are vague because afterrwards a lot who could hid their injuries, fearing to be punished further). It's one of those fixed points in time events the Doctor can't change, but, in a rare event for the Fifth Doctor, he gets spectacularly angry, and the way Peter Davison plays that barely restrained rage is beautiful. (Especially in the scene with the reporter who prepares the whitewashing of the local industrialists who form and finance the yeoman doing the massacring already.) It's one of those stories where human greed and callousness towards the underprivileged are the villains, which, btw, why I'm glad there is no sci fi element other than the Doctor and friends. Well done, leaves you enraged, which is as intended by the story.

The Defectors by Nicholas Briggs: both a standalone story and part of what I take it from the interviews at the end is a Big Finish event series, where later regenerations of the Doctor switch places with the first three (aka the ones whose actors are dead), for a mysterious reason to be explained at a later point. This allows later Doctors to interact with earlier Companions (provided the actors are still around), not decades (or centuries) later (except from their pov) but when their younger self actually was travelling with the people in question, and that's an interesting premise in itself. In this particular case, it's the Seventh Doctor finding himself in a Third Doctor adventure with Jo Grant, and as those eras are very different from each other, while I'm very fond of both, I pounced and aquired the audio. With one (and a half) caveats, I'd say the execution lives up to the promise.

( Here it gets a bit more spoilery )

Death and the Queen by James Goss: basically, a Ruritanian adventure for the Tenth Doctor and Donna. This one's plot and premise doesn't bear much examining and thinking about (what do the villains get out of their evil scheme that they wouldn't have gotten in far simpler ways? did we have to do a story where Donna gets conned by a bridegroom, again? etc.), but the charm is in the execution, no pun intended, and the Tate 'n Tennant rapport is as strong and sparkling as ever. Also, extra bonus for, after milking the "conned into marrying a prince with dreadful relations and hidden motives" fantasy for what it's worth, the story ends concluding that the most sensible thing to do is to abolish the monarchy entirely and make a republic out of ~~Ruritania~~ the fictionial European kingdom Donna spends some months as Queen (sort of) as instead. (This might not have struck me as so were it not for the fact that the latest season of Doctor Who included the Space-Amazon-is-okay-the-union-people-are-bad epsiode.) We meet the future leader of the revolution in this story, too, and she's female. In conclusion, not a classic, but I enjoyed it and listening to one of my favourite Doctor/Companion combinations again a lot.

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Location: Munich

Well, we already know there'll be Missy stories, covering her Doctor-less time. Other obvious possibilities:

( Spoilers for the Twelfth Doctor era ensue )

The other days

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Bad Wiessee

Aka Big Finish using the fact they finally got license for the New Who characters, big time. This audio series consists of four episodes, about an hour long, each written by a different writer and with an overreaching story arc, though each adventure is more or less self contained as well. Continuity-wise, this seems to be post-Demon's Run, pre-Library (obviously) in River's time line. It also was conceived and produced before The Husbands of River Song was broadcast, I'd wager, because this River on her own while still capable of ruthlessness has a much stronger commitment to ethics than the one from the most recent Christmas Special.

Overall impression: enjoyable, Alex Kingston is great, of course, the guest voice actors are good, and so far it navigates around the inherent prequel problem of us knowing River's ending and the way she can't come face to face with any pre-Ten Doctor in a memorable way pretty well. When I heard that the Eighth Doctor guest stars in one of the episodes, I assumed he'll get yet another case of amnesia (because this keeps happening to Eight), but no, the writer of the episode in question solves the continuity problem another way. Go him! The season also, like Doctor Who itself, uses the opportunity to try different types of tropes.

Individual episodes:

The Boundless Sea, written by Jenny T. Colgan: allows River to start out depressed and shaken, instead of being the unflappable-no-matter-the-trauma guest star she usually is on DW. This not being season 6 of Buffy, she gets over it in the course of the episode's adventure, which is essentially a classical Universal horror story with walking mummies in Egypt (if you've read my Penny Dreadful reviews, you know this part satisfied an urge), complete with clueless (OR ARE THEY?) archaelogists and civil servants. The episode's "monster" is more like a tragic antagonist and also an obvious reflection/counterpart of River herself (originally entombed for the sake of her husband), though I'm not sure I buy what the script seems to be getting at. Introduces Alexander "Mordred from Merlin" Vlahos' character Bertie Potts.

I went to a marvellous party, written by Justin Richards: introduces the season's true antagonists, the self-styled "Rulers", who are the classic type of rich privileged callous bastards you love to boo-hiss at. Also a Christie-homage paying murder mystery and a con story. Alexander Siddig's character is a bit of a let down in that he's not around for long and doesn't interact with River much, but River solving the mystery while also tricking the "Rulers" and screwing them over was very satisfying to listen to.

Signs by James Goss: co-starring Samuel West, and essentially Gaslight in space. Very creepy for what is clear to the audience though not River (for plot reasons) from the start. Also inadvertendly supplying an additional explanation as to why River has trouble realising Twelve is the Doctor in The Husbands of River Song. West is good in a role that's ( spoilery, sweetie ). Not one to re-listen to, I don't think, though not because it's not good.

The Rulers of the Universe, written by Matt Fitton: in which the various plot threads from previous episodes come together, there's a showdown with two antagonists at once, both the "Rulers" and the ones introduced in "Signs", and River manages to work with the Eighth Doctor to save the day without actually meeting him, and yet they interact, sort of. (It's great team work, btw.) Both how River foils the Rulers and how the Doctor foils Those Other Guys are classic for the characters, and it's a good conclusion to this audio-season.

Wishes for season 2: has Big Finish the rights for Amy and Rory, too? Because I really truly want an episode long interaction between River and her parents post-reveal.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: Bad Wiessee

Big Finish has started doing dramatizations of the Doctor Who New Adventures novels that were published in the 1990s. Both audios I aquired in Britain feature the Seventh Doctor, but admittedly that was a minor reason for picking these two instead of others; I picked "All Consuming Fire" because it co-stars Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, and I picked "Damaged Goods" because the young Doctor Who fan turned writer responsible for the original novel was one Russell T. Davies.

Thoughts:

Damaged Goods:

jesuswasbatman told me that RTD hadn't wanted the novel to be republished once New Who hit the screens, which would have been an option, because he considered it too violent and dark for the kids. Having listened to the audio, which, googling a description of the novel tells me, Big Finish did brighten up a bit: no kidding. Even the Big Finish death score is still high, but that's actually the least of it (after all, both Old and New Who have the occasional episode where a lot of people die, if usually off screen - there was that time the Master wiped out a quarter of the galaxy back in Five's day, for example). It's the psychological and emotional darkness in one of the major plot threads.

Damaged Goods foreshadows a lot of later RTD, and not just because there's an estate family, last name Tyler, involved, joining Vince Tyler from Queer as Folk, Rose Tyler from DW and Johnny Tyler from The Second Coming. (I swear, if our Rusty ever writes a story set in the Stone Age, you can bet there will be a Neanderthal by the name of Ty-Ler.) The Doctor sends the TARDIS away early in the story because Reasons, and the action takes place entirely in late 80s Britain in a working class council estate. It's ensemble-tastic, and one of the major guest characters, David, is gay and after the male Companion, Chris. (The Companions, Chris and Roz, were from the New Adventures, I take it, not RTD original creations, but this is there debut in Big Finish; they're played by RTD veterans, Travis Oliver and Yasmin Bannerman.) Chris' subplot allows for a very RTD subversion of a certain cliché; at first, when Chris seems to ignore David's various code-spoken hints about "one of us", "a friend of Dorothy" etc., it seems like the conventional joke of a straight character not getting that a gay one is making a pass, but then, when David says "you really have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?", Chris impatiently retorts "yeah, I get that you're hitting on me, what I don't get is why you don't just ask instead of all this code talk" (because Chris isn't from the 1980s but from the future, where categories aren't relevant - hello, Jack). This, google tells me, in the novel leads to actual sex; Big Finish toned it down from a blow job to just snogging for the audio version (no blow job in Big Finish?), but either way, leave it to RTD to let the "Companion and guest character flirt" trope result in m/m for once.

(Otherwise, David is luckier than his novel counter part; ( spoilery fate comparisons ensue ))

The middle-aged mother figure is divided between the good one (working class Winnie Tyler) and the bad one (upper class Eva Jericho), though just how much Eva's actions are the result from her going bonkers for plot reasons and how much is character is up to debate. Because of a dialogue between Eva and her husband that reminded me a bit of the COBRA scene from Torchwood: Children of Earth where Denise Riley suggests statistics to deal with a certain selection (it's that type of class cruelty verbalized), I'm going with "character, with worst traits amplified due to plot" myself. Anyway, the Mrs. Jericho subplot is the one I was referring to when saying I get why this one isn't for children. (Otoh Eva in the audio has a moment of redemption she doesn't have in the novel, according to google.)

Other than Eva and the British class system, the antagonist/threat/menace of Damaged Goods is an ancient Gallifreyan weapon reminding us that the Time Lords had a spectacularly nasty imagination when it comes to creating these things. ( Spoilery plot detail discussed that connects this with New Who and Old Who alike ) There's also the dastardly scientist conducting experiments who shows up not just in RTD written stories, granted, but, this being an RTD story, turns out to be working for - well, that differs from the novel (which tied him to an ongoing New Adventures subplot) and the audio (which instead has him working for another Rusty creation, give you three guesses which one.) And various drug dealers, drugs being one of the plot threats mingling the late 80s estate setting with the sci fi. (The drug in the audio is called "Smile"; in the novel, it's plain old cocaine. The function is the same, plot wise.)

Doctor and Companions characterisation: this is a post-Ace, melancholic Seven, though he does indulge in a magic trick in order to get one of the kids to trust him. Roz is a classic no-nonsense sensible and compassionate RTD female; Chris comes across as a bit more reckless and less sensible, but he also does the emotional bonding with locals (and not just because David hits on him). Neither of them looks like they are in danger of making the Doctor the center of their universe. That Roz is black while Chris is white is mentioned two times, but otherwise doesn't impact the plot.

Pace: after establishing "The Quadrant", the estate in which most of the action takes place, it's pretty rapid, but with enough room for character and comedy scenes (the cultural misunderstanding between David and Jack, the somewhat tense situation between Winnie Tyler and her daughter Bev) and the pitch black dysfunctional marriage scene where Eva Jericho crosses the moral horizon and which RTD later cribbed for his Second Coming. (I checked; it seems to be identical in the original novel and the audio, not changed via adaption.)

In conclusion: worth listening to, even if it leaves you reeling, because the story does make you care about its characters.

All Consuming Fire: original novel by Andy Lane, also a later veteran, and in fact at least in the audio adaption a bit more heavy on the Sherlock Holmes side than on the Doctor Who side of crossover-dom. The first half is narrated entirely by Watson, Bernice Summerfield (the original space archaelogist with ties to the Doctor long before River Song was a blink in Stephen Moffat's eye) doesn't show up until the second half of the story, and Ace, minus two very brief cameos, not until the last 15 minutes. Before that point, it's Holmes and Watson on the case, occasionally running into a mysterious stranger defying the Sherlock Scan because Holmes can't tell anything about his origins other than the mud on his shoes not being from earth.

Within this premise, the story is, as I said, great fun. The Doctor is suitably enigmatic and twinkly for the occasion, Watson has the good taste of flirting with Bennie even if he's a bit taken aback by her forwardness, and Holmes is somewhat irritated by the Doctor but far too logical and pragmatic not to take help when it comes in useful. In a postmodern twist on Doyle's imperialist tropes, the dastardly Indian cult involved is actually a dastardly British Empire cult (and while Holmes and Watson are faithful subjects, they definitely don't agree with murder, hence aren't deterred from pursuing). And there are cats! What the Doctor does re: the cats at the end is one of my favourite things about the story.

Now I could nitpick that I seem to recall Sherlock Holmes was said to be a fictional character in the Whoverse as early as the Second Doctor's era, but who cares? Not this listener. Highly enjoyable.

Current Mood: content
Current Location: Bamberg

Darth Real Life keeps me relentlessly busy these days, but I had to share this thing of joy which

andraste provided me with:

"The Tenth Doctor & Donna Return" (Watch on YouTube)

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Location: Bamberg

This already made my day: Big Finish, having at last secured the rights to New Who characters as well, will give us more Donna and Tenth Doctor adventures. My absolutely favourite Doctor and Companion combination from the New Who era returns! More magical Tate & Tennant banter: these two had such superb comic timing together, even off screen when they did radio interviews, so I'm pretty confident Ten and Donna will translate well to the audio format.

In conclusion: I'm a happy, happy Doctor Who fan this morning. YES!

Current Mood: ecstatic
Current Location: Bamberg

Because fannish life sometimes loves me, I've just found out that Bryan Cranston's stage performance as LBJ will be filmed for tv. Exceeeeeellent news for us overseas fans.

Due to the Big Finish offerings this last week, I've sampled a lot more audios. Among the most memorable ones:

Spare Parts (Fifth Doctor & Nyssa): one of the most famous ones, by Marc Platt; an origin tale for the Cybermen (original Mondas version) in the mode of Genesis of the Daleks (i.e. Doctor experiences critical point of development of already established antagonist, becomes involved with local population who have no idea of their fate). Most Five adventures I've listened to until now tended to be more optimistic than their tv counterparts, but this one has the Fifth Doctor in very familiar tv horrified-by-ghastly-goings-on-without-being-able-to-stop-them mode. Though on tv the Mondasians would have been less or not likeable at all, whereas here they are, which makes what happens to them extra tragic.

Protect and Survive (Seventh Doctor, Ace and Hex): part of the lead up to the events from Gods and Monsters and Afterlife, but also a self-contained story that really went under my skin. It was produced while Sylvester McCoy was busy filming The Hobbit, so it has minimal Doctor participation (though what there is of him is crucial, and it wouldn't work without that part), making a virtue of necessity. Ace and Hex are - due to circumstances that get gradually revealed to them and the audience - trapped in the most ghastly time loop possible. Because, like Ace, I was a teenager in the 1980s, the scenario in question, i.e. a nuclear war does happen and the survivors slowly die of radiation sickness, is intimately familiar. I don't think anyone who grew up after 1989 can understand how very real that possibility was and how it was part of your subconscious and your dreams/nightmares. Including the official info material of what to do just in case (and knowing that actually, these tips are pointless), which is used to great effect here. Mind you: this is not a "big" war story but a very intimate one - just four people (Ace, Hex, and two guest characters) plus the Doctor in absentia (he's missing at the start of the story, and only present in flashback in the third part, though that flashback not only explains what's been going on but packs the biggest emotional wallop re: the Doctor's terrifying side when dealing with enemies since I first saw what happened to the Family (of Blood) at the end of the episode of that name. It's one of the sharpest examinations of the ethics of such actions in Doctor Who, and yet also shows exactly why they happened. The acting by Sophie Aldred and Philip Olivier is top notch and makes you empathize with Ace and Hex to the nth degree.

Flip Flop (Seventh Doctor and Mel): this one is on one level very clever experimental storytelling - there are four "episodes" like on the usual Big Finish audio adventure, but they form two stories which can be listened to in any order because they're both self contained and completely interlocked, taking place at the same time on two parallel time streams. I have mixed feelings about it, though, not because the production doesn't pull it off - it does, and Bonnie Langford as Mel proves again that with a decent script she can be as good a companion as any -, but because the scenario in one of the two timelines is something that strikes me as an almost perfect fundamentalist right wing dream/nightmare scenario, and as such very ill fitting with Doctor Who (especially not with the Seventh Doctor era). The two different timelines hinge on the arrival of a slug-like species called the Slithegee at a human colony planet, where they occupy one of the moons and ask it should be given to them, since they're refugees. In one scenario, the President grants them the moon; in the other, spoilery stuff happens and an all out war with the Slithegee is the result. The paranoid right wing fantasy scenario is the first one, as the Slithegee proceed to take over the system, accusing any humans resisting the gradual take over of hate speech (that expression gets flung about a lot) and discrimination, and thirty years after their arrival own nine tenths of the planet while the humans live in ghettos, and Christmas is renamed Slimetide in the name of religious toleration etc. In short, it's the dystopia as prophecied by current right wing fanatic complaining of "political correctness gone mad", and the Slithegee are presented as uniformly revolting without any positive quality whatsoever, insisting on being the victims all the time while in actuality outnumbering and oppressing the humans. Just about the only thing which saves it from being anti-immigration propaganda is that the other timeline, where there was war with the Slithegee instead, is an equally dark dystopia, because there the Slithegee were defeated, but the planet became poisoned by the warfare, and the surviving humans have become a fascist dicatorship prone to commit massacres on each other.

Incidentally, while both scenarios are incredibly dark, the tone of the episodes isn't grimdark at all but more Blackadder like; lots of mistaken identity gambits and ridiculing of self important bureaucracies (both of the fascist humans and the Slithegee, depending on the timeline). It makes for a clash of tone and content that's sometimes effective and sometimes just plain weird. But really, the most disturbing thing is the feel of the Slithegee-Takeover-Timeline scenario. So: points of experimenting with the format and exploring the possibilities of time travel/fallout from altering history tropes in a very creative way, but I don't think I could bring myself to listen to it again.

Current Mood: good
Current Location: Bamberg

Still in haste and briefly:

Doctor Who:

Due to all the interest (and their server crashing), Big Finish is changing their 15 Days to 15 Offers, which each offer available for several days.

Make Mine Marvel:

Steve Rogers meta. Only connect, as Forster put it. And speaking of Steve, as you you can see in this bit from the Comic Con panel where the Avengers actors show up, Chris Evans got the most applause, which no one would have predicted a few years back. Methinks it was Cap 2 which made the difference.

Once Upon A Time:

Another SDCC goodie for those of us far, far away: The REAL reason why the writers decided to do that storyline in s4 which the s3 tag scene revealed. Read: a hilarious sketch in which the OuaT writing staff pokes fun at themselves. Complete with Jane Espenson's pizza fandom (known to the world since the audio commentary for Conversations with Dead People from BTVS was on dvd) and a cameo from a Dharma telephone from Lost. (The fact that some Lost alumni ended up in OuaT, others in Bates Motel and yet others in New Zealand doing Tolkien-Jackson stuff tells you all about what kind of a show Lost was. :)

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: Bad Wiessee

...or if you've ever thought of trying out said audio plays but aren't exactly cash fluent, this may be of interest: Big Finish is celebrating their 15th anniversary, and every day for 15 days, they're putting different audio plays up to be downloaded (for 24 hours, then it changes) for just one pound. On day 1, there were even some free audio equivalent of short stories as well. Day 2, which should be soon over, includes some of the best Sixth Doctor audios (Jubilee by Rob Shearman later became, heavily altered because of the different Doctor and Companion, the episode Dalek on New Who; The Holy Terror is both a spoof of fantasy melodrama and an examination of real emotional horror once it sinks in what's actually going on - also, that's the one where the Companion looks like a Penguin).

Like I said: if you've been thinking about checking out the audios, this week and the next should be a great occasion to get several of them cheaply.

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: Bad Wiessee

Much to do in the last few days, and despite not being a football (soccer for you Americans) fan per se, I wasn't immune to all the excitement, and yes, did watch us getting the World Cup. (You couldn't sleep that night anyway, being in Munich. The celebratory noise level was incredible.) However, I also went on a Seventh Doctor audio binge, which means some thoughts accumulated. Before I get to those, a completely unrelated link: Can we say Vergil wrote fanfiction?, smart meta involving fanfiction as a genre, Vergil and the Brothers Grimm.

Now, on to Doctor Who, audio department thoughts. Big Finish does both standalone adventures and story arcs, and I listened into two of the later plus a standalone for the Seventh Doctor. Now, for some years you had the tv team of the Doctor and Ace with the audio additon of Hex, aka Thomas Hector Schofield, nurse from Liverpool, as a Team TARDIS with a dynamic in their own right; then, at the climax of the audio Gods and Monsters, something shattering happened.

( Which is spoilery, and thus behind a cut. )

One of the very early Big Finish adventures, Coldlitz, had the Doctor and Ace ending up in guess where; I still haven't listened to it because I tend to shy away from the idea of Doctor Who actually tackling the Third Reich in an unmetaphorical way (there are plenty of Space Nazis in the long history of the show, just like in most fantasy and sci fi shows). The dangers of tackiness, caricature or softening a real life horror just seemed to great. However, fannish osmosis told me that one of the villains in Coldlitz, Dr. Elizabeth Klein, who hails from a timeline where the Nazis did win WW II, ended up stranded in the "real" timeline at the end of the audio and was brought back more recently, years later, to serve as the least likely Companion ever. (Unless you count Shalka!Master, I suppose.) This made me curious enough to handwave another of my aversions, to wit: my problem with "Germany wins WWII and the Third Reich continues to rule the world" - just can't see it happen, not with Hitler on top - one reason why Stalin died in bed after decades of tyranny, undefeated, was that he knew to keep the killing within his own sphere of influence and didn't want to be seen as a world conqueror, but Hitler? never would have been satisfied with that even if you suppose technological MacGuffin X forces the Allies to go for a truce - , and not with all the infighting between his upper level paladins if you remove him from the equation. And the corruption within the party. And - anyway. Can't see it happening.

This handwaved, I was curious about Dr. Klein, how Big Finish would develop her, and what type of dynamic she would have with the Seventh Doctor. So off I went and acquired the Klein trilogy - "A Beating of Tiny Wings", "Survival of the Fittest" and "The Architects of History. This turned out to be a great decision. Nitpicks first, so I can get to why and how and praise: perfect, these stories aren't. Beating of Tiny Wings takes place during the Mau Mau Rising in Kenya, but is essentially a version of The Thing (of horror movie fame) put in its opposite surrounding, climate wise, and the Mau Mau Rising context is mostly there so there's a reason why various (white) women are trapped on a farm and can't know whether any new arrival is there to help them or kill them. At some point, it must have occured to someone in the storyediting department that if you set a story in Africa, there should maybe also be a black character. So there is one, but a) he's mostly there to make the point the British ladies (and British society in the 1950s) are racist, he gets no characterisation beyond that, minimal text and an unceremonious death. My other nitpick concerns The Architects of History: I just don't get why German characters other then Klein speak in one of those typical fake German accents when they're supposed to speak German (we're just hearing it as English because this is an English audio.) In fact, it was a HUUUUGE plot point in Survival of the Fittest that the TARDIS telepathic circuits translate whatever everyone speaks into whatever everyone else speaks for everyone. (Which is why at one point Klein mentions to the Doctor he has a stuffy Prussian accent; it cracks me up to no end that this is what the TARDIS found to equal the Scottish accent, let me tell you.) I mean, Doctor Who is just following the custom of the majority of film and tv there, and I wrote an entire entry years ago why I think fake accents (be they French, German, Spanish or whatever) when we're assuming the characters are in fact using their own language are ridiculous. I still think so, let's leave it at that.

Those were the nitpicks. Now for the good stuff. Elizabeth Klein turns out to be a great character. One of the things I was most curious about was whether or not the audios would go for a redemption story, especially since she wasn't a member of a fictional fascist organization with fictional victims, like, say, Aeryn Sun on Farscape; having real life victims still among us makes for a different emotional resonance. Speaking of real life, what happened in Germany post WWII was often referred to as "re-education", was aided by the Marshall Plan, and it wasn't until the 1960s - when the children of the WWII generation had grown up - that actual confrontation with the past happened not from outside but from inside on a massive scale. This, clearly, isn't something you can carry out in a series of audio adventures with one character.

Elizabeth Klein as the Doctor runs into her again in Kenya isn't repentant or in any way convinced she (and the ideology she was raised in) was wrong; moreover, as far she's concerned, her timeline was the right one, the current one is a travesty, and it's the Doctor's fault that she lost everyone who ever meant anything to her when her timeline blinked out of existence. However, she's also smart and wants to survive, so teaming up with the Doctor in the Thing-like situation in Kenya makes sense. That she's also a scientist who can talk to the Doctor on that level made me wonder whether the idea for Klein wasn't inspired by the Third Doctor tv story Inferno, where the Doctor temporarily experiences an alternate universe where Britain is fascist, his then companion Dr. Elizabeth Shaw is Section Leader Shaw, and the Brig is equally fascist. The start of the next audio, when we get Elizabeth Klein's backstory wherein she got recruited by the guy heading an alien artificats investigating organzation in a victorious Germany also argues for that. Anyway, one key difference to Inferno is that Three has no backstory with Section Leader Shaw and tries to win her over because he knows her alter ego. Whereas Seven and Klein have, in both senses of the word, history, which makes for mutual (deserved) distrust. This makes for great dialogue because Klein is far from stupid and thus not a ranting cliché, which means she and the Doctor keep their verbal digs at each other while working together on an equally successful rate instead of him effortlessly beating her in the verbal sparring. Also, Tracey Childs is fantastic in the role. (And thankfully not forced to fake a German accent.) When the Doctor at the end offers her a lift, it's an incredible gamble (because she still wants her original timeline back), but you can see the variety of motives on why he does it: not least continuing distrust and control issues (she's a lose element with a destructive ideology and superior technological knowledge in the 1950s), but also being intrigued by the challenge of her (she's clever and ruthless; what could she be if she does change?). And, as it turns out, a sense of responsibility, because it's due to him she's stranded in this timeline in more ways than one. He didn't just restore the original timeline in Coldlitz, no, as turns out at the start of Survival of the Fittest, where we get her backstory, he manipulated her into coming to Coldlitz to begin with, setting her up to give him the means to wipe out "her" universe.

This he did due to the series of events which created the victorious!Germany timeline to begin with; among other things, the Seventh Doctor regenerated into the Eighth not in San Francisco in a bad American movie but in Alt!Germany, though still after getting shot. Poor Eight. Or not so poor Eight, because as Johann Schmidt (hooray for a Paul McGann cameo), he then cons Elizabeth Klein who is trying to figure out how to operate the TARDIS into bringing it to 1944 to his previous self. One reason why the Doctor and Klein combination works is that this way, the dynamic isn't just "the hero and the Nazi". She does have a genuine non-petty reason to hate him because he used her to basically uncreate her entire world; at the same time, her timeline is bad news for so many people that of course one can't wish it restored. Survival of the Fittest sees the Doctor and Klein on a planet where the native population are basically intelligent giant bees called Vriil, who are in danger of getting wiped out by some greedy humans. I thought I knew where this was going: Klein would learn empathy by sympathizing with the endangered Vriil and see the error of her fascist ways. Perhaps this is what in story the Doctor expects to happen, too. But the writers go for something more complicated - and realistic - because while Klein does sympathize with the Vriil and shows compassion for them (aided by her disgust for the sloppy and creating-even-more-damage-than-intended-by-bumbling humans), this does not change her basic goals, chief among them the need to restore the to her real timeline, or her resentment of the Doctor. Which is why Survival of the Fittest ends with a breathtaking cliffhanger, and why Elizabeth Klein fulfills both the Companion and the Main Antagonist role in this trilogy, which I don't think is a dynamic we've ever seen before.

The Architects of History, in which basically every character doublecrosses everyone else at least once, sets itself the additional challenge to make the audience care about yet another alt!world and -characters in addition to the Klein-and-the-Doctor double act, and succeeds. It has Leonora Crichlow (Annie in Being Human; she also guest starred on New Who in Gridlock) as a Companion-who-never-was, and what happens with her in the course of the narrative contributes to the emotional punch. It's both a siege story and a "be careful what you wish for" story, and at no point does the narrative either excuse Klein or make her into a one dimensional villain whom the Doctor can easily (for both himself and the audience) dispose of; to avoid both extremes is truly an art, and this trilogy, including its climactic finale, pulls it off. And speaking of avoidance: Klein falling in love with the Doctor, let alone he with her, is also one easy way out that I don't think the current tv show could have resisted, and it never happens here. Go, Big Finish!

In conclusion: yes, I saw the latest trailer, and I'm looking forward to the show, but to be honest, the audios right now are what I'm truly fannish about as far as Doctor Who is concerned. They have my heart and mind.

Current Mood: impressed
Current Location: Munich

Because listening to the last bunch only heightened the craving by reminding me how great the Whoverse can be.

The Doomwood Curse: an Sixth Doctor and Charley adventure, written by Jacqueline Reyner (whom I've liked as a BF writer ever since The Marian Conspiracy). For their second go, this Doctor-and-Companion combination ends up in a fictionalized version of the 18th century, though not, as the Doctor theorizes earlier on, in the novel Rookwood itself. Said novel, btw, really does exist; it was a Victorian Gothic pot boiler, set a century earlier, and mainly responsible for turning the historical Dick Turpin (petty thug) into legendary Dick Turpin. Charley has just read it and is thrilled, but the Doctor's copy actually belongs to the library of Alexandria V (you can see what they did there) and he has to return it. This ends up landing him and Charley in a version of the 18th century which becomes increasingly fictionalized due to the plot MacGuffin, with the people, including Charley, changing character at the whim of a Gothic novel plot. The Doctor is immune at first, which won't last forever, and has to save the day before literature takes over reality altogether. (I must admit there was a moment where I thought "actually, would this be a bad thing..?" before remembeirng some 18th century novels and seeing the Doctor's point.) All the actors have great fun, especially India Fisher who can play different versions of Charley, from fainting Gothic Novel damsel to Highway Woman and Cutpurse "Gypsy Charlotte", while Rayner's script pokes fun at all the Gothic clichés with much affection for them. The only problem I had was when Charley (still herself) hears from Susan the maid about how Susan had a horrible encounter with the (real) Dick Turpin and responds with "how thrilling" (which, yes, is due to her having just read about fictional romantic Dick Turpin but is still a very callous thing to say), but I suppose I can handwave that by declaring Charley is in the early stages of getting turned into a literary character by the plot MacGuffin. For all the poking fun at Gothic novels, though, the plot also offers genuine moving scenes, as when one of the guest characters gets out of his fictionalized Gothic version - where he doesn't feel grief at the death of his father because the plot demands he's thinking about nothing but his romance - and into his normal version (where he suddenly realizes the full impact of what has happened and the grief is awful; he at first wants to be fictionalized again to escape that feeling and the Doctor's reaction shows the kindness blustery Six is also capable of when the occasion demands). And the climax demands that the Doctor surrender to fictionalization as well and trust that Charley, once de-fictionalized, will understand the situation and save the day, which as a gesture of faith is just the type of thing which makes the Doctor and Companion relationships so endearing.

The Raincloud Man: in which the (Sixth) Doctor and Charley return to Manchester to team up with fabulous Mancunian D.I. Patricia Menzies once more. D.I. Menzies is as sarcastic and great as in her first outing; now aware of aliens she's become the go-to copper for aliens in Manchester, and she and the Doctor are such great foils for each other that one regrets she doesn't join Team TARDIS at the end, but then again, it occurs to me she's turning in a successor for the Brig in the Big Finish world, someone who remains on Earth because that's where their job is and who drafts the Doctor instead of the Doctor drafting him. Also, the extras for this adventure tell me the actress who plays D.I. Menzies also played a very different character on tv (sans Mancunian accent), Novice Hame (the cat nurse from the episodes New Earth and Gridlock). Patricia Menzies also because of one of her alien sources finds out Charley's secret (i.e. that Charley is from the Doctor's future and hasn't told him), which allows for some interesting scenes between her and Charley. As for the actual case, among other things, it involves a casino travelling through time and space where the high stakes involve betting your past and future, and the Doctor coming to the aid of a race of beings who were solely created to fight another race and thus never were free to choose their own lives. And though nobody ever says anything, I strongly suspect the reason why Manchester has now joined Cardiff and London as a favourite visiting/attack/refuge-seeking spot for aliens is that this is where comatose coppers go when they want to time travel. (Or when they're dead. :)

Son of the Dragon: another historical for the Fifth Doctor, Perri and Erimem, which uses Erimem's different perspective due to her ancient Egyptian origins better than The Council of Nicea did in a story that deals with Vlad Tepes, the historical Dracula, no less (i.e. the warlord whose name Stoker used; he's definitely not a vampire here), and with his brother Radu the Handsome. Dracula gets played by James Purefoy (still best known for playing Antony in Rome, I think) who can't resist doing the accent (though the actor playing Radu doesn't follow suit) and lowering his voice. This is one of the darker Big Finish stories, opening as it does with the TARDIS arriving in a village burned to the ground by Dracula's troops and including one of Vlad's most famous atrocities later - which earned him the nickname "Impaler" which is what "Tepes" means - the impaling of 20.000 people and leaving them for the Turkish invasion troops to find (after which the Sultan decides he can't win against this man and leaves, though brother Radu does not). I'm pretty impessed by the amount of actual history that shows up in this script, including the fact both Radu and Vlad grew up as hostages in Constantinople - only Radu remained with the Turks and Vlad became a crusader in response - , and Dracula's divided reputation among his contemporaries as a horrible butcher on the one hand and heroic leader defeating the Turks and establishing regular law again in Romania on the other. Making this an adventure for this particular Team TARDIS was inspired because the story can use Peri to convey the audience horror and Erimem (to whom impaling people actually is not unheard of as a punishment and who when Dracula mentions why he killed the nobles (they betrayed his father and oldest brother to a horrible death) gruesomely admits she might have done the same to the people responsible for her family's deaths if not leaving her country with the Doctor. Mind you, Dracula is still the antagonist in this tale, but the story takes the trouble to show the listeners why he became the way he is (without excusing what he does).

The Crimes of Thomas Brewster: This one I listened to out of order - the character Thomas Brewster shows up in earlier audios I'm not famiar with yet - because it promised a) more Six and Evelyn and b) more D.I. Patricia Menzies. It's a blast of an adventure, opening with a James Bondian teaser where the Doctor and Evelyn are chased by a killer drone while trying to escape on a speedboat on the Thames, but with a very Whovian twist (the Doctor confuses the drone's aim with the garish multiple colours of his coat, which causes some great lines from Evelyn; btw, if you've ever seen the Sixth Doctor's outfit from tv, you know why this works *veg*). D.I. Menzies is in London instead of Manchester because someone calling themselves "the Doctor" has become a new East London gangleader of sorts, the real Doctor really hopes this isn't one of his future selves (spoiler: it isn't), and Evelyn thinks she's getting too old for this kind of craziness (she isn't). As for Thomas Brewster, who basically comes across as the Artful Dodger with some time travel experience, he's just trying to be helpful, honest. Also co-starring: alien hiveminds, symbiotic planets, original uses for the London Underground and people of both genders pretending to be the Doctor. Loved it all.

Current Mood: amused
Current Location: Munich

The Doctor Who/Beatles play having reawakened my appetite for Big Finish audios, I went on a minor downloading spree, with the result of listening to various excellent and one well intended but not altogether successful Doctor Who stories. As I generally like to end on a high note, I'll start with the later first.
The Council of Nicea: this is a Fifth Doctor, Peri and Erimem adventure as well as a pure historical (aside from the Doctor himself, there are no aliens around) reminiscent of the Hartnell era. The obvious comparison would be to The Aztecs, since the key plot issue is one of the Companions decides to change history. On the plus side, there are lot of aspects to admire about this audio: scriptwriter Caroline Symox (a theologian herself) manages to really get across how deeply and violently the religious doctrine debates went across the populace in this era where Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, and just what the so-called Arian heresy consisted of in a way that's understandable if you've never heard about the big Athanasius versus Arius clash before. And it's another very strong outing for audio companion Erimem, whose difference of perspective to both Peri and the Doctor due her historical origin - Erimem is a pharaoh who never was from ancient Egypt - was used well in such audio adventures I've listened to as The Church and the Crown and The Kingmaker. For Erimem, the Council of Nicea takes place in her future, not her past, and so her asking the question of Barbara and Donna as to why they can't change events (when the Doctor can and does on other occasions) gains additional emphasis. (BTW there isn't really a good Watsonian answer to this, since the reason is so obviously Doylist.) The inter audio continuity of Erimem making a great organizer and leader is excellent, and the script makes a valiant effort of making the Emperor Constantine (yes, the in hoc signo vince guy) a shades of grey character (pure villainy is reserved for Athanasisus, who is presented as a scheming plotter willing to go over dead bodies, while Arius is presented as an ideal Christian standing by compassionate and pacifist beliefs).

However, on the downside: Since Erimem is no Christian, the script which needs to give her a reason to become an Arius partisan makes her side with Arius because she deems him, after just one brief encounter, an honorable man, but what got Arius into hot water and what was debated on the Council were his teachings about the nature of Christ, which Erimem has zero interest in. Her accusing Constantine of not listening to his people and of being a tyrant are staggeringly anachronistic and unlikely from a character coming from a culture where the kings were regarded as living gods. (Incidentally, I can't remember which dynasty Erimem is supposed to be from, but if it's post Akhenaten she would be familiar with the concept of heresy and more likely than not having a negative attitude towards the whole idea of monotheism.) And those are only my Watsonian level problems. Stepping outside of the story: there is a scene early on in which the Doctor explains to Peri and Erimem just why the Council of Nicea was such a turning point and mentions that the church became a political power under Constantine. Erimem asks how this is a good thing and why shouldn't it be changed, which is anachronistic for Erimem as an ancient Egyptian, see above, because religion most certainly WAS politicis in her culture and very much tied to the rulers. But it's still not a bad question, and it never gets answered beyond "then the entire history would change". Well, yes, obviously. But you can just as well argue Christianity becoming a state religion resulted in all the corruption of its ideals and abuse thereafter, and the audio doesn't give you a reason NOT to want history to be changed in this regard. Lastly, this is a story in which the Doctor is almost incidental, not effective or interesting; he keeps having the same "just listen to me "/"No" - dialogue with both Erimem and Constantine, and it's not clear why Constantine botheres to after the first round, since the Doctor does nothing impressive or clever to awaken his interest. (The Empress Fausta deems him a fascinating man when talking to Peri, and he can be, but he's just not in this story, which makes it a bad case of tell, not show.) (By contrast, The Aztecs may be primarily Barbara's story, but you can't say the Doctor is dull or redundant in it.)

In conclusion: interesting but frustrating, and ultimately not satisfying to me; your mileage may differ.

The Condemned: This is the first Sixth Doctor and Charley Pollard story and also a murder mystery in Manchester featuring a fabulous tough female Mancunian D.I. named Patricia Menzies who temporarily teams up with the Doctor. Charley, who spent several years as the Eighth Doctor's audio companion, finally parted ways with him in the audio "The Girl Who Never Was" , which I had listened to some years ago, and which had a cliffhanger ending in that the TARDIS arrives, Charley thinks it's the Doctor...and it is, but the wrong Doctor. This turns out to make for a great new dynamic, since Charley is basically in the River Song position of knowing the Doctor's future self while he doesn't know her and is not a little irritated (though also intrigued) by the fact there are obviously secrets she keeps from him, and that she acts as if she knows him. Also, the romantic angst between Eight and Charley that was in their later stories is gone which is a relief. That said, the majority of interaction actually happens between the Doctor and D.I. Menzies on the one hand, and Charley & other guest characters on the other. I'm told D.I. Patricia Menzies will be back, which is great, because she and the sixth Doctor make a great detective team, complete with lots of verbal sparring, and you almost wish for the Doctor to be stuck in Manchester for a while longer so they can solve some more cases together. In conclusion, this audio is a joy to listen to, works even if you are not familiar with Charley before (then you're in the Doctor's rather than Charley's pov re: her), and has lots of neat details to boot, like the Doctor getting to show off the fondness for cats that is at its peak in this particular regeneration.

The Word Lord: is the audio equivalent of a short story from a larger collection, written by Steven Hall, but can be downloaded individually and should be before listening to the adventure reviewed below, as it introduces the later's main antagonist. It's a Seventh Doctor, Ace and Hex (more about him in a moment if you don't already know him, he's an audio only character) adventure; at a secret station in Antarctica, they run into a being from another dimension, Nobody No One, the Word Lord from the title, who is a renegade from his people is obviously designed as the Doctor's opposite number, very powerful and not a little psychotic, thriving on word play. He gets his power via language and travels in the linguistic equivalent of a TARDIS (called CORDIS), and because his powers allow him to bend reality (if someone says "Nobody can do this and that", Nobody the Word Lord is instantly able to do this and that), he's damm near unstoppable. Which makes him an ideal opponent for the Seventh Doctor specifically, who has to both outthink and outtalk him. The Word Lord only takes 20 minutes or so but is a great mini adventure as well as a good introduction of a new nemesis. Can be heard without much previous knowledge, and also showcases the Ace and Hex interactions in a good way.

A Death in the Family: this, on the other hand, very much a tale which needs both tv show and audio canon knowledge do be properly appreciated. It's sublime. Again written by Steven Hall, it features Seven, Ace, Hex and Evelyn (formerly Smythe, now Rossiter) and Nobody No One the Word Lord as far as recurring characters are concerned. Hex and Evelyn are both audio companions, Hex of the seventh, Evelyn of the sixth Doctor, but their backstories are connected in one particular point which finally receives a pay off. To briefly sum up: Evelyn knew Hex' mother, Cassie, whom she met when travelling with the Doctor, and the Doctor's inability to save Cassie caused the first serious fallout between him and Evelyn. Years later, in the Doctor's seventh incarnation, he ran into Cassie's son (or rather Ace did), who ended up as a Companion, but the Doctor did not tell Hex (the name is short for Thomas Hector Schofield) about Cassie until it all came out messily in the audio Project: Destiny which immediately precedes A Death in the Family. And anyone who's been watching more than one adventure of the Doctor and Ace on tv is aware that they're very close but he also has a penchant for manipulativeness when it comes to her. A Death in the Family has fantastic character scenes for all three relationships - the Doctor's with Ace, Hex and Evelyn -, and, as far as I'm concerned, succeeds in something Stephen Moffat tried to in season 6 of New Who but didn't pull off satisfyingly: killing off the Doctor early on in the tale complete with establishing a puzzle, then using timey-wimeyness and the characters being themselves to come up with a solution that feels emotionally satisfying and earned as to why the Doctor (obviously, since a listener knows coming in that he doesn't die for good in his seventh body) makes it out of the story alive after all. (Another parallel to New Who's season six is that you get an older and a younger version of the Doctor around during some of the time for this that is part of both the riddle and the solution.) My favourite part of timey-wimeyness used is when the Doctor in a conversation with Ace references something Evelyn said to him which, however, Evelyn only says much later in the story, but what makes this emotionally effective as well as clever is that both conversations are ones he could only have with these specific women. Most Companions change while travelling with the Doctor, but with Ace he made a deliberate effort to achieve that (Doylist wise because part of the idea for Ace back in the 80s was that she'd end up as a human going Time Lord, which never happened because the show was cancelled), and there always was an ambiguity about that, so for the Doctor to be confronted with how much Ace has become like him (while still being herself) was fantastic to listen to. Meanwhile, Evelyn was the first Companion already in her 60s when introduced, and the age and experience that gave her contributed to making her such a good foil for the brash Sixth Doctor who became very deeply attached to her and listened to her in a way he didn't to most others. He'd met Evelyn once already in his seventh regeneration (in a short scene on the audio Thicker Than Blood, which is mainly a Sixth Doctor adventure but lets Seven visit Evelyn while Six is busy elsewhere to tell her about Cassie's son), but here he does so for a longer time, and Evelyn, very old now and with the perspective of having known him in a previous regeneration, is the ideal person to question him about one of the key differences between these two selves, tied to Seventh's penchant for withholding information and need to be in control. As for Hex, who hasn't been travelling with the Doctor as long as Ace but still finds himself changing, wondering about the choices he's made, the ones being made for him, and what he wants from his life makes for some awesome scenes with both Evelyn and the older version of the Doctor. Hex, a male nurse before Rory was ever invented, shines in his compassion and need to understand.

All of these character scenes are tied together with the second use of Nobody No One as a really scary villain, whose power through words make him an ideal oponent in a medium that tells its tale through sound, not visuals, and his various showdowns with Our Heroes keep you on your listening toes, so to speak, all the time. This is also a tale very much on a meta level, about people choosing their narratives versus being trapped in them, and while it wraps up the various plots very well, it does leave room for ambiguity where you really want no black and white because ambigutiy is part of the character point. In short, this was both moving and brilliant, and it never cheated. I loved it.

Current Mood: impressed
Current Location: Munich

Wherein the Doctor saves the Beatles, because of course he does. It's one in a series of Big Finish audio plays done specifically to honor the big 50 years anniversary by connecting them to the year 1963, aka Annus Mirabilis, between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles' first LP, to use the obvious Larkin quote...and of course the year in which Doctor Who started broadcasting. Doylist and Watsonian Doctor Who/Beatles connections have existed from the start - Beatles producer George Martin worked with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Paul McCartney knew Delia Derbyshire who created the Doctor Who theme, the Beatles themselves show up in a concert clip in a First Doctor adventure (in which, btw, the show accuractely speculates that there'll be a Beatles museum in Liverpool to go to years in the future - which the Doctor's Companion Vicky who is from 200 years into the future has visited, to the shock of Barbara who is from the 1960s), which, given that the Beatles were a current band at the time the episode in question was broadcast must have sounded ridiculous). So a Doctor Who 1963 Beatles themed adventure may have been logical, but the way scriptwriter Eddie Robson pulls it off is genius. It works on so many levels - for starters, both if you're deeply into DW and the Beatles and if you're not that familiar with either. But oh, all the inside gags had me in stitches.

The premise: the Doctor (Five, played by Peter Davison, who is having a blast here) takes Nyssa to see the Beatles in 1963 and to his utter shock finds that nobody has heard of them while the band everyone is starting to go crazy about is called The Common Man and consists of not four but three fellows named Mark, James and Corky. ("The Fab Three doesn't have quite the same ring to it.") Clearly, someone has changed history, and in the course of finding out why and put history back on track, Eddie Robson the scriptwriter checks off various important points of the Beatles saga - Hamburg, Royal Variety concert, Maharishi, split up; while Nyssa for plot reasons ends up in the Hamburg era, the Doctor dashes through the 60s in an effort to first find out what's going on and why and then to stop it. (He does try 1957 first - known to fans like yours truly as the year John met Paul - but it's timelocked by the story's villain, so he can't go there.) The three Common Man bandmembers are obviously modelled on the Beatles (Mark on John, James on Paul, and Corky is a George-and-Ringo amalgan), for which there is an in-story reason, but it also allows the script to use their characters without having to worry about law suits; after all, Mark, James and Corky are fictional. :) The actors, btw, to this German sound great with their Liverpudlian accents, and their music, specifically written for this audio tale, is a neat 60s Britpop pastiche without being on a Beatles level (as the Doctor points out which nearly gets him lynched by The Common Man fans), for which, again, there is an in-story reason. You can tell Eddie Robson really knows his Beatles stuff, btw; for part of the audio, Mark provides a narration which turns out to be his equivalent of the 1970 Lennon Remembers interview, only unlike John, Mark's interviewer calls him out on the inconsistencies (which happen because the Doctor and the villain keep changing the timeline and hence also Mark's memories). Mark and James have a condensed split up era John and Paul argument ("We were in the studio nine hours, take after take after take, and then you said we still hadn't got it right!" versus "Someone had to hold the band together and it sure as hell wasn't you! You couldn't even be bothered to show up when Corky was recording his songs!"); the villain of the tale turns out to be ~~Allen Klein~~ Lenny Krieger, evil American manager extraordinaire (with an American accent that's a bit over the top, but that's okay, he turns out to be not really American); two of the fans get to play larger roles, one of the potentially lethal fanatic variety (named Sadie) and one of the enjoys-is-inspired-but-keeps-her-head-and-own-goals variety (named Rita), and if you haven't noticed they're both called after Beatles songs I'm disappointed. Lastly, the way the show uses the Paul-is-dead nonsense that was cooked up by a bored discjockey in 1969 and became a suburban legend had me rolling on the floor, because it's so clever, both on a Doylist and Watsonian level. (Also it serves the rl extremely creepy PiD crowd right.)

As to what happened in this timeline to the real Beatles: the villain's sinister scheme started by postponing one key historical event, the point at which Britain ended national service, which meant John, Paul and George had to do their time in the army. (Ringo didn't, for health reasons, but he never joined the band, either.) Which, as the Beatles in rl often remarked, would have ended their career before it ever began. Via Rita, the Doctor does find out what became of them in 1963. (John is in a band consisting of "Pete, Chaz and another Pete" - if you're a Beatles fan you know who they are supposed to be, btw, but it's not important to the story - which never went anyhere. Paul gave in to his father's demands to get a proper job though he's writing songs of his own in his spare time - "but he missed his point in time", comments the Doctor. George became an electrician's apprentice. Ringo is drumming for the Hurricanes.) But they're off stage for the rest of the tale, until the very end, when the timeline is back to the original and the Doctor can finally take Nyssa to that promised Beatles concert, so the story ends with the first few chords of an immediately identifiable song. :)

Because the Doctor when dashing about in the 60s has most of his interaction with Mark and James, Nyssa in Hamburg has most of hers with Corky, who is smitten with her (btw, can see both Nyssa/Ringo and Nyssa/George). And here's why the script is really good from a DW point of view: it uses both the fact Nyssa is a scientist (she figures out just who The Common Man really are that way) and her backstory, which I thought the show itself handwaved after Logopolis. At one point, Corky asks Nyssa whether if she's with a time traveller she can't return to her destroyed home planet before said planet's destruction. Nyssa: "No, I couldn't." Corky: "But you said..." Nyssa: "Oh, it's possible. But I couldn't." And the way Sarah Sutton says this second "I couldn't" has so much weight and sadness in it. Speaking of DW continuity, the Doctor mentions Susan a couple of times, and there is an absolutely golden explanation as to just which song Susan was listening to in An Unearthly Child.

In conclusion: two of my fannish loves together in a very enjoyable mix. Get thee to to the Big Finish website and download, gentle reader! With an audio like that, you know you should be glad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. .:)

Current Mood: enthralled
Current Location: Munich

Profile

selenak

June 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30

Page Summary

Active Entries

Syndicate

Style Credit

Style: Starflower for Mobility by branchandroot
Resources: Rounded Star 005

Page generated Jun. 26th, 2025 02:25 pm

|

Entries tagged with big finish

Expand Cut Tags

Doctor Who: The War Doctor

Doctor Who: Three Audios and a TV Episode

Big Finish Audios (both Torchwood and Doctor Who)

Cicero (Big Finish Series)

Things to do when you're stuck at home...

When River met the Master(s), and what they did next

Signs on the slow path (Doctor Who fanfiction)

Doctor Who (and Class) audios

January Meme: If Big Finish Uses Twelfth Doctor material...

The Diary of River Song (Series One)

"Damaged Goods" and "All Consuming Fire" (Doctor Who, Big Finish Audios)

"I was reading from cue cards"

Blimey!

Good news and more audio reviews

More links!

If you like Doctor Who and audio plays...

Seventh Doctor Audio Reviews and a link

Yet more Doctor Who audios

More Doctor Who audio adventures

Doctor Who: Fanfare for the Common Man