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Doctor Who (and Class) audios
Apr. 4th, 2019 10:31 amIt'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 ofRuritania 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.
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
