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Reviews for The Architects of History

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Falls at the final hurdle

By:Writingbluebear, jersey
Date:Tuesday 16 March 2010
Rating:   7

Expectations for the final of the trilogy were high, being left after a strong cliff hanger from the previous episode.

Architects one its own is a classic doctor who, moonbase, aliens, invasions. Enjoyble but as an end to the trilogy it falls flat loosing its way.



Amazing, Epic, Daring

By:Doug, Pocono Summit, PA, USA
Date:Monday 31 May 2010
Rating:   9

Yikes! We've missed out on a lot of action between the end of Survival of the Fittest and the beginning of The Architects of History.

Architects is a crazy, wicked time paradox story that takes the Nazis where they've never been before - we now have a Galactic Reich with a department of temporal affairs, headed up by Auberst Elizabeth Kline! I'm not a fan of alternate universe Nazi stories, or any Nazi stories, but trust me - this is a good story. It's 2044, and some version of the Doctor is Kline's prisoner on a Moonbase. There's a whole potential multi-story arc in here which has not been taken advantage of (tut-tut, Big Finish), and at this point, Kline has reshaped Earth's history and near future into quite an amazing state. But suddenly and inexplicably, an attack begins that they should've seen coming, but didn't.

Yes, the aliens are ruthless walking armored sharks. Somehow, that didn't bother me here. Maybe it's partly because they weren't nearly as campy as they could've been, and maybe it's partly because their vocal effects are pretty good.

The causality here is so twisted that I had to listen to part one again after the end of the story, and after doing so, it still really doesn't make sense. And yet, again... this didn't stop Architects from being one heck of a good story for me. Added to this is the somewhat surprising secret of Rachel's, which I won't mention here, and the hidden but apparently implied role the Time Lords have played behind the scenes, as a setup to clean up what's been going on, which is revealed, apparently, in the resolution. There's so much in here that it makes for a dense, real thinker of a story, which I found quite satisfying.

I'd say The Architects of History is on par with the best stories of the new TV series. But what a missed opportunity for Big Finish - they could've gotten so much more mileage out of this story arc before closing it off.



Only one thing wrong....

By:Matthew David Rabjohns, Bridgend, United Kingdom
Date:Wednesday 21 July 2010
Rating:   9

Steve Lyons is a really good writer for Doctor Who. He seems to know exactly how to make me really interested in everyone of his tales for Big Finish. Competent and believable tales with big themes running throughout. This tale really feels like an epic ending to the Klein trilogy.

And at last we get the brilliant shark heads! The selachians were my fav monster in Steve's previous novels The Murder Game and The Final Sanction. They could and should have been included in the original series. Pity they were thought of after it had already been stupidly removed from our screens. They are a very brutish and appetising race.

What also grabs the attention is the usual likeable characters that Steve pens. Rachel and her friend are two rather sad individuals. You feel genuinely upset at their fate towards the end of the story.

I am sad though that this is the last story of the Klein trilogy. This could have gone on for so much longer. Tracey was brilliant as Klein. Despite the fact that she is nazi you cant help but find her not the usual 2d ranter youd expect a nazi to be characterised as. This was just taking off as a brilliant story arc and then it comes crashing to a halt.

And the final scene is actually very confusing for me. So what happened after the Doc took Klein away once more in his TARDIS? Are we supposed to believe she joined UNIT? Or is it a totally new timeline that the Doc has fiddled with? I find this last scene confusing in what is otherwise a brilliant and exciting tale. Can someone explain it to me cause I think I may be a bit dumb...



The Reich Falls Again

By:David Layton, Los Angeles, United States
Date:Tuesday 23 July 2019
Rating:   7

I find Steve Lyons to be a better novelist than script writer. The novel form works for him because he can give his ideas room to breathe. In this audio drama, though, too many things happen too quickly, making much of the story a rather standard base under siege tale. That is too bad, because it could have been much more. The idea is that Klein, having successfully stolen the Doctor's TARDIS, has gotten exactly what she wanted. She is able to nip back in time, re-write history, prevent disasters, and allow the glorious 1000 year Reich to be real. But, there is something niggling at the back of her mind, something is just not quite right about it all. So, it's off to the moonbase in 2044 (exactly a century after her little adventure at Colditz) to interview the prisoner, aka The Doctor, one more time. Unfortunately for her, she doesn't know which Doctor from which time line this is. That is a brilliant setup. The possibilities for following the story of Klein's repeated attempts to undo her mistakes while the web of time becomes undone strand by strand would have been such a great story. Instead, Lyons has opted for plan B, which is that one of the alternate Doctors has made a desperate plan to use the Selacians (one of Lyons' creations from his novels) to attack the moonbase using time technology that the Doctor gave them, so that the Doctor can decommission Klein's TARDIS and remove Klein from time. Unfortunately, this Doctor can only guess at what the other Doctor had planned, so things go very wrong indeed. As base under siege stories go, it's not bad. It's just that Lyons left behind the more interesting story to pursue this one.



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