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Reviews for Embrace the Darkness

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Very effective Indeed...

By:Matthew David Rabjohns, Bridgend, United Kingdom
Date:Wednesday 12 January 2011
Rating:   9

It really is so good to be given the chance to hear Paul McGann returning to the role of Doctor Who. He was such brilliance within that movie. (The movie for me was still a failure, but that was because of the script, not Paul's performance. He was the only real thing that made that movie bearable)

And what is more exciting is when you get a writer whose clever who can weave such an imaginative and gripping and in places genuinely quite horrific plot. And add to that mix a smaller cast so the characters all have so much more chance to show how three dimensional they are.

The twists and turns within this story come thick and fast, and India Fisher again is so brilliant as Charlie, she really did blend so well with Paul's Doctor. They were like toast and butter. I have immensely enjoyed their run of stories together.

The cliffhanger to episode one is really quite something. Yes, that would be rather too graphic I think for a screen tale. One is sickened just thinking about having your eyes melted out of their sockets. The Cimmerians are an effective race too, realised so well with their slightly freaky breezy vocal tone. The ingredients of this story all blend together nicely to give us an effective horror tale that follows on well from Seasons of Fear.

That the Doctor here is fallible adds just reality to his whole character. No one gets it right all the time. He's not God anyway at the end of the day. And this aspect of the script is handled sensitively and well for once in this almost flawless classic from veteran Nick Briggs. The sound score is also memorable and suitably different.

This is a good horror story, one can imagine how freaky it would be living in a place that's totally dark all the time. The climax to the tale for once I did have an inkling of, but this is in no way a bad thing. It was directed well, and was genuinely a happy ending to the four episodes. This didnt seem over two hours long at all. It just flew by. And that shows how good a story this is. (Just ditch all the OMGs and this would be one of the best stories of the whole of the Big Finish range, its up there with the Chimes Of Midnight and No Man's Land)

One wishes the BBC would have let Paul return to the role of the Doctor first before they roped in anyone new. It would have been quite brilliant to see him again. Im just glad that BFP have brought him back!!!!!



Darkness and Light

By:David Layton, Los Angeles, United States
Date:Thursday 3 October 2019
Rating:   7

Nick Briggs delivers another of his many base under siege stories. This one takes place mostly within a scientific base on a planet orbiting a sun that has mysteriously gone totally dark. The technicians are trying to start up artificial suns, when the whole base goes haywire and something takes away their eyes. The story belongs to the early phase of Big Finish in which the writers are foregrounding the sound medium in a highly self-conscious way. And what better way to do that than to have most of the characters most of the time either unable to see or groping around in darkness? The story also highlights the developing character of Doctor 8, a mix of Doctor 4's sense of wonder and tendency to be talking to himself even when talking to others, and Doctor 6 with his over-wrought sense of responsibility and a tendency toward grand-gesture self-sacrifice. The story has a few too many implausibilities for me, too many bits of magic dressed up in scientific garb.



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