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| By: | John Carter, Nottingham |
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| Date: | Wednesday 9 November 2005 |
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| Rating: |   1 |
Really poor release this one.
| By: | Adam Summers, Lower Bank, NJ, USA |
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| Date: | Monday 14 November 2005 |
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| Rating: | 3 |
It's disappointing when the best compliment I can give a release is about its length. Clocking in at just shy of 80 minutes, this is the shortest Big Finish since they started the Doctor Who series. Had "Scaredy Cat" been any longer, this may have been the first Big Finish serial I may not have seen through.
The Doctor has little dialogue other than exposition, and most of his explanations really stretch credibility. Charley seems to be her plucky self, yet does little other than set up the second part cliffhanger. C'rizz gets the short stick in the story. He has two chances to shine, but both are glossed over (Once during what could have been a very intense conflict with the Doctor and the consequences of interfering with time. Maybe it's me but I think that a character who's come from a universe without time into a universe with time, a writer should be able to pull out some decent character conflict.)
The rest of the cast are simply generic, forgettable characters (the scientist with good intentions, the scientist who's doubtful, the mysterious alien, the over the top villain). The story is so by the numbers, the numbers have their own numbers to go through the motions. "Scaredy Cat" leaves little depth for a repeat listen.
| By: | Joe Ford, Eastbourne |
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| Date: | Tuesday 15 November 2005 |
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| Rating: | 1 |
That was a tedious mess, unoriginal to the last line and lacking a single decent performance to make the tired script bearable. Even the production, usually a plus for Big Finish is utterly bland. After the boundary stretching Terror Firma I was expecting the eighth Doctor series to continue to surprise but it turns out it wasn't the divergent universe that saw this series go down the pan, it was the creators of this company, who are producing some real duffers this year. They need to do something about this soon or I will take my buisness elsewhere, and if i'm feeling that way i'm sure others will be too.
| By: | Phil Ince, Mouth agape at your wastepipe |
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| Date: | Saturday 19 November 2005 |
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| Rating: | 1 |
There is no score of 0 therefore it isn't possible to score this item fairly. But please assume, despite the unity indicated, that the latest flushing from BFs endlessly streaming pipe is worthless.
Even shit can be recycled to encourage new life elsewhere. But what can we do with this?
Scaredy Cat appears to be an offcut from the abandoned failure of the Divergent Universe sequence. Humourless and of a banality previously unsuspected even by the low standards which Bog Flush exemplify, this is an embarassment.
This comes as a real surprise since it is directed by the exemplary Nigel Fairs. Fairs' work on the Faction Paradox series for bbv was everything Bog Flush might hope to be; beautifully cast, sharply-intelligent realisations of always interesting, sometimes glittering scripts. But even a director of Fairs' evident abilities is only able to do so much and with these materials, sadly that comes to precious little.
There are three outstanding aspects of this production.
Firstly, there is Doctor's vacuous sententiousness which is an embarassment when delivered by so smart a performer as Paul McGann; one cringes at almost every one of his lines. The author of this crude junk is clearly no philosopher and therefore has no wisdom to deliver through the Doctor's mouth.
Second, the entirely undifferentiated guest parts and their triteness;With only 4 guest speakers besides the unconvincing adult performing as a (presumably) spooky child, it would be fare to expect some differentiation of the parts but almost any of 3 researchers could deliver any of their comrades' lines. And the intended characters are smirking sociopathic villain, crudely-blinkered scientist, etc etc; the endless staple of Bog Flush productions.
Finally, the depth of this script's failure and its utter absence of merit comes into focus when the villain leaps in an instant from supposing that his will has stopped it from raining to presuming he can use thought to control to murder.
Unless it's C'rudd and the Doctor, of course, in which case, he can't (a word which one would somehow expect to find written as "carn't" if appearing in Schindler's dismal typing).
At that moment in this childish play, there is the possiblity given to develope some element of drama from a mad man discovering himself gifted with a superhuman power and the growing horror of what he might realise could be done with it. But the script runs straight ahead without interruption to its purposeless denouement.
Give up writing Schindler. You're embarassing yourself and us.
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 | Rubbish - not scaredy at all |
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The title says it all, poor plot, rambling, not development of the cast just flat.
| By: | Steve Broemer, Folkestone |
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| Date: | Saturday 18 March 2006 |
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| Rating: | 2 |
Nuff said
| By: | Doug, Pocono Summit, PA, USA |
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| Date: | Saturday 9 December 2006 |
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| Rating: | 4 |
Wow - this title has been totally trashed in these reviews!
I can't say I disagree to a great extent, but what I was going to say is that this story was not worse than The Twilight Kingdom, one of the divergent universe stories. I went over to look at the info on it again, and lo and behold - it too was written by Will Shindler. No wonder the bleakness of the storyline is familiar.
Well, Scaredy Cat actually kept my focused attention for a while, because at first I saw it as a simple (but rather miserable) story with well-designed suspense that kept me wondering what would happen. Then I began to note some elements that were very familiar to me. I'd heard this story before.
The real deal here is that Scaredy Cat is nearly a direct retelling of one of the first three Stranger videos by BBV - More Than a Messiah - in which Sophie Aldred plays the role that was adapted for this present title into the "elemental" Galayana. The disturbed apelike natives, the being with the link to the planet, the invading technological offworlders, the global upheaval, the Doctor/Stranger who befriends the elemental being... it was all in More Than a Messiah. A few little changes, and you have Scaredy Cat.
Still, I can't pan this one as badly as the others did.
And a possible explanation for how C'rizz could resist Flood: C'rizz is both a physical and psychic chameleon, and in the Doctor's presence, the Doctor's mind was actually more influential over him than Flood's was, since they have something of a history together now, and an established familiarity.
| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Thursday 10 June 2010 |
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| Rating: | 4 |
"Scaredy Cat" had possibilities, yes it did. However, it gets bogged down in the Gaia hypothesis for its "science" and gets further bogged down by an obvious, stock bad guy. It was just lazy writing more than anything else.
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| For once I agree with the main... |
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| By: | Matthew David Rabjohns, Bridgend, United Kingdom |
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| Date: | Tuesday 26 October 2010 |
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| Rating: | 2 |
Yes, for once the other reviewers are totally right about this story. It is not highly original, or even well paced, which is bad for a story thats hardly over an hour. And for once sadly, not Even Paul McGann can save this one. The characters are all bland and boring. The plot is weak and irrelevant, and doesnt really make a whole lot of sense to me. And with those woeful ape blokes all over the place. This is one of the few Big Finish tales that really is very bad indeed. I cant even think of anything that is memorable about this tale apart from after Will Shindlers first audio for Big finish, this is a massive let down. One doesnt know why this story was done. Gladly, this isnt often repeated to such bad effect from this point on with Big Finish, sigh of relief....
