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 | Another Holiday Goes Wrong |
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| What: | One Mile Down (Tenth Doctor Adventures audios) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Sunday 22 August 2021 |
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| Rating: |   7 |
"One Mile Down" fits well into the middle of the Donna season. Here, The Doctor and Donna are very palsy, with Donna constantly taking the mickey out of The Doctor. The story is also rather obvious in its political messaging. The pair go to visit an underwater city, once a great wonder, but now turned into a chintzy tourist attraction by a corporation operating as a quasi-official branch of the government. The local economy is depressed, totally dependent upon tourism. Someone, however, is sabotaging the systems, causing leaks in the shielding protecting the system. It's only a matter of time before things get out of hand. Like much of Davies-era DW, it's brisk, entertaining, and only a little preachy.
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| Standard Doctor Who in Gory Detail |
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| What: | Storm Harvest (BBC Past Doctor novels) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Sunday 22 August 2021 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
After the experimental "Matrix," Perry & Tucker return to more normal Doctor Who territory with "Storm Harvest." Doctor 7 and Ace go on holiday to beach resort planet Coralee. What could go wrong? Well, apparently there was once an ancient civilization there that built a nearly indestructible bio-weapon called the Krill. No, not the tiny shrimp-things that whales eat. This Krill are individual mechanisms of pure destruction that cannot be reasoned with. It turns out that a race of rugby-player sized humanoids called the Cythosi have somehow learned about these Krill and want to reactivate them to use in their own war. The first two parts of the novel are the exploration parts, where The Doctor and Ace gradually uncover what is going on. The second two parts are the bloody denouement. It becomes one big gore fest driven by not one, not two, but three mad men (well one a Cythosi, one a dolphin, and one a Cythosi who thinks he's human, or sometimes not), each of whom want more or less total destruction of everyone else. I have some quibbles with some of the basic science that Perry and Tucker really ought to have known about, such as that nuclear reactors do not blow up, and probably in the far future, if they are still using nuclear reactors by then, the likelihood of blowing up would be next to 0. Another is that objects travelling in space do not arc. The novel has a number of interesting bits, and goes a long way toward straightening out the relationship between Doctor 7 and Ace. Still, the ending is too frantic, too desperate.
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| A wonderful return to form from Chris! |
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This boxset is a pretty wonderful return of the 9th Doctor. 3 connected stories to bring back 9. All 3 stories are really good, with Food Fight being the best of the set!
| What: | Solitaire (The Companion Chronicles audiobooks) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Monday 9 August 2021 |
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| Rating: | 8 |
This audio differs from most other Companion Chronicles stories in being a 2-hander drama rather than a narrated story. Charlie finds herself in a toyshop, but cannot remember who she is, why she is there, and what she is meant to do. The Toymaker runs the shop. She must play his game, but she does not know the rules or the objective of the game. It's as if Harold Pinter or Samuel Beckett were writing Doctor Who. The interaction between India Fisher and David Bailie works very well. Some of the dialogue gets repetitious, and Charley seems far too clever at points. However, overall this audio is very good.
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| Might Have Better as Full Cast Audio |
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This story is a typical Companion Chronicles endeavor. The companion is narrating the story, there is one other voice actor, and the story's focus is squarely on the companion, with The Doctor pretty much out of the picture for most the duration. Interestingly, this one manages to have a good reason, revealed at the end, for both the companion as narrator and the presence of the other voice, one integral to the story and not merely down to a visitor from the outside. Eddie Robson has not done so well in providing reasons for The Doctor being largely missing. For some reason, he is negotiating a conference trying to avert a war, a bit obviously active for The Doctor, and so cannot devote any attention to whatever is going on with Bennie. She is there for an archaeological conference, when she hears about a "forbidden language," and so just has to stick her nose in and make it unforbidden. The plot has too many moments where something happens merely because the writer needs it to happen. It's a nice little jaunt for the Doctor 7 & Bennie pairing.
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| Interesting Morality Play |
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| What: | Memories of a Tyrant (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Monday 9 August 2021 |
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| Rating: | 8 |
"Memories of a Tyrant" concerns this question: How should we act about political atrocities when they have become only memories and historical records? The story goes at this question in a sideways fashion, being part whodunit and part spy thriller. The story is that Doctor 6 and Peri have been summoned to a space facility for research into how to recover and restore true memories. This facility is now down to a skeleton staff and on lockdown because the researchers are now working on only one subject, an old man who may or may not be a former political tyrant who destroyed whole planets for reasons unknown. Various factions and interests outside the facility are keen to know for certain who he his, not to get to the "truth," but to use the information for their own political and/or personal benefit. It's an interesting premise. Peri in this story is especially well written - loyal, honest, determined, and cleverer than she thinks she is. A couple of things keep this story from being really outstanding. One is the necessity of keeping it to a small cast. This limits the scale on which events can occur and creates some improbable events. Another is that the whodunit plot sidetracks the main story at several points. Still, this is a generally satisfying story.
| What: | Matrix (BBC Past Doctor novels) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Monday 9 August 2021 |
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| Rating: | 6 |
Everything about "Matrix" is "not quite." The story, such as it is, follows what happens when some mysterious magician type uses the TARDIS telepathic circuit to take over The Doctor's mind and turn him into a savage murderer. The magician uses something like golems, but mainly just to chase people and destroy things. Eventually, the magician gets The Doctor to land the TARDIS in late 19th-century London, and to turn him into Jack the Ripper. The magician also tries to get Ace to become the Cheetah person lurking around in her mind. Out of desperation, The Doctor removes the telepathic circuit from the TARDIS, throws most of his consciousness into it, then hurls it into the Thames before running off not knowing who he is. Oh, and somehow The Doctor is partly saved by The Wandering Jew. There are plenty of other bits to this, including an abused mentally retarded young man, a circus run by a criminal mastermind, and a harsh, unforgiving vicar. These elements do not quite come together. One of the key problems is that for over 100 pages the story keeps ticking along without providing any clues as to what is driving all this, who the evil magician is, why The Doctor is in such a terrified frenzy about it all, and so on. Things happen, but no information emerges from them. The ending is a big show down in which The Doctor does something, we are never told quite what he does, to resolve the situation. And what about The Wandering Jew? Why is this character even in this story? I think that, for this novel, Perry and Tucker had an idea of what they wanted to happen at the end, but not a clear sense of how they were going to get there.
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| Sequel Not As Good As Original |
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That Johnny Byrne had submitted a sequel to his famous "The Keeper of Traken" script was well known. I think the reason it did not get made for TV, which would have been in the Davison period, was that John Nathan-Turner deemed it too expensive and difficult to produce. The Big Finish people managed to get a hold of two synopses of the story that Johnny Byrne wrote. Byrne died in 2008, and for some reason a copy of the full script was not available. The duty of turning these synopses into an audio story was given to Jonathan Morris, who does a serviceable job. There is a bit more humor in the final version than probably would have been in the original. Big Finish assigned the story to Colin Baker's Doctor, and Morris does well in giving Baker's Doctor a more confrontational attitude toward authority than we would likely have seen with Davison's Doctor. Ultimately, the story itself is mainly "The Mummy" set on another planet. There are a few remnants of "The Keeper of Traken," such as a ruling elite that "begs conference" with a computer system that maintains a protective shield of peace and harmony. The Melkur are back, several of them, and this time as themselves rather than The Master pretending to be one. My main complaint is the repetitious insistence that the Melkur and their leader, Malador, are sooooooo evil. They are pure, all-pervading evil. What does that actually mean? And is it convincing if, in the end, Malador is just another would-be galactic dictator who enjoys hurting people? The production of the story is very good, keeping intact the feel and sounds of mid-1980s Doctor Who.
| What: | Ringpullworld (The Companion Chronicles audiobooks) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Monday 26 July 2021 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
One of the more interesting Paul Magrs scripts. This one still has some of his usual bits of pointless whimsy, such as a universe in a can of beans, and indulgent use of his favorite word - benighted. Still, these do not interrupt the story too much. Since Magrs really likes the act of narration, the Companion Chronicles format works well here. The story gets relayed through dialogue and trading of narration between Turlough and Huxley, a being from a race of "novelizers" who latch onto people and then tell those people's stories. This idea allows Magrs to sneak in some philosophizing about the nature of narrative and the need for storytelling. Mark Strickson is also an excellent narrator. Some people might be put off by an ending without resolution, though ending this story in that way makes some degree of sense.
| What: | The Emerald Tiger (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Tuesday 13 July 2021 |
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| Rating: | 4 |
This ridiculous mess of a story pays homage to the episodic adventure stories of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, to Kipling, Rider Haggard, ER Burroughs, and the like. So, it's rollicking adventure all the way from one danger to another. Those who like that sort of thing will probably enjoy this one. The abundance of coincidence, the lack of coherent logic, and the silliness of many of its parts just did not work well for me.
| What: | Survival (Target novelisations) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Saturday 3 July 2021 |
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| Rating: | 6 |
"Survival" was the final story in the regular run of Doctor Who. It has all the elements of the transformation that script editor Andrew Cartmell made to Doctor Who. The story is more fantasy than science fiction. It concentrates its narrative focus on the companion Ace more than on The Doctor. And it has just a bit historical kitsch, in this case in the form of Midge's transformation into a leather-clad, sunglass-wearing, 1950s style biker. Rona Munro's novelization of her script starts in Terrance Dicks fashion, being mostly a faithful and unimaginative transcription of the TV script, written for an audience about 12 years old. However, the narrative picks up about halfway in, with the writing level rising and the novelistic touches more apparent. Curiously, Munro leaves out the most memorable speeches from the TV broadcast. Perhaps these had been added by Cartmel and she felt no attachment to them. The novelization, then, is serviceable.
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| A sublime blustery adventure in Scotland |
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| What: | The Grey Man of the Mountain (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | Matthew David Rabjohns, Bridgend, United Kingdom |
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| Date: | Tuesday 29 June 2021 |
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| Rating: | 10 |
What awaits the TARDIS team in Ben MacDui?
I am so glad that Big Finish recently seem to have acquired a lovely new sect of superb female writers. Lizbeth myles delivers a cracker of a story here in The Grey Man of the Mountain. I am a sucker for all things snow and ice and mountains so this story had to be a purchase for me. I can easily say it didn't disappoint at all either. In fact this story highlights everything that I love about Big Finish.
First mention has to go to the superb sound design on this one. The feel of the Scottish Highland mountains is admirably supplied in a sublime soundscape and score. It evokes instant claustrophobia, which is really hard to get on audio but somehow Big Finish always manage these sort of sound scapes with consummate ease.
Then we have the unequivocal delight of hearing John Culshaw deliver his brilliant channelling of Nicholas Courtney's Brigadier. it is touching and brought a lump to my throat hearing John's remarkable rendition of Nick. John is just so good that it is truly like the Brig is back with us again for the duration of a frankly superb story.
Sylvester McCoy is Scottish too so its great to hear him as the Doctor in a Scottish setting too. And as ever he is aided no end by the remarkable talents of Sophie Aldred as Ace. Oh i could wax lyrical on just how awesome Ace is as a character and how well she and the Seventh Doctor work together. They really are a legendary double act and the more stories they do together for Big Finish the more I love and adore them.
I also love the wonderful character of Kirsty. She is fantastically portrayed by Lucy Goldie who gives her character a very lovable sense of warmth and maybe even slight naivety. But she takes a shine to Ace and its so great to hear them braving the elements together. Lizbeth's grasp of character is extraordinary in this story. every character is full on and beefy and well conceived. They truly pull you into the events of the story and make you feel bad for them when things start to go awry and amiss on the mountain.
The Grey Man of the Mountain is yet another in the pantheon of wickedly good seventh Doctor adventures. its nice to see him not in quite such a manipulative mood as in some other stories. In fact this story gives him something interesting to handle and Sylvester as ever is remarkable in the role.
This is definitely the kind of claustrophobic story I would love to hear more of from Big Finish. This is the kind of story I will easily find myself listening to again and again. It really is that good.
| What: | Memory Lane (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Monday 28 June 2021 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
Memory Lane is another false reality story. This seems pretty clear pretty early. The question is really why this false reality exists. The resolution is interesting because it turns out not to be the kind of evil plot that we are used to. It's amusing in places, especially in the exchanges between C'rizz and Kim Kronostska. It's not a brilliant story, but certainly worth listening to.
| What: | The Curse of Fenric (Target novelisations) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Friday 18 June 2021 |
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| Rating: | 8 |
"The Curse of Fenric" is probably the highest regarded episode of the McCoy era of Doctor Who. It maintained a consistent atmosphere of anxiety, had an intriguing puzzle, and well developed characters. Ian Briggs' novelization of his script adds quite a bit to all of that. It is probably the best Doctor Who script novelization. Briggs writes this as a novel, and while he sticks pretty closely to the script in plot and much of the dialogue, he is not too bothered with making an exact match. Where using novelistic touches would strengthen the narrative, he uses them. The story itself is just on the edge of what we might consider "Doctor Who" to be. It is much more a Gothic horror story of insidious evil, ancient curses, and reanimated corpses than it is science fiction. It's more William Hope Hodgson than John Wyndham. The few science-fictional touches that are there are mostly just window dressing. Briggs adds some background chapters in different narrative styles to fill in some of the missing information from the TV shows. There is still a big, gaping hole to all of this, and that is how Ace is incapable of recognizing her beloved grandmother even if it is the grandmother from 40 years earlier. How Ace's backstory fits into the generational Viking curse never escapes the mist in which it is enshrouded. Also, Briggs adds a coda ending of what possibly happens to Ace years later, but it does not quite fit either the novel or Doctor Who continuity. Still, there is far more good than bad about this novelization.
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| Good Story in Baker Style |
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| What: | The Pyralis Effect (The Companion Chronicles audiobooks) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Monday 14 June 2021 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
The Pyralis Effect has Romana II mostly on her own for the first half. The story itself would fit well in late 70s Doctor Who. The Doctor and Romana land on a seemingly abandoned space ship. Romana discovers an insane android and soon, she is embroiled in an experiment gone wrong scenario when the ship's crew accidentally open a gateway to a transdimensional prison, releasing the dangerour Pyralis. The story operates on two levels, one the put the Djinni back in the bottle level, and the other the who done it level. Sadly, time did not allow the story to go deeper into several areas that really should have been explored.
| What: | Something Inside (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Wednesday 26 May 2021 |
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| Rating: | 6 |
Big, gaping holes in plausibility. So, Doctor and crew arrive inside a prison for former soldiers with augmented psychic powers. Having served their purpose, the psychs are simply rounded up and stuck inside "The Cube" because they now pose a supposed threat to society. Interesting enough idea. Added to this, The Cube is run by two people - Rawden, the man who "made" the psychs, and his pet torturer Mr. Twyst. If you thought that the allegory of those names is more obvious than the presence of air, you would not be wrong. Rawden is a very worried man because something inside The Cube is killing off the psychs, and he doesn't know what it is. If something is killing the psychs and it isn't him, he wants to know. Here are a few of the gaping holes. First, this prison is run by just two, that's right, two people. Where is the staff? The Cube has levels, so certainly should house more than just the four psychs we run across. Where are the canteen and toilet facilities? We are led to believe that Rawden made the psychs, but he is technological ignoramus, so how did he do it? The Brain Worm that eats people's minds and leaves gaping holes in The Doctor's memories seems to have taken a few bites out of the plot of this.
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| Decent Far Edge of the Universe Story |
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| What: | White Ghosts (Fourth Doctor Adventures audios) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Monday 17 May 2021 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
"White Ghosts" has many elements that we know well from the long history of Doctor Who. Doctor 4 and Leela find themselves way way out where even the TARDIS has trouble navigating. There, a scientific station studying a strange planetoid is more than just a scientific study. There are shades of "Planet of Evil" here. Tied to the plot is an environmentalist message and an interesting way to revisit The Doctor's ethics. It doesn't break new ground, and does get dragged by a few bits of preposterousness, but overall "White Ghosts" is pretty entertaining.
| What: | Ghost Light (Target novelisations) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Saturday 15 May 2021 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
"Ghost Light" the TV serial suffered from two major problems: 1) That it was a 4-part idea stuffed into a 3-part serial, and 2) Marc Platt's method of never revealing significant information directly. Thus, on TV, "Ghost Light" came across as a mulligan stew of ideas and set pieces with few apparent connections. Platt's novelization of his script provides much of the missing information and a few missing scenes that help give the story some sense of design. Platt has mainly tried to write an allegory of evolution set in a Victorian haunted mansion that is more like a madhouse. There are many juicy ideas and clever bits. It still does not quite come together, and large holes remain. Just how is Josiah Samuel Smith able to hypnotize or otherwise take over the minds of the people in this house, and do so almost effortlessly? Why is Smith so obsessed with the idea that Control is evil? Why does Control start evolving, and why now? What kind of superbeing is Light that sets about cataloguing all life, yet is unaware of and refuses to acknowledge that evolution is a rule of life? So many questions remain unanswered.
| What: | Battlefield (Target novelisations) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Friday 7 May 2021 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
The second Doctor Who script from Ben Aaronovitch was a disappointment after the well designed "Remembrance of the Daleks." In rough outline, "Battlefield" is quite similar. It has two contending alien factions (in this case from a parallel universe) that should not be on Earth fighting a battle on Earth to capture an object of great power. It also has The Doctor as somehow guardian or otherwise responsible for this artifact. Unfortunately, the formula was not as effective the second time. One reason is that the motives of the factions, and who is on whose side, are not always clear. This had been a problem in "Remembrance," but becomes a major problem in "Battlefield." More importantly, the background is not as carefully worked out, creating huge gaps in the plot, leaving the viewer wondering just why things are happening in the way they are happening. Plus, the issue on which the plot hangs, that of world-destroying power (nuclear weapons) being carelessly managed for the personal gain of the powerful, arrives late in this script; whereas, the issue in "Remembrance" of racism is clear throughout. The biggest problem, though, is the attempt to recreate the King Arthur legends in Doctor Who terms. While it had been long a fan wet-dream to have The Doctor as Merlin, when it came to actually making that connection, it came across as artificial, forced, and too tiresomely obvious to bother with.
Marc Platt's novelization of the script goes a long way to fixing some of the most troublesome problems of the script. Most importantly, many of the missing explanations that would have made the TV version less of a muddied mess are in the novel. Thus, the reader finally understands that clearly the Arthur-related characters come from a parallel universe in which there is a strange mix of technology and magic, that Morgaine's magic is not as effective in our dimension than in hers, that Excalibur is more than just a sword, how the future Doctor/Merlin may have escaped being frozen by Morgaine, and more. It also explains why The Doctor is so interested in names, such as Winifred and Ancelyn. Still, Platt loves revealing things obscurely (a trait common in his scripts for Big Finish audios), and so the reader gets information through point of view of such things as the TARDIS and the sword, or through what appear to be throwaway bits of dialogue.
In the end, "Battlefield" as a novel is still a flawed story, but is much more enjoyable and sensible than the TV original.
| What: | Time Works (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Tuesday 4 May 2021 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
Time Works is an odd little item from Steve Lyons. It has an interesting premise of the Doctor and companions stuck in a time between times, as in The Space Museum, and then one getting separated from the others back in the normal course of events. The mystery is what makes this society tick. Everyone is obsessed with time and being useful, and their entire vocabulary is fitted around clock metaphors. They fear The Clockwork Men, whom they never see, though they see the effects. It's a world where nothing fits quite right - a medieval society with bits of technology from later eras, seemingly random excisions of people from time, and so on. The payoff at the end drags this one down a bit. Not only is it disappointing that it's just a mad computer running everything, but also there are too many gaps in the how and why. I kept thinking of the obvious questions to put to the computer that the Doctor never states: What do you mean by "completion"? What is the goal of the project? How will you know when you're done? I think that drama is not Lyons' best medium, as his novels are so much more thought through than the dramas.
