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This book was one of the best doctor who books o have ever read. There are funny bits in it. I think this should be made into an eppisode it would be so good. I think its great the way Terrabce Dicks brought back one of the doctors ach-enemies and they were actually asking the doctor for help. This is a great book i have read more than 10 times and im only 12
It takes a while to get going, but this is a gripping read. The first few chapters, however, are full of too many continuity references which are unnecessary and distracting. However, once these are out of their system the true power of the novel is felt.
The Doctor entering his own future, not wanting to know, but not being able to avoid interfering is a genuinely new idea (the poor excuse for a story that is the Trial of a Timelord is simply not coherent enough to merit the title of 'idea'). Future timelords are frightening entities, and the Doctor has become a legend. It is brilliantly done. A terrific novel, but only once it gets going.
| What: | UNIT: Snake Head (UNIT audios) |
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| By: | Doug, Pocono Summit, PA, USA |
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| Date: | Sunday 22 April 2007 |
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| Rating: |   7 |
Though Snake Head is a very different story than Time Heals, and thus leaves the listener wondering what is to become of the loose ends left dangling there, what we have here is a solid, focused story, in contrast to the somewhat hyperactive, disjointed style of Time Heals. After a disturbingly disfigured dead body is found in the area, Dalton and Chaudrey eventually find themselves investigating the possibility that there is an Albanian vampire on the loose in Southend. It's a simple story, but it is well-written, well-acted, and really works for audio, whereas much of Time Heals did not. The writing and production makes for really good visualization, and there are some truly creepy moments near the end, as we experience the creature and its very foreign, blood-curdling strangeness.
In some ways, I wanted to give Snake Head a higher rating - it is a well-designed, well-executed audio production. What limits it is the story as a whole. Though the story is good, solid and easy to follow, with some good chemistry between the regulars, it's just not a particularly fantastic story. Oh, and by the way, the Brig is completely absent from this one.
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 | with a exception a great introduction |
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| What: | No Future (New Adventures novels) |
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| By: | John Reid, Upminster Essex |
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| Date: | Sunday 22 April 2007 |
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| Rating: | 9 |
Finishing The third arc of New adventures and the first that coulnd't have been used if the t.v show had continued, Cornells quest at that time for a Epic ultimate story is written from the point of view of The two assistants on one Hand Ace as Maniplative and prepared to be seen as devious as her mentor and on Benny's side camp ad Portentous, This was the first New Adventure I had read I knew there was a new companion I didnt know Ace had seen her partner die in Cornells previous Love and War(making this hard to follow), I didnt know There were Gallifrey invadors called Vardons. Celeverly acting on cold war paranoia put about by the Press in the 70's the idea of even the most serious yet anti establisment Doctor not getting the help of his old chums U.N.I.T and featuring his oldest Arch enemy The Monk plus an interesting setting of The Punk scene with references this is a neglected classic as new to Who in 1994 the fanzinie dated cyberpunk scene with tardis reality game and cybermen plus the rowing on the tardis were a great intro to me, Cornell admits the ending was rushed Hes Just rewrote Human nature for T.V perhaps this could make a great radio play
| What: | UNIT: Time Heals (UNIT audios) |
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| By: | Doug, Pocono Summit, PA, USA |
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| Date: | Sunday 22 April 2007 |
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| Rating: | 5 |
Though Time Heals features fine acting by the cast and some very nice sound production, at times I was not sure what I was supposed to be listening to, and for some long periods during the drama I felt that the plot had lost me. By the end, I understood what had just been going on, but this seemed like a story that needed visuals. The limitations of the audio format were quite apparent here. Lots of sirens, lots of running around, lots of quick and somewhat confusing scene changes. The effects of the time experiments are interesting and serve to entice the listener to return for more, to see how this will all develop, but if the next installments of this series don't get it together better, I think it would be easy to quickly lose interest.
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| Military Intelligence - not here. |
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| What: | The Eye of the Giant (Missing Adventures novels) |
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| By: | simon, Bristol |
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| Date: | Sunday 22 April 2007 |
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| Rating: | 6 |
This is a well written and well plotted novel. The King Kong-esque pastiche is fun (although its humorous potential is never quite developed to the full). I'm particularly fond of the series of endings. Just as you think the end has arrived, a new twist (normally of 'the future's changed, but now into what we wanted' variety). All this adds to the fun, and reminded me a bit of the various ways of ending 'Wayne's World'. It would have been fun to change 'now' more by interference in the past. This would, of course, bring the added joy that the Doctor was exiled to earth precisely because of such interference.
But The Eye of the Giant never reaches the heights it promises (or that Bulis attains elsewhere) because it never feels comfortable with the humour of the situations it sets up. A great shame, as there are some wonderful possibilities.
And the idea that Mike Yates worked his way up from the rank of Sargeant is so ludicrous as to be laughable. The army, even an international force like UNIT, simply doesn't work that way. Do some basic research, or just ask a soldier. A shame really, that such a seemingly little thing can grate all the way through the book and seriously undermine the whole.
Television scores don't get much better than this! This collection of Murray Gold's first work for Doctor Who puts most cinema scores to shame. It features both the Tennant opening theme and and a ( highly compressed ) full length CD version.
A near-faultless re-creation of Dudley Simpson's original scores. Convincing and faithful to the broadcast versions but with the benefit of stereo. Used on the Pyramids of Mars DVD special features.
This one was very tounge in check and for the most part held together as a fun story.
Well paced with some good quips without becoming too silly.
Although the aliens were a little too far fetched over all not too bad
Clever of World Distributors to choose a photo of the main character not in costume. Bet a lot of thought went into that. About the same amount as went into the stories, I imagine. Bad,bad, bad, bad...and yet we kids still kept asking for next years annual. Aren't people strange?
What a wonderfully deranged volume this is. It has been said that if you fed someone magic mushrooms whilst keeping them locked up in a cellar for a year, they might end up writing something like this at the end of their ordeal.
That seems to be pretty fair comment. There are characters called the Doctor, Harry and Sarah but that is about the only point of contact with the series as far as I can see. Luminous dolphins, eye-spiders and talking chimpanzees await the brave souls who enter this volume. Imagine that you're 8 years old again by reading this volume on Xmas morning and thinking "What the &@!£ is this about!" They don't make 'em like this any more (thank God).
I'm really surprised that He Jests at Scars... has received such a low rating here. To my mind, it is by far the most unbound of the Unbound series so far, and it is fascinating. But I guess appreciation of it depends on whether or not you like Michael Jayston as the Valeyard.
The story jumps around a lot, moving backward and forward through time after an altered ending of The Trial of a Timelord. In He Jests at Scars..., the Sixth Doctor has lost and is no more, and the Valeyard has been let loose on the universe. The events at the end of The Trial of a Timelord and shortly after it are explained, and then we have the first of many paradoxes to come - Mel, though she has memories of adventures with the Doctor, has been prevented from ever meeting him by the Doctor/Valyard's new companion, Ellie. The Doctor/Valeyard then proceeds to wreak havoc on the established timeline, revisiting old foes and familiar situations, and changing them completely with reckless abandon, as he seeks to gain ultimate power and do all of the things he never allowed himself to do as the Doctor. And the threads of time begin to unravel, as it seems that Time itself has had enough of his interference and is attempting to eliminate him. It is apparent that there was a good reason that the Doctor avoided willfully changing established history, as seen for example in his reaction to Tegan's and Nyssa's request to go back and save Adric at the beginning of Time Flight. One of the first things the Doctor/Valeyard has done is to get the Time Lords out of the way, so now it is up to 'Lady Melanie Jane Bush' to stop him.
Michael Jayston's Valeyard is fantastic here, scripted in the same style as seen in The Trial of a Timelord, complete with the illustrious, lugubrious linguism harping on things such as spurious morality and such... that was his trademark there. Jayston and Langford both shine throughout this production, and the rest of the cast are excellent as well.
The heart of the story is an examination of the identity of the Valeyard. His actions seem to prove that he is not the Doctor, yet... he is still dependent on the Doctor's past for his own existence. And his denial of the Doctor's sensibilities is what ultimately threatens his own continued existence.
The one weakness I found in the story is the question of just how the Valeyard was able to draw creative power from the technically non-existant Matrix to contruct his monstrous Chronopolis at the heart of the time-space vortex. The explanation of its origin just doesn't quite make it, but then again, at that point, we are in a general state of such extremely fluid reality anyway that the end result, whether or not Chronopolis actually existed, is the same.
Making great use of the 'Unbound' format, this one comes very close to a 10 in my book.
| What: | Night Thoughts (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | Doug, Pocono Summit, PA, USA |
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| Date: | Friday 6 April 2007 |
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| Rating: | 2 |
I was skeptical about whether I'd actually want to listen to this one before starting it, and I didn't read the reviews here first. Imagine my surprise to find that by the end of disc 1 I was actually quite impressed with it. The rating for disc 1 would be an 8 - excellent sound design, a dark, claustrophobic atmosphere, and a suspenceful whodunnit. We have a very wet, cold island, a strange house complete with atmospheric cellar and attic and a mysterious hooded night figure, a long disused chapel building nearby, and a freaky teenaged girl. The trouble is that all that was built up in the first two episodes is destroyed by the last two episodes. Disc 2 would get a rating of 1, and the fall of the story in its second half all but destroys the value of the first half.
The previous reviews state the situation pretty well. The second half of the story is utter chaos. All of the mystery that has been built up is unraveled in what seems the worst possible ways, turning the suspenseful, atmospheric mystery first into a bad soap opera, then into a bad sci-fi B-movie, and finally, at the very end, into a really nasty slasher story. Yuck!
It seems that my first instinct about Night Thoughts was on target.
I can see how listeners could think very highly of this production, but I personally didn't find A Storm of Angels to be quite so outstanding as most others have rated it.
The "Unbound" concept is fantastic, and allows for a great deal of additional creativity with some fresh and interesting takes on the older ideas, and allows the use of fresh and talented actors in the key roles. In addition, the sound design here was superb - particularly the sounds of the gems and gem creatures, and also the time ring activation sound. The actors' fine perfomances were recorded and mixed quite clearly as well. All of this lends the production a very professional feel.
However, I did not feel that the casting of Ian Hallard as Zeuro was a good choice. The actor, and by extension the character, was notably weak, and this became increasingly problematic as the story's progression turned him into the envoy of the crystalline beings. I also have mixed feelings about Geoffrey Bayldon as the Doctor. Though delivers an excellent alternate First Doctor, he also tends to sound, frankly, as if he could keel over at any moment.
As to the story itself, there's no doubt that this is a product of Marc Platt's mind. That can be good or bad, and in this case, I'm unsure about the overall product. I've been a big fan of some of Platt's work - probably much of it - and it can be really weird (like titles such as Timewyrm: Revelation, Time's Crucible, and Lungbarrow). As with some of Platt's other works, at the end of A Storm of Angels, I was left sort of wondering what just happened - does this story feature not only an alternate Doctor but now also an accepted alternate Earth timeline? Did the Doctor really alter Earth's history so wildly? Did this really take place in an altered "original" universe or in a parallel universe? Why were the asteroids from the asteroid belt sentient? Why and how did they give the appearance of angels? Where did the shewstone come from? (Btw, I must say that the shewstone was superbly voiced by Ian Brooker, who sounded quite a bit like Peter Pratt's Master from The Deadly Assassin.) In addition to these gripes, the story was just too long. It definitely dragged during the second CD, and it felt like there was a lot of wasted time when nothing significant was added to the storyline.
But these are not serious problems. Overall, A Storm of Angels is definitely an entertaining production that stretches the mind somewhat more than most of the standard stories that feature the established Doctors.
Sound and emotion - this one has come up a number of times with big finish so nothing new. But the evil as really a side issue to the story which was really around the doctor and his companions. I didn't really believe this one and it didn't take you anywhere.
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| The start of something special |
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Part two follows on at pace, maintaining the strong plot and energy of the first. A new travel partner with a subplot great, I love her attitude.
All I can say is if you love Daleks you will love this. Blood ofthe Daleks unlike many other Dalek stories isn't stuffed with screaming daleks that you end up turning the volume down. The Daleks should be used correctly to give balance to the plot not just shoved into every seen screaching and ranting endlessly. A great intro for a new travel buddy - a must listen
At first I couldn't help snigger at the idea of a pig in a secret room eating everything. However I was strangly drawn into the sillyness and came out of it enjoying the whole thing. Like no mans land it cast the reflection back on mankind out our own weakness. I enjoyed it.
I waited and waited for the monsters, listened hard to find out who the real bad guy was, only to find out that man is the bad guy.
What a great plot after all in real life we are the only monsters.
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| Great start and middle but no finish |
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This had a classic start, had you thinking had twists and turns mad me think. But then we met the aliens and it all tumbled into a weak joke.
Never mind better luck next time. I give it 6 for 66% of the story, otherwise it would have been 1.
