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| What: | The Myth Makers (TV episode audio soundtracks) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Thursday 22 June 2006 |
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| Rating: |   7 |
The first of Donald Cotton's irreverant takes on history is much better than the lamentable "The Gunfighters." Here, since not much is known about the actual Trojan War, Cotton can play with events, using realism to undercut the epic. Character reactions are very much like readers' reactions to The Iliad. Cassandra is annoying and everyone but her thinks so. Good stuff, that. On the other hand, there is also a severe problem in the plotline involving Vicki. First, of course, we have the love at first sight bit, which is rarely convincing, and less so given the thousands of years of knowledge separating Vicki from Troilus. Second, there is what we know happens to the Trojan women after the fall - most are sold into slavery and prostitution. Having the couple escape with Aeneas's party just is not convincing. Third, the various stories involving Troilus and Cressida make it clear that Cressida is older than Troilus, a widow, and ultimately betrays him to save herself the fate that befalls the other Trojan women. Probably, it would have been better to have Vicki leave in the midst of The Daleks' Masterplan, and save the weird Katarina interlude.
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 | Keep The Happy Pills, Lose The Crabs |
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| What: | The Macra Terror (TV episode audio soundtracks) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Thursday 22 June 2006 |
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| Rating: | 6 |
The Macra Terror is by turns intriguing and cliched. On the one hand, the society that is just too happy to be true is interesting in itself. Clearly, brainwashing of some sort has to happen, and that Ben gets brainwashed into it provides some good drama. The bad part is that all of this is down to some paranoid crabs. Pushing off the responsibility for faults in human society by saying it is caused by an outside influence simply ducks the writer's responsibility to investigate the main idea. While it might not be "Doctor Who" enough without a demonstrable baddy, in this case the story probably would have improved without one.
| What: | Galaxy 4 (TV episode audio soundtracks) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Thursday 22 June 2006 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
Galaxy Four has several interesting ideas to keep it going. One is that a society run by women will in the end not automatically be more loving and virtuous than one run by men. Another is that outward appearance bears no correspondence to personal virtue. In other words, Galaxy Four is effective in conveying its anti-prejudice theme by showing that prejudices run in several directions, not just the usual brands of racism and sexism. Its defects are that the situation of the story makes it difficult to sustain for four parts, so that we get a drawn out hostage scenario merely by changing hostages midway through.
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| Entertaining, But Overrated |
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| What: | The Web of Fear (TV episode audio soundtracks) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Thursday 22 June 2006 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
Considered one of the "classic" lost stories, The Web of Fear is probably a classic because most of it is missing. There is not much need to rehash the story as it is well-known. Its virtues include solid performances from the regulars, a convincing performance by Nicholas Courtney, and some very tense scenes. Some of the problems involve the main rationale - that the whole invasion is designed merely to ensnare the Doctor. The anticipated spectacular showdown between the Doctor and the Intelligence gets scuttled mainly to give justification to a sequel. The characters of Evans and Chorley are both rather stereotypical and tiresome. In the end, there is enough good to justify its 6-part length.
A good example of the Peter Davison era. Great cast and not bad effects. Cliffhangers are good too...
| What: | The Stealers of Dreams (BBC New Series Adventures novels) |
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| By: | Hatman, nobody will ever know what he did |
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| Date: | Tuesday 20 June 2006 |
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| Rating: | 8 |
Quite good..ish. a bit absurd. like the traveller
CU captures the dicotomy of the Sontaran military structure perfectly, an army cannot have soldiers all the same rank and some Sontarans are breed not to be cannon fodder but the officer elite. The idea of the gentic breakdown is a good one too and having 2 Sontarans battle it out to become the new genetic template for their species is interesting. Of course we're expected to cheer for the one helped by our 2 heroes as he slowly comes to understand the human psyche and realise that ruthless aggression is not always the right way, which is exactly why he loses and his rival wins. A genius bait and switch manouvre that really takes the listner by surprise, I highly recommend this story :)
| What: | The Juggernauts (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Sunday 18 June 2006 |
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| Rating: | 6 |
The idea of having the Mechanoids return to face off against the Daleks again gets totally derailed by bringing Davros into the picture. Instead of Mechanoids v. Daleks Mechanical Smackdown II, both of the metallic creations get subordinated into props for what is really a Davros story. As Davros stories go, this is a fine one. And, of course, where Davros goes, there must be Daleks around somewhere. However, that makes the Mechanoids superfluous. As far as they are used, there might have been any old type of robot.
A plus in this one is that Bonnie Langford gets some of the strongest writing for her part. We get to see her not as a dimwitted screamer committed to vegetarianism, but as a skilled technician with a strong will and appealing personality.
| What: | The Game (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Sunday 18 June 2006 |
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| Rating: | 6 |
The Doctor 5 + Nyssa audios have been fairly solid, on the whole. "The Game" will not knock your socks off, but it is representative of Davison-period Doctor Who. The basic story is that the Doctor has taken Nyssa to see a great peace negotiator in action. The planet in question has turned warfare into a constant bloody game. The Doctor arrives and quickly, totally by accident, finds himself embroiled in the politics. Typically for the Davison Doctor, he desperately wants everyone to give peace a chance, but no one is listening. It is particularly humorous when the Doctor's attempt at an escape turns into an especially brilliant move in the gory game of Naxi, making him a planetary hero overnight for absolutely the wrong reason. The game of Naxi itself is a kind of extrapolation of Rugby and Football, all the violence left in, all the game taken out.
On the downside, there are just too many plot twists, as if Darin Henry did not trust the story he had. We get introduced to a new villain with a promise of a return. Perhaps a way for Henry to secure a second commission? Fianlly, Henry plays the story too straight. There are comic moments, but really the whole premise was waiting to become a satire, which never materialized.
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| 2nd Worst, So Far, Big Finish Audio |
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| What: | Dreamtime (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Sunday 18 June 2006 |
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| Rating: | 1 |
Only the excrutiating "Doctor Who And The Pirates" is worse than this nonsensical trip to nowhere. Trying to turn mythological systems into science fiction is very hard for even the best of writers. It takes a Roger Zelazny to pull it off, e.g. "Lord Of Light." Most of the time, it makes little sense. Whenever it has been attempted in Doctor Who, for instance in "The Daemons," the twist that made it work was to turn the mythology into quasi-science, or at least scientific-sounding explanations. Simon A. Forward, instead, wants to keep the mythology intact, as is. There is no technology behind it all. The result is totally antithetical to Doctor Who and to science fiction in general. To top it off, the mythology in question, aboriginal australian, is so obscure, probably even to Australians, that the story absolutely required the missing scientifical explanations in order for the uninitiated listener to make any sense of it. As it is, "Dreamtime" makes even less sense than "Ghostlight." Things just happen. There is no figuring what is happening or why it is happening. Every "explanation" is just a reference to "the dreaming," as if that said everything. What this dreaming is, what its rules are, how it functions, why it is happening, nothing about it is ever explained. A final insult is the tired old saw, it is all the Doctor's fault. I am beyond sick of this plot "twist." Please, please, Gary Russell, tell all your writers from here on out never to use the "it's the Doctor's fault" ever again.
| What: | Catch-1782 (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Sunday 18 June 2006 |
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| Rating: | 5 |
Poor Mel. Having just wasted 3 months of her life working for Davros, here she gets to waste 6 months in a laudanum-induced stupor at the hands of a mad ancestor. The story is another in the time-conundrum tradition. Mel, while visiting her uncle, takes interest in some of her family history, most notably the mysterious 2nd wife of one of her ancestors. A maguffin and a TARDIS later and she finds herself to be the very woman she was reading about. While Alison Lawson has taken some trouble to supply various clues as to the outcome - a mysterious chest buried on the estate grounds, a piece of technology that should not be inside the chest, etc., the trouble is that she constantly seeks the easy way out of the conundrum. For instance, the chest gets buried merely because it needs to be buried for the future to remain intact. This is not very clever. It would have been much more interesting to contrive events so that the chest gets buried inevitably as part of the natural process of events in 1782. In the end, a potentially good story is derailed by lazy writing.
| What: | Three's a Crowd (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Sunday 18 June 2006 |
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| Rating: | 5 |
This is a sort of Doctor Who take on E.M. Forster's classic story "The Machine Stops." In that story, technology had advanced so far that all people live in isolated rooms inside a kind of hive city, with all their needs supplied by "the machine." Colin Brake has taken the premise and moved it to a failing Earth-colony (shades of "Frontios"?), provided a human leader, the inexplicable Auntie, played by Deborah Watling, and focused on the phobic nature of such a hive life rather than on its sapping of human spirit and intelligence, which is what Forster focuses on. As a premise, this is fine all by itself. The problem is that it does not lend itself to Doctor Who very well. After all, what is the Doctor to do? He would simply arrive, tell everybody to overcome their fears, throw a spanner in the works, and leave. Two parts at most would cover this. So, in order to make it Doctor Who, Brake has provided a totally irrelevant second plot line, involving a species that uses humans for food and has a bunch of hatching eggs just ready to chow down on wimpy colonists. (A borrowing from "The Twin Dilemma"? You be the judge.) And these colonists are so wimpy, so whiny, so pathetic that one has to marvel at Peri's patience with them. Most people would have given up after about 15 minutes. This is another Big Finish audio that needed some major revision.
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| Needs A Very Strong Rewrite |
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| What: | Unregenerate! (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Saturday 17 June 2006 |
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| Rating: | 4 |
The 2005-6 Big Finish audios have been very poor indeed. This is pretty low among them. The focus here is mostly on Mel, particularly in Parts 1 & 2. I must say that the writing for Mel has been much better in these audios than it ever was in the TV series. Additionally, Bonnie Langford has genuinely progressed as an actor, and continues to put in marvelous performances for the series. That said, it is too bad that she is given such weak material to work with.
The main problems are as follows. The Doctor through most of parts 1-3 is a raving loony. While this allows Sylvester McCoy to go far over the top and get away with it, ultimately it detracts from the effect of the story. Listeners want a Doctor Who story, with companion, not a Mel story, with companion. That gets me to the cabbie, Mel's companion. He is principally there to supply muscle so as to give Mel room to operate. Nice enough bloke for an ex-bouncer and bookie enforcer, but that is about all.
On the other hand, with the Doctor effectively out of the story, gibbering for most of the time he is on, one is left with not much to listen for.
Finally, there is the problem of the first 10 minutes or so, which switches around from scene to scene with no explanation so often and so confusingly, that it is very difficult to have patience for any part of it to make sense.
In the end, a thorough revision was in order. The premise of the story and some of the ideas are quite good, but they needed to be arranged more effectively. Characters needed to be strengthened. Roles needed to be better assigned.
| What: | The Council of Nicaea (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Saturday 17 June 2006 |
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| Rating: | 4 |
While I did not hate this one quite so much as the previous reviewer, I still found it among the weaker Big Finish stories. The main problem is Erimem. It is not that she is hypocritical as the other reviewer states, just that the script is nonsensically written. As the previous reviewer noted, she throws off her friends and allies to support a cause she knows little about. It is really worse than that, though. She throws in her lot to support a man she has met only once for an hour or so. Her sole reason for considering Peri and the Doctor traitors to her is that she judges Arius to be an "honorable man." Given what little time she has spent with him, how can she determine that? Furthermore, she criticizes the Roman Emporer Constantine for his cruelty, calls him a tyrant, and organizes a revolt against him. Again, motivation for all this is sorely lacking. After all, even if Erimem never got the chance to be a despotic pharoah, she must know that all her predecessors were despots worse a thousand-fold than Constantine, and that ruling an empire in her day required ruthlessness and cruelty in extreme measure. It makes little sense for her to be ranting about justice and honor and fairplay. That the audioplay has such a weak central premise means that it can never really get started.
| What: | Terror Firma (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Saturday 17 June 2006 |
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| Rating: | 4 |
To kick off a new "season" of 8th Doctor audios, Big Finish has brought back the Daleks and Davros, hoping, one supposes, that merely having those components will be enough to warrant the production. They aren't.
In the early days of Big Finish audios, the Dalek stories were often the best (for instance, "The Apocalypse Element" and "The Genocide Machine"). The Daleks play very well in the audio format, and work when they are handled as the ruthless, efficient military power that they are. In "Terror Firma," the Daleks seem to be almost an afterthought. They have no significant presence in the story and do virtually nothing.
The real focus is on Davros. It is here that problem #2 crops up. Joseph Lidster has attempted to fill in gaps in the Davros saga left in the various TV serials. As is often the case, the "explanations" for these gaps are silly and nonsensical. The basic concept is that Davros after "Resurrection of the Daleks," has developed a split personality - Davros and the Emporer Dalek - and the two are fighting each other for control. This affords Terry Molloy a chance to go all out in the acting department, and he does a super job of displaying Davros's fear and despair. However, rather than giving us something new with this, Lidster reverts to the tried and not-so-true formula: Davros cannot control the Daleks, who revolt against him. Surprised? I wasn't.
The real weakness, though, is not just Lidster's. There is no doubt that the Big Finish audios are now producer Gary Russell's baby. And he has devoted most of his energy to the 8th Doctor series, making this "his" Doctor Who. He has dedicated his efforts toward a nearly complete overhaul of the series, in line with his own later novels. Nearly all of these tweaks are bad. In particular, he seems bent on running Doctor 8 through the emotional wringer again, and again,...and again, ...and again. So, what do we get? (Spoiler coming. You have been warned.) We get, it turns out, that Davros has managed to capture the Doctor and 2 companions we knew nothing about. He used his surgical skills to gain control over all of them. He watched all of Doctor 8's adventures with Charley and later with C'rizz, and all the while plotted to humiliate the Doctor by destroying everything he loved. Thus, though Lidster is careful to stay true to the Davros timeline, he completely ignores Terry Nation's. The Daleks take over Earth again, earlier (it seems) than in "The Dalek Invasion of Earth," and the Doctor seems to have no recollection that any of that had happened. Sloppy on Lidster's part. I kept expecting a "this is not right, something is meddling with history" twist. No chance.
So, in the end, the story is contradictory, both to itself and to the Dalek history as established in the TV series. Things are brought in, then abandoned. Multiple references to previous stories lead nowhere in particular. All we are left with is Terry Molloy's superb performance to raise the story.
Ghost Light is immensely enjoyable, and proves that Doctor Who was regaining its legendary status when it was stupidly axed. The fact remains though that this story is so ridiculously confusing that the ending leaves you wondering what the hell just happened. I've seen it 3 times and I'm still none the wiser...
The first two installments of Night Thoughts are fantastic. The regulars are all brilliant, as are most of the guest cast, and there are some exquisite moments of horror and intrigue. The whole build-up is ruined in parts 3 and 4 however. Shame.
Firstly, thankyou very much to Hatman for entering the 1000th review - may Timelash see the 2000th review very soon!
Ian Marter does a good job of conveying the sense of menace and brutality of the televised Sontaran Experiment into print. The cover's quite nice in a subtle way as well...
| What: | The Feast of the Drowned (BBC New Series Adventures novels) |
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| By: | Hatman, ow, make it stop! |
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| Date: | Saturday 17 June 2006 |
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| Rating: | 6 |
this is the 1000th review. yay! it was ok...
in parts
| What: | Only Human (BBC New Series Adventures novels) |
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| By: | Hatman, the Chemistry lab |
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| Date: | Saturday 17 June 2006 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
ok... ish.
