There are 4,137 reviews so far. To add a review of your own, click on the item in question, then click the Vote link.
The Brig has a small part which is a pitty but the new crew settle in well. A good start lots of possible plot lines and leaves you feeling that it will roll on with a good plot arc.
This is a good decent dr who story nothing amazing but nothing awfull. There are no brill performances and no bad ones its just ok. You cant help but like it its just very very nice and likeable
| What: | Paradise Towers (BBC classic series videos) |
|
| By: | ste, cumbria |
|
| Date: | Saturday 10 December 2005 |
|
| Rating: |   8 |
I luv this story its so original. sylvs gud and i actualy like mel in this (shoot me i no!) richard bries is awful but tabbie and tilda make up 4 it. This story looks fab. But there are 2 things that annoy me 1)the plot doesnt make sense why was the gr8t arcitect left in a celler wid all dat technology and 2)why do the kangs need the rezziez 2 throw see through sheets over the cleaning robots when they have explosive arrows! This story is still fab tho ONE OF MY FAVOURITES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
| What: | Time and the Rani (BBC classic series videos) |
|
| By: | Ste, cumbria |
|
| Date: | Saturday 10 December 2005 |
|
| Rating: | 5 |
This is one of the best lokking storys ever but the script is a bit boring. The rani is wow and so are the bat things. The lakershuns are just all crap actors and the big ball things provide one of doctor whos most brilliant cliffhangers. All in all this is an ok regeneration story and looks fab (bonnie langford is ok but as usual is given crap stuff 2 do and corny lines)
| What: | Singularity (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
|
| By: | Phil Ince, Standing over our mother with an axe |
|
| Date: | Saturday 10 December 2005 |
|
| Rating: | 1 |
This is a humourless, juvenile embarassment.
| What: | Gallifrey: Imperiatrix (Gallifrey audio dramas) |
|
| By: | Nicholas Murphie, Newtown, Australia |
|
| Date: | Monday 5 December 2005 |
|
| Rating: | 10 |
To say Imperiatrix is the best of the second Gallifrey series may be true but it's also unfair on the other writers. The quality of the final chapter rests greatly on the fantastic work of the previous CDs of the season. All of them have been building to something big and this is the pay off. So much revelation, death and destruction earned a longer release than previous chapters and it's needed. The final chapter sealed this series as the best of Big Finish's range that i've heard so far and season 3 should be well worth the wait.
| What: | Gallifrey: Insurgency (Gallifrey audio dramas) |
|
| By: | Nicholas Murphie, Newtown, Australia |
|
| Date: | Monday 5 December 2005 |
|
| Rating: | 7 |
There are so many good ideas in this latest Gallifrey series that some of them just don't get the room to be truly fleshed out. The lives of the multi-racial stuidents of the Academy are one of those ideas. With all the delicious political powerplays going on elsewhere, this concept does not really have the room to breath. That said, it was still really enjoyable all round.
| What: | Gallifrey: Pandora (Gallifrey audio dramas) |
|
| By: | Nicholas Murphie, Newtown, Australia |
|
| Date: | Wednesday 30 November 2005 |
|
| Rating: | 8 |
The second Gallifrey series has already improved on the first. If the seedy, ambitious, backstabbing machinations of Time Lord society is like this then no wonder the Doctor buggered off...
An extended scene in this audio is probably the most disturbing I've heard on a BF audio to date. The prolonged mutilation of one of the Time Lords is nauseating but adds to the tension of what is an excellent audio.
All the principle characters are well fleshed out and the continuing arc is interesting.
| What: | Scaredy Cat (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
|
| By: | Phil Ince, Mouth agape at your wastepipe |
|
| Date: | Saturday 19 November 2005 |
|
| 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.
| What: | Scaredy Cat (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
|
| By: | Joe Ford, Eastbourne |
|
| Date: | Tuesday 15 November 2005 |
|
| 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.
| What: | Scaredy Cat (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
|
| By: | Adam Summers, Lower Bank, NJ, USA |
|
| Date: | Monday 14 November 2005 |
|
| 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.
| What: | Scaredy Cat (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
|
| By: | John Carter, Nottingham |
|
| Date: | Wednesday 9 November 2005 |
|
| Rating: | 1 |
Really poor release this one.
Lloyd Rose is hugely reliable when it comes to the level of quality one might expect from her writing, and this is not to say that she trots out the same thing with every book, Terrance Dicks style. It is simply that one can expect an EXCELLENT read every time. The Algebra of Ice is a wonderful book. I disagree with the reviewer below - it IS a cracking read. It's very competently written, which may sound like faint praise, but there's an awful lot of bad structuring and incoherence in the EDAs and PDAs, which makes this book very refreshing indeed. There is certainly intrigue and mystery, but not at the expense of clarity. The characters are superb (especially Brett, who is a truly nasty piece of work) and the prose is vivid and fluid. I recommend this very highly.
| What: | Nightshade (New Adventures novels) |
|
| By: | Siskoid, Moncton, NB |
|
| Date: | Wednesday 26 October 2005 |
|
| Rating: | 9 |
Yes, Nightshade is a simple horror story, with Mark Gatiss once again showing his interest in telling village life stories, but I've written horror has never had such a strong effect on me. The set pieces manage to disturb this jaded old soul at times, and that's high praise.
Indeed, while a simple enough tale, the prose is extremely well written. Seems to lag in some of the early chapters (with a flashback to 1644 almost stopping the action), but it's a warm sort of lag, like a lazy evening in front of a fire. You get to care for a number of characters in the cast, though of course, they're pretty much all cannon fodder in a story like this.
If I have a reservation keeping this from a higher score, it's the fate of the title character, which was a bit abrupt and telegraphed for my taste. Still, there's lots to like here, as both the quiet and the action-packed bits are equally well done.
Overall: I would definitely recommend this as a first book to get into the NA range or even Who fiction as a whole.
 |  |  |
 | Dark and muddled or is that just me |
|
| | |
Having read this book and then read all the other net based reviews I find myself in the distinct minority - I didnt enjoy it. One man's excellent plot thread is another's plot that seemed to jump about all over the place. The novel seemed to throw unimaginative names at us like homunculette & lord ruthventracolixabaxil. It was dark and depressing in places but on the positive side it did broaden the characters of both The Doctor and Sam - hopefully Sam's dark side may be exployted later. Don't let my review put you off - it's worth a read to see what you think
| | |
| WARNING - Spoilers Ahead! |
|
| | |
Have just finished reading World Game and I have to say I enjoyed it immensely. After a slowish start it soon picks up and becomes a great rollercoaster of a ride through the history involving Napolean, Duke Of Wellington, and Nelson. I had never read any of the stories from the so-called 'Season 6B' and approached this with a sense of trepidation that the continuity may bog it down, but in hind-sight I needn't have worried too much. It's not to say that there isn't any continuity at all, it's just that it doesn't detract at all from the plot of the book. There's also a link leading in to The Two Doctors towards the end!
Terrence Dicks portrays the second doctor to perfection here, which isn't too surprising really given he worked on the later Troughton TV shows. Plus, the fact a new companion is presented to the reader at the start of the story, coupled with the fact that you feel rather saddened at her demise later in the book shows how well she is characterised by Dicks throughout via her growing relationship with The Doctor.
You feel that Dicks has done his historical homework for this book, a theory supported by the presence of a section at the back of the book called 'Historical Notes' which gives annotations regarding some of the characters involved in the plot. You are left with the impression that Dicks has tried hard to base the events in the story as close to the historical reality as possible. As someone who loved the 'early historicals', this appealed to me greatly. What a coincidence that the day I finised reading it, I later found out was the 200th anniversary of Nelson's death at the Battle Of Trafalgar! Could this be a Doctor Who novel that is trying to mark this occasion, given it's release so near to this anniversary. In my eyes it did it proud, and I think I may now go and try to get a copy of 'Players' and read that to!
| What: | The Robots of Death (BBC classic series DVDs/Blu-rays) |
|
| By: | Toby, England |
|
| Date: | Saturday 22 October 2005 |
|
| Rating: | 5 |
I have seen every episode of Doctor Who from this episode onwards and I do not think this was a good way to start off. The story was dull seeing that it was just a typical murder mystery only set with the person you thought was your freind turning out to be the murderer only set in the future. If you do not know that old story this would be good otherwise do not bother.
| | |
| A glimpse of true potential |
|
| | |
Budget restraints meant thre classic TV series never portrayed the supposed threat of the Daleks very well... there were no intergalatic invasions and mass subjugations of entire species, as referred to by the Doctor.
Congratulations then to Nicholas Briggs for giving us a sense of the true menace of the Daleks. Setting the series over a period of years has allowed the characters to progress and change, while giving a better snapsot of the relentless war machine that the Dalek race is supposed to mobilise.
The storylines may a tad obvious, but the originality is left for the end of the last disc... an alternative universe of "good" Daleks at least gives the mythology something different.
Big Finish proves the Doctor Who universe is very large and can cope without the Doctor.
| What: | The Monsters Inside (BBC New Series Adventures novels) |
|
| By: | Siskoid, Moncton, NB |
|
| Date: | Sunday 16 October 2005 |
|
| Rating: | 8 |
The Monsters Inside has some great banter from Rose and the Doctor, and remains witty when we're inside their heads. Much closer to the TV series' pace than The Clockwise Man. So it's all great fun, with villains that really do pose a challenge for the heroes, and it flies by extremely fast.
If there's a flaw here, it's that the technobabble/pseudoscience is a bit off the charts. While this is common in Doctor Who, it does tend to make the later chapters a little too talky, and really, anything can be made to happen since the science makes little sense.
Still, some excellent scenes, great dialogue, and Rose comes up... well, roses. Great parts for both of them so that their being split up doesn't sink the book when we go back and forth.
Overall: Fun read that smacks of the TV series, though don't pick it up expecting hard SF
| | |
| This book is very helpful |
|
| | |
This book is very helpful for all those fast lines and Inside information of what different, hard to read actions were all about.
