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| What: | The Bride of Peladon (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Friday 26 August 2016 |
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| Rating: |   7 |
The Bride of Peladon is one of those Big Finish stories that goes for all-out nostalgia, bringing together all the main elements of the two televised Peladon stories and adding a bit of Pyramids of Mars to it. So we get medieval political intrigue involving an alliance between Earth and Peladon, this time through a pending marriage. We get the main character types from the previous stories - an Ice Warrior ambassador, an Arcturan, Alpha Centauri (admirably voiced by Jane Goddard), Aggedor, a king's champion, a dodgy off-world mining expert, some stalwart miners, and so on. All of this is designed to propel the fan into flights of ecstasy, probably. It does, however, seem like a bit of a rehash, enough so that characters seemingly allude to the fact. One aspect that worried me was the question of where all the people were. If there is to be a royal wedding, what is going on with all the guests? If there is a big enough explosion to rock the mighty citadel, then why are the only ones on the scene the royals and VIPs? Surely, there would be emergency services of some kind, at least all the numerous subordinates who must live and work in the castle just to keep it running. So, where are they? The story does have its good points. The characters are deep enough to be convincing. Peri is especially active and quite determined, much more the way she should have been written in the televised program. Erimem's departure from the TARDIS crew makes emotional sense, and has already been prepared for in previous stories. It's a pleasant enough listen.
| What: | Match of the Day (BBC Past Doctor novels) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Friday 26 August 2016 |
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| Rating: | 6 |
I have liked the Chris Boucher Doctor Who books I have read until this one. The premise is that the Doctor and Leela land on a world on which half the population is devoted in some way or another to death-match dueling contests. Leela accidentally gets mistaken for a challenger and the Doctor has to become her agent and try to keep her clear of getting into trouble. All this is happening against a background involving a fighter named Keefer who escapes an assassination attempt and then goes looking for his would-be killer. Boucher here has attempted a kind of parody of sports by accepting the exaggeration that fans only want to see athletes hurt each other and then making an entire world based on that concept. Thus, there are elaborate rules that no one fully understands, players and agents, training schools, and so on. One funny bit involves a trial that drags on for ages while the tribunal watch instant replay from nearly every angle over and over again. There were a few things that for me were fundamentally wrong with this novel. The first is that clearly on this planet the people understand that there are off-worlders, so why don't The Doctor and Leela simply say that they are and so avoid all the mess they get themselves into? The second is that the plot takes far too long to identify the key problem to be solved. Why was Keefer attacked? What has it to do with the Court of Attack? Is the Doctor supposed to change this weirdly unethical society? And so on. Because the main problem is not identified, the main characters seem to be getting nowhere for most of the novel. After 200 pages, the reader still has no idea where this is going or that any of the three principals - The Doctor, Leela, and Keefer - are anywhere near to identifying who is manipulating events and why. The third problem for me is that for the first time Boucher succumbs to the trap of writing the Fourth Doctor in a novel. He is too scatter-brained and uncertain. It is alright for him to be a little scatter-brained and uncertain, but in this novel that is his principal mental state. Boucher manages to keep the pace moving, and writes Leela well, but I really could not find this novel to be structured enough.
| What: | Terror of the Sontarans (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Wednesday 24 August 2016 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
We might call this Fear of the Sontarans given the way the supposed terror runs. The story itself seems to be made specifically to recall 1987 with a half serious - half sendup story, and a music soundtrack that hearkens to Keff McCulloch in many places. The basics are these. The Doctor and Mel arrive on a planetary research station in answer to a distress beacon. There, they find the station mostly empty except for four prisoners who were not part of the base's crew and their only surviving jailer, a Sontaran driven mad by something. Then, a force of Sontarans arrive to secure the base, but it turns out that whatever is haunting this base is far more terrifying than any bunch of blustery Sontarans. The script has some very dodgy ideas about absorbing life forms to create a new life form. Hmmm..., where have we heard that one before? Maybe in ten or so at least Big Finish productions. The Doctor/Mel combination works well in this story, as if the pair had been travelling together for some time. Overall, it is a story with some hits and some misses.
| What: | The Curse of Davros (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Wednesday 24 August 2016 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
Without giving away the twist to this story, I will say only that both Colin Baker and Terry Molloy have to do some extra acting in this one, and both carry it off admirably well. We get a new a new companion in an old character, Flip from "The Crimes of Thomas Brewster." That makes the Who universe a very small place given the outrageous odds against her meeting the Doctor again in the way that it happens. A coincidence of this magnitude should not go unnoticed. Flip is a bit too South London to me, more a walking set of regional stereotypes than an actual character. The part of the story that revolves around the battle of Waterloo is the part that does not hang together all that well. Davros' rationale for going there and his intimate knowledge of this bit of human history just do not make sense. Davros is an alien. What is his concern for old Earth battles? Dalek time travel in this one is far too easy. The introduction of Daleks and Dalek technology into a well-established historical event cannot be brushed aside with a "don't say anything about this." So, the premise for parts 1 and 2 is very interesting and has many possibilities, but the story is let down by what happens in parts 3 and 4.
| What: | The Hypothetical Gentleman (IDW graphic novels) |
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| By: | Andrew Perez, Zephyrhills , United States |
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| Date: | Friday 19 August 2016 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
isbn-13: 978-1613777190
| What: | Son of the Dragon (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Monday 15 August 2016 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
Continuing in the Doctor Who meets... vein of stories for Doctor 5, this time we get Doctor Who meets Dracula. It's a good thing that writer Steve Lyons got this assignment because in the hands of a lesser writer it could have gone horribly wrong. Lyons approached this as a pure historical, thus avoiding the need to explain all the clichés associated with the fictional Dracula. Indeed, he brings them up every now and again just to dismiss them. That leaves the historical Dracula to deal with. That in itself is a tough assignment because little about the real Vlad the Impaler has survived. However, that leaves Lyons with plenty of room for inserting the Doctor and crew into events. Lyons manages to accomplish here what was missing from The Council of Nicaea, which is that given her background and upbringing, Erimem completely understands what a tyrant does and why he does it. In many ways, Vlad is closer in worldview to Erimem than Peri is, and Lyons does a good job of bringing this out in the story. The main problem with the story is scale. Lyons works best as a writer in the novel genre, where he can work to the limits of his expansive imagination. Limited to about five main characters and five subordinates and tight selection of settings, Lyons and the Big Finish crew just cannot bring to the production the epic sweep it needs. We end up with one character representing the entire peasant point of view, a major person in the details of the events, Sultan Mehmet III, merely described rather than portrayed, and some improbable communications and contacts between characters. It's a worthy, but flawed, effort.
| What: | Just War (Bernice Summerfield audios) |
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| By: | Alexander Amos King-Grey, Campbell Town, Tasmania, Australia |
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| Date: | Thursday 21 July 2016 |
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| Rating: | 6 |
Okay, maybe I am being a little harsh on this audio because it's one of Big Finish's first audio, but the lack of music and sound effects really makes this audio a slog fest. I nearly fell asleep listening to this audio, I was only saved by the marvellous characters...
All the characters are brilliant and it's nice to here Maggie Stable playing a foster-mother for Berny, she a superb actress. Bernice is great and Jason is alright. The German characters are brilliant, especially Mark Gatiss's vicious and vile General.
Plot wasn't overly great either, some stuff about a UFO crash-landing, which never gets mentioned again.
I saw this in a shop an grabbed it because I hadn't found any other Big Finish's in Tasmania, so I took the chance and bought it off the shelf. It might even be rare, since it was released in 1999.
Saw a listing of the book which this is based on on Ebay, going for $40, it might be better than this audio.
A pretty much straight forward novelisation of the story. One of my very favourite 5th Doctor story's.
| What: | Masters of Earth (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Monday 13 June 2016 |
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| Rating: | 8 |
The writing team of Wright and Scott are back with another story of plot and counter plot involving different factions, with the Doctor and the newly returned Peri caught in the middle of it all. The scene starts in Scotland one year before Doctor 1 defeats the Daleks in "The Dalek Invasion of Earth." This time it is Peri, older and more self-confident, who gets the pair in trouble when her moral outrage gets the better of her. Before you know it, there is a capture, an escape, and then a mad chase to the Orkneys. The story has very much the sense of the middle portion of "The Daleks' Masterplan," and even includes the Varga plants. The spirit of Terry Nation is all over this script. This could have been handled poorly, with just one danger following another. Wright and Scott have cleverly made these narrow escapes part of a coherent plot. Nothing is quite what it seems and motives are suitably murky. It's an engaging adventure.
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 | The Last Outing for Romana I |
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| What: | The Final Phase (Fourth Doctor Adventures audios) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Monday 13 June 2016 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
The season closer, part 2, shifts focus from Proxima Major to Cuthbert's orbiting platform. We get the revelation of what both Cuthbert and the Daleks are up to. The majority of the story is of the base-under-siege variety, with a strong role for K-9. Romana realizes that perhaps life with the Doctor is more interesting than life on Gallifrey. The story ties up most the loose ends, with one left deliberately hanging. The 1978 feeling remains, so much so that one can easily picture all the action in the manner that it would have been taped in 1978. It is a fitting finish, though not a particularly original story.
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| Romana's First Encounter with the Daleks |
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| What: | The Dalek Contract (Fourth Doctor Adventures audios) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Monday 13 June 2016 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
Big Finish keeps that 1978 vibe going for the big finish of the (sadly) only season with Romana I. "The Dalek Contract" finds our heroes chasing after the results of their encounters with the Laan. They find a planet barely surviving oppression from Cuthbert, the self-made northerner of dubious morality, who is using the Daleks as a security force. Of course, the Doctor knows this makes no sense and something else must be going on. Big Finish has done everything they could to recreate the 1978 feeling. The soundtrack harkens to Dudley Simpson in many ways. The story has the half-the-series-budget sweep of the season finales from the late 70s. This episode suffers a bit from being just part 1. Also, the restrictions of storytelling to keep it in spirit close off many possibilities. Fans will probably go nuts for this precisely because it is so exactly 1978 in everything except for the stereophonic sound design.
| What: | Return to Telos (Fourth Doctor Adventures audios) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Friday 3 June 2016 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
Another second part of a two-part season ender. This time, K-9, controlled by the Cybermen, has taken over the TARDIS to deliver the Doctor to the Cybermen so they may harvest his brain. The Doctor is having none of it, and does a clever maneuver that means that he winds up on Telos at the exact time that Doctor 2 is on Telos. Doctor 4 manages to avoid meeting himself, and realizing that the Cybermen have time travel technology, he heads back to Krelos to try to save it from invasion.
On the plus side for this story, Frazier Hines is really getting down imitating Doctor 2, measuring the delivery down to the little coughs and stutters typical of Troughton. The scenes added to Tomb of the Cybermen do not in any way violate the story of that episode. Michael Cochrane seems to be having a whale of a time, just really enjoying doing two roles. On the minus side, the story is down to chase and avoid for most of its length. There's some more Doctor soul searching of the "it's all my fault" variety even though it really isn't the Doctor's fault. I don't know why Briggs likes that idea so much. Nick Briggs has gone with the "it didn't really happen" ending, the "rewrite time" variety. Perhaps knowing that many listeners find such endings unsatisfactory, Briggs has milked it for all the stuff he can get from it. Multiple scenes at the end involve characters remembering something and then forgetting what they remembered.
It is all listenable and enjoyable, does not really finish the season in the most memorable way.
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| Not as bad as everyone says it is... |
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| What: | The Twin Dilemma (BBC classic series DVDs/Blu-rays) |
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| By: | Alexander Amos King-Grey, Campbell Town, Tasmania, Australia |
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| Date: | Wednesday 1 June 2016 |
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| Rating: | 6 |
There are some good ideas in it and I just love Colin's Doctor even when he's brash, it gives him real character.
My main gripe about this story are the monsters, the Gastropods, their too human with their tiny feet sticky out of their giant bellies. They should have been more slug-like like their suppose to be.
Acting is also a bit iffy from some of the extras, ecspecially the twins.
Overall a good, unrated story in my opinion and a good DVD all round.
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| Good Introduction to New Doctor |
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Getting John Hurt to reprise his role as the War Doctor was a coup for Big Finish. This, plus getting Tennant and Tate, solidified Big Finish as a legitimate alternative Doctor Who production company. Nick Briggs' introduction to the War Doctor is designed primarily for that purpose, to establish the character and the general type of story he will occupy. Therefore, there are not many risks taken in the storytelling. The three 45-minute episodes comprise what we can call a "season," with a story arc and repeated characters. Briggs has smartly read the character of the War Doctor so that he does not get a "companion" in the traditional sense. This Doctor is a loner. The basic story is that the Doctor (don't me THAT!) has apparently died in defeating the Dalek time fleet. However, the chief strategist Cardinal Ollistra, played with relish by the formidable Jacqueline Pearce, does not believe it. Part one, "The Innocent," finds the War Doctor landing on a peaceful planet that has escaped a war of its own, beset by their own implacable, genocidal enemy. The Doctor meets Rejoice, a character just a bit too sweet to be believable, helps keep the would-be conquerors at bay, and then gets sucked back into the Time War. In part two, the Doctor is added to a team to go deep under cover behind enemy lines, and lo and behold, it is back on the planet he had just landed on in part one. It is now decades later and the Daleks have formed an alliance with the other genocidal race. The Doctor meets a much older Rejoice, though only slightly less sweet. Of course, the mission is not what it seemed and there are some questionable characters on the mission. Part three is a direct sequel to part two, playing out the mission to its end and establishing the Doctor - Ollistra partnership. Part one is designed to provide the Doctor with a parallel situation to the Time War and thus allow him and the audience to reflect on the morality of war. Parts two and three provide numerous touchpoints with classic Who, especially in the Dalek plan, and provides more opportunity for discussion of the morality of war. In particular, we get a Time Lord fanatic who believes in peace at any cost versus the Doctor, who knows that one cannot negotiate with "monsters" and that war forces even good people to become monsters. Thus, the Doctor must argue with the man he would like to be and accept, however reluctantly, the man he has become. John Hurt pulls this off brilliantly, mostly by never overplaying the emotions. His controlled delivery and careful modulation carry the character's sadness and disgust far greater than shouting would ever do. Big Finish really has sound design down to an art now. The new theme arrangement is big, mock-orchestral, war-movie contraption that is a little too over-the-top for my tastes. The story itself drags down my appreciation. It is rather ho-hum and unimaginative, playing out in a highly predictable fashion. It is a good, but not great, start to a new series.
| What: | Dark Eyes (Dark Eyes audios) |
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| By: | Alexander Amos King-Grey, Campbell Town, Tasmania, Australia |
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| Date: | Friday 27 May 2016 |
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| Rating: | 10 |
Unbelievably awesome! Was really expensive but totally worth it!
Great plot twist, especially the one a the end that reveals who Kotris [main villain] really is!
Fantastic plot and supporting characters, really sympathetic to all of them.
Molly is a wonderful character, so full of fire and wits, she's so clever and funny.
The star of the box-set however of the Eight Doctor himself. Paul Mcgann is just incredible as the broken doctor, he is clearly wants to be alone but still enjoys an adventure.
Daleks are awesome too. Dalek Time Controller gave me chills when I first heard his voice, it sounded so cunning but also subtly human too, which gives him a creepy edge.
Overall a must-have box-set. If you haven't yet got this box-set in your collection, then what the hell are you waiting for, it is highly and truly recommended, it totally worth your money.
| What: | The Drosten's Curse (BBC prestige novels) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Tuesday 17 May 2016 |
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| Rating: | 4 |
The Drosten's Curse abundantly illustrates most of what can go wrong in writing a Doctor 4 novel. The story, such as it is, does not have enough to support a novel of this length. Basically, a big mind parasite that also eats people is haunting a golf course. Because the setting and conception really do not offer enough for 300+ pages of novel, half of the novel, stuck in the middle, has the Doctor trapped in mental space playing mind games with the monster, and his two temporary companions isolated in other tiny spaces so the writer can go back and forth between them reiterating just how isolated they are. However, the real problems are in style and conception. Too many writers of Doctor 4 novels in trying to capture Tom Baker's portrayal focus far too hard on what might be called his whimsy, the habit of making seemingly random or tangential lighthearted observations. A.L. Kennedy has focused so hard on this whimsy that she mostly misses the seriousness and keen insight that makes Doctor 4's particular whimsy work. Nearly every statement the Doctor makes in this novel is tangential, witty, or endearing. This Doctor cannot say or even think a straightforward sentence. What makes it worse is that Kennedy has made this whimsical manner of speaking her principal way of telling the story. It is all whimsical and light, though not particularly funny. It is all foam and no beer, all cream and no coffee, all frosting and no cake. The characters are shallow. This is made worse in two regards. One is that the reader is constantly told that the main "companion," Bryony Mailer, is exceptional, extraordinary, outstanding, decidedly above and beyond when she isn't at all. The other "companion," Putta Pattershaun 5, is one of those shy, awkward, unmen that occupy many British light comedies, except that Putta is unbelievably shy, awkward, clumsy, geeky, etc., so much so that he quickly becomes annoying and stays that way through the rest of the book. The magical ending also does not work for me, since once again it introduces whimsy to replace seriousness and so undercuts the rationale for whatever dramatic tension Kennedy has managed to stir up. I do give Kennedy points for consistency. She has chosen her path and stuck to it. I just felt that it wasn't a particularly good path.
The second of the Warner-Doctor and Brigadier stories is written as if it is the end of a full season's worth of stories. We get the sense that the Doctor and the Brigadier have had several adventures since they met in Hong Kong. The pairing works very well, with the Brigadier as the perfect practical and reality-minded foil to a very idealistic Doctor. David Warner makes an excellent Doctor, something like a mix between Doctor 3 and Doctor 5 in his confident bravado tempered by self-reflective doubt. The story itself sees Nick Briggs rewrite Dalek history, perhaps as in a way closer to what he would like the Daleks to be. Thus, we have two Dalek factions, one loyal to a memory of Davros, the other disavowing Davros. We get an entirely new rationale for the Kaled-Thal war. And, we get a third term, so to speak, in the new alien species, the Quatch. I wonder whether Briggs knew that Quatch is German slang for nonsense. Be that as it may, these aliens are not all that convincing, and the notion of a passage to another dimension sitting in the center of Skaro steps a little beyond credulity.
| What: | Starlight Robbery (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Thursday 12 May 2016 |
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| Rating: | 8 |
Sylvester McCoy's time in TV Doctor Who was spent at the extremes, either extremely trite and jokey (first season) or too deeply brooding and mysterious (the other two). Starlight Robbery strikes the right balance between these two ends, with a fairly comical first two parts transitioning to a much more serious tone in the second two parts. Matt Fitton has handled this pretty well. Fitton also handles Sontaran psychology well. There are still some problems with big scale and small cast, which always makes it difficult to make the scale convincingly big enough. Another negative for me is the character of Will Arrowsmith, who is just too awkward, geeky, and so on for me to tolerate. He just irritates me. This is not a knock on the actor, just on the character. The acting throughout this story is very good, with Dan Starkey magnificent as four or five different Sontarans.
On a side note, while I was listening to the exchange between Klein and Marshall Stenn, it suddenly struck me that were Big Finish ever to decide to do a serious series with a female Doctor, Tracey Childs would be the perfect actor for the role.
| What: | The Cloisters of Terror (Fourth Doctor Adventures audios) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Monday 9 May 2016 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
Big Finish are sticking to their pattern in the 4th Doctor stories of making them feel like the TV series of 1977. This story fits that well. Actually, it is very much in the Gothic style of the Hinchcliffe years. An all-girl college at Oxford, run by the cloistered order of St. Matilda, is haunted by three sisters, ghosts of nuns who take girls under mysterious circumstances. Of course, the only ones who could stop this madness are The Doctor and Leela, with help this time by Dame Shaw, mother of Liz Shaw. It's a spooky story played with gusto by all the cast. The Doctor 4 - Leela combination is working exceptionally well, better than on TV. The story itself is kind of a ho-hum "Image of Fendahl" thing. The small cast makes it all quite predictable. Altogether, this drama is entertaining, but light.
| What: | Recorded Time (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Wednesday 4 May 2016 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
Another in the anthology series of releases, Recorded Time and Other Stories has the usual characteristics of these things: varying quality of stories, a generalized theme, and a sort of wrap-up at the end. The first story, Recorded Time is the least effective. This one has the Doctor and Peri in the court of Henry VIII, who has been forcing a man to use time technology to write the future. There is a bit too much magic rather than science and Henry is just too bombastically egotistical. Better fare is served in Paradoxicide, an interesting twist on the Time Paradox story with a bunch of warrior women seeking a master weapon. A Most Excellent Match is a virtual reality story set in a virtual re-creation of Jane Austen's world. It is quite funny in places. The best of the stories is Question Marks, which has all its characters trapped in a building/ship on the brink of catastrophe. The trick is that no one can remember who they are. The generalized theme of the stories would be virtual reality, of things being imaginary rather than real, of the mind's role in shaping reality. Because no story is allowed to develop to full brilliance, the best I can say is that it is an entertaining listen on the whole.
