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CaptainYesterday posted:As I state in the OP, don't listen to any spin-offs starring companions created by Big Finish. I can think of only one example that might break this rule - Solitaire with Charley.
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Apr 15, 2015 17:38
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Bicyclops posted:Gallifrey's good. Romana and Leela were not created by big finish. I mean technically Dorian Gray wasn't either and that series is bad but that's kind of splitting hairs given the nature of the character. As far as the Key 2 time series goes, it's much better than graceless but like most big finish trilogies it turns to poo poo in the last audio.
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Apr 15, 2015 17:41
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if there's a single bigger trilogy quality drop-off than the one between A Death in the Family and Lurkers at Sunlight's Edge, I've yet to hear it.
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Apr 15, 2015 17:45
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CobiWann posted:I can think of only one example that might break this rule - Solitaire with Charley. Solitaire is a companion chronicle. It's not really a spin-off. Charley's actual full cast spin-off boxset is honestly pretty boring. Which sucks because I was waiting for it for the better part of a decade and it ended up being a collection of overused or rejected Doctor Who plots. Huge disappointment.
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Apr 15, 2015 17:47
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Chairman Mao posted:Romana and Leela were not created by big finish. I mean technically Dorian Gray wasn't either and that series is bad but that's kind of splitting hairs given the nature of the character. Ah, fair enough, I see what you mean.
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Apr 15, 2015 18:05
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I really didn't enjoy Key 2 Time much. Judgment of Isskar was OK and I like Amy, but Destroyer of Delights really wasn't doing it for me and Chaos Pool loving sucks hard Also it's been a while since I listened and I don't remember particulars, but I remember Isskar being maybe the single stupidest main character Big Finish has ever made e: in that he makes every single decision in the dumbest way he could possibly come up with at the time
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Apr 15, 2015 19:32
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DoctorWhat posted:if there's a single bigger trilogy quality drop-off than the one between A Death in the Family and Lurkers at Sunlight's Edge, I've yet to hear it. Ocean's 11, The Matrix, Robocop?
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Apr 15, 2015 19:46
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I meant within the Big Finish context, and more specifically between parts 2 and 3.
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Apr 15, 2015 19:48
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Cleretic posted:I get poo poo for my accent, but that's because it's a weird Australian-British combo that I have no idea of the origins of; none of my family sound like it, and I didn't really watch British TV until Doctor Who came back so it can't be from there. I sound British to Australians, Australian to British, and British to everyone else, unless they know I'm Australian. Go to america, all the girls will love your accent.
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Apr 15, 2015 20:26
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Chairman Mao posted:like most big finish trilogies it turns to poo poo in the last audio. DoctorWhat posted:if there's a single bigger trilogy quality drop-off than the one between A Death in the Family and Lurkers at Sunlight's Edge, I've yet to hear it. I might have to go with Prisoners of Fate as BF's most egregious example of shattering an ankle upon landing. All of the Nyssa/Tegan/Turlough stories had been pretty good so far, and in particular the two before this one. And this story even makes it an hour or so before collapsing up its own rear end and topping it off with an ending only Joseph Lidster could love. But today I was pleasantly surprised by Signs and Wonders, the capper to all the Hex and Elder Gods stuff. I've never been a fan of the Elder Gods outside of the TV stuff and maybe Protect and Survive, but this story was definitely solid. It helps that it's more of a character piece and it nails the Hex stuff, as well as giving him a satisfying resolution. The end of that story got me thinking, though: Ace has never had a final story. Seven got one with the movie, Eight eventually got The Night of the Doctor, but Ace is trapped in this weird limbo where she just stopped traveling with the Doctor at some point. It's kind of weird.
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Apr 15, 2015 20:52
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Rochallor posted:I might have to go with Prisoners of Fate as BF's most egregious example of shattering an ankle upon landing. All of the Nyssa/Tegan/Turlough stories had been pretty good so far, and in particular the two before this one. And this story even makes it an hour or so before collapsing up its own rear end and topping it off with an ending only Joseph Lidster could love. Och, that's a contender for sure.
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Apr 15, 2015 21:07
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For some reason, Disney XD has picked up Tennant-era DW for broadcast in the US. Just Tennant.
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Apr 15, 2015 22:27
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CaptainYesterday posted:For some reason, Disney XD has picked up Tennant-era DW for broadcast in the US. Just Tennant. I don't have Disney XD, do they cut up content to stuff in commercials like BBC America? Or do they add time to add commercials, and not do any cuts? (I so hate those cuts.) As far as XD picking up Tennant and only Tennant... Well, X equals 10, and D is for Doctor? (ok, ok, I'll leave...)
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Apr 15, 2015 22:29
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CaptainYesterday posted:For some reason, Disney XD has picked up Tennant-era DW for broadcast in the US. Just Tennant. More Northern accent bias!
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Apr 15, 2015 22:32
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Jerusalem posted:To be fair, it's not like the BBC can stop RTD doing what he wants, mostly because as often noted, he's literally a giant and they're scared of him. Did you read the latest the DWM? Moffat actually talks about this. Steven Moffat posted:I though I'd get away with it [not being a public figure] more than Russell, because Russell is hard to miss. You know he's one inch below giant height? He told me the other night. If he was one inch taller, he'd officially be classed as a giant. It's true! Well, he says it's true.
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Apr 15, 2015 23:03
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The_Doctor posted:But he didn't write the Big Finish adaptation...? Well we can only assume that he gave his blessing for them to include a comment on Torchwood. Either that or he wasn't able to catch little Nick Briggs before he grabbed the reference from RTD's mantel and slid safely back to earth down the beanstalk.
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Apr 15, 2015 23:04
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Jerusalem posted:Well we can only assume that he gave his blessing for them to include a comment on Torchwood. Either that or he wasn't able to catch little Nick Briggs before he grabbed the reference from RTD's mantel and slid safely back to earth down the beanstalk. BF has done four Gareth Roberts' adaptations, and we haven't heard a peep from Roberts. They gave away to subscribers an extended bonus features download because RTD wouldn't shut up. God bless RTD.
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Apr 15, 2015 23:11
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CaptainYesterday posted:For some reason, Disney XD has picked up Tennant-era DW for broadcast in the US. Just Tennant.  That's really loving odd.
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Apr 15, 2015 23:27
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Davros1 posted:BF has done four Gareth Roberts' adaptations, and we haven't heard a peep from Roberts. I don't like much of his writing, but RTD seems like the nicest dude.
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Apr 16, 2015 01:19
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egon_beeblebrox posted:I don't like much of his writing, but RTD seems like the nicest dude. Whenever he'd appear on screen to talk about making the show, he always had a  expression on his face like he still couldn't believe he actually got to make Doctor Who for a living. 
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Apr 16, 2015 01:48
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Quel Dommage, Davros!
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Apr 16, 2015 01:51
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DoctorWhat posted:Quel Dommage, Davros! 
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Apr 16, 2015 01:56
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Ahahaha. I just posted that same image (minus the caption) recently, when the Red Sox kept me awake by playing a nineteen loving inning game. There's a Tom Baker picture for every occasion. He's got a very beautiful smile, probably. On an unrelated note: today, I received the first three Hartnell stories, as a gift from the wife to make up for a difficult week at work. I plan to watch all of the special features and then maybe make a few gifs (I'm still learning, but I think I'm getting okay). I will post them whenever I get around to it, which I'm sure will be awhile, because April is the cruelest month. e: watching ALL the special features was a mistake, as they seem to have included some very bad sketch comedy for some reason. Bicyclops fucked around with this message at 05:39 on Apr 16, 2015 |
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Apr 16, 2015 05:21
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 Renaissance of the Daleks is a story that emerged "from an idea by Christopher H. Bidmead", a former Script Editor of the classic television series. I don't know where his ideas end and the editing takes over, so all I can say is that I really like the general idea of this story, and feel it failure mostly comes about in the execution of that idea. Whether the original idea by Bidmead is what I liked, or if even that was drastically changed, I don't know, but on paper this is a pretty good story that just falls apart in the way it is produced and edited, in the performances and in (which may be Bidmead's fault) the way the story fails to take advantage of its audio nature. Visually this could have been an appealing story, in audio format it requires a lot of exposition/description that grates the narrative to a standstill, and the loose references to continuity and the substandard resolution to the plot really affect things poorly. The Doctor drops Nyssa off in the 14th Century and travels to the 22nd in order to test out a new device that Nyssa has been working on, one enables trans-temporal communication. Unfortunately for Nyssa, it doesn't seem to work particularly well AND the Doctor absentmindedly dropped her off in Rhodes in the 14th Century, just in time for an invasion by the Order of the Knights of Saint John. Unfortunately for the Doctor, he's landed one year AFTER the Dalek Invasion of Earth from the story of the same name.... only the Daleks HAVEN'T invaded, humanity just goes on living the life it always had. The Doctor runs into General Tillington, an American played by William Hope (best known as Lt. Gorman in Aliens) who unsettles him by knowing far too much about him, as well as revealing his group - the awfully named Global Warning - have developed rudimentary time technology of their own, though they can't travel through time, only "see" a rough vision of the future. Tillington knows about the Doctor, he wants access to the TARDIS, and he's also fully aware that there SHOULD have been a Dalek Invasion within the last year - he doesn't know why it didn't happen but he intends to make sure it continues not to happen, and he correctly suspects the Doctor will want to set things "right" and restore history to its right course. Drugging the Doctor, he puts him into a cell when he refuses to give him access to the TARDIS, only for his slightly goofy nephew (Wilton) to break the Doctor out in order to hitch a ride himself and see all of time and space. What follows has an air of Keys of Marinus/The Key to Time in that there is an overriding goal of tracking down the source of the divergence in the timeline, interspersed with stops in different times/places. Nyssa and a knight (Mulberry) in Rhodes fall through a portal into 19th Century America, smackdab in the middle of the Civil War. Reunited with the Doctor and Wilton, they take on a black Confederate called Floyd and move on to Vietnam in the 20th Century, where they rescue a downed helicopter pilot called Alice before finally finding the location of the timeline divergence and dealing with the problem head-on. This gives the story a very episodic feel, but there is nothing distinct about any of the locations/times, or rather nothing in the story that takes advantage of what would be distinct about them. Rhodes after being conquered by the Knights of Saint John, the American Civil War, the Vietnam War - all interesting settings for stories that end up being little more than set dressing as the actors rush through them to get back to the TARDIS and move on to their next story. Where the previous two mentioned stories from the classic series worked was that each individual setting felt alive, it was a place where things were happening, the Doctor/Companions walked into those worlds and occupied them for a time, taking part in events/making a difference before moving on to their own overall goal. Here, the locations/times would be interchangeable with any other, you might as well say they were in Gorgplex IV in the 53rd Century during the Skalvonia Revolution for all the impact the actual settings have on anything taking place in the episodes. In Rhodes Nyssa is upset about the behavior of the knights, accuses Mulberry of being a creep and then they fall through a wormhole and end up in the Civil War. During the Civil War, Nyssa, Mulberry and Floyd are almost killed in a giant explosion when the TARDIS gets confused by the identical place names in different States. In Vietnam, they rush to rescue Alice from her downed chopper and then.... leave. On the CD Extras for this story, Nick Briggs talks to William Hope about how Big Finish often gets mocked regarding the American accents in their audios, and how this can't happen this time because they got an American to play Tillington (Hope then informs him he is a Canadian based in England!). The trouble is... the accents are still awful! Whether this is down to writing, performance, direction or a mixture of all of them I don't know, but the accents are truly terrible in this story and very much sound like British people trying to do their best impersonation of their broad idea of what an American sounds like. Alice and Floyd in particular are very bad, though at least with Floyd's character the idea seems to be to try and capture the sense of an intelligent man who, through no fault of his own, was poorly educated and is used to having his opinions ignored. Alice is just loud and abrasive where I feel they wanted her to be forthright and self-confident, and she in particular suffers from the issue where too much exposition replaces a script that adequately conveys action through sound. Mulberry is almost a complete non-entity, which makes his pivotal role in the climax of the story fall a little flat. Similarly, Wilton seems pleasant enough but utterly irrelevant, and though he attempts to offer helpful advice to the Doctor and is far too handy with the TARDIS controls, he's otherwise completely forgettable... which makes what happens to him at the end of the story feel oddly appropriate. The story has Daleks in the title, but for most of the first couple of episodes they're relatively absent. Disturbingly, despite the invasion never taking place, some Dalek toys have started to be mass produced with seemingly no point of origin, with the Doctor pondering whether awareness of them is seeping into the subconscious of humanity who KNOW that the timeline they are living in is wrong. The toy Daleks are more than they seem, leading to a rather comedic segment where the Doctor and his companions chase a tiny little Dalek through the corridors of the TARDIS, and later haul one off the TARDIS console while it squeals angrily, like the world's deadliest toddler throwing an adorable little tantrum. The TARDIS is locked into flight "sideways" through Time, eventually ending up in the place where all the "time tracks" converge, some kind of causal nexus in time/space from which all time branches out throughout the vortex. This is the location of mysterious voices that all the characters have been able to hear throughout the story, which were the inspiration for Nyssa to create her device for communicating across time. Unfortunately for them, the inhabitants of this place, for all their talk of peace, justice, liberty etc, turn out to be Daleks. Millions and millions of Daleks, stacked up to form a literal Dalek City, they have made their base in this causal nexus and are attempting to spread out Dalek ideals across time and space (how this is expressed as justice/liberty etc I do not know) - they are aware they were supposed to invade Earth in the 22nd Century, and also aware that thanks to the Doctor their invasion ultimately failed, and they mean to set all this to rights. They have created the toy Daleks, and mean to send trillions of "nano-Daleks" to occupy them, to hit Earth with a surprise attack from within, and because they're insane little megalomaniacs, they've also decided to make the Doctor the trigger for this invasion, as punishment for his foiling their plan in his past. The above paragraph is a whole lot of nonsense and this is how it comes across while listening to it too. The Dalek plan is lunacy, the germ of an interesting idea executing in an astonishingly silly way. While the Doctor, Nyssa and Wilton are escorted through the Dalek City and informed of this needlessly complicated plan, Alice, Mulberry and Floyd try to figure out a course of action to rescue them with the TARDIS by listening to the Doctor singing songs through Nyssa's communication device.... which is also able to be picked up by General Tillington in the 22nd Century, which allows the Doctor to eventually execute a plan to shortcircuit the Dalek control of the TARDIS. In the midst of all this is a creature called the Greylish, which is bizarrely introduced as the cliffhanger to episode 3. "I am.... THE GREYLISH!" it smugly informs, and the howl screeches and the music kicks in while the listener is left going,"Oh no NOT the Greylish.... wait, who the gently caress is the Greylish?" Who the gently caress the Greylish is gets revealed in episode 4, the Doctor having figured it out almost immediately and having to inform the Greylish of the truth of the matter too. Again there is the germ of an interesting idea there, but the Greylish is introduced so late and does so little that its pivotal role in ending the Dalek threat to time/space doesn't really have any impact, similarly to how Mulberry's big moment in the sun falls flat. Suffice to say the Dalek threat is ended, and as a result some stuff happens that feels a little too neat - Wilton ceases to exist, as does Tillington and his time project for the US Military, since now the Dalek Invasion DID happen as it was "meant" to. The Doctor returns the others to their appropriate times with a comment that Alice will probably give him an earful about it, which further leads me to believe that she was intended as a Tegan-esque "mouthy" character, and cements the truth that it is the actor that makes the material and not necessarily the other way around (see L.A Takedown and Heat), because where Tegan amuses, Alice just grates. Renaissance of the Daleks had a lot of potential, but almost none of it was realized. Whatever Bidmead's original idea was, I have to imagine trying to work with that rather than changing it up to the point it no longer reflected his vision would have been a better way to go - at least then if it had been a failure it would have been one that could have been dumped on his doorstep. Who knows how many people were involved in rewrites/edits etc, but it may have been a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth, or a writing by committee job that sucked the soul out of a novel concept. In any case, as an audio this might have made an interesting novel, this format certainly didn't suit the story the way it was told.
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Apr 16, 2015 06:40
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Bicyclops posted:Ahahaha. I just posted that same image (minus the caption) recently, when the Red Sox kept me awake by playing a nineteen loving inning game. There's a Tom Baker picture for every occasion. He's got a very beautiful smile, probably. Please make some gifs of Richard Martin charmingly throwing his scarf around, thank you.
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Apr 16, 2015 06:49
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Wow. That plot sounds...very convoluted, Jerusalem. My brain needs coffee just from reading about the Dalek City and helicopter pilots and Rhodes... The concept of tiny Daleks sound funny, though! Oh, and want to feel just a little bit older? Ten years ago a certain Scottish bloke was announced as the Doctor... http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/doctorwho/entries/6a7a52b4-e963-4465-9cf0-4fcc6dc63139 CobiWann fucked around with this message at 12:29 on Apr 16, 2015 |
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Apr 16, 2015 10:16
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CobiWann posted:The concept of tiny Daleks sound funny, though! At one point they're chasing one around and the Doctor realizes that it wants them to chase it, so they stop, turn around and walk the other way and the little Dalek gets all confused and upset because they're not following the plan and starts yelling at them to come back  CobiWann posted:Ten years ago a certain Scottish bloke was announced as the Doctor... The dude from Casanova? Is the Doctor gonna start making out with his companions or something? :lau.... oh wait. v  v
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Apr 16, 2015 12:34
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Jerusalem posted:The dude from Casanova? Is the Doctor gonna start making out with his companions or something? :lau.... oh wait. v What? Already? But Eccleston only just started! How is he stepping down already?
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Apr 16, 2015 12:51
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Jerusalem posted:The dude from Casanova? Is the Doctor gonna start making out with his companions or something? :lau.... oh wait. v ...you know, I never thought about that. This puts that scene from New Earth in a different light.
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Apr 16, 2015 13:36
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Jerusalem posted:The dude from Casanova? Is the Doctor gonna start making out with his companions or something? :lau.... oh wait. v Chip and Ironicus' podcast went on about Casanova for twenty minutes at one point, just recalling stories about the guy. Putting aside the constant sex, he was a really Doctor-esque figure. He basically led an entire life of those scenes where the Doctor barges in and pretends to be someone important until people listen to him. What I'm saying is that I'm entirely unsurprised that they cast the guy that played Casanova as the Doctor, and it worked really well.
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Apr 16, 2015 15:16
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I started Assassin in the Limelight today and realized I juuuuust missed hearing it on the 150th anniversary of the day it takes place  Also, the accents. Good God, the accents.
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Apr 16, 2015 17:04
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After The War posted:I started Assassin in the Limelight today and realized I juuuuust missed hearing it on the 150th anniversary of the day it takes place Again, they're all American or Canadian actors!
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Apr 16, 2015 17:36
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Barry Foster posted:Again, they're all American or Canadian actors! Whether it's that they're trying to push a regional accent they can't do or playing it up for British audiences, (most likely both) it sounds goofy regardless of country of origin.
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Apr 16, 2015 17:55
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Barry Foster posted:Again, they're all American or Canadian actors! Not surprisingly, Canadians attempting to do Southern is still really funny (and if you listen to their interviews, all of them have spent the better part of the last decade in England). It's kind of okay for Assassin in the Limelight though, because it's bizarre enough already that the accents are just part of it, and Leslie Philips steals the whole show anyway.
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Apr 16, 2015 18:10
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Well, this is a conundrum. McCoy will be at a convention nearby (Marlborough, MA) this weekend. However, as cool as it would be to meet him, I really don't enjoy conventions at all and this one looks especially weird as a solid 50% of the convention lineup is washed-up wrestlers. Mostly this post is to poke BosGoons in the arm and say, "hey, you guys should go to this," I guess.
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Apr 17, 2015 03:54
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After The War posted:I started Assassin in the Limelight today and realized I juuuuust missed hearing it on the 150th anniversary of the day it takes place I'm in the middle of Worldwide Web, a 2009 audio which takes place in the Near Future of 2015, where a space probe is lost on a mission to Mercury. http://www.space.com/29128-nasa-messenger-mercury-mission-death-plunge.html 
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Apr 17, 2015 04:07
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CobiWann posted:Oh, and want to feel just a little bit older? Ten years ago a certain Scottish bloke was announced as the Doctor... For a second I thought you meant Capaldi and I felt the sudden weight of father time's hand on my shoulder.
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Apr 17, 2015 04:11
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After The War posted:I started Assassin in the Limelight today and realized I juuuuust missed hearing it on the 150th anniversary of the day it takes place Now I'm wondering how packed your year would be if you tried to watch/hear every Doctor Who episode on the anniversary (or pre-niversary) of the event itself. One thing's fro sure, your Christmas is gonna be loving busy.
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Apr 17, 2015 04:18
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Astroman posted:I'm in the middle of Worldwide Web, a 2009 audio which takes place in the Near Future of 2015, where a space probe is lost on a mission to Mercury. Well there's a simple explanation for this, NASA is just putting all their funding into making sure Doctor Who is an accurate representation of the future. To be fair, I can't think of a better use for their time, effort and money.
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Apr 17, 2015 04:43
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Has anyone mentioned these fan-made covers in the style of the old Target Novelizations? Because they're amazing. A couple of examples to persuade you to click:   What's more, there's so many of them...
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Apr 17, 2015 10:14
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