CobiWann fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Aug 9, 2015

Chairman Mao fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Aug 11, 2015

• The concept of Perfect imperfection. Indigo 3 is treated as an oddity, and makes very good use of the audio format to describe the naturally unnatural-looking environment they find themselves in. Visually, something so real it looks fake would just look.... well, fake. But in an audio, you can make the listener picture in their own heads something uncanny, something that triggers a response in humans of,"No no no something's not right here at all!" The sandy dunes of the planet are somehow, someway almost perfectly identical, which gives them a disturbingly crafted look. But it is that tiny imperfection that drives the creation of a religious movement there, one that finds this small inperfection.... well, perfect - so they devote their lives to finding balance, to making sure that things never go too far one way or the other - that things are never too chaotic, but also never too ordered either. As a concept, it's cool as hell and a great potential subject for exploration. Throw in the Doctor's casual explanation of other features of the planet, like the huge rainstorms that come and blanket the land as far as the eye can see with blue flowers etc, and you have a really cool "alien" planet to use as a setting.
  
  
• Lucie's meaty part. Lucie is a cool character but too often the stories rely on her loudness at the expense of actual personality/character development. While she is certainly loud in this story, and still a little guilty of rushing through her dialogue, the story shows that she doesn't just rabbit on vacuously, but is thinking on her feet. Late in the story, circumstances dictate a radical personality shift and Smith does a good job selling it, hampered only by having to emulate a rather poor voice effect. The ending, as she delights in rubbing the Doctor's nose in the situation he finds himself in is a lot of fun too - the warmth and depth of their relationship has really developed over the last season and a half to the point that even in middling stories like this one, it comes across well.
  
  
• The Doctor's attitude. Right from the beginning, the Doctor has a wonderfully anarchic tone which is just pitch perfect. Constantly bemused by the obvious lies and obfuscations of the monastery, he seems to delight in refusing to allow anybody to get away with their bullshit. Even when he gets literally tossed out a window by the pissed off monks, his reaction once outside remains as light-hearted and fun even though he freely admits there are concerning things to be dealt with. That risks making the character seem callous, of undermining the stakes of the story with his detached air (sometimes Tom Baker would cross this line, unfortunately). But McGann's performance always gives the sense that he does care, that he is trying to make things better. That doesn't mean he needs to suffer fools or allow them to dictate terms, and he definitely buckles down when it becomes Lucie is in danger. You could accuse him of only getting serious when it affects HIM, so I think it's important that he still cracks jokes in the same vein even when he is obviously concerned. That's who the Doctor is - charmingly befuddled in a very English way, he is somebody who has always come across as genuinely caring, to the point of sometimes wearing his heart on his sleeve. Like with Lucie in the point above, McGann has by now so firmly inhabited the role of the Doctor that the character shines through no matter the quality of the story (unless it is REALLY bad).
  

• The execution of Perfect Imperfection. While in concept the idea of the religion based on perfect imperfection, of a planet of uncanny near-symmetry, is fascinating.... beyond paying lipservice to it they don't really do ANYTHING with the idea. They establish the setting/theme and then toss it aside in favor of a far less interesting story about an ancient (and alien!) war. At points the religious figures mention how their philosophy is supposed to work, but in practice nothing they really do reflects that. It's a sad indictment of a story when the setting is more interesting than the actual narrative.
  
  
• The treatment of the devout. In addition to the discarding of the setting in favor of a less interesting storyline, the religious figures in this story get short shrift too. There is no doubt that they are devout (at least the two authority figures) and yet they are also shown to be either hopelessly corrupt or mindlessly obsessed with rules without thought at all for the actual (ill-defined) teachings of their religious order.... except for when they do give it thought. If I thought the story was actually trying to make some kind of point about religious hypocrisy/bureaucracy itself, I could forgive this. But I don't get that sense, the characters in the monastery just seem to shift in the wind and do whatever the story requires of them at the time, shifting from hapless boobs to complicit criminals to sticklers for the rules to craftily interpreting their own religious doctrine to allow a happy ending for the Doctor and Lucie. The lack of defining characterization for the two authority figures means they come across as empty, undefined, and ultimately forgettable. Just as forgettable as the whole "visions of apocalypse" thing that is introduced early, largely forgotten about and then hastily and sloppily explained in a throwaway line later in the day.
  
  
• The underwhelming "monsters". Sadly the narrative framing of this story includes a pair of alien warlords who barely work on paper let alone in audio format. Giant sentient crocodile men, the story starts with the declaration of war between the ruler of their planet and his most trusted lieutenant - a war that spirals out and eventually comes to Indigo 3. These creatures wouldn't work on television but in audios you can go crazy.... but you still have to successfully get across the creatures for the listener. These guys sound utterly generic, the same typical "deep" voiced warrior-class type that have appeared across large numbers of Big Finish audios. They sound ridiculous, the attempt to sell the booming voices impact the performance negatively, and they just get in the way of a far more interesting setting. There is some neat stuff about the way they choose their "Champions" and the surprisingly "civil" way they engage in warfare, but that's all too little, too late and should have been more focused on as the driving force of the story. As it is, it comes too late.