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CobiWann posted:The Kingmaker. Third act cliffhanger. I'm not a huge Nev Fountain fan but Kingmaker is pretty drat great.
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Apr 30, 2015 15:22
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Astroman posted:Seeing the comic panels they do for the 8 audios and how they dress Charlie in modern clothes and jogging suits is kinda off putting. I always envisioned her dressing like an Edwardian Adventuress all the time. Like a cross between Indiana Jones and Amelia Earhart or something. I always figured her for rolling with wherever they were and learning a lot about modern times in her travels, which is why it was a bit jarring once she starts traveling with Six that she still says "Operator?" whenever she picks up a telephone. Fil5000 posted:I'm not a huge Nev Fountain fan but Kingmaker is pretty drat great. Yeah, it's good.
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Apr 30, 2015 15:23
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Bicyclops posted:I always figured her for rolling with wherever they were and learning a lot about modern times in her travels, which is why it was a bit jarring once she starts traveling with Six that she still says "Operator?" whenever she picks up a telephone. yeah latter-day Charlie is kind of a mess
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Apr 30, 2015 15:24
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Like, it technically works (when would she have been picking up telephones anyway?), and I think for the purposes of that particular story, they were just trying to remind us "Hey, she's Edwardian, which may become important given where she was found and her story," but it was still sort of weird.
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Apr 30, 2015 15:34
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CobiWann posted:The Kingmaker. Third act cliffhanger. I'm looking forward to this review now. I liked the clever solution they had for the... dictated voiceover in the first half.
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Apr 30, 2015 15:36
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The main issue with Charlie's characterization is that it changes exactly once: during Scherzo. But very few people, unfortunately, can follow Rob Shearman, and Philip Martin is far, far away from even being close to that level of talent, so it all kinda goes to poo poo.
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Apr 30, 2015 15:55
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God, I'd forgotten that Creed of the Kromon is right after Scherzo. Talk about the best of times and the worst of times. Charlie does have really good chemistry with Six, though. I think they just drag out the issue of her actually telling him what's going on wayyyy too long because they're afraid of upsetting the apple cart (which is confusing - why even take the risk of making it a plot point if they're never going to get to it?). It's kind of okay because so many of their stories together have a Jasper Ffordey sort of thing going on, all genre bending and hurried pace, that we're more interested in the Doctor, or DI Menzies, or whoever else happened to blunder between them.
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Apr 30, 2015 16:12
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FreezingInferno posted:I'm looking forward to this review now. I liked the clever solution they had for the... dictated voiceover in the first half. I just finished the final episode. This just raises further questions! If anything I need to rewatch City of Death after this one... And hell yeah, Flatline is fantastic! My favorite episode of the revival, hands down. CobiWann fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Apr 30, 2015 |
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Apr 30, 2015 21:25
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Flatlined is great, you guys. That is all.
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Apr 30, 2015 21:42
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Bicyclops posted:God, I'd forgotten that Creed of the Kromon is right after Scherzo. Talk about the best of times and the worst of times. Actually, no. They had only planned to do a couple of stories with the pairing, but the actors had such great chemistry, they decided to add a few more stories, making the arc longer.
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Apr 30, 2015 21:49
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Jsor posted:Flatlined is great, you guys. This is an accurate statement. The dude who wrote this and Mummy on the Orient Express needs to come back and write more episodes.
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May 1, 2015 00:27
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Just laughed my rear end off at Dark Eyes 4, part 3: The Master: In the wrong hands, [the Doctor's Tardis key] could be a very powerful tool. And I am definitely the wrong hands. Liv Chenka: I thought you were the powerful tool.
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May 1, 2015 00:48
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Question I know I asked before - with regards to the "new" novels, who are the authors/what are the books I should read?
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May 1, 2015 01:24
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CobiWann posted:Question I know I asked before - with regards to the "new" novels, who are the authors/what are the books I should read? You mean the BBC books from 9 onwards? Or the EDAs too?
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May 1, 2015 01:48
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 Valhalla comes so, so, so close to getting it right. So close. A typical 4-parter unlike the 3-parters that surround it, it's an audio designed to appeal to Sylvester McCoy's taste as Big Finish was doing whatever they could to keep him happy, as at the time he was busy traveling the world acting in King Lear alongside Sir Ian McKellan (I had a chance to see that show and missed it, and I've regretted it ever since). For the first two episodes, things build up steadily as the stakes increasingly raise, we learn more about the mysteries of what is happening, and it all pays off in the fourth episode with the confrontation between the 7th Doctor and the beautifully overplayed "Our Mother", joyously hammed up by Susannah York who sounds like she is having the time of her life. Sadly, in the third episode a particular creative decision is made that utterly robs the monsters of their menace, and wipes out the chilling atmosphere that precedes it. The fourth episode attempts to recover, but it's hobbled by this one single bad decision in the previous episode, and "wrecks" what could otherwise have been a classic story. The Doctor arrives on Valhalla companionless and morose, seemingly fed up with life in general and looking to retire. Why choose Valhalla then? It's a failed mining colony on Jupiter's moon of Callisto, a "gold rush" town where everybody who could afford to moved on as soon as the massive gas deposits they were mining dried up. But to make up for this lost revenue, Valhalla has become a place where EVERYTHING is for sale, and the Doctor has decided to sell himself.... or maybe start up a little bed and breakfast inside the TARDIS, he doesn't seem to have made up his mind. That's how most of the story unfolds for the Doctor, as he seems to be in two minds about exactly what he wants to do with his life, suffering empty nest syndrome after the departure of Ace and Hex (and who knows who else, the story is vaguely set some time ahead of The Enemy Within). Of course, being the 7th Doctor, he's not telling entirely the truth, and much of what he says and does is an act specifically designed to entice attention from just the right sort of people. The character pulls that off to such good effect though that the listener (or at least, THIS listener) can't be sure if the Doctor is actually feeling this way genuinely or if it is just an act. Perhaps the two don't need to be mutually exclusive, as McCoy is on record as saying he was very interested in exploring the loneliness of the Doctor, and as noted earlier Big Finish was more than keen to cater to him. Of course a companionless Doctor story just means that the Doctor finds himself with a one-off companion for the story. In this case that character is Jevvan, a public works maintenance crewmember most notable for being played by Michelle Gomez, better known nowadays as HOLY gently caress IT'S THE MASTER  . Unfortunately her character is basically generic companion #1A, she's pleasant and a little scared but ultimately does the right thing and proves her bravery at the pivotal point and pleases the Doctor by proving humanity's ultimate worth etc etc. Perhaps the most defining moment for her character is when the Doctor offers her a place on the TARDIS and she rejects him, first of all for presuming that she would jump at the chance, and secondly because she's not interested in jumping from place to place/time to time and missing out on all the stuff in-between. That all said, make a point of listening to the CD Extras, where her personality comes out to shine and reminds everybody that she was done a disservice by the writing for her character - she's hilarious, larger than life and lights up the room (and the ears) with her presence. Then again, it might have been unbalancing to have her character be too out there, because Susannah York does an amazing job as "Our Mother", the utterly mad villain of the piece who manages to come across as both sinister and utterly bonkers. York just devours the scenery, hamming it up gloriously as she conquers Valhalla and puts into motion her plan, taking the idea of "EVERYTHING is for sale on Valhalla" to its logical extreme. Her interactions with the Doctor are fantastic, as he attempts to apply reason and desperate appeals to sanity as she raves and rants about the coming glory of her endless Empire. That does kind of fall apart with the relative ease with which the Doctor ends up finishing off her plan (it's made clear he could have basically stopped this at any time, but wanted desperately to reason her around to a mutually beneficial solution). There's also the problem that they kind of waffle around being explicit about her plan being always doomed to failure, even without the Doctor's intervention her great Empire was always going to have been relegated to the dustbin of history, the only sign of their passing a novelty item in a back alley thrift shop.The major drawback of this story comes in episode 3 though. The people of Valhalla exchange tall tales where they exaggerate the size and antics of the termites to be found all over the city, only to discover to their horror that the tales weren't so tall, if anything they were underselling the horror. The termites form the army of "Our Mother", putting down a "riot" (a poorly defined take on the 2-Minute-Hate method of social control in 1984) and taking control of the city. They are terrifying creatures, utterly alien and impossible to reason and communicate with because their minds simply don't work the way most "people" do. They move in unison, all mindlessly serving the terrible will of their leader, slicing through any human in their way, physically moving entire city blocks, moving as easily through the underground tunnels as they do on the roads or atop the buildings. And then in episode 3 their menace is completely dashed when the Doctor figures out a way to understand their "language" and we discover the termites are... working class squaddies. They laugh and jeer and call bigger termites "Sarge" and generally just convey an atmosphere so in contrast to their terrifyingly alien appearance that it completely undermines what went before or is to follow. This may have been deliberate, as the Doctor does seem keen to come up with a solution that allows both species to live a life of freedom and dignity, but it really does completely take the wind out of the sails of the whole rest of the story. In the end, Valhalla suffers from never really being able to decide what it wanted to be. The barcodes, the "everything is for sale" ethos, the publicly organized "riots" etc all suggest a conformist, dystopian society, the type of place the 7th Doctor would usually show up in to tear down. He does do that, but that never seemed to be his primary concern, and it only happens after they've already suffered their "comeuppance". Even then, it's the regular people who suffer in this story, the "elite" are reduced to a single character who is shown from the get-go to be as much a victim as anybody, as the society is taken to its "logical" extreme by Our Mother. So you have this kind of perverse situation where the Doctor is battling to save a truly horribly society, or rather the people within it, none of whom really seem to learn a lesson other than that they can turn the horrible social controls used to keep them in check against their oppressors. When the story ends, all the humans - barely saved from a lifetime of slavery - set out to seed amongst the other Earth colonies out there, with no real sense that any of them really learned anything about why the society they lived in was a bad one. Meanwhile the termites simply continue on as they always have, just without the benefit of Our Mother, and still facing the slow inevitable fall of their artificially created race stuck on a hollowed out moon without even the guidance of the horrible but at least intelligent leader they had before - it's through no fault of their own, they simply follow their nature, just as the humans are, and none of them (other than Jevvan) seemingly any the wiser. And of the Doctor goes, knocked out of his malaise and ready to set off on more adventures, seemingly in search of a companion to fill the hole in his life, no longer caught between warring desires to interfere and to retire.... but did he really accomplish anything? Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 04:00 on May 1, 2015 |
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May 1, 2015 02:12
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The_Doctor posted:You mean the BBC books from 9 onwards? Or the EDAs too? Any and all!
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May 1, 2015 02:24
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The thing I remember best about this story? It's the one where the modulation they used on the termites speaking made me ill. Like, physically ill. The buzzing sound in my ears just had an odd effect. DoctorWhat posted:Just laughed my rear end off at Dark Eyes 4, part 3: For me, it's the Dalek's report to the Dalek Time Controller "There is a one hundred percent probability that the Master will betray us." Not 98 percent. Not 99.9 percent. Nope, this motherfucker is going to betray us, no doubt about it. Davros1 fucked around with this message at 13:47 on May 1, 2015 |
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May 1, 2015 13:44
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Davros1 posted:The thing I remember best about this story? It's the one where the modulation they used on the termites speaking made me ill. Like, physically ill. The buzzing sound in my ears just had an odd effect. I felt a lower level version of that when I watched The Web Planet, the constant droning, buzzing noise in the background seemed to be in that sweet spot where it just wouldn't fade into the background, so I was always aware of it. But it wasn't quite aggravating enough that I couldn't keep watching. I think that plays a large part in why I dislike that story so much.
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May 2, 2015 00:36
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Jerusalem posted:I felt a lower level version of that when I watched The Web Planet, the constant droning, buzzing noise in the background seemed to be in that sweet spot where it just wouldn't fade into the background, so I was always aware of it. But it wasn't quite aggravating enough that I couldn't keep watching. I think that plays a large part in why I dislike that story so much. It doesn't help that they filmed it in that vaseline haze to match the sound. It didn't bother me nearly as much, although I can't say it's my favorite from the Hartnell era.
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May 2, 2015 00:59
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"The Web Planet" is one I actually really enjoy, though a lot of people seem to dislike it.
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May 2, 2015 01:38
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I think it drones on a big long, with an actual droning noise. The actual horror thing that is taking the insects over is cool, as are the bee dance people, though.
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May 2, 2015 02:22
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I checked it "The Vault" from my library and am enjoying it a lot. I knew most of the trivia in it, but the layout and pictures are very nice. Also, my five year old nephew was just shown "The Eleventh Hour" and loved it. So that makes me happy.
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May 2, 2015 02:26
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The Web Planet isn't great, but I really appreciate how hard they tried to make something really weird and different on basically no budget.
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May 2, 2015 02:28
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The Web Planet fuckin' owns, but it's only worth watching once, preferably in a film class, or, alternately, while high.
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May 2, 2015 02:34
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DoctorWhat posted:The Web Planet fuckin' owns, but it's only worth watching once, preferably in a film class, or, alternately, while high. I wonder how well it syncs with Dark Side of the Moon.
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May 2, 2015 02:35
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The best thing about Web Planet: "Quick! Chatterton! Give me your tie!" "Okay, but I don't -"ssssssss "Yes! That proves it! Definitely acid!" "Dammit, Doctor, they make us pay for those!
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May 2, 2015 02:49
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Bicyclops posted:I wonder how well it syncs with Dark Side of the Moon. At this point, I wonder what doesn't sync with Dark Side of the Moon.
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May 2, 2015 02:49
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egon_beeblebrox posted:At this point, I wonder what doesn't sync with Dark Side of the Moon. Funnily enough? TF3: Dark of the Moon.
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May 2, 2015 02:55
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egon_beeblebrox posted:At this point, I wonder what doesn't sync with Dark Side of the Moon. A complete Floyd reunion. 
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May 2, 2015 02:58
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After The War posted:A complete Floyd reunion. You'll get your whale songs and like it! 
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May 2, 2015 03:02
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After The War posted:A complete Floyd reunion. Two of them are dead now, and one of the two dead people isn't even Syd Barrett.
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May 2, 2015 03:12
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Diabolik900 posted:The Web Planet isn't great, but I really appreciate how hard they tried to make something really weird and different on basically no budget. Oh yeah for sure, I really like that they were willing to make that effort, and can appreciate the balls it took to try something that weird. I dislike the story for how it ended up looking and sounding, but there was nothing wrong with the actual idea behind it. One of my favorite bits is that the Doctor immediately declares that he knows just the body mannerisms to make to communicate with the ants, does all the gestures and the ants basically just look at him like,"The gently caress is this guy doing?" and the Doctor gets pissed off that they don't understand him. I don't think it even occurs to him that maybe he's getting it wrong. 
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May 2, 2015 03:22
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After The War posted:A complete Floyd reunion. You bastard. May you find yourself a character in a Who story that becomes part of a multi-fandom shipping pair.
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May 2, 2015 03:57
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 Frozen Time is a story that has a lot going for it, filled with a lot of quality individual elements that sadly don't add up to a compelling whole. It seems more concerned with being "clever", which comes at the expense of the integrity of the overall story. Borrowing elements from other stories, this is another "companionless" story for the 7th Doctor, which proves more a distraction than anything else, as this simply means a quasi-companion needs to be found from the supporting cast, and since they're a one-off, the usual introductory process a new companion goes through feels "wasted" since it isn't going anywhere (though it may have been intended to). Borrowing elements from early Big Finish story The Land of the Dead, the story begins with a rich man looking to return to the site of a family member's failed expedition to a remote location in order to uncover the mystery of what happened to them. In this case, it's the Antarctic, where Lord Barset's Grandfather disappeared in 1929. This background plays into an audiovisual story from pre-Big Finish days, which recounted the story of that Expedition and exactly what happened there. You don't need to be familiar with that story to enjoy this one, they do a good job of giving just enough information that you can pretty much figure out what happened, and the lack of detail works well since (mostly) nobody else on the expedition knows what happened either. This lack of information means that the story is able to pull the rug out a bit, as it rather cleverly makes you expect one thing only to give you another. If you're going to listen to this story, I highly recommend avoiding looking too deep into the details of this story (which I'll do my best to avoid going into) so the "surprise" isn't spoiled - at least this story doesn't throw the villain onto the front CD cover or put their name into the title! At this time, Big Finish was trying to remain appealing to Sylvester McCoy who had a lot of high profile and prestigious work going on. They seemed to have taken the same approach to this as they did with Paul McGann, as they provided McCoy a story where the Doctor.... gets amnesia! Discovered by the expedition frozen in ice alongside his TARDIS, apparently trapped in there for over two million years (!), this is a story that makes no bones about reminding the audience that the Doctor is NOT a human being. Surviving all that time in the ice relatively none the worse for wear, capable of surviving in a blizzard, healing quickly, I don't recall seeing a classic Doctor's "superior" physiology played up so much since the Pertwee era. What's interesting is that, unlike McGann, the 7th Doctor's amnesia doesn't change his nature at all - while McGann's Doctor always remains pleasant during his many, many, many bouts with amnesia, he often reacts differently to how he would if he was in full possession of his faculties. This is probably the appeal for McGann, the chance to portray the character without the "baggage" of the character's decades long history - but for McCoy, his amnesiac Doctor is basically indistinguishable from his usual self. So what was the point? Basically it seems to be to hobble him - the expedition finds him right in the middle of a (paused) unseen adventure, and after they thaw him out he acts the same as always, effortlessly controlling the situation/characters with all the ease of his puppetmaster self... but this time he doesn't know all the facts - he can't quite remember who he was facing, what he was doing when frozen, what the implications are, what other devices are about that could cause harm. The 7th Doctor is rarely not in complete control of all the facts in the situations he finds himself in, here he is playing catch-up, but he's playing catch-up to himself, slowly regaining his memories and thus slowly regaining his place in the plan he was in the middle of executing when a single moment of chaos left him literally stuck in place. The supporting characters are a mixed bag, probably the best is Lord Barset, who is written as an apparent rear end in a top hat who later gives a great speech about why he is actually a noble, self-sacrificing and selfless hero... and is quickly knocked down a peg by the other characters who point out that he's lying to himself and just trying to cover up/justify why he actually IS a huge rear end in a top hat. A couple of soldier characters manage to somewhat rise above the status of background players, not so much due to the writing but in their performances - there is a rather wonderful bit in the CD Extras where the actors discuss with the writer (Nick Briggs) the motivations/backgrounds they associated with their characters, and Briggs admits that he honestly didn't even think about that type of thing but their ideas make a lot of sense. Even just having perceived motivations enables the actors to create the sense that their characters are actually people and not just names on a page. But most of the attention goes towards Genevieve, played by Maryam d'Abo who is perhaps best known as the Bond Girl from The Living Daylights, coming at the expense of everybody else - the poor Professor leading the scientific side of the expedition gets written out of the story about halfway through and pretty much forgotten about for the rest of the story! I get the sense (perhaps unfairly) that Big Finish was hoping Genevieve would prove popular enough to actually BE a regular companion. Because this is a companionless story, she serves as the quasi-companion for the Doctor, and it feels like everything is building up to an offer from the Doctor to take her along... which means when it doesn't happen, the whole thing kind of feels like a waste of time. That said, in the conclusion to the story there are some vague use of wording that makes me think that Big Finish left in the suggestion that MAYBE Genevieve and the Doctor went off on a series of more adventures before returning to the Antarctic. I guess (and this is all speculation) that they hoped to bring in d'Abo as a new recurring companion for the 7th Doctor ala Evelyn for the 6th Doctor - I'm glad that didn't happen, because despite being raised in Paris, d'Abo's French accent feels pretty forced and distracting, and I don't know if I could have dealt with it on a regular basis. The conclusion to the story relies on the Doctor being able to actually have time to verbally spar with the big baddie of the piece, there are multiple occasions where the bad guy had him completely in his power and could have easily killed him and just didn't for no other reason than the fact the script didn't call for it. Still, the Doctor's solution is rather clever even if it does rely on an unknown factor reacting in just the way he hoped... though to be fair that unknown factor doesn't quite react the way the Doctor wanted, causing him to have to run for his (and Genevieve's) life. All the loose ends are basically tied up, but in a way that doesn't feel particularly cathartic - the concern seemed to be more with making sure everything was tidy rather than that the story was compelling, and while technically speaking nothing is wrong with the story, nothing about it is really unique, nothing stands out, nothing happens that hasn't been done in other stories (sometimes worse, sometimes better). Frozen Time is good, not great, the type of story that in the classic series wouldn't be notable for anything other than the misdirection of exactly what threat the Doctor is about to uncover/face.
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May 2, 2015 05:11
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Bad Dalek sketches are fun https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpt_BtPIi_E
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May 2, 2015 15:07
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from the occ thread:quote:Without saying when he/she/they arrive, does anyone else feel like it would be better if Toxx knew the identity of the new companion? After all it wasn't long after this when we knew, and it made the companions first appearance a lot more surprising I think no, because surely it'll be more of a surprise if the Dalek-girl from the premiere shows up again in the Xmas special and then AGAIN and then becomes the companion, right?
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May 2, 2015 15:29
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Toxx has repeatedly hooked on every mystery and twist so far (or played along very well), so I would like to see his earnest reactions.
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May 2, 2015 15:34
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Everyone was spoiled at the time because she'd been announced as the next companion before she first appeared in the Dalek episode, but then an advantage of watching these episodes later is not being exposed to all that press stuff. I definitely say keep him in the dark on that. Wow, that thread is almost on the home stretch at this point. The next, what, 16 episodes, go up to Matt Smith's last episode.
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May 2, 2015 15:34
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That was my question, I can definitely see it being good both ways. It will be interesting seeing Toxx get surprised when Clara reappears in the Christmas Special. I'm actually a little worried that Toxx will burn out on the reviews before the 50th special at the pace he has been going through them.
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May 2, 2015 16:41
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Knowing that she's a companion and then having her be offed (twice!) would be a proper kick in the balls. 
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May 2, 2015 16:51
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