Box of Bunnies fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Oct 25, 2016

jivjov fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Oct 26, 2016

• The Guardians. After an excellent cliffhanger to the rushed and overly packed The Judgement of Isskar, the Black Guardian shows up full of all the booming power familiar to viewers of the Davison era. However, the writer Jonathan Clements does a very good job of working with the premise that Big Finish gave him: It's the Key to Time so the Guardians need to be involved, so get them in and then get rid of them as quickly as possible! Clements does this by rather sensibly taking the approach that if Entropy is rapidly overtaking the Universe and bringing it to an end, then the Guardians' own power would be similarly coming to an end. Each is desperate to get their hands on the 5th Segment to jumpstart their powers for even a few more precious seconds of overwhelming power, each are rapidly waning in strength, and so they cling to whatever powers they can find. The order-driven White Guardian becomes a Legate to the Caliph, the chaos-driven Black Guardian becomes the greedy Lord Cassim who makes a deal with an extra-terrestrial to get him off the backwater planet as fast as possible. Both are utterly pathetic once stripped of power, still expecting others to do their bidding, unable to think strategically or imaginatively, lacking inspiration because they've been so used to knowing everything and being able to do anything/be anywhere for as long as they have existed. The Audio reduces the (far too) powerful characters and sidelines them well, leading to a rather fun ending where the two find themselves stuck out in the desert with nowhere to go and nothing to do but wait and hope that the Doctor saves reality, and thus by extension themselves.
  
  
• Amy gets some character. This second story in the Key 2 Time was written first, with Amy a completely blank character both in terms of history and within the narrative itself. Yet oddly, Amy gets far more character in this story than she does in the later written but earlier released previous story... which isn't to say she gets much, but at least it is something! Separated from the Doctor and tending to imprint on the mannerisms/behavior of those around her, Amy struggles as she does her best to fit in by being a slave while constantly questioning everything/everybody and insisting on following her own leads as she tries to retrieve her stolen Satchel, find the Doctor AND the missing Segment. There are moments where she has minor breakthroughs, points where she refuses to kowtow to the conventions of the time and place she is in (she has no moral objections, she just speaks her mind on any issue) and actually drives the story forward.
  
  
• The missing Segment. After so casually finding the first four segments in the first story, all four "episodes" of this audio see the location of the 5th segment a complete mystery. The Black Guardian has scoured all of time and space and found no trace of it beyond certain locations/times when it SHOULD be present but isn't. None of it makes any sense until the Doctor finally figures out what has happened, a neat little bit of paradoxical writing where it turns out that the segment was hidden in an object that the Black Guardian himself would create, unknowingly making the thing he was looking for by stealing huge amounts of gold in order to build a device to escape the Earth, which he only got trapped on because he was looking for the Segment he himself would end up creating!
  
  
• The Doctor's escape. Once the Doctor figures everything out, it's quite fun to see how expertly he manipulates events without anybody realizing what he is doing. While the story has the same wonderful,"He's in over his head" feeling that marked so much of the 5th Doctor's televised era, his frantic and frustrated directions to the various characters in the story as it reaches it climax masks his very deliberate and fun choreographing of the scenario in order to allow he and Amy to retrieve the Segment and escape with nobody able to get their hands on them. The moment where they escape, leaving behind the Guardians just as they figure out what has happened is handled really drat well and is a lot of fun, it's pretty neat to see the once near-omnipotent beings powerless to do anything after realizing how completely outsmarted they've been.
  
  
• Black and blue. There's a wonderful bit of linguistic play where the Doctor explains the misconception Nisrin has had of Amy's use of the word "blue", it's a fun bit of writing and Davison has great fun as the Doctor getting carried away with his enthusiastic explanation.
  

• Nisrin and Prince Omar. There is a running subplot of the slavegirl Nisrin's rather desperate attempts to gain the favor/notice of Prince Omar. In the end she succeeds in getting his attention, but whether that is a good thing or not I really couldn't say. There seems to be a deliberate effort to point out that Omar is far from the heroic and dashing image she appears to have of him, but Nisrin's own flaws kind of get glossed over. At one point she freely admits her desire for Omar is based almost purely on her fear of growing old and weak and being casually disposed of as a result. While it's true that women of the time (particularly slave women) had pretty limited options, it feels like the story is trying to paint at least one half of the relationship as genuine/heartfelt but then throws in these sections that suggest it's based almost entirely on self-interest (and perhaps a fair chunk of self-delusion). Given the large chunks of story devoted to both characters, I'm still not sure what if anything I was supposed to feel about them as individual characters and as a couple. I honestly would have preferred Nisrin taking more obviously onboard Amy's example and gaining some ability to think for herself and value herself as a person.
  
  
• The Djinn. The extra terrestrial element feels somewhat tacked on, even though it is so central to the plot - the Black Guardian needed to want to get off of Earth, the irony of his plan and the paradox of the missing segment required it. But the alien (a race called the Djinni, which is a bit on the nose really) just kind of gets in the way, and the story can't seem to decide if they want him to be a real threat or just a bit of comic relief. The comedic bits are funny ("She stole my..... handbag.....") but also rather negate any sense of menace he might have had when threatening to kill people or lay waste to an army/city.
  
  
• The Key 2 Time. Again I have to question WHY a sequel to the Key to Time saga. I liked the first time around just fine but at best this just feels like more of the same. Amy is even in the same "new, inexperienced companion slowly growing as a person" category as the first Romana, just without the smooth, slightly smug superiority that Mary Tamm did so well. Cramming the first four segments into the first story still feels like a mistake/a desire to get everything over as fast as possible, and while this story is much better than the first this "saga" is almost over already before it even began. Not that I wanted 6 4+ episode stories, one per segment, but this all just feels rushed like they wanted it done as soon as possible.