Bicyclops posted:

CobiWann posted:

It's Black Friday, and guess what that means...

http://www.bigfinish.com/news/v/doctor-who-special-offer-on-the-entire-eighth-doctor-series

FreezingInferno posted:

Just show her the best clip from the serial.

Forktoss posted:

Is everyone's first BFA some random inconsequential release from the mid-2000s? Mine was The Gathering, and I can't even remember why I picked that (or how I ever proceeded to my second audio after that awful piece of Lidster). Probably because it was one of the few main range ones you could get for a fiver back then.

Jerusalem posted:

Time Works is basically the type of story I would have liked to have listened to in the Divergent Universe arc. Even though it's a story obsessed with time/schedules/deadlines etc and thus technically wouldn't fit into the so-called "universe without time", it IS a story that embraces the weirdness of a world that feels utterly alien to the "regular" type of worlds/scenarios the Doctor frequently encounters. It also has about the best use of C'Rizz and his own limited understanding of the concept of time I've heard so far, and even though the character still feels like he isn't quite gelling, this is another step in the right direction. It's a great concept and it is executed fairly well, with some neat misdirections, though this also leads to certain elements of the story being abandoned as the audio goes along - things that seemed vitally important or the overriding goal of the episode quickly become irrelevant or overridden by some more pressing concern. In that respect, probably this story's closest television counterpart would be The Space Museum from William Hartnell's era, a story that I also quite like - so maybe I'm biased in regards to the quality of THIS story.

The Doctor has promised to take Charley and C'Rizz to a fun location - which in Charley's mind means a sunkissed beach or a big party... and in the Doctor's mind means a Bandril warship. They're ALL disappointed though, when they instead arrive on a planet with a seemingly pre-industrial society frozen in time. They wander a city of market stalls, horse drawn carriages.... and wristwatches. Every single person wears a wristwatch, and every single one is showing the exact same time - the society appears to have frozen in place at 8 seconds past 5 in the afternoon. As they explore, they increasingly find signs that something is wrong with this place beyond the obvious - a giant clocktower sits at the center of a castle overlooking the town, the militia were chasing a woman clutching a device that is strangely familiar to the Doctor, and the Doctor keeps hearing an odd sound that Charley and C'Rizz do not.... and then suddenly the Doctor is gone, and the TARDIS is similarly frozen in place, the key unable to turn in the lock to let them back in.

Through this first part of this story, the driving force is the attempt by the Doctor to reunite with Charley and C'Rizz. The TARDIS, confused by the odd time aberrations of the planet, has jumped back in time a couple of hours and taken the Doctor with it. With time running properly in the "past", his fear now is that if he doesn't reunite with his companions by 5pm (and 8 seconds) then they will remain trapped in that time forever. They in turn are searching for him, a frustrated Charley interfering with some of the frozen people on the way till she arrives in the court of the King and discovers to her horror the Doctor frozen along with everybody else, surrounded by 4 guards, one of whom is swinging an axe to behead him. So while the Doctor is running around in the past trying to figure out how to find Charley and C'Rizz, they in turn are in the present trying to figure out how to save him from a fate he doesn't realize he is running straight into.

If that alone had been the entire premise of the story it could have carried the audio easily, much like the TARDIS crew trying to avoid their fate as exhibits in The Space Museum COULD have carried that entire serial as well. Instead, this just serves as the set-up for the actual storyline, as both the Doctor and companions independently discover the inner workings of the society they have become trapped in. Interestingly, it is the companions who get to meet and interact with the behind-the-scenes powers, while the Doctor is left to figure things out from the "outside" through his interactions with the citizens who are effectively victims of the bad guys. It is fun to see the Doctor working things out with limited and biased data, and quite true to his character that almost the first thing he does once arriving in the past is seek out a companion to work with.

That said, there are a lot of false leads in terms of where the story and particular subplots are going. This both works and doesn't, in that it is a pretty good representation of the paranoia, confusion, and subterfuge that would be the hallmark of a society like the one the Doctor finds himself in. Characters appear, disappear and (sometimes) crop back up again later but don't serve to do much or impact anything - they're pretty much present as world-building, which is laudable but can also be frustrating. One character in particular has an enormous impact in interactions with the Doctor, with the quasi-companion, and with the quasi-villain of the piece... and then is unceremoniously removed from the story about 3/4ths of the way through. The quasi-villain is quickly shown to be as much a victim of the circumstances of his society as everybody else, but his self-interest and arrogance - as understandable as it is - does make it difficult to accept the almost sympathetic end-result for his storyline. The quasi-companion's partner on the other hand is shown as sympathetic right from the get-go but is actually technically speaking far more the villain of the piece, complicit in who knows how many murders.

The ACTUAL villain of the piece only has a few scenes, and is very much in the vein of the villains of serials like The Green Death or The War Machines. There is only ONE scene between the villain and the Doctor, though it is a good one, and the villain's motivations make a logical kind of sense even if they're utterly abhorrent. There is a slight touch of the Cybermen to the whole thing too, especially when the Figurehead reveals that their ultimate solution to the directive to make sure the species doesn't waste their potential is to have that species get to the point that they can build robots and machines to do all the work, then kill off the species and just continue on without them! Most of the Figurehead's time is taken up in interactions with C'Rizz, which is interesting mostly because it serves C'Rizz's development throughout this story as he attempts to figure out for himself how he should act, react, think and feel. I think it's quite nice that we see him struggling to explain how time travel works when he barely understands time itself, and how for much of the story he talks about what the Doctor would do, what the Doctor would say etc.... and then by the end flat out says (paraphrased),"No, forget what the Doctor would say, this is what I say."

On a minor note, there is a really interesting thing going on with the 8th Doctor in this story in reference to his thoughts and feelings on his prior incarnation. At one point in the story he talks with some distaste about a Time Lord who became obsessed with ordering the universe to his own liking, and my immediate thought was that he was referring to Rassilon. It quickly becomes apparent he actually means himself, however, or rather the 7th Doctor - and he makes reference to the 7th Doctor's penchant for taking down "corrupt" societies almost as a hobby. It's rare (at least so far in Big Finish) to hear the 8th Doctor talk about his prior selves AND how he feels about the man (men) he used to be. If we can look at his personality as a reaction to his prior self - the 8th Doctor is a far more reactive, relaxed and ultimately hopeful incarnation than the often scheming, grandmaster 7th Doctor who went out of his way to track down and destroy corrupt Governments/societies. And yet, in what I thought was a rather sweet moment, at the end of this story, the Doctor confronts the Figurehead in best 7th Doctor fashion, points out that it took him 2.5 hours to end this corrupt society ("not a personal best" he says, or words to that effect) and then adds in a thank you to the Figurehead, because he has regained an appreciation for "my work". It feels to me like the 8th Doctor coming to terms with his prior self's attitude and appreciating once again the value of that attitude. I'll be very interested to see what if any impact this has on the 8th Doctor as a character going forward.

Interestingly, the Clockwork Men of this story bear a very passing similarity (in description at least) to the Clockword Droids of The Girl in the Fireplace, and this story was released a couple of months before the latter aired on television. They're really cool in concept, though in practice they're more like the "Spoonheads" from The Bells of Saint John - they're there for the cool "look" but are merely tools used by the actual power behind the scenes. They have no agency or personality, they're just the scary things that come out and put the characters into peril - particularly the companions. They serve to showcase the growth of Charley and C'Rizz (and Collis) when they figure out how to beat the Clockwork Men's "precognitive" abilities. They're not active antagonists, just a cool concept and tool for the development of others.

Time Works works for me. It makes very good use of the three main castmembers, tells a very interesting story, showcases character growth including the Doctor's own, and does some interesting experimental stuff with time. It also includes a few false leads/dropped storylines or red herrings, and the morality of some of the characters is questionable at best. But the overall impression I got was a positive one, and it's a story I'd happily recommend. The Doctor/Charley/C'Rizz trio is starting to grow on me, which probably means it doesn't have too much longer to go!

Bicyclops posted:

I kind of liked No More lies, although I will admit it is very confusing and the relationship between Lucy and the Doctor seems to take an enormous friendly leap in the middle of nowhere. The production value sort of raises it above the mediocrity of the writing.

Irony Be My Shield posted:

Someone posted this timeline thing a while back. It goes from the very start of the show up until season 7 of the revival. You can just select the revival doctors to see their bits.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20131119-doctor-who-travels-through-time

The Bad Wiki posted:

The book is further notable — perhaps even infamous — for a subplot involving the rape, near-wedding and murder of former companion Dodo Chaplet. However, this aspect of the story has often been conflated with aspects of The Man in the Velvet Mask. As a result, many fans wrongly believe that Kennedy tells the story of Dodo dying from syphilis — something that never happens in either book.[1]

DoctorWhat posted:

So, um

remember that pipe-dream New Doctor Who Wiki?

I, um, may have bought the domain "dwwiki.net" today. I may be soliciting article-writers to deliver written-from-scratch synopses for every TV story and mini-sode since 2005. I may actually be starting this ridiculous thing and looking for help in getting it off the ground.

I may be posting some more detailed plans and cries for aid this time next week.

DoctorWhat posted:

Well, I've set up a temporary(?) wiki hosted by ShoutWiki and have sent the ShoutWiki staff a request to upload a fork of the TARDIS data core to the new DWWiki. I'm also working on a style guide for Story articles right now, and also plan to do style guides for character pages. I'm also drafting some general policies.

The dream is to have scratch-written articles for every TV story and recurring character since 2005, along with scratch-written or heavily cleaned-up articles on all Classic stories, ready by the end of July so that we can launch a publicity blitz in sync with Series 9.

After The War posted:

Eighth Doctor Avatar Combo Breaker!

Is there a good source for behind-the-scenes BF stuff? I just finished Absolution, and I'd to know more about why they... did that.

Moffat posted:

“Everybody hide - Michelle Gomez as Missy was an instant hit last year, so she’s straight back to plague the Doctor and Clara in the series opener. But what brings her back into their lives is the last thing they’d expect.”

Pesky Splinter posted:

Was having a lazy sunday and attempted to make a visual list thing of the audio series, with a vague idea that it could used as a quick reference to doctor specific audios. Is this sort of thing of any use to anyone at all?