The_Doctor fucked around with this message at 16:19 on May 17, 2016

Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 13:19 on May 20, 2016

• The Doctor/Donna Chemistry. Cited by many as the best Doctor/Companion partnership of the revival run so far (some would argue that the show has EVER had, classic or revival), it's a welcome return to hear both Tennant and Tate back in the roles they once inhabited so well. It feels like they haven't missed a day, the two comfortably settle back into their roles and most importantly their chemistry together. Nobody is phoning it in (and hell, it's not like Tennant is in need of the work or money) and it sounds like the two are having an absolute blast, even when the characters are getting short or frustrated with each other. If you enjoyed the two together on television, there's no reason you won't enjoy them again in audio format, with the only downside being that we don't get to see the wonderful facial expressions/reactions the two often had towards each other. Listen to the behind the scenes interviews as well for more of the same, as they good-naturedly mock each other before warmly praising the other and talking about how happy they are to have got the old gang back together.
  
  
• The RTD feel. Doctor Who is a very different television show to the RTD years nowadays, and that's got its upsides and its downsides. That said, for me these audios feel very much like something out of the RTD years in a good way - it's all the highly emotive, charged nonsense that RTD did so well on television, and now Matt Fitton, Jenny Colgan, James Goss and the entire team at Big Finish do a great job of recapturing that same ridiculously fun spirit without hitting any of the lows that sometimes punctuated the show during that period. Whether it's people recoiling in fear from vacuum cleaners, civil servants taking over a den of iniquity, or a bunch of quasi-Marxist maids doing battle with a skeleton army - there's just a campy fun feel to the whole thing.
  

• It's played safe. Big Finish doesn't really try anything too beyond the pale - yes it captures the RTD spirit, but it doesn't take any of the big risks that RTD often took. Sometimes those worked beautifully for him, sometimes they blew up in his face, but he always seemed willing to put himself out there. Perhaps justifiably Big Finish decided to push for middle-of-the-road, fairly safe stories that mostly relied on the Doctor/Donna chemistry to carry them. They do this very well, and I imagine some experimentation is to come in future releases, but it does mean none of the stories really stand out as absolute classics (but also no utter stinkers).
  

• The "evil" AI. The story seems to be aiming for the typical "new technological advancement backfires and tries to take over humanity" type of thing, but quickly turns that on its head. A series of incidents leave the Doctor confused because when he checks the technology that "assaulted" various humans he discovers there is absolutely nothing wrong. The problem isn't the technology but the people, their fear and the danger that results is entirely of their own creation - born of ignorance and presenting no threat beyond what the humans cause to themselves in their efforts to "escape". The actual source behind the fear is entirely more terrifying than any robot or AI would be.
  
  
• The horror of ignorance. With no (known) external threat, the true horror comes from the result of the growing ignorance of the human population. Of particular note is a section where a technological genius is reduced to a gibbering mess in the presence of technology, finding herself unable to even draw a circuit with a pencil... or even a straight line. To make things worse, as her condition deteriorates she begins to regard even the pencil itself with fear, how does this "drawing stick" work? For me it hits a rather unsettling area by bringing to mind dementia, the loss of the ability to comprehend or understand things that were so simple in the past, the loss of the mind and the self to the frustration, fear and misery they comes from not being able to understand. This is present throughout the story to one degree or another - a man is trapped in a lift unable to understand how he is being shifted from one position to another or who the mysterious voice telling him what floor he is on is; a newscaster stops in terror as he realizes that words are floating in the air in front of him telling him what to say; a cleaner recoils in fear from his vacuum cleaner, leg tangled in the cord and convinced he is under attack from the roaring creature; people find themselves trapped inside mysterious metal objects on wheels; and underground giant metal snakes sit silently in the tunnels, flashing words with destinations on them - what ominous threat are they making!?! Remove humanity's understanding of their environment, and they become fearful, superstitious primitives whose fight or flight instincts are automatically triggered.
  
  
• The Doctor is not immune. The Doctor's great intelligence actually proves to be a liability, and best of all the effect it has on him - while immediately obvious to the listener - goes unnoticed by himself because he is inside his own head, everything seems perfectly reasonable to him until he begins to understand that things he knew easily before are now mysteries to him. He assumes the Sonic Screwdriver has stopped working rather than himself, and it isn't until he goes into the TARDIS and can't deal with the impossibility of what he he seeing that he finally grasps that his own mind has been turned against him. His reaction to this is somehow perfectly RTD, as he shuts down his higher brain functions in order to regain the ability to walk and talk, and increasingly looks to Donna for direction until they can engineer a way to return him to his best self.
  
  
• Donna. Donna's ability to hold out longer than most (but not all) of the other characters in the story is not an indictment of her intelligence, but rather explained away by her lack of exposure to the signal, her coming from a slightly older time where technology was omnipresent but not quite to the degree it is today, and having mostly not cared to understand most technology in the first place. As a result, she can hold out longer, come up with plans involving technology, and she's smart enough to realize her own limitations - her plan essentially boils down to,"I'm going to take things far enough for the Doctor to wrap things up at the end" and.... that works! Plus of course during all of this she's been the same old Donna, flirting outrageously ("He saved me.... with his muscles!"), getting snippy with the alien menaces, and proving herself more insightful and empathetic than her initial brash attitude might first indicate.
  
  
• The resolution. This works so well, with Donna's plan working to the point that the Doctor gets back in charge of his faculties and makes the necessary moves to negate the evil plan. His solution builds on everything presented in the story up to that point, and even falls into the old RTD tradition of,"The Doctor gives the bad guys a chance to walk away" ending. Even though it's violent, the end of the bad guys is nicely ironic, and the line of,"Did you remember to turn on the.... thing...?" is pretty drat hilarious.
  

• The Koggnossenti. The actual villains of the piece have a lot of potential - an alien race that conquers/invades not through martial force or violence, but by reducing the intelligence/comprehensive ability of their victims to the point that they welcome the arrival of a "smarter" race that promises to "look after them" (turn them into slaves). But the aliens' pompous characterization makes them feel more like some WASPish bad guys out of a crude 80s comedy, and the story never seems entirely sure whether it wants them to be monstrously immoral slavers or comedic idiots who aren't quite as smart as they think they are.
  
  
• The cleaner. This character just seems kind of weirdly out of place, an extra character who isn't really needed and whose purpose to demonstrate the danger/threat is redundant because that function was already filled by other characters as effectively if not moreso. Also, his accent and dialogue feels mildly racist - the uneducated foreigner archetype for no real reason.
  

• The Time Reaver and its application. The Time Reaver as a weapon is already a pretty neat concept - it slows down the victim's perception of time enormously, meaning it can be used effectively as a torture device to stretch out a moment's pain to a relative sense of days, weeks or even months. But the way it is used in this story is perhaps even more devastating, as downtrodden members of Calibris' underclass take to using it as a narcotic - wait for a moment of pleasure or happiness and then use the gun, and suddenly that euphoria will last and last and last.... even if only a few minutes has gone by. Which of course is what makes it so dangerous, because once people recover they want MORE, and while time may not pass for the body, it does for the mind, and you CAN have too much of a good thing. And if the effect is made to last longer? If somebody spends a week in their state of euphoria (or pain)? Then without any real notion of time and with one particular feeling dominating their minds, who is going to remember to look after themselves? To be aware of their surroundings? To eat or drink? To sleep? And when the Doctor discovers WHY the Time Reaver was discovered, and HOW it ended up on Calibris, it just adds to the sense of desperation and longing.
  
  
• Donna sharing her dad's final words. I won't reveal them here, but when Donna talks about the death of her father (an event that happened off-screen and went largely unmentioned on the TV show) it's very moving, and when she reveals the final words he told her.... well, you have to hear it, really
  
  
• The Doctor/Donna chemistry. I know I already talked about this before, but it bears repeating, these two are so great together. Her gentle chiding of the Doctor when he admits that he only really came to Calibris because he likes to look at all the other spaceships in the universe and feel smug because the TARDIS is better is a lovely bit of character work. Together they make a great double act, lots of verbal sparring and sniping back and forth but also very effective teamwork. The way Donna reacts to the aftermath of the Doctor's insane plan to deal with the Time Reavers is very sweet, and this story very much plays off the idea that the two are the absolute best of friends traveling time and space together having a blast and looking out for each other.
  

• The bad guy. Unfortunately while the concept is interesting, the execution is not, and the voice modulation while well-intentioned ends up being more a distraction than enhancement to the actor's performance. It's also difficult to take it particularly seriously as a threat, it's just kind of a ridiculous thing and so low-rent that you question whether it has managed to last as long as it has because it is so beneath the attention of the officials. Instead of being a serious threat and danger, it just feels comedic, kinda pathetic, and not particularly bright. More often than not its cunning plans consist of just showing up and saying,"Give me what I want" and ignoring the fact it is outgunned, surrounded or in no position to make demands. It ignores the actual situations it finds itself in to just repeat demands to be handed what it wants even when it has nothing backing it up by way of threat. When it finally faces its comeuppance, it doesn't feel so much justified as just the inevitable result of a not particularly bright thug pushing its luck too far.
  
  
• The "planet" size of the Spaceport. It's an issue that has cropped up in Big Finish stories before (such as Faith Stealer) and even on the television show (like Gridlock or even the Library 2-parter) where the idea is,"The entire PLANET is <x>" which sounds very impressive. Except it also doesn't particularly stand up to the story itself, as the setting ends up feeling more like a small town let alone a city or country and certainly not an entire planet. The sense of scale is not there, all the integral characters/authorities/headquarters/locations etc take place inside a constrained geographic space because spreading it all out across (and inside) an entire planet would be unmanageable... except that is what the setting actually IS.
  
  
• Ignorance of the Vacintian situation. The Doctor knows about the Vacintians.... so how does he not know about the situation they're currently facing? Or their involvement with the Time Reaver situation? The Doctor's ignorance of these things is necessary for some major revelations in the story, but doesn't make particular since given the apparent prominence of the Vacintians in the universe, as well as the intense interest the Doctor has in the Time Reavers.
  

• The Doctor as third wheel. When Donna meets the charming Prince Rudolph, she's instantly enamored and to her great joy he seems to be too. Which makes the Doctor's insistence of sticking his nose in all the better, as over the course of several dates the two try to get to know each other only for the Doctor to continually stick his oar in or get in the way. Popping his head in to inquire about the mysterious country Rudolph is prince of (the Doctor has never heard of it, raising his suspicions), detouring their romantic trips in order to explore things of interest to HIM, eventually the Doctor gets dumped as Rudolph and Donna do a runner to get him out of the way. Even when he finally shows up, he remains a third wheel who just serves to infuriate (endearingly) Donna, get casually insulted ("are you an aging gigolo?" asks the Queen-Mother, to Donna's great delight), and dismissed by Death in a rather cruel way ("My victim must be loved.... nobody loves you"). Best of all comes the section where he decides to nobly "let Donna go", making a brave speech about how much it hurts him when a companion leaves but how he knows it for the best for them and he is proud of them and happy for them and blah blah blah while all the while Donna is trying to get a word in edge-wise to tell him to shut up and listen because things are going to sour and she wants to get the hell out of dodge with him. This constant sidelining of the Doctor works extremely well, especially because even as it is all happening, the Doctor IS getting stuff done, figuring things out (albeit incorrectly at first) and still being an integral character even if this is very much a story where Donna is the central character.
  
  
• The quasi-companion. At first Hortense (Big Finish veteran Beth Chalmers) seems a one-note comedic character, a maid whose exposure to Donna has seen her gain awareness of the works of Jackie Collins and a decidedly Marxist-bent. But as the story continues, she begins to prove her worth both as a quasi-companion to the Doctor AND a leader of her fellow countrymen, which plays importantly into the end of the story. The Doctor taking to her and commenting on her suitability as a companion is quite fun following so quickly on from the scene where he "let's Donna go", which gets a neat punchline when Donna shows up and archly notes that he "moves quick". There is a level of "exposition machine" from her as she gets the Doctor to give a running commentary of action going on so the listener can get a mental picture, and it's all played a little too much with a nod and a wink at times. But her rallying of her fellow maids and her reaction to the change in the status quo at the resolution all feel earned and sensible, and make for a good supporting character
  
  
• Prince Rudolph. The initially debonair and sophisticated Rudolph has a wonderful gentle transformation across the course of the story, ending in a rather fantastic sequence where he finds himself caught between Donna and his mother, and a quite hilarious scene of him pathetically calling after Donna as she gets the hell out of town having dodged a bullet with "not my best wedding... not my worst either". The slow realization that Rudolph's feelings may be genuine but the man himself is surface-flat is nicely handled, and the fact he is genuine is important because it in some ways makes the character more pathetic - had he just been coldly manipulating Donna (like his mother, played by Alice "Borg Queen" Krige) it would have made him one-dimensionally villainous, but as things the shallow character ironically ends up with a bit more depth to him.
  
  
• The flag. The flag is introduced early to the story as a subject of some fascination to the Doctor, and it's import (and how it affects particular characters) is firmly established throughout the story which is important to the resolution, making everything make sense and feel like the solution wasn't just pulled out of the author's rear end at the last minute.
  
  
• Donna's solution. The way Donna deals with Death is.... you have to hear it to believe it
  

• It's a bit cute. The story mostly has a very lighthearted tone, but sometimes it all gets a bit too cute, too much winking to the listener with anachronisms or forced jokes. This mostly happens with Hortense and her fellow maids, who act and react in ways that really make no sense given their sheltered upbringing even WITH exposure to Donna and some of the activities she has had them undertake.