Cleretic fucked around with this message at 15:04 on Aug 23, 2022

• Terrific Translation: Something that let the previous story down was that after the delightful alienness of Abraham, the actual execution of the birds' "voice" as it communicated with (and expositioned all over) the Doctor left a lot to be desired. Not so here. Similarly "inhuman", the Vrill communicate by scent markers, which the TARDIS helpfully telepathically translates for the Doctor and Klein AND the Vrill (and later others). The result is a story in which the limitations in such a form of communication are played well into the effect of the story. Also it leads to a great joke where Klein complains that the "imperfect" translation has left the Doctor with a "stuffy Prussian accent", indicating that what she hears when he speaks is different to what we hear as listeners.
  
  The Vrill are incapable of lying, which makes them in many ways gullible, which in turn means the various characters who speak to them reveal more about themselves in how they choose to make use of this information: the Doctor is helpful even when being misleading; Klein exploits this feature even when she is being friendly/accommodating; and characters who can't quite wrap their heads around the nature of the Vrill forget that a slip of the tongue is hard to explain away with context to a race that takes everything at face value and whose reactions exponentially spiral out of control due to the nature of their hive.
  
  By spending three episodes taking advantage of this translation, it makes the moment it is taken away hit all the harder. Suddenly Vrill characters that had names and personalities become just another part of the insectoid horde. Suddenly the old tricks that allowed safe passage are useless. Suddenly the gulf in communication is so vast it seems impossible to ever cross in spite of much of the story showing it was possible... and the Doctor's lament for that loss is very well realized. If only we could have seen - from a privileged meta perspective - the likes of Lily also lamenting the sudden inability to talk with the man whose name/smell meant "help".
  
  
• Filling in the Blanks: By tightening down the original 4-episode script into a three parter, it made for not just a streamlined story but also created space for a one-off that filled in some of the blanks. Klein was first introduced in Colditz, where we were given a tantalizing glimpse of a "future" where the Doctor - having failed to save Ace and caused the Nazis to win WWII - arranged his own death as step 1 in a characteristically complex plan to correct both mistakes.
  
  In Klein's Story, the Doctor has her explain the situation in further detail as they go on their first trip in the TARDIS. What unfolds, from her perspective, is the story of her glorious ascent into scientific marvels in an alternate 1960s with the aid of the mysterious Johann Schmidt. To the listener Schmidt's own backstory is obvious, but of course to Klein it is just another frustrating mystery from a timeline that no longer exists. It's quite something to listen to the Doctor himself just listening, intrigued and increasingly amused as he pieces together a picture she doesn't quite get.
  
  
• To Gloat or not to Gloat? The key difference between the central characters is made extremely obvious in the way they choose to react to having the advantage over the other. Klein of course is quick to gloat and revel in her little successes over the Doctor. The Doctor on the other hand chooses to keep his own "victories" to himself, only explaining what he figured out about Klein's Story to her after she insists he explain, and apologizing profusely for what to her horror she quickly realizes was how easily she was played. As audio shorthand it works effectively, and though the Doctor is of course far from perfect it's fun to hear that at worst he gets frustrated by her little games of one-upmanship but mostly is far more interested in exploring things and is trying to encourage her to open her eyes up to the wonder of the universe and nature, rather than dunking on her.
  

• Oh boy, humans. For the first half of the story, it's basically the Doctor and Klein moving through tunnels "talking" with their new Vrill buddies, and it's a compelling enough story on its own. Then, of course, the secret of the "Winterlack" is discovered and some more human(oid)s show up and they're just kind of dull and uninteresting by comparison. They're there to add some conflict, but the same could probably have easily been accomplished by discovering whatever had been done had happened long ago and the perpetrators of the "Winterlack" were long gone. The story was far more interesting when dealing with the aftermath, not the actual instigators.
  
  
• The MacGuffin: Late in the piece, the Doctor reveals he suspects (correctly) that Steffan's story makes no sense, only passing muster to that point because he'd been dealing with Klein who has no truly adequate frame of reference to understand dealings on the scale of solar systems and galaxies - her comments on colonization are very much mid-20th Century in scope, getting the basic exploitative details right but knowing nothing about the politics, organizational clashes and future history of which the Doctor has access. But the reveal of what he is REALLY after, and how it offers a solution to the conundrum the Doctor was facing in his own efforts to save the hive, is not only far too convenient but feels unearned. It does lead to a neat moment at least where the Doctor uses circular logic to convince a Vrill that he has the authority to use the MacGuffin he is holding because the only people who are allowed to hold the MacGuffin are those with the authority to use it!
  
  
• No Seriously, gently caress Nazis. Mentioned in A Thousand Tiny Wings, but the climate has changed so much since this story came out (2010) that it feels near impossible for me to give the benefit of the doubt to the story/character arc that Big Finish are trying to tell. Klein is a Nazi. An unapologetic one. She wasn't forced along with it or felt she had no choice in order to pursue science, she is a dyed-in-the-wool enthusiastic supporter of the fascist cause.
  
  She doesn't blink or show the slightest concern at mention of forced labour camps or the execution of political prisoners. She cheerfully sneers at Steffan for being an "Untermensch" and is delighted to hear that the "Geo-Police" appear to be fascists themselves. Even her brief moments of surprise or unease at hearing people/beings she would consider "beneath" her extolling the same views that she holds do nothing to mitigate what a piece of poo poo she is.
  
  Worse though is that the Doctor, for all that it's laudable he is trying to teach somebody to be a better person, often leaves unsaid any kind of push-back on the horrific ideas she endorses. There's plenty of back-and-forth between them on whether her now destroyed timeline was worth saving or not, but he never calls her out on her indifference to the monstrous acts of the Nazis, or her clear belief in supremacist views.
  
  In 2010 (even then a bit of a stretch) you could argue that the Nazis were so done as any kind of ideology beyond the fringiest of the fringe that a character like that could be put into an audio series like this to explore the ways somebody like the Doctor could make them see the error of their ways. But it's 2022, I really have no desire to hear a character like the Doctor pretend like a Nazi is somebody you can have a reasoned debate with, or that their views need be given any attention to at all. It colors every Klein story, no knock on Tracey Childs at all, but I just don't want to see or hear a character like this in Doctor Who.