Year: 2006

Big Finish news

1 December 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Freshly plucked news about the audio plays from a nice man who went to a US convention where Big Finish head honcho Jason Haigh-Ellery was in residence.

  • Their Doctor Who licence has just been extended again. It will now run until December 2009. (And apparently, the request for an extension was the first thing on Gary Russell’s desk on his first day on the job in Cardiff on the new series.)
  • We have not heard the last of the newer companions created in the Big Finish range like Charley, Hex, Erimem and so on, but there will be fewer stories with them after the relaunch as more emphasis is placed on the TV companions, and they’re also considering creating some more new companions.
  • The BBC7 series will run on Sunday nights beginning on New Year’s Eve. Exact time slot is yet to be determined. It will have the David Arnold theme music, but it’s been remixed a bit, and also, episode three, Horror of Glam Rock, will feature its own “glam rock” version.
  • While the BBC7 McGann CDs are coming out, there will not be any other McGann stories coming out in the CD range… it’ll be 5-6-7 until the radio season is finished coming out.
  • Matthew Sweet is writing a Doctor Who audio that’s a silent movie. Yes, you read that right.
  • Sylvester McCoy said over the weekend that he’d quite like to be a baddie in something for Big Finish, and Jason liked the sound of that a lot.
  • Sales have recovered quite a bit since the big hit they took after the relaunch of the TV series in 2005.
  • Jason was “95% sure” that Renaissance of the Daleks with Peter Davison will co-star Sarah Sutton as Nyssa. It hasn’t been recorded yet though. She has told them that she’d like to do more audios again than the one-a-year she had cut it back to.
  • There’s nothing more for Turlough in the pipeline at the moment simply because of Mark Strickson’s schedule, but they will always record more with him when he’s in the UK and available.
  • Unless sales pick up there will probably not be a third series of Sapphire and Steel audios. All weekend long Nigel Fairs kept forcing the phrase “Sapphire and Steel starring David Warner and Susannah Harker” into the panel discussions, to increasingly funny effect. By Sunday the audience were saying it along with him. For the same reason, there will probably not be anymore Doctor Who audio script books or music CDs.

News of the morning

1 December 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Just a few snippets of early morning news fun

Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Doctor Who – No Man’s Land

30 November 2006 Rob Buckley Post a comment

No Man's LandIf there’s one thing to thank Big Finish for, it’s their revival of the pure historical story. The on-screen adventures of Doctor Who might have abandoned sci-fi free tales circa the second Doctor (bar the fifth Doctor’s Black Orchid), but the Doctor’s Big Finish audio adventures have had trips to Roman times, the Great Exhibition and 17th century Paris, to name but a few, all with minimal involvement of wibbly wobbly space things.

No Man’s Land is a First World War story that has no War Lord or War Chief, no timorous beasties creeping around in the trenches, no Rani sucking off brain chemicals. But there’s a murder about to happen in the next day or so – the British army has orders to expect someone called The Doctor and his two companions, who are coming to investigate it before it happens. Unfortunately for them, rather than the Seventh Doctor’s Big Finish “A-Team” (Mel), he’s brought his B-Team in tow: Ace and Hex.

Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – No Man’s Land”

Is Britain turning into A Clockwork Orange society?

30 November 2006 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

This one tickled me because of its full on frothing at the mouth. The Western Mail (aka “The Daily Mail for Welsh people”. Collectively they will be referred to as * Mail) is wondering whether we’re turning into the society depicted in A Clockwork Orange.

Quick answer: no, we’re not.

There you go. Sorted.

That’s never enough for a * Mail article though. We must continue to scare.

Thirty-five years on, are we heading for the kind of nightmarish vision presented in that film – a place where young people kill for kicks?

There are points in history – slavery, Hitler, children being sent up chimneys – at which we look back in dismay asking, “Why didn’t someone do something?”

The slightly mythical happy-slapping compared to slavery, Hitler and children being sent up chimneys. Marvellous.

Just for laughs, incidentally, count how many of the sentences following “Thirty-five years on…” end in question marks, with one concluding sentence that supposedly answers those questions.

“Is the moon a balloon? Can I have fries with that? Happy slappers should be shot.” See how the final proposition doesn’t necessarily follow the questions posed, but because it’s placed in proximity to the questions, it supposedly is the answer.

Ah the wonderful world of * Mail rhetoric.