Month: August 2009

Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Doctor Who – 123 – The Company of Friends

27 August 2009 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

As we all know, Paul McGann is technically the longest serving official Doctor Who. Although only having done one TV story, he graced the pages of books and comics and, of course, starred in the Big Finish audio plays for the best part of a decade.

During this time, the Eighth Doctor racked up a number of companions, including Bernice Summerfield and Fitz Kreiner in the books and Izzy Sinclair in the comics. He even, apparently, travelled with Mary Shelley for a while, if you believe an off-hand comment he made once. However, until now, we’ve never had actors playing these companions in any of the audio plays (okay, Benny I’ll give you, but she never appeared with the Eighth Doctor).

With a 4×25 minute play featuring the Eighth Doctor to write, it occurred to Big Finish that they could finally give these old companions voices, and flesh out the Eighth Doctor’s range of audio companions. So here comes The Company of Friends, featuring (as always) Lisa Bowerman as Benny, Matt di Angelo (off EastEnders) as Fitz, Jemima Rooper (Hex, Lost in Austen) as Izzy and Julie Cox (Dune, Children of Dune) as Mary Shelley.

What a fantastic opportunity. What a pity it’s mostly been wasted.

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Rick Berman explores 18 years of Trek

27 August 2009 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Bit of Trekkie? Got three hours to spare? Then how about watching this interview with Rick Berman, one of the exec producers of ST:TNG, ST:DS9, ST:Voyager, ST:Enterprise and all the TNG movies.

In it, he gives a relatively no-holds-barred discussion of all the various things that happened on the shows, what he thinks were the high and low points, why various casting decisions were made and let’s slip that he spent most of the time begging Paramount to let Trek rest for a while to stop people getting bored of it.

If you want a list of the highlights, you can read them over at TrekWeb.

[via Qqabal]

Thursday’s companionable news

27 August 2009 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Doctor Who

  • Janet Fielding, Mark Strickson and Sarah Sutton reunited for Big Finish plays
  • Frazer Hines to appear in Sixth Doctor stories for Big Finish

Film

British TV

  • Channel 4 unveils its Autumn season
  • Sky1 acquires Modern Family
  • BBC4 wants to adapt more works of fiction
  • C4 to overhaul its output after Big Brother cancellation
  • Shane Meadows to make a drama for C4
  • Sky unveils its Autumn line-up

US TV

Meme of the week: what show are you looking forward to the most this Autumn/Fall?

26 August 2009 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

As the title says, this week’s meme asks a simple question, given that the new season starts in a little over a week on some US networks:

What show are you looking forward to the most this Autumn/Fall?

You’ve obviously got all the returning shows as well as the new shows (you can see synopses of these over in my Fall 2009 category, if you want) from both sides of the Atlantic. Which one are you anticipating the most? Mah, for me it’s Heroes for some reason: you?

As always, leave a comment with your answer or a link to your answer on your own blog.

Review: Doctor Who – 122 – The Angel of Scutari

26 August 2009 Rob Buckley Post a comment

 

The Angel of Scutari

And thus we roll onto another Sylvester McCoy story in the Big Finish line. Oh joy.

 

Actually, if we think back to the last couple (The Magic Mousetrap and Enemy of the Daleks), they’ve not been too bad of late, so maybe it’s not such a terrible thing these days.

In fact, Angel of Scutari is another reasonably good bit of work. A pure historical – albeit one with timey wimey things going on – it plonks the Doctor, Ace and Hex right into the Crimean war, where they meet Florence Nightingale, Kitchener and Leo Tolstoy himself. It’s a bit over-complicated and probably merits a relisten to fully get to grips with it.

But yet again, it’s another good seventh Doctor story. What’s up with that? 

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