Big Finish

News about and reviews of plays produced by production company Big Finish

Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Doctor Who – The Ultimate Adventure

17 October 2008 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

The Ultimate Adventure Every so often, something dumb happens. In the world of Doctor Who, this usually equates to a stage play. Always a bad idea, since they’re usually sub-panto pieces of rubbish.

Now along comes another bad idea to the world of Doctor Who. Big Finish are going to adapt these stage plays and turn them into audio plays, trying to be as faithful as possible to the original productions, no matter how arse they were. They’re even hiring as much of the original cast as possible, no matter how appalling they were, too.

First up is The Ultimate Adventure, a stage play from the 80s that featured first Jon Pertwee then Colin Baker (and occasionally understudy David Banks) as the Doctor. Written by Terrence Dicks, it also features the Daleks, the Cybermen, mercenaries and – oh my God – songs.

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Review: Doctor Who – Time Reef

14 October 2008 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Time Reef

There’s always something more to look forward to with a fifth Doctor Big Finish play. Okay, so Colin Baker’s still the best audio Doctor and he’s usually partnered with India Fisher (best audio companion/actress), Nicola Bryant (ah, Peri…) or Bonnie Langford (nearly best audio companion/actress. Honest). But his stories tend to be considerably poorer than the ones Peter Davison ends up with.

Whether it’s the TV era itself that encourages the writers to come up with cleverer storylines or the editor of the fifth Doctor range (whoever that might be) simply commissioning better pieces, you can usually assume that a fifth Doctor piece is going to be good, with just the occasional minor fluff-up (such as The Boy That Time Forgot.

Here, though, we have Marc Platt, author of the Sylvester McCoy TV story Ghostlight, who can normally be guaranteed to over-write his audio plays something chronic. So we have a battle on our hands: the pretension of the seventh Doctor’s era versus the cold sci-fi of the fifth Doctor’s. Who will win? And should you spend money on the spoils of the war?

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Review: Doctor Who – Kingdom of Silver

8 October 2008 Rob Buckley 3 Comments


Kingdom of Silver

Two questions. First, do you think there’s a reason that the seventh Doctor has been particularly companion-bereft of late? The Big Finish-ies claim it’s because they want to explore the ‘vast’ time that he’s alone before the TV Movie. I’m wondering if so few people are buying the seventh Doctor audio stories, they can’t afford companions as well. Or maybe they don’t like Sophie Aldred.

Question two: why do writers bother trying to be clever with Big Finish? Here we have a cyberman story. We know this because there’s a great big cyberman on the front cover and because the story’s Kingdom of Silver. Mondas gets mentioned halfway through the first episode and one of the ‘houses’ in the play is called Argentum (sp?). So what’s the big cliffhanger at the end of episode one? OMG, it’s a cyberman! Who saw that coming?

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Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Doctor Who – The Doomwood Curse

26 September 2008 Rob Buckley 1 Comment


 

I imagine, if you’re a regular Big Finish actor, there is a range of reactions you experience when getting your latest script, depending on which of the various standard Big Finish categories it falls into. A lot of the time, you’re going to be wondering how you’re going to get all that jargon out. "Blimey, it’s a bit complicated. I don’t really understand a word of it. I must remember to be ever so serious."

Quite a lot of the time, you’re also going to be thinking, "Ooh, goody. This looks like fun. We’re going to have a laugh doing this, aren’t we?"

And then, just occasionally, you’ll get one through that not only makes you think, "Ooh goody, that’ll be fun," you’ll also be thinking. "Ah! I love the smell of ham in the morning."

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Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Sapphire and Steel – Wall of Darkness

25 September 2008 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

There are species of sloth faster than me. I really do learn incredibly slowly sometimes. Case in point: the Big Finish Sapphire and Steel audio plays.

These have been a largely hit-and-miss affair, with the distinct emphasis on ‘miss’. Yet I’ve kept on getting them and wasting my time with them. Doh! Still, once in a while, a good one turns up, so I’m not wholly insane.

Where I’m learning impaired is in forgetting to note who writes each story. In particular, if it’s producer Nigel Fairs, the Sapphire and Steel supremo at Big Finish, you can pretty much guarantee that the first part of the whole play is going to be absolute drek, with a second part that manages to make the misery you’ve experienced almost worthwhile.

Turns out that for this, the final play in the series, possibly ever, pretty much the whole of the second part is absolute drek as well. The final ten minutes or so? Now that’s where it gets really interesting.

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