Big Finish

Yes, I’ve skipped one. Sorry, I was more excited by the prospect of another Charley story, this time with the sixth Doctor, than I was about finding out how Erimem gets thrown overboard through the help of a giant penis in a cape (Pertwee fans will know what I’m on about. Maybe). I’ll get round to Bride of Peladon some time in the next fortnight, I reckon.

Now the thing about most Doctor Who stories is they’re inherently crime stories. They may be set in outer space or the future, but nine times out of ten, someone’s been killed, the Doctor investigates, unmasks the evil-doer and puts a stop to their plans. The end.

Of course, the real world isn’t a detective novel and when a crime gets committed, particularly a murder, usually the police will be involved – and they’re not as cack-handed in real-life as they are in Sherlock Holmes stories. So The Condemned‘s quite an interesting idea. What if the Doctor landed at a crime scene in 2008 and got arrested by the police? Proper, Manchester police at that.

Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – The Condemned”

Ever since BBC7 pumped Big Finish full of cash so they’d produce a range of original eighth Doctor audio plays to break up the constant repeats of Lionel Nimrod’s Inexplicable World, Sheridan Smith as Lucie Miller has been the companion du jour for Paul McGann – it was only a matter of time before India Fisher’s Charley Pollard was shown the TARDIS exit, although through the mysteries of temporal mechanics she’s now going to be a companion of the sixth Doctor, starting with Condemned (review coming soon, I promise).

Following Charley’s departure in The Girl Who Never Was, we now have the second season of Lucie stories. Whoopdy doo. It’s not that I dislike Sheridan Smith – I think she’s pretty good in Two Pints…, although you’d be hard pressed to fit a fag paper in between her performance in that and these audio plays – it’s just I really don’t like Lucie.

I’m trying to work out why. So far, my list of arbitrary reasons includes

• her being one-dimensional and despite the massive wodges of Rose-esque familial development, she doesn’t come across as a real person, just the sort of person who appears in Radio 4 plays
• she perpetuates the stereotype of Northerners being thick, workshy whingers who are full of themselves and only like to argue. This, I must emphasis because it’s the Internet, IS NOT TRUE
• she doesn’t really bring anything to the party in terms of skillset. What, as they probably asked her at the career fair, can you actually do?

Not especially great as a list, but hey ho.

Whether it’s because it was all slapped together in a hurry or it was for BBC7, the first season of Lucie stories was a touch uninspiring. As I remarked at the end of Human Resources:

As a whole, the season’s been okay. Sheridan Smith has been a memorable companion, if a little too Peri-esque in the level of bickering. Paul McGann’s performance has been variable, but good on the whole. The big names in the guest cast have been uniformly excellent, even if the minor players haven’t. The plots haven’t really yielded any memorable villains or monsters and there’s been a little too much silliness. Not bad over all, though, and certainly the best thing BBC7’s done for a while.

Dead London, however, is actually quite good. Not brilliant, a bit confusing, but well paced and moderately entertaining. Whether that’s because it doesn’t have any BBC7 involvement, I don’t know.

Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – Dead London”

First, a brief apology – I’m behind in my Big Finish reviews. Trouble is, while I’ve been working from home for the last week, enabling me to put some actual work into the blog for a change, it means I haven’t been doing any commuting. No commuting, means no iPod listening (except when I’m doing the housework), so I’ve not been listening to any of the plays. Never fear, though, I hope to have reviews of The Bride of Peladon, Condemned and Dead London sometime soon.

But 1st February marked two important events. Number one: Big Finish redesigned its web site again so that it’s almost usable. Almost. They have a slight issue with labelling. You’ll see. And they could do with hiring a proofreader (hint, hint).

Number two: it’s started to sell its plays as downloads. No more ripping to iPod for me then. Woo hoo.

Almost.

Let’s look at the pricing. Price of a two-disc play on CD: £14.99. Price of a download: £12.99. Hmm. Okay, so, you’re not having to pay P&P either, but that’s not a huge reduction. £2 less and I don’t get the CDs, the box liner notes, etc? (Well, I haven’t bought any yet, so maybe you get them as PDFs).

I don’t feel “incentivised” by that. All the same, I suspect that’ll be the way forward for me from now on. How about you?

Mention The Web Planet to almost any Who-er, and you’ll likely as not get a great big smirk in response. It was a story written in the Hartnell days before anyone really ‘knew’ what Doctor Who stories were supposed to be like. A rather brave attempt at hard SF, it involved the planet Vortis, a world populated entirely by various giant-sized species of insect and absolutely no humans other than the Doctor and his companions.

Yes, giant butterflies, ants and larvae on a budget of £2 7s 6d, back before anyone had anything like the technology to do it properly. You can imagine what it was like, even if you’ve never seen it. Go on, imagine it.

Tee hee.

Fortunately, audio plays don’t have this problem so Big Finish, throwing the fifth Doctor and Nyssa at the world of the Menoptera, Zarbi and Venom Grubs, can let their imaginations run wild, content in the knowledge that we’ll do the rest of the work.

Yet somehow, it’s almost impossible not to think one thought while listening to Return to the Web Planet: “Tee hee”.

Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – Return to the Web Planet”