Big Finish

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

News

Tuesday’s news

19 December 2006 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Best taken with some bacon or a rollmop herring:

Doctor Who

  • David Tennant and Catherine TateIt was the press screening of The Christmas Invasion yesterday, so news and spoilers are all over the place:
  • Colin Baker is to appear in one of Big Finish’s Sapphire and Steel audio plays. League of Gentleman star, future Who guest star and current Who author Mark Gatiss will be returning to the series as Gold. Sarah Douglas from Superman II will be appearing in the season’s (and likely the series’) final episode.

British TV

  • I was wondering a while back what was happening about that remake of The Prisoner, given that Chris Nolan was making a film as well. Turns out, as suspected, that there are two versions going ahead now. Universal, which is behind Nolan’s flick, have the film rights and are still going ahead with a movie. But now US network AMC has come on board with Granada and Sky One to co-produce at least six episodes of a TV version. Production will begin in Spring, with the first episodes airing in the US and the UK in January 2008. It’s going to be an ‘entirely new reinterpretation’. Um…
  • There’s going to be a ratings system for British television, although it’s going to debut in Channel’s 4oD online service.
  • The big ratings winners on digital TV are the networks that spun off from the terrestrial channels.
  • The Hogfather has stolen Torchwood‘s record to become the highest ever rated digital TV show, with 2.8 million viewers. Meanwhile, Torchwood‘s ratings have dropped below Lost‘s again, bringing in 900,000 viewers for BBC3.

US TV

  • Raines has had its order of episodes cut to just seven, even though it won’t air until March. That doesn’t sound promising, does it?
  • E!’s Watch With Kristin has notable news and spoilers, including:
    • Paul Reubens will be appearing in 30 Rock.
    • The BSG spin-off, Caprica, now has a script and is waiting for network approval
    • My Boys has had another nine episodes commissioned
  • Frank Skinner’s British sitcom, Shane, is being remade for the US by its British producers, Avalon. Avalon also has some other comedies up its sleeve, including Evil Genius, about a super-villain who takes over the world and realises it’s bit harder to run than he first thought.
  • The L Word is launching a social networking site.
  • There are format changes ahead for The Class as attempts are made to make the sitcom more conventional. Curses. However, some of its themes of suicide, infidelity, etc will be preserved.
  • One of The Nine‘s producers tries to explain why the show flopped.
Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Sapphire and Steel – Water Like A Stone

13 December 2006 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Water Like A StoneNigel Fairs has a lot to answer for. The producer of the Big Finish range of Sapphire and Steel audio plays, it was his decision to make the stories more ’emotional’. The result, so far, has been something other than the Sapphire and Steel we came to know and love when we were growing up/bought the videos in the early 90s/bought the DVDs a couple of years ago. Instead of weird, alien logic, and morals that make no sense or are completely counter to conventional morality, we’ve had standard dramatic clichés (eg homophobia is bad) and plots that have drifted between comedic and uninteresting.

Now we have one of Fairs’ own stories, Water Like A Stone. It has good points, but for the most part, it has all the things wrong with it we’ve come to expect from the range.

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News

Wake up to the news

13 December 2006 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Doctor Santas

Smell the TV coffee:

Doctor Who

Film

British TV

US TV

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.
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.

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