Audio and radio plays

Hands up anyone who’s not a Charley fan. Right, get out: you’re barred.

Since we’re now left only with people of pleasing intellect and taste, we can begin the review. First, as a brief aside, is "Nicholas Briggs as the Daleks" really a major selling point, worthy of the cover? Okay, so he does the TV voices, too, but who, other than committed fans, knows that and cares. More to the point, won’t they already be buying at least three copies of every Big Finish release already? You don’t think it’s because Briggsy is one of the Big Finish producers that his voicing mysteriously warrants a cover praise, do you?

Anyway, moving on. When you sit down to write a piece of intelligent fiction, more often than not, you tend to want to make it "multi-layered" – ie "not too basic". The audience need brain stimulation, you convince yourself, so let’s add some plot twists. All well and good so far.

The problem is when you go overboard and start to cackle to yourself as you add in every single plot twist and clever idea you can possibly think of. Suddenly, your play lurches from minute to minute like a rodeo bull, throwing off audience members willy nilly.

Oops Alan Barnes. I’m looking at you here.

Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – Brotherhood of the Daleks”

What’s up here? This is getting silly. Not only has Louise Jameson already starred in three entire series of Gallifrey already, she’s been in the Tomorrow People plays, the last Sapphire and Steel play and a previous Companion Chronicles piece, The Catalyst. Now she gets another one? What did Mary Tamm, Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton and Matthew Waterhous do wrong? Actually, don’t answer that.

Of course, the quick answer is that Big Finish producer Nigel Fairs seems to like Jameson, given that he’s responsible for writing and directing a sizable number of the plays I just listed. In fact, this follows on directly from The Catalyst, at least in storytelling metaphor, even if the story itself is set at a more random point. Co-starring David Warner (oh look, another Big Finish fave. Fancy that.), the play isn’t as good as The Catalyst and feels like a couple of old Blake’s 7 episodes cobbled together.

I’m not selling it to you, am I?

Continue reading “Review: The Companion Chronicles 3×4 – Empathy Games”

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?

Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – Time Reef”