Radio and podcasts

An archive of blog entries about radio, radio production and podcasts.

Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Doctor Who – Phobos

1 February 2007 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Immortal BelovedSo we’ve had something Dalek, something silly, something thought-provoking and now, something traditional. Blah, blah, blah, blah, Doctor and companion arrive, Doctor and companion find people being killed off one by one, Doctor and companion get put in peril and discover monster is behind it all.

Ring any bells with anyone?

Yes, it’s standard Doctor Who plot #3. It worked for countless episodes of the old series (Image of the Fendahl, Curse of Peladon, The Dominators and just about anything else you care to name) and it’s readily deployable to the halfway house between old and new Who that is the Big Finish universe.

The question is, did you feel the fear?

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Kneale Before Nigel

The Quatermass Memoirs

25 January 2007 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

The Quatermass MemoirsI don’t know if you’ve ever done jury service or not. But if you haven’t, you may – or may not – be delighted to hear there’s often plenty of waiting around involved.

It’s up to you what you do with your time, of course. You can read, which will at least enable you to hear the tannoy system telling you where to go to ruin someone’s life. But unless you bring your own books, you’ll be reduced to reading whatever some kind person’s left behind.

Plus somehow, when you’ve just helped send someone down for eight years and everyone on the jury is having to eat massive amounts of chocolate to keep their blood sugar levels up from the shock of all the horrible things they’ve heard, you’re often just not in the mood to read anything too taxing.

You could, if you wanted to, blog. Judging by the GPRS charges on my Virgin bill for this month, this is a bad idea that will clearly bankrupt you.

So audio books are where it’s at. Now you won’t have time to get through all of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (I’m on hour 18 of 34), but something relatively light like a Big Finish play is just what the Doctor ordered.

Unfortunately, I’d listened to all mine already. So instead, I chose to listen to a little known oddity: The Quatermass Memoirs.

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Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Doctor Who – Blood of the Daleks (part one)

3 January 2007 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

Blood of the DaleksBastard was up to his little tricks again at the weekend. I asked him very nicely to record Blood of the Daleks on BBC7 on Sunday night, since I had better things to do like… oh, I don’t know, celebrate the New Year. But after first attempting not to record it at all, the cunning little thing then decided to cut the first episode off after half an hour. Git. Fortunately, I’m made of sterner stuff and went to the BBC7 Listen Again site to listen to it over the web.

Blood of the Daleks is the first in a series of Doctor Who audio plays starring Paul McGann. They’re designed, if certain parties are to be believed, to show how Paul McGann’s Doctor (number eight) ended up turning into Christopher Eccleston’s some time before, during or after the great big Time War with the Daleks. Since it’s BBC7 doing the commissioning, the budget’s a bit higher so we have a new companion for the eighth Doctor, an all-star cast and some decent music.

And judging by the first episode, it’s all going to be pretty good.

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Silly Who rumour of the week

27 October 2006 Rob Buckley 24 Comments

Tennant fun

It seems the “episode without the Doctor” possibility is really driving fans nuts. We’ve already had Love and Monsters in series two, and the expectation is that there’ll be another episode that’s Doctor-lite, thanks to hellish filming schedules. So how will the production team cope?

We’ve already had one possibility thrown at us: the Doctor and new companion are regressed into children by mad scientist Mark Gatiss and so child actors will take the place of Freema Agyeman and David Tennant. Since there’s that exciting competition for some lucky fan to land a part on the show, maybe that’ll tie in nicely.

Paul McGannBut now, we have another one, which has the virtues of a 1% chance of being true and all the hallmarks of a conspiracy theory. In this exciting possibility, Martha Jones turns round, says “Tell me all about regeneration, Doctor”, and low and behold, we have a Tennant-narrated tale of life being Paul McGann. That would fill me with joy if it happened, because it’s about time McGann got to be something more than a footnote in Who history*.

Sheridan Smith with a DalekWhere the conspiracy theory element comes in is the BBC7 series starting in the New Year. The idea is that that will act as a primer for the public to accept McGann as a previous Doctor and more importantly to get them used to Sheridan Smith as his companion, who will then legitimately be able to appear on-screen as the Doctor’s companion and be an audience draw. Smith, of course, has a big youth following from Two Pints of Lager (although not from Grown Ups).

Not at all plausible, particularly since the rumour also says it’s going to be set during the Time War, but I liked it anyway.

Incidentally, the Big Finish web site now has more details on those BBC7 audio plays. One thing I spotted that I hadn’t seen elsewhere: Sheridan Smith’s character is going to be with the Doctor thanks to some form of Time Lord Witness Protection Programme (very Big Finish). Even she doesn’t know what she’s supposed to have seen, though.

*Footnote: Technically, Paul McGann is the longest running Doctor, since he was the official Doctor between 1996 and 2005, appearing in the TV movie, comics, books and audio plays, all of which were licensed by the BBC.

UPDATE: The rumour mutates and combines with the earlier rumour! Now the suggestion is that when the Doctor and companion are zapped by Mark Gatiss, he turns back into Paul McGann. Now that’s the hallmark of a great rumour.