An archive of blog entries about British science-fiction programme Doctor Who.
In the UK: Saturday 17th April 2010, 6.15pm, BBC1
In the US: Saturday 1st May 2010, 9/8c, BBC America
Phew. Crisis over, again. Stevie’s back with 17 degrees of awesome to scare you, excite you and make you go, “Hang on, isn’t this just Aliens but with the Weeping Angels?”
Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – 5×4 – The Time of Angels”
As has been discussed before, Big Finish are in a dilemma with these Lost Stories. Just how authentic should they be to a half-finished script that never saw the blessed red of a script editor’s pen? Should they improve them or give the fans exactly what they want – a word-for-word identical version of the script as is, no matter what state it’s in?
In the case of MIssion to Magnus, they went with the wrong choice: they left it as was and served us all a great big pile of rubbish. But Magnus did have a virtually complete script. Paradise 5 is a different matter.
Written by He Who Must Be Hallowed, the creator of Sapphire and Steel PJ Hammond, Paradise 5 is an awkward lost story since it was originally intended for the The Trial of a Timelord season in the slot that ended up in Pip and Jane Half-Baked’s Terror of the Vervoids. It was going to have lots of Time Lords in it, lots of trial stuff and the companion was going to be Mel, as played by Bonnie Langford.
Big Finish couldn’t afford that. There was no way they were going to get Lynda Bellingham and Michael Jayston to reprise their roles, for one thing. Bonnie Langford’s stopped doing the Big Finish plays, now she’s having fun dancing – and proved her point that it wasn’t her, it was the writing of Mel that was the problem.
So they stripped out all the Time Lord stuff from what there was of PJ Hammond’s scripts, which left just three episodes. PJ Hammond wasn’t free to adapt the rest of the story into an audio play, so they got Andy Lane to write an intro episode, convert Mel to Peri – since Nicola Bryant was well up for some more Lost Stories – and polish it all up. He also ‘updated’ it so that it was less 80s, which he reckoned wouldn’t wash these days.
So given all of that, do we have a PJ Hammond Lost Story now or simply a shiny new sixth Doctor and Peri story that’s a bit PJ Hammond-esque in places?
Discuss.
Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – The Lost Stories – 05 – Paradise 5”
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When last we left the seventh Doctor in Big Finish land, he’d decided it was a cracking good idea to take a time-travelling Nazi scientist on a grand tour of the universe with him.
As you do. Can’t see anything going wrong there, can you?
Nevertheless, said scientist, Dr Elizabeth Klein – who is from an alternative universe in which the Nazis won World War 2 – is now the Seventh Doctor’s companion in his travels through time and space.
Of course, with the great big ‘Nazi’ thing hovering over her, do you think the Big Finish writers could resist writing a story about the struggles of a ‘master race’ trying to obtain lebensraum? Of course not, which is what we have with Survival of the Fittest.
Nevertheless, despite its occasional ladelling on of the sub-text, Survival of the Fittest is actually a very decent, intelligent hard SF story. It’s also preceded by an equally interesting episode-long flashforward to Klein’s future which sees a guest visit by the eighth Doctor.
Unfortunately, there’s also the concluding part of The Three Companions tacked on the end. Couldn’t go five for five, could we?
Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – 131 – Survival of the Fittest”
In the UK: Saturday 17th April 2010, 6.15pm, BBC1
In the US: Saturday 1st May 2010, 9/8c, BBC America
Just goes to show you – Steven Moffat isn’t infallible. He might be showrunner, but when he’s given a piece of tatt by his bestest Whoer pal Mark Gatiss that was left over from the Rusty years, he’ll still try to use it to save himself a bit of time. Oh, and to get some new merchandising opportunities up and running.
Cue, Collectibles of the Daleks!
Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – 5×3 – Victory of the Daleks”
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