Okay, fine. Have my 9/10 Scherzo.
I still don’t love how cruel 8 is to Charley here. I understand it better each listen. I respect the characterisation more each listen. But it will never ever work fully for me honestly that any Doctor - let alone 8 - would treat someone he cares about as callously as he does here.
But!! I continue to love everything around that characterisation, such as the superb horror, soundscape, and performances. And I’ve grown to like the characterisation as well as what it has to say about The Doctor more than I ever used to.
This story went from a 6/10 to an 8/10 to a 9/10 for me. I don’t think I’ll ever fully like this characterisation of Eight here, and I don’t think this story will ever resonate with me as well as it does other people. But I concede.
Scherzo is great.
Woah you have been converted into one of us!!
As for the Characterization, I do get your Issue, but honestly I have no troubles with it. I think it does make sense for him behaving like that, even if it feels not in line with the Doctor that we know. Then again, it is very much a Moment of taking the Doctor out of his comfort zone, with Incarnations like 8, I am not surprised at all to see him snap like that. I do agree, he is too cruel to Charley and really even if it makes sense for me, there is no excuse behind of course, but I think it works really well considering how dark 8 can be, looking at other expanded Media.
(Just me kinda explaining my view point on it, hope it doesn’t come across as “dig” or anything like that. You are of course valid for feeling this way, and there is certainly a debate to be had if it works or not, so feel free to disagree with anything I said).
Either way, I am glad you can find some more enjoyment out of it after each listen!
I was not prepared for the jump scares.
Yes they were loud, yes they were shocking, but more than that, they were somehow so unnatural and unnerving that they actually sounded like something from a different universe.
It doesn’t help that I was in bed at the time, we were resting and kind of napping after a long busy day, so I was kind of drifting in and out of the story and I had to rewind a few times because I fell asleep but then WHAM!
I think they will haunt me for a long time.
But aside from that (and I think a genuine jump scare that is genuinely horrifying is a huge achievement), this is just an amazing episode.
I’m giving it 5/5 because wow, it’s absolutely brilliant, however I’m not totally sold on the ending. That was a bit of a letdown. But I still think it is leaps and bounds above everything else in the Main Range so far, maybe better than Chimes simply because it freaked me out so much.
I need to listen again soon!!
But hey anyone who likes this and hates Ten/Rose is a hypocrite! This is a love story featuring the Doctor! He loves her, she loves him!
I’m sad that I didn’t listen to this when it was released because now I know that they get out of the Divergent Universe, I can imagine it would have been so good to not know what could happen.
But I digress, I’m waffling.
Love it!
yup and I’m not fond of EightCharley either 
it’s why though this episode is great, it’s not a favourite of mine
I’m sure I’ve told my ‘nearly crashed the car whilst listening to Scherzo’ story when one of those sound scares happened.
I listened to it again, whilst doing some housework.
Knowing that the jump scares were coming, but not remembering exactly when they were, made it even more stressful.
Especially when I was washing up glasses, I was soooo careful in case I dropped one haha.
I still don’t entirely get the ending, how they merged together or whatever, but see it as just a weird thing about the universe they are in…
I’ve listened to this story with my mum in the car before and every time a jumps are approached I turned the volume right down!
(I listen to quite a bit of Big Finish with my mum and Scherzo is one of her favourites! Along with Loups-Garoux and all of Gallifrey. We’re very similar!)
I. Euhm. Robert Shearman, you are an insane man, and this is the best Doctor Who story ever written./lh
This is gonna sound insane but I really like the fairytale that the parts start out with too, to the point I might like it more than the main story. I think it’s really lovely and exactly the type of stuff Shearman excels at. The more abstract, almost childish feeling stories that are really not childish at all. It’s like some of his non-Who short stories I’ve read/listened but it’s allowed to be an element of something larger, like it doesn’t need to try standing on its own, so it can just fully be in the ‘background’ and feel like an actual thing and evolve beyond being just a story. Does it make sense what I’m saying? Oh well. I translated the fairytale parts to my mum, because I thought she’d find it neat, and she did, so that instantly makes it cooler of course.
The part in it about how good and evil (it doesn’t have to be that simple but I feel like Robert did intend it that way) people can take the opposite from the same thing/two opposites can easily corrupt to become the other, (aside from being suuuper wonderful irony) I question if that’s supposed to be a bit about forthcoming Charley/Eight development? That the Doctor is going to learn more about human kindness, but that in turn Charley is going to lose more of herself, like is already happening a little bit here… Or at least if that was the intention before the whole Divergent Universe thing got all shuffled up behind the scenes. Like I at least feel that the king is intended to represent the Doctor in one way or another with the king banning music immediately being followed by Eight asking Charley to stop humming, but I’m not yet sure how exactly. Gonna have fun thinking about that!
Ten slash ten by the way if anyone was still questioning that
Slightly late, but just listened to it. It makes me want to, how do the kids say it… want to eat glass? I think that’s apt.
Everything is just so interesting and scary. The scifi is topnotch, but my God, it’s their relationship on this one that really does it. Charley loves the Doctor, she wants to be with him forever. The Doctor loves Charley, he dies for her. So she can’t accept his death, and he can’t accept her presence. UGH. Craaaazy stuff.
He goes on about the companions being memento mori, and maybe that’s part of it, just how him needing an audience is, how him sometimes needing someone to stop him is. I think at the beginning, yes. With any companion, really, those are part of it. But then, with time, it becomes more and more about friendship and about love. Peak Doctor Who, slapping us in the face and asking “what is love, what does it mean?”.
Been waiting for your reaction fr fr
Finally actually got round to relistening to this one, and I stand by what I said - it is really good but it’s not a favourite of mine, and I stand by my 4* rating of it. The premise really does push the limits of the audio medium, which I love, and it is completely spooky and atmospheric.
However, it’s also just… I don’t know how to express it properly because boring is the wrong word, but it literally is just 8 and Charley wandering around a glass tube eating each other. And that I feel loses some of its impact on relisten. Maybe it’s just because I find Charley to be a little tedious, or maybe it’s because the 8/Charley ‘romance’ does nothing for me, but the things I find most diverting about this episode are the way they’re basically in a test tube rather than the relationship between them.
And all of that sounds way more negative than I actually feel because I do like this one - I think it’s very clever and really immersive. I just think it’s not the kind of story that tickles my brain in the 5/5 it’s a favourite kind of way
A bit late to this one but I’ve been absent for a while and been looking for an opportunity to relisten to this banger so I will take this as a sign as soon as I can!!!
Finally got around to scherzo today. And it is indeed that ■■■■■■ up. I don’t know if it’s actually a 10/10 for me but yeah this is a masterclass in acting and sound design. Incredible
I was actually in between regular visits to the forum when this audio club happened so might as well post my opinion now.
Anywhos, this might be the greatest script ever written.
And, oh yeah, here’s me ranting about it for over 2,000 words.
I found this one quite difficult to rate, because I thought it a truly excellent story with great characterization, well suited to the medium of audio, that both delivered a discrete story (with no padding!) and also contributed to a wider character arc… but… I didn’t enjoy it very much.
I think it’s great that Big Finish included commissioned stories that tried to go beyond the kind of “generic encounter with the cybermen” and came up with something emotional and moving. I certainly don’t consider my time listening to this wasted. But, honestly, if the whole range were like this I’d probably not have made it past 3 or 4 stories, it’s just a bit heavy for what I was looking for. I listened to it in two parts, and perhaps it’s just the mood I was in and I need to come back to this another day?
I like the combo of 8 / Charley, and I think the actors did a great job (special call out for the episode intro story in 4 parts). Actually I think I probably rate the 8th doctor stories in the main range so far consistently above than most of those for the other doctors (I’ll have to check my ratings to be sure) - but next I’m going to listen to something a bit lighter, even if the quality is lower! 
But this is why I like listening to the main range so much, you get lots of different stories thrown together so it keeps it lively! And this certainly sets the bar high for quality.
I really like this one, it’s a weird, experimental story with tons of fascinating ideas… …but I don’t love it. I don’t know what else to say. It’s well-written, really well-acted, great sound design, tons of weird and interesting ideas. It’s really good, and I do really like it. But I love it like most everyone else.
The first time I listened to it I was very new to Big Finish - it was my first Eighth Doctor audio - and I really loved the atmosphere and thought it was fantastic. Listening to it again a couple of years later and I felt a lot like you said - the individual stuff is great but I would no longer say I love it