It’s time to listen to and discuss The Kingmaker
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One of the funniest scripts Big Finish have ever produced, Nev Fountain hits it out of the park with another banger! Definitely helps to go in blind and get swept up in the mayhem!
If anyone is wondering what’s going on in my brain at any given moment it’s just this
Need to catch up on audio club for all of their audios but this one is peak Perimem for me and that scene was the exact moment I became insane about them as a ship. Beyond that, it’s just Nev firing on all cylinders really. Incredibly funny throughout and a perfect example of his style of wacky comedy that gets totally recontextualized through later reveals. And despite getting stranded out of time and locked in the tower for two years, this is still one of the least traumatic stories for Peri and Erimem because my girls truly could not ever catch a ■■■■■■■ break
This one is a 5/5 for me and my #1 audio story
The more times I encounter media that gets into ‘the authorship question’, the more truly aggravated I get. I cannot stand this borderline conspiracy theory “how could a glover’s son possibly be a good writer?” BS, and I let out the exact same sigh of disappointment every time I see an actor who has done Shakespeare spout that line of reasoning.
With all that in mind, I have to give Nev Fountain credit for writing a story along these lines that didn’t immediately give me the ick. Far from it; it’s one of his shining moments as a comedic voice in DW. The Perimem hijinks are really fun, I like how both the Fourth and Ninth Doctors were brought into the narrative, and considering the academic discussions concerning Richard III at the time it was written (namely, his place within a larger historical narrative of disability erasure and equating conditions under that umbrella with wickedness, and as someone who also has scoliosis… get stuffed, lads), I appreciate the way his character was handled.
Part of me feels a slight niggle at trying to reconcile this story with The Shakespeare Code and The Time Of The Daleks in terms of lore… but it’s a definite showing of just how good this is that that doesn’t get under my skin like, say, the werewolf in Tooth And Claw did.
A super fun and endlessly relistenable story with some of the best on-audio comedy I have ever seen.
A great take on time travel mechanics with some really clever twists and turns and one of the most bonkers climaxes I have seen in a story.
There’s not much meat on its bones when you get down to brass tacks - and I find it too long for its own good - but I had a smile on my face for most of this story.
Full review here, if you enjoy, please leave a like
You know, I went into this one thinking urghhhhh not anotherrrrr Five historical, save me from this only to be really pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It’s fun and it keeps you engaged for the most part, and the historical shenanigans are, blessedly, not completely boring.
What a well-timed thread. Happy Bosworth Day to all who celebrate. 
Well, they really hit a stride with the Five audios, didn’t they?
I have to admit that I love Perimem. Easily the best TARDIS team for Five. And this entire audio is going to stay with me for a while. It’s not perfect, but it’s unique in the best possible way.
The Kingmaker is one of Big Finish’s most gloriously bonkers releases, fusing Richard III, Shakespeare, and the Princes in the Tower with razor-sharp comedy and a hefty dose of metafiction. Fountain’s script is witty, playful, and endlessly quotable, giving Peri and Erimem some of their best moments. Shakespeare as a ray gun-wielding impostor from the TARDIS is both ridiculous and brilliant, and the story’s clever time-travel structure ensures it has bite beneath the farce. It’s a little long-winded and crowded, but it remains one of the most memorable audio historicals Big Finish has ever produced
Here’s my spoilery review for those who fancy a read. Thanks!
An absolute belter of an audio:
I thought this was brilliant, cleverly written and entertaining with twists I didn’t spot coming a mile off, which is always nice!
The only minor flaw was inconsistent characterization of Peri vs. Erimem “should we or shouldn’t we try to change history” vs The Council of Nicaea - it seems like two or three lines should have been swapped between the two characters in the script. I always feel like the writers should try and align a bit more on characterization of companions… But that’s a very very minor point and doesn’t stop me giving this 5/5!
I actually feel like the different attitudes from them between here and Nicaea make a lot of sense. Erimem’s intervening in Nicaea is for the sake of fair treatment of the people and comes from a sense of justice and her beliefs about how rulers should act rather than from any particular stance on the issue. Here, the issue is essentially a power struggle within the royal family and that’s really just a fact of life for her and part of history that isn’t worth risking time to try to change. For Peri, she sees what’s happening in Nicaea as a totally insignificant debate and she’s pretty much neutral. She’s basically up for helping Arius until the Doctor explains why they can’t and then she pretty much just accepts that. In The Kingmaker though, she sees two kids whose lives she thinks she can save and she’s not willing to accept that the web of time should prevent her from saving them.
Hmmmm, that makes sense, although I feel like that’s extrapolating beyond what’s in the script since the stated reason they gave was something more generic like “oh, but we can’t interfere in the web of time…” if they’d phrased it like you did it would have been more consistent with character….
Interfering /not interfering and the stances characters take on it is not exactly consistent across all of Doctor Who though so I’m not counting it a major point 
I don’t think Nev was necessarily like actively thinking about this specific contrast to Nicaea and intending it as a character statement, but I do think that both Nev and Caroline Symcox came to the positions that they wrote for Peri and Erimem through understandings of them as characters that are not out of line with each other. On a surface level the positions on “should we interfere with the web of time” change, but looking at the specific instances rather than viewing it as a broad question, their positions make sense and align with the characters as we know them.
really great story, Peter Davison really is at his best in this one. Feels like I say that all the time about him lol, just shows how good he is as an actor.
Love love love love LOVE this story. It’s incredibly fun with a joke a second. Nev Fountain has the special ability to write a laugh out loud comedy, with a beautiful emotional core. The final twist is fantastic and is really well built up. An incredibly special story. One of the best.
This hit so many little spot in my Brian that makes me go crazy I loved it
I love this one.
The Team of Peri, 5 & Erimem work quite well and their run of stories does offer a lot of great ones, this one is no different. Dare I say the best I have encountered of them so far. It lives from a witty brilliant scripts, with a lot of fun ideas to it. How it uses the Character of the fourth Doctor and the discovers Book is great fun. None of the Performance do disappoint, and it’s just great fun, isn’t it?
Nev Fountain don’t quit
How it’s done, done, done!
(I think that as with “Heaven Sent”, the hype I absorbed about this story worked against it. I wouldn’t be quoting that song if it wasn’t of Fountain’s usual caliber, but it’s not an untold gem, the best Doctor Who evar. Still, it’s smartly plotted, pretty funny, includes Nine in a completely legal way, and does yet more for Perimem’s benefit. I can almost tolerate the ass smacks suffered by Erimem because she smacks the men even harder back.)
