Such an amazing Erinem character piece
Along with “The Axis of Insanity”, this story languished in the downloads section of the app for months, since I recognized that I wasn’t entirely paying attention the first time. Where I enjoyed “Axis” after giving it a fair shake, this one remained okay. Doctor Who stories have an annoying habit of featuring strong starts (Erimem is mentally ripped to shreds by an evil entity) and disappointing endings (Oh, it’s just an alien. Remember when Peri tried to ice skate? Let’s defeat it with her liquid nitrogen!).
If nothing else, “Roof” has the notoriety of being written by a really weird guy, the picture-perfect setting for the Fifth Doctor—glad that it was properly explored in “The Emerald Tiger”!—and some excellent development of Perimem. The character detail of Peri loving ice skating enough to attempt to freeze the TARDIS pool is super cute.
3 Likes
Hey ho, here we go, there I am again, back to the audio club. It’s as if I’ve never left, because I didn’t! What a good one to come back to, I love me a strange story. You know it’s a good one when you’re questioning for 20 minutes if you aren’t listening to it in the wrong order.
This one’s so fun, it doesn’t vibe like a Doctor Who story to me, funny how that can sometimes work no? All of these parts don’t feel like they make sense together. It takes place in Le Very Very Cold Ice Snow Stuff but the cover has super warm orange colouring. The setting goes from Loup Garoux (that has a very similar feeling cover…) on a train to the devil haunting our companion in a completely bonkers surreal string of nightmare scenes that’s kind of isolated from the rest of the story. And then it just has some more stuff happening and it’s over before you know it.
It’s an existential cosmic horror that almost maybe even accidentally humanizes its horrors. It’s this kind of edgy gritty story with tough characters, that in the end is about the power of the indomitable human spirit of love. Badass Peri leads a hard scifi action sequence to beat Cthulhu, while the strangely harsh almost 6th Doctor like Five does a weirdly aggressive speech and then the Dark Citizens just explode I suppose.
This story starts off so far away from where it ends, but it doesn’t really feel like it builds up (probably because plot wise this is secretly a three parter), we’re just there suddenly. I feel like I’m dreaming this story too, actually. The rating on The Guide of a 2.94 is the sort of rating that makes me expect a story where the Doctor and companions land, find cast of side characters, vaguely strange obviously alien things happen, they find out it’s aliens, whoo waa aliens that’s crazy dude, something clever is done by Doctor and the aliens are goners, and this does that, until it doesn’t, and then it does. I think it greatly improved my experience that I didn’t read the story description. Made all the madness much more unsuspecting and fun. Like that black cloud is ominous, and it works as existentially ominous, but it’s also genuinely weirdly unsuspecting in how almost uninteresting it conceptually sounds. It did not yet register to me as The Kotturuh Are Coming type of ominous. Anyways, I don’t actually know what happens in part three plotwise, I’m not sure if anything does. I don’t even understand which of the many meanings my words have taken on? Do you? Do I? Does anyone know anything? Ha! Ha! Cluelessness is also a great way of being fearless if you do it right.
This story is ridiculous, I think I really like it.
Edit:
Oh yeah wait I just read this and it simultaneously just kept baffling me more and more but also made me think: “Yeah this seems like the sort of person who’d write this”.
6 Likes
Even though a good portion of it was trippy/confusing and probably one that you can’t have on just in the background and need to pay attention to. I did really enjoy this one, I thought the setting was great and work pairing an ancient Egyptian pharaoh with Tibet far into (Erimem) future and it working together. And the monster was genuinely creepy and terrifying, especially using the form of her father to completely ruin/break/take over Erimem - especially making Erimem seemingly hate the Tardis crew because of what she believes they say/think about her
3 Likes
Okay, yeah. A really weird guy, indeed.
2 Likes
So I finally got around to starting this[1] and listened to Part 1. It’s got atmosphere in droves and an intriguing mystery. However, the villain is a bit on the creepy side (not in a fun way) for me and I remember not following this one all that well or understanding the whole plot. Also, how does an Egyptian pharaoh imprison a creature in the Himalayas? That seems rather far and well beyond the scope of Egyptian geographical knowledge.
having originally listened to it years ago ↩︎
2 Likes
Not if he had a Stargate… 
1 Like
Finished this one, and it’s not that bad. I’m not into the Lovecraftian-type mythologies, but the second half of this was quite engaging. Erimem was excellent in this. But, I wasn’t that keen on the overall plot, and the first half was almost too weird for me. I ended up rating it 3.5/5.
2 Likes
I like Erimem and I think she and Peri are a terrific companion combo. In my opinion it’s a shame it didn’t happen in the TV series. I don’t much care for the Fifth Doctor’s TV companions, not even Peri. But I really enjoy this trio’s adventures. I also like this story for the most part and I think it generally works well as an audio. I also think the guest cast is excellent.
It also appears that this is the 50th audio I’ve rated.
2 Likes