Audio Club: The Wishing Beast / The Vanity Box

Audio Audio Club
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It’s time to listen to and discuss The Wishing Beast and The Vanity Box.

Buy them online using the links above.

Even if you listened to them before and just want to discuss them - dive right in! Just please use spoiler tags!

Everyone who participates will get a coveted Audio Club badge! :medal_military:

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The Wishing Beast:

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The Vanity Box:

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1 Like
Audio Club Backlog
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The kind of weird I’ve come to expect from Paul Magrs. First part featuring Rule 63 Luigi’s Mansion, second with Sixth pulling a Pertwee in The Green Death; it’s fun, if a bit frivolous.

2 Likes
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I’m not a big Magrs fan from what I’ve heard of him, but The Vanity Box is one of my favorite audios.

3 Likes
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I’m kind of on opposite page to you on this one, Babyan! Paul Magrs is my favourite Who writer, but The Wishing Box is one of my least favourite stories of his. But it still features Jean Marsh vacuuming up ghosts with a hoover so I still like it!

I enjoy The Vanity Box a bit more (even if it lifts a plot point directly from The Brenda and Effie Mysteries!).

3 Likes
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Coincidentally I relistened and reviewed these just the other day! The Wishing Beast is ridiculous and messy and I found the ghosts very grating to listen to, but Jean Marsh saves it for me. And The Vanity Box feels like an Iris and Panda adventure, as a southerner living in Manchester I found the interactions between the locals and 6/Mel very entertaining. And that last scene is just lovely, 6 and Mel have such a warm relationship, it’s easy to forget they only had 6 episodes on screen together!

6 Likes
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Welcome, feel free to hop over to Introductions and tell us a bit about yourself.

2 Likes
7

Are these the strongest stories ever? No. However, I really love this duo. The end of the Wishing Beast really pulls it all together: this is a fairytale. It’s not supposed to make a ton of sense. It’s not supposed to be fully formed. It’s supposed to be a story about growing up and coming of age. And also Jean Marsh with laser eyes killing ghosts with a vacuum cleaner.

The Vanity Box is a fun little epilogue/prologue (depending on which way you look at it) to the tale and puts Ol’ Sixie in drag. Listening this time around, it almost feels like this was intended to be the penultimate Sixth Doctor story before he regenerates, what with the Doctor mentioning that he wouldn’t want to change his face and Mel (very sweetly, might I add) telling the Doctor what her wish would be. I may be dipping into my timeline playlist and putting Wishing Beast/Vanity Box down just before Spiral Scratch and The Last Adventure because it works far too thematically well. (Edit: Way too easily decided and done. It just makes sense)

2 Likes
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I much preferred wishing beast to the vanity box. Wishing beast even though the villainary of the sisters was obvious it seemed like a better story than the vanity box

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This one bored me to death.

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Does that mean you are typing this message

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“The Wishing Beast” is a story in need of a setting, and “The Vanity Box” is a setting in need of a story. This is the one 3+1 release where I wish the stories were combined, maybe streamlined. Have the ghostly stuff happen in Swinging Sixties Salford—so not groovy!—and have the Doctor and Mel pull a Scooby-Doo to stop the sisters and the Wishing Beast.

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Ngl I listend to these last month and can’t remember either of them could be cause I’ve done so much this year or could it be there is just nothing meaty there you decide

2 Likes