IT’S NEARLY VEKLIN TIME!!! !!! !!!
oh yea and other stuff i guess
Yes, we have Sarah & Harry in a festive escapade! Dear BF, please give us an xmas version of their theme tune.
Just had a look at the cast list and there’s a character named ‘Tom the Baker’
I am so excited for this boxset
Same, I just don’t know whether to save this for listening closer to Christmas or start now. What a dilemma!
Unholy Night: A relatively tiresome pastiche of that kind of xmas romance film where wr all simply MUST all learn to love the Magic of Christmas and isn’t it all so sickly sweet and lovely. And in that sense it succeeds completely. I think if I liked xmas I might have got something out of this. However, I do not and I found this incredibly tedious. It was kind of funny to cast Missy in the role of city big timer stuck in the small town I guess
Unholy Night was unfortunately quite a disappointment for me
All the hallmark stuff got old really quickly
And the fact that the reveal at the end is that they’ve been sacrificing people in exchange for longer lives just didn’t really make sense - I was expecting more of a Peach Blossom Heights thing there the locals have no clue what was going on
Gomez was great as Missy but her characterisation felt a little generic
There wasn’t much to her beyond the generic maniacal personality that comes with most of her incarnations
It did have some decent moments but overall not my cup of tea
Unholy Night is a good start but I think it’s held quite a bit bad from being a bit shallow, it doesn’t actually say anything about the outlook on Christmas seen in Hallmark movies that it’s parodying and their often shallow worldview, and there’s a sense to me that it didn’t need to be a Missy story. It probably wouldn’t have changed much if it was just a Doctor Who story for basically any New Who Doctor especially.
See I personally loved Unholy Night. As a kid I used to watch a lot of Hallmark Christmas movies with my sister, and I remember thinking they were all so so so dreadful. Ive not seen one since I was probably 11 (so around ten years ago now). So seeing Missy just thrash the stupidity of them felt like an itch that needed scratched.
I get its definitely not for everyone but I loved the contrast of Missy and the setting. For me at least it was a funny and enjoyable start to the boxset.
I will say the ending is a touch anticlimactic. As I gather it, the townsfolk planned to throw Missy in the pit all along, so really she had no agency at all and even if she hadn’t uncovered the scheme it would have ended the same way.
I think Unholy Night was very good in the sense of it knew exactly what it was and succeeded with what it was trying to do completely, I just didn’t like it because it’s not the kind of thing I like. Excited to hear Lisa Bowerman in the next one though, maybe this is what will finally get me to go okkk fineee I will listen to J&L (and I’ll look really silly if I really like J&L because I’ve always said I don’t like them at all )
Legacy of Blood: ok so turns out the way to make me enjoy an xmas story is to put vampires in it 
AND TO REFERENCE HOUND LEELA FROM ANNIHILATION SOMETHING THAT HAS NOT BEEN REMEMBERED IN AGES IM FLIPPING OUT OVER HERE but for real, this isn’t a complicated story or anything but it’s a lovely meditation on grief if nothing else, and Leela gets served really well
Talking about Legacy of Blood, can we talk about the Green Knight being a VAMPIRE ICE WARRIOR??? I already want more, give them a boxset or three.
I won’t say too much about Legacy of Blood, but I will say this is in contention for best story of the year, and the absolute proper way to do fan service
The Green Knight! I wanna click on that spoiler but I must not I must not.
I just finished it’s a wonderful war.
Every story (bar the Smith and Sullivan one, which don’t get me wrong was still fine) I thought was going to be the highlight. This one really is amazing. The ending is such a, well I’m speechless, don’t let me spoil it go listen to it.
I thought I wasn’t going to listen to this set anytime soon, so yesterday I started reading spoilers of it without a care in the world, and now I’m regretting that decision very much lol. But especially that last story sounds so interesting, I kind of want to purchase this to listen to it anyways…
Can you guys either talk me into or away from giving Big Finish even more money this year? I’m not particularly interested in the non Time War adventures, but that could change.
Presents of Mind: It was fun. But I also did fall asleep on the bus to it, so.
It’s a Wonderful War: me when Veklin says four lines: YAYYYYYYYY!!! In honesty, I didn’t like this one very much. Again, I think it was a very good story but that kind of tooth rotting heart warming saccharine xmas stuff makes me cringe so so hard and it doesn’t help too that I couldn’t take it seriously bc all the dreadful accents just made me think of this John Finnemore sketch (at 21.57). Which I realise are all me problems. I think many others will like this more than I did
