Short Trips Volume 14: Impeccable and Other Stories

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Short Trips Volume 14: Impeccable and Other Stories – Available 10/02!,

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Impeccable
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Hard Feelings
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Cut-Out
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Bring Me the Head of Dorium Maldovar
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The Tip of the Mind
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Is Anybody There?
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Big Finish Release Schedule
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I don’t usually go for the Short Trips boxsets unless, like this one, most of the stories interest me, or at least contain some of my favourite characters
There seems to be a really unique mix of stories in this set so I’m super excited, but between other things I’ll probably take a while to get through it all

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This short trip volume is really good so far just started cut out and I think this might be the best of the volume set short trips

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I don’t often review short trips but I had quite a few thoughts on Impeccable so I might as well go for all of them lol
A pretty good start to the boxset, but please be aware the review does spoil The Truman Show, as I make a lot of comparisons

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My thoughts on the boxset:

Impeccable - not mind-blowing in terms of story, but Eric Roberts’s performance salvages it. I rarely heard him that genuinely menacing and scary.

Hard Feelings - I like the idea, the ending didn’t quite land for me, but I had a good time. The sequence of Nyssa hiding from the Cybermen and 5 sorta being proto-7 was very good.

Cut-Out - silly and fun mini-spy-thriller. The actor’s impressions of the Doctors vary, but he does a good job in capturing their identity.

Bring me the head of Dorium Maldovar - a little silly and fun timey-wimey sort of a heist story. The chemistry between Dorium and 12 is great (also I’m very happy that BF hired Nick Slawicz again).

The Tip of the Mind - an audiobook of a short story released back in 2003. Not a fan to be honest, even though I like how some workers of the facility hate Zoe for being smart. Also it has a really fun cameo. But this is just a reading, no sound-design whatsoever.

Is Anybody There - it’s kinda alright. I like that they did a different ending to the trope they used here, but everything before that didn’t quite grip me.

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As the opening story was specifically done to work as part of the Master! subrange, these Short Trips could be done to get new stories in for other spin-off ranges where regular box set releases may not be fully feasible, or to supplement them (like how Galois Group was part of the Series 7V arc in the Eleventh Doctor Chronicles).

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Polished this off over the past few days. The quality of Short Trips since the switch to box sets, especially after the gap year, has not been great, to say the least.

  • “Impeccable”: A typical “false utopia” story elevated by some excellent prose and the silky smarminess of Eric Roberts. As soon as he snarled, “Pathetic!”, I forgot that he was A Talking Cat!?! Also, he’s not half bad at accents. You can tell that Ajax is voiced by him, but not easily.
  • “Hard Feelings”: A combination of “The Curse of the Fugue” and “Flashpoint”, two Short Trips I’m fond of. Nyssa crashes on another planet and must fight to survive until she meets the Doctor, and her emotions are heightened by something technobabble-y. While that reveal spoiled the emotional heft of Nyssa’s anger—finally!—and Felix’s failing emotional inhibitor, it gives the Fifth Doctor a welcome edge.
  • “Cut-Out”: Boring plot, horrible impressions of the Doctors. The latter is especially shocking given Duncan Wisbey’s skill as a narrator and voice actor. Not as shocking, though, as the fact that this was written by a former spy. I was wondering why it was credited to the main character!
  • “Bring Me the Head of Dorium Maldovar”: My favourite story—thirty minutes of fun from the beauty behind “The World Tree”. Pairing Twelve and Maldovar works so well, as our favourite ancient rocker gives the slimy man no slack, and I liked the soft time loop. Castellan… That’s not the Doctor’s friend who got involved, is it?
  • “The Tip of the Mind”: This was entertaining until midway through. Bowerman’s performance as self-absorbed nepo baby Sandra Urtiman began feeling off, like she was reading the story instead of bringing it to life, and the presence of the Third Doctor, attempting to discreetly glean temporal equations from Zoe, proved way too fanwanky for a Short Trip. Surprise, surprise, as I forgot, this was written for one of BF’s printed anthologies. I’m probably being rude when I say this came off as an emergency addition.
  • “Is Anyone There?”: I liked the exploration of child abuse and Nine’s Time War trauma. Actually exploring his trauma, at that, making crystal clear how guilty it is.
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Isn’t Ajax voiced by Alistair Lock?

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He is, and that’s why I struck it out. I guess Lock sounds similar to Roberts when doing an American accent.

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Ah, apologies :sweat_smile:

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Listened to the BTS for “Cut-Out”, and it fully sank in that this was a retelling of an MI6 operation with Doctor Who elements bolted on. Special laptops, COBRA meetings with the PM, dispatched F-35s, wow.

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