I continued to listen to Fifteen Doctor, 15 Stories with The Roots of Evil: a weaker take on The Face of Evil (6/10), and Tip of the Tongue: a slow, dull Fifth Doctor historical that did nothing for me (4/10).
Tomorrow, I’ll relisten to …ish. It’s the final MR audio I have listened to previously, so starting next week, I’ll go blind into every Audio Club!
andy davidson is my new blorbo of the season, so everything with him in it I guess! currently torchwood: outbreak
Love Andy, he’s become one of my favorite Torchwood characters
Andy is so good!
Loaded up my phone again. Will be back on the BBV grind on my train ride to parts unknown.
Starting the trilogy of Lost Stories from season 20 with 5, Nyssa and Tegan. On Part 2 of The Elite and have already figured out the major twist lol ofc it’s a dalek
Idk how much they rewrote from the original script but it seems to suffer a bit from characters being handed the Idiot Ball to move the plot along (seriously Doctor, how did you not pick up on the spartan eugenicist vibes like straight away) which is unfortunately common in classic who serials and rather frustrating
Ah, Mission to Magnus, what a mess. I know that even when I read the book with the enthusiasm of someone who rather likes the Ice Warriors, it was very disappointing. I can’t say for sure if I don’t re-read the book, but it’s possible the audio is worse.
It starts with the Doctor turning into a sniveling coward when he encounters the guy who bullied him back in school. Puh-lease. And it ends with some puerile snickering related to the birds and the bees. It doesn’t get a whole lot better in the middle, and even Colin can’t save this one. That wraps up the 2009 releases on my shelves.
Moving into 2010, the commute home wrapped with Bernice Summerfield and the Criminal Code, which I also found disappointing, as I’m pretty certain I did back when it came out. I love Benny, and so would have had high expectations, but for whatever reason I found this story dull. The tail end of it manages to be interesting, at least, but somehow this one just seems to miss the mark for me.
Listening to the Missing Episodes podcast on The Myth Makers which has Toby Hadoke as a guest - so this is going to be good!
I recently finished Storm Warning (great, great story), The Stones of Venice (pretty good), Sword of Orion (I didn’t like it that much, but it was passable), Fallen Angels (absolutely brilliant). Currently I’ve started …ish and Judoon in Chains will be next I think. Any suggestions?
I’m just hopping to-and-fro between stories that seem interesting (although I want to listen to the MR 8 in order).
Feel free to hop into the Audio Club to talk about those Main Range stories.
Had to drive up to Knaresborough today (and back tonight) with no new BF to listen to so I’ve relistened to The Holy Terror for the first time in over 20 years and I’d forgotten a heck of a lot.
Great story, got Part 4 and then the first relisten in just as long for The One Doctor for the drive back later.
he’s such a fun lil guy fr
MUSE OF FIRE: Episode 1
Ages since I’ve listened to a Paul Magrs story. Really enjoyed this first episode. A gentle opener, to be fair, but that actually really works. Steeped in period and a love of Parisian art intellectualism. It works so well with the Seventh Doctor. Ace and Hex are also able to engage nicely with the period setting. Who is this mysterious art critic? There’s an air of The Time Meddler about this one (though the setting is so very different, so much more civilised - and I love that). Plus, I love the ambience of French cafes and clubs. Different. In a very good way! 
Muse of Fire is one of my comfort audios. Pure sunshine!
That’s good to know. I love how Doctor Who can do stories like this alongside hard bitten thrillers, epic alien invasions and claustrophobic horror. There’s, quite literally, nothing else like it!
Started listening to Neverland this morning, thought I’d just do one part before getting up, didn’t realise it was over an hour for the first part! So not quite finished yet, but I’m actually loving it so far!
Started Primeval. Trying to catch up a bit on the Audio Club.
I remembered a fair amount about the first two Lost Stories, since they were also novelized, but the rest, not so much. Enter Leviathan. I quite enjoyed this one, and I could visualize it as a story airing on TV (admittedly with a bigger budget than it would actually have had were it made.
After that, Klein’s Story, from when Big Finish was playing around with the Main Range containing a 1-parter and a 3-parter on some releases (rather than a single 4-parter. This was very handy leading into the 3-parter, as it gives us Klein’s backstory and I only very vaguely remembered who she was. Turns out I probably remembered enough, but I didn’t remember how she came to be traveling with the Doctor, so that was useful.
I’ve been working my way through some of the Main Range stories from the mid-2000s, mostly Fifth and Sixth stories. Quick rundown:
The Game (MR#66, Darin Henry, Feb 2005) - A heart-pounding story featuring Five and Nyssa that could perhaps be accused of coming across as corny in its sincerity. Possibly approaching camp territory with the inclusion of Jonathan Pearce, this story of a death-sport masquerading as a civil war probably has one too many twists in its plot; I never quite understood the central scam behind Naxi, but the sport itself was really easy to visualize. The body count is huge on this one too, you can imagine Saward nodding in blood-soaked approval. Only real big issue is that at six parts, every part is very short. It pounds along, but could be paced a touch better. 4/5
Catch 1782 (MR#68, Alison Lawson, Apr 2005) - Flicking back over to this Sixth Doctor and Mel adventure, and I have mixed feelings. Whilst the period is well evoked and the cast all give good performances, the narrative driving force is still basically “Mel gets drugged and gaslit over a period of many months”. Once I strip everything else back out of the story, it just strikes me as a desperately sad adventure, and one I didn’t remember particularly well. It’s interesting to me that this was penned by a woman, although it’s perhaps telling that after this Alison Lawson was not invited back for many years. I initially gave it 2.5, but in hindsight I think this one is mostly a miss. Also, something about the Sixth Doctor stories of this era have an oddly soporific quality; a dreamlike disjointed air that makes the universe Six has to survive feel mysterious, dangerous, but also slightly surreal. Maybe I should stop listening to them in bed, I don’t know. Either way, I think this is a 2/5.
Pier Pressure (MR#78, Robert Ross, Jan 2006) - Look here, I know I’m one of the loudest, most annoying voices on this website demanding Big Finish bring in some new blood to write for them, but I’m beginning to get an inkling that this period in the company’s history may well have something to do with it; Robert Ross’ only credit before this is Medicinal Purposes, a story only remarkable in that it wasn’t the complete ruin of David Tennant’s career before it had even had a chance (seriously, rapist Nazi, then…look, I don’t know how to kindly talk about Daft Jamie. There’s a big essay coming on the Sacrificial Moron in Doctor Who and how it just seems to keep happening, and Daft Jamie is one of the most egregious, yet still somehow David Tennant came out of his Big Finish career tipped to be the most popular Doctor of our lifetimes).
Seriously, what’s happening in this one.
Seriously. 1.5/5.
The Nowhere Place (THIS WAS A NICK BRIGGS STORY?)
Basically read what I wrote for Pier Pressure except it got bumped a star for having a story that was at least somewhat possible to follow. 2.5/5.
Three’s A Crowd (MR#69 [ehhh], Colin Brake, May 2005) -
Go and listen to this and then watch Dot and Bubble and tell me that Colin Brake (who also seemed to get consigned to to the oblivion of writing Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novels after this one) doesn’t have at least a bit of a reason to be miffed. RTD got the idea for the episode in 2009, and four years is very realistic timeframe for someone to work through their Big Finish backlog and get to this. It’s great, fantastic, by the way.
The Counci
l of Nicaea
Finished my relistens of The Holy Terror and The One Doctor and it had been so long since I’d heard either of them (I listened just once about 20 years ago) and I’d forgotten a vast amount of them.
Had a great time. I picked stories I remembered being brilliant so it wasn’t exactly a gamble but having had so long between listens they felt far fresher than I was expecting because of forgetting quite a lot of them.
