Excelis Rising.
3 Likes
I’ve been waiting for more reviews and thoughts before checking it out, what are your major spoiler free issues with it, if any are spoiler free anyway lol, if you don’t mind me asking?
4 Likes
If you don’t mind me jumping in and answering this question, my main issue was a lack of proper plot development and too many disparate ideas and characters thrown into one adventure with a very tiresome overarching theme to tie it all together. I find it perfectly listenable but not too exciting.
6 Likes
This is fascinating to me. You don’t like to use half stars, even though it (from what you describe) perfectly captures your feeling - not too harsh, and not too favourable. So why the hate of half stars?
8 Likes
Yeah when it was announced and I saw how many characters were in it this was my biggest worry; shame to see it validated!
4 Likes
DOCTOR WHO: Return of the Cybermen - Episode 2
This is the episode where things start to diverge, ever further, from ‘Revenge’. More use of the 500 year Diary (well used again) and plenty of action in the bowels of Nerva, with Cybermen in oxygen tanks and smashing through bulkheads. It is, so far, a much purer Cyberman story and is consolidating my opinion that this was Hinchcliff and Holmes’ big misfire. By trying to change this story, they lost the heart of what it was about and added elements that were far less interesting. I’d avoided ‘Return’ because I didn’t see the point of listening to a retread of what was always a weak story in an otherwise highly consistent era. Now I get it. Very much enjoying it so far, with just two episodes still to go.
6 Likes
Finished Susan’s War: Family Ties last night and the second episode was stronger than the first I thought, Carley continues to excel. Carole Ann Ford is also excellent value. Quite a nice boxset that, without fully blowing me away.
Then decided to do Parts One and Two of the War Master Dark Gallifrey releases and… Didn’t particularly vibe with them. Found Part Two the stronger and having never listened to anything with Captain John yet and whose only experience with him is the few episodes in Torchwood I thought the three of them worked really well together.
So I was carried through by their chemistry really because I’m still not fully engaged with the premise so far. I did think the Morbius three parter was fine but I suppose we need to get further in before I fully commit to saying whether or not this is a strong series.
It’s just we’re almost a quarter of the way through and it’s not grabbing me so far. My inner monologue is a bit, "Patience, dear Stokes, patience.
Yeah but almost six hours in, I’m not exactly being impatient…"
8 Likes
DOCTOR WHO: Return of the Cybermen - Episode 3
And finally we get to Voga, only it is just an asteroid rich in gold and not televised Voga at all. Consequently, I find myself liking it a whole lot more. I mean, Voga and its denizens were never very well realised for me. A rare example of shoddy world building from the normally reliable Robert Holmes. I far prefer the stranded miners of Davis’s original story. There’s much more reason to care about them and they’re more immediately believable in this story.
Moreover, there’s additional action for Harry aboard Nerva. The Cybermen continue to feel much more present and much more ‘cyber’ than in ‘Revenge’. There’s even some nice use of their logical approach here (as there was in episode 2 also). These Cybermen can be reasoned with (to a degree). They will make deals and accede to conditions (though they refuse to accept they are conceding anything) provided said conditions do not threaten their plans.
I’ll happily concede that there are better stories out there (and, even, better Cyberman stories) yet this feels much more tonally right than ‘Revenge’ ever did. Gerry Davis certainly knew the nuts and bolts of a solid adventure story and, as should come as no surprise, John Dorney has added his usual polish in adapting this story for audio.
One episode to go now!
5 Likes
Starting The Fearmonger!
9 Likes
Listened to Project: Twilight and it was good, but not for me. Very dark but maybe too much so? I wish it at least had some dark comedy or something. Still great performances from everyone and I’ve heard it’s VERY important in BF canon which I’m excited to see.
13 Likes
Got a fan-read version of Be Good for Goodness’s Sake, a little heart-warming story just to warm my sore shoulders (wait what?) from that boxing class 
6 Likes
Trying to catch up with Audio Club Extra (ironic, I know) so I’m doing Excelis Dawns and then I’ll go straight into Excelis Rising and the rest. Then it’s probably going to be a certain box set called…Geronimo…
14 Likes
The Darkening Eye - shrug. Just never engaged with it. Sarah Sutton was fine, but the raspy Dar Trader voice grated on my nerves. Also, unless I missed something, the title of the story, aside from containing “Dar” doesn’t mean anything. I may have missed something, though, as my mind kept wandering.
7 Likes
Been working my way through 8th doctor & Charlie adventures again. Other Lives was good fun - I expected more sci fi and instead just enjoyed all 3 of the gang getting into different situations. Time Works was… fine? Seemed promising from the 1st part, but idk, felt more and more like generic Who as it went on. And I barely paid attention to Something Inside - that one is just not good. I didn’t even finish it. Amnesic doctor, everyone trapped in a cube with mind-reading soldiers, and a brain worm. Except… That’s all it is. It doesn’t really expand further in the 2 hours. I was really uninterested in this one.
Now I just have 3 more with Charlie and C’Rizz - ah! Here’s hoping they get better…
In other news, I recently purchased the beginning of 7, Ace, and Hex adventures, so looking forward to that!
13 Likes
DOCTOR WHO: Return of the Cybermen - Episode 4
Well that was fun! It wasn’t stellar, and I’ll happily admit that had this script been televised instead of “Revenge”, it still wouldn’t be competition for ‘The Ark in Space’ or ‘Genesis of the Daleks’ as a stand out for the season. It would be a middling story, on a par (I would suggest) with ‘The Sontaran Experiment’. That said, it would have been a marked improvement over what we actually got and would, I feel, have been remembered far more fondly.
There are many problems with ‘Revenge’ but one of the biggest is that Holmes was far more interested in the politics on Voga than in the Cybermen themselves. There are few Cyberman stories where these top tier (second only to the Daleks) monsters are so poorly used and ‘Revenge’ is one of their lowest ever points. The problem is that the politics of Voga and its inhabitants hugely detract from the point of having the Cybermen in the story.
This is where ‘Return of the Cybermen’ really succeeds for me. It actually feels like a Cyberman story first and foremost. Everyone’s favourite cybernetic horrors take centre stage, there’s much talk of logic and there’s much much more cyber action.
Even when the story returns to a finale much more in line with what we saw in ‘Revenge’ (Nerva Beacon hurtling towards impact with the asteroid), the excellent Big Finish soundscape really sells that they are hurtling to disaster very effectively.
On balance, I definitely feel this is the story that ‘Revenge’ should have been. It’s a rare moment of poor judgement on Robert Holmes’ part and, whilst I understand how keen he was to stamp his own mark on the series and move away from the storytelling style of yesteryear, in doing so he misunderstood the appeal of the Cybermen. A story about Voga could have been fine (without the Cybermen) and now we know that the original story about the Cybermen would have been fine.
I, for one, am glad that ‘Return’ has finally come back to us.
7 Likes
Other Lives is great - one of my favourites from that run of 8, Charley and C’Rizz.
9 Likes
listening to some torchwood soho and really enjoying it so far! mostly cause I wanted more andy stories. if anyone has any recommendations pls let me know!!
7 Likes
Basically everything ColdStream said. Too many characters and not enough of a plot. I think the review that I posted is pretty spoiler-free, but I’ll condense it here. There weren’t any real highs or lows to the story, nothing exciting, nothing that stood out. Considering the audio is somewhere in the range of three hours long, these issues made it drag.
Also, as this is supposed to be the first? time Six and Peri have met since Mindwarp, they didn’t seem all that excited to see each other, in my view. It felt more like business as usual with them. Likewise, Peri and Mel had never met before this audio, yet they didn’t act like strangers. The characterization, I felt, was a little lacking across the board. Even the villains weren’t as vicious as they should’ve been.
The audio is basically a G-rated Vengeance on Varos with a bunch of hodgepodge characters tossed in from Six’s era (mainly S22 ones, even though this is supposed to be a S23 set?) and meta references to the IRL hiatus. Not very original or creative.
9 Likes
Because none of my other ratings have half stars and that would be the one outlier 
. Also I just like how (my) rating scales look when they rely on five columns instead of ten; it’s just an aesthetic thing I think. Looks more streamlined.
Whole numbers ftw.
7 Likes
Could I humbly suggest that the producer of the 7DAs does the same? I mean that respectfully.
8 Likes