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Last Doctor Who Story you listened to?

Well, Leviathan was a vast improvement over the first two Lost Stories. The first episode did a really good job setting up the mystery of what was going on, and why there were so many things about the medieval village that didn't add up. Although the bit where Peri looked up Herne in the TARDIS databank did kind of give away the game too soon. I was wondering why it didn't occur to the Doctor and Peri to remember what the databank entry had revealed and realize where and when they really were, until it was explained in the behind-the-scenes segment that the databank scene was added to the audio script to provide a visual description of Herne. Too bad, because otherwise it was a very well-done mystery.
 
latest
 
Yeah, I've seen the sleeve art from these on their Wiki pages. It's pretty terrible. I preferred the comic book-style illustrations they had in the early Main Range audios.
 
Those comic-book-y ones appeared at the Doctor Who Magazine ones. And I like the intent behind these illustrations anyway, as they're trying to get across some of the feel. And some of them are rather nice, personally speaking.

Beyond that, I remember liking The Leviathan, and I even listened to the prequel written by the writer's son, The Sentinels of Dawn, with Liz Shaw describing an adventure she had with the Third Doctor and the villainous group of the Lost Story. Rather neat, I should say.
 
I hoped I'd liked The Hollows of Time, since it was by Christopher H. Bidmead and I liked "Logopolis" and "Castrovalva." But I wasn't as fond of "Frontios," and this was more in that direction, particularly in bringing back the Tractators, although it hardly did anything with them. It was kind of interesting, I guess, but also rather confusing and cluttered, and the adaptation of a very visual story to audio was very clumsy, with far too many scenes of characters narrating what they see and do, despite the framing device of having the Doctor and Peri narrate the story in flashback as well. The first half worked better than the second -- really, they almost felt like different stories.

I loved the Doctor's "My kingdom for a hawser" pun. Although Nicola Bryant's American accent failed on the word "hawser" when Peri complained about it. (She also went British for "conservatory," making the last four letters sound like "tree" instead of "Tory.")
 
Emperor-Tiberius said:
Did it work without the Master reveal?
Click to expand...

As a story overall, I guess it worked about as well as any Who story with a random evil mastermind behind it. But you could tell they were artificially tiptoeing around the question of Stream's true identity. It did pay off well, with the Doctor having an "I remember now" moment at the end and having the punchline be that he'd remembered Bessie's name, but that still called attention to what they were avoiding.
 
I remember the next story had the Doctor mentioning how the villain of this one was someone they knew... but its too bad they couldn't aknowledge him, because of the BBC using the Master at the time.
 
Paradise 5 was okay, though kind of slow-paced and not really gripping; I listened to one episode at a time over 3 days. The making-of segments they append to these reveal that the whole first episode was a new introduction by Andy Lane, since the story was originally planned to be the third arc of "The Trial of a Time Lord" and started in medias res. Maybe that's why it was so slow-paced.

For the most part, it had a kitschy quality that fit into the era it was written for; but it took a very dark turn in the final part when we learned what was going on. I guess that made it a bit more potent, but still a bit tonally awkward.

It's odd that the previous ones were done as two roughly hourlong episodes while this was four half-hour episodes. If the idea was to mimic a "lost season," you'd think they'd maintain a consistent episode length. Although I appreciated the shorter episodes since they let me take breaks more often.
 
That does annoy me, too. But given that, as you said, it was originally supposed to have been written for the Trial season, they kept the format at least relevant to the cliffhangers that the writers intended.

Although why didn't they simply adapt with Bonnie Langford, I'll never understand. I would imagine it would require less tinkering, surely.

In any case, I do remember enjoying this, but again, no real recollection since its been a long while since.
 
Emperor-Tiberius said:
That does annoy me, too. But given that, as you said, it was originally supposed to have been written for the Trial season, they kept the format at least relevant to the cliffhangers that the writers intended.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure that's true, though, since it's a 4-parter reworked into the last 3 episodes, which would change the pacing. And only part 1 was actually scripted; the rest was just story outlines.


Emperor-Tiberius said:
Although why didn't they simply adapt with Bonnie Langford, I'll never understand. I would imagine it would require less tinkering, surely.
Click to expand...

I did notice a bit where Peri had a Mel-like line disapproving of the overindulgent eating habits of the guests.
 
I listened to a ton of audios lately.

Specifically, I've listened to first four series of Gallifrey and found them highly enjoyable, particularly Braxiatel, who I will look out for in future audios. Unfortunately it will take a while until I'll get to the Benny stuff.
A few Gallifrey highlights (spoilers!):
  • The Torvald twist in series 1.
  • Darkel's fate was extremely satisfying
  • Castellan Wynter's mutilation is one of the most graphic thing's I've ever heard, and listening to that audio while trying to go to sleep was an awful idea.
  • Honorable mention for scary stuff goes to Janartis' regeneration while under the influence of the Dogma virus.
  • Ranking a lot farther downin the scary moments list, alternative Brax in the world where the Time Lords are still waging war against the vampires.
  • Speaking of the Dogma virus, has Commander Hallan's fate ever been revealed? Otherwise I'll be assuming he's still in stasis and the only survivor of the Master burning Gallifrey in series 12. If he's not the surprise plot twist in the final episode of series 13 I will write a very upset letter to Chibnall.
  • Leela occasionally pretending to not understand what's going on, so that the high-and-mighty TIme Lords underestimate her.
  • Romana I appearing.
  • K9's death actually made me cry, which isn't something I'd ever have thought about K9.
  • It's neat that they got Baker to play Maxil again, even if only for a few minutes.
  • Speaking of Baker, the Burner Doctor! Probably the highlight of series 4, in relation to Brax's stuff that episode.
  • I think Narvin's character development is very natural. I read in the wiki that he and Romana would eventually become good friends, and when I listened to the first series I was afraid it'd be a "they got friends between seasons and now everything is changed without us seeing the change" type thing, but their relationship changed very organically and believably over a long period of time.
  • Braxiatel. Just, damn, he's great. His return in Mindbomb may just be my favorite moment of the entire series.
  • Gallifrey does a great job at introducing us to new characters, like Matthias or Valyes or Hallen or Janartis or Darkel or Elbon (yes, I know two of these appeared on the show, but frankly, without an extremely enceclopedic Who knowledge you wouldn't know) and make us care about them, even if they won't stay forever.
  • Matthias and Darkel planting the seeds of their own loss of the presidency by erasing parts of Romana's decision was very nicely done.
  • I hate Darkel, but in a good way.
  • Having all the people who sided with Pandora in the war arc basically be free to continue their previous positions after the war, was a very good choice on the side of the creators.
  • K9 has a surprising amount of great moments and moments that made me genuinely sad.
  • I love how Leela, even after being blinded, still probably has the highest kill count.
  • When alternate Narvin pretends that he's married to Romana in order to make her reveal herself as an imposter you could feel the relief Romana felt, when she learned that was merely a ruse.
There is so much more, but yeah. Most of these are about the first three series. The fourth series, relased five years after the previous one takes very different approach to the previous series and exiles the five main characters in the Axis, which is basically a plot device for visiting alternative timelines. I wish they had resolved the Dogma virus storyline before that, but I think the fourth series did generally well. The adventures weren't just one-offs, between Narvin losing his regenerations, Brax "leaving" and Leela regaining her eye-sight, and of course just the usual character development, there is always more to these adventures than a plot which won't ever affect the other stories. As far as alternate timelines go "capitalist Gallifrey", "interventionist Gallifrey", "vampire war Gallifrey" and "slavery Gallifrey" are all interesting enough, that I'd probably listen to stories with these concepts anyway. Particularly the second and third were very well done.

I've also started a Seventh Doctor Listen/Watch-Through and have so far listened to Unregenerate!, We Are the Daleks and The Warehouse.

Unregenerate! was probably the best of the bunch, it just kept twisting and turning and I found it a very engaging experience. It also made very good use of Mel, who I had previously thought of as a pretty "meh" companion, but she really shines in this one.

We Are the Daleks was pretty enjoyable and weirdly realistic with the Daleks acknowledging that subjugation through economic means may be more effective than waging war against everyone at the same time.

The Warehouse was something of a disappointment. It kind of happened. It's the most recent of these stories I've listened too, but I can recall less about it, than I can about Unregenerate! which I listened to months ago. The fact that I listened to the excellent Gallifrey series between We Are the Daleks and The Warehouse, which is serialized and features interesting character development, may also have negatively impacted my view of The Warehouse as an inconsequential one-off. (Except for the Seventh Doctor changing his umbrella, which is obviously extremely important plot stuff).

Today I listened to the first installment in the I, Davros mini-series, Innocence. I think Big Finish did a good job on portraying a young Davros as very cold-hearted (even though he comes off as fairly nice in like the first ten minutes). Especially Davros subjecting his tutor to his own radiation chamber felt very much like a calculated move to gather more data "for science" and not like he wanted revenge for his tutor almost killing him earlier.

Oh, and speaking of Davros, I completely forgot I got The Curse of Davros, when it was reduced some time ago. The plot of the story definitely isn't something I've seen in a Doctor Who story before (or at least not to this extent). I think both Baker and Malloy did a great job of playing the other's character trying to pretend their own character, I'm just absolutely not interested in Flip, after having "seen" her in only this one story. She really just felt like a very generic Who companion. Does this at all change? If not, I'm really not interested in listening to further Six/Flip stories, especially at the prices Big Finish is selling them at.

I also got the first War Doctor and the first War Master story, when they were available for free and I can't say either really impressed me. From what I hear other people say the War Master series is the better, but frankly I found both first stories fairly predictable. The lead actor's performances are great, no question, but once again, at the prices these are sold I feel confident that buying four series of Gallifrey was a much better decision.
 
Point of Entry was okay. A bit unusual for this "season" of Lost Stories, the first real historical tale in the bunch, and maybe somewhat darker and more somber than most. Interesting focus on Christopher Marlowe, a figure I don't know that much about. It's a change of pace from the usual emphasis on Shakespeare as the go-to Elizabethan celebrity playwright.

Peri impersonating Queen Elizabeth was a weirdly random twist, but kind of fun. As usual, they kind of bungled Peri's American accent. I don't think most Americans would pronounce Velez's name like "Veleth" while otherwise pronouncing it with American phonetics. That's more a British thing, I think. An American would either say "Velezz" (rhymes with "says") with an American accent or would pronounce it with a Spanish accent if they were familiar with the language.


The Song of Megaptera was pretty good, and felt more like a Sixth Doctor story. The idea about the space whales "diving through time" was weird and kind of cursory; it didn't really have any relevance to the story, aside from being an excuse for the TARDIS and the whale to interfere with each other. Oh, there was the bit about the castaways being kind of deranged because they'd lived inside the whale for thousands of years, but the same could've been achieved if they'd lived in it for 20 or 30 years.

It did have some implausible bits, too, like the idea of the TARDIS's exterior being damaged by the whaler's abbatoir machinery, or the Doctor needing to step outside the TARDIS to fix some outer component (it hasn't got any, unless you count the police telephone and the lamp on top). Or the Doctor somehow being able to reprogram the whaler ship's computer with an animal-rights activist personality in a matter of seconds using some kind of virus. And there were some scale issues in the climactic episode -- the whale was supposedly a mile long, but once it was inside the whaler and the characters inside it climbed out onto its back and interacted with the crew on the observation platform, they seemed implausibly close together.


Looks like The Macros is the last one, which is good; I'm ready for a change of pace from Six/Peri. When I started this listen-through, I wondered if I should go through the stories Doctor by Doctor in chronological order, but I'm glad I went for release order on the Main Range, since there's more variation that way.
 
I prefer to organize lstening orders with the Doctors, personally, though sometimes you just cant avoid it. But, I did go through the Seventh Doctor's audios (with the tv episodes) chronologically, and it was just wonderful. Same with the Eighth. Now on to the Tenth.

How many Lost Stories do you've access to?
 
You'll miss out with The First Sontarans, then. Huge favorite. But, I like the Hinchcliffe Lost Stories, also. The First Doctor is pretty great, but they're narration-filled, so be prepared for a condensed audiobook. Never listened to the Second Doctor's. The Seventh Doctor series, basically, sucks.
 
As a story, The Macros is okay, though it has kind of an odd jumble of concepts -- the mythical "Philadelphia Experiment" being linked to a micro-universe with a dictatorial president -- that didn't quite come together. Having the Doctor try to go back and erase the experiment was unusual for him and didn't pay off anyway, so it seemed like a pointless digression. And the title is weird. Nobody uses the term "Macros" in the story, just macro-universe and micro-universe, and it's the Doctor and Peri who are the "macro" ones.

It was rather sad listening to the documentary feature and having so many people talk about the "Philadelphia Experiment" -- a mythical conspiracy theory that began with a letter from a pseudonymous, possibly mentally ill person to a sensationalist hack writer a dozen years after the alleged event -- as if it were an accepted historical fact. The actress who played the villain even said she remembered hearing about it happening in her childhood, even though the first barely-published account of the alleged experiment would've come out when she was 17, and it didn't become widely popularized until she was 39 (and she would've been only 3 when it was supposed to have happened).

Which tracks with the fact that I never heard about it as a kid in the '70s, even though I was into all this pseudoscience crap, UFOs and the Bermuda Triangle and ancient astronauts and all that. I guess it just wasn't a well-known part of the mythos yet. Much like the Roswell UFO myth, which was almost unheard of until around 1980, even though a lot of people today assume it's been famous since 1947.
 
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