I'm not a huge fan of Sisters of the Flame/The Vengeance of Morbius, personally. While I like all the elements you praised, nevertheless I thought the balance wasn't there. For one, I think Morbius should have taken over at the end of the first episode, so you then a second episode akin to The Last of the Time Lords that showed the dangerous despot he was. Then again, maybe they intentionally steered clear of that because of that tv episode? Anyway. I don't dislike like a lot of fans do, but I do believe it could have spent more time on Morbius' reign than building up to it. My pet theory on your observation about the Time Lords finding Morbius so threatening even after death in The Brain of Morbius is this: It wasn't the Time Lords of Tom Baker's era that brought the Fourth Doctor and SJS in Karn in The Brain of Morbius, it was the Time Lords of Paul McGann's era (maybe even by Straxus himself) that informed/forced upon the Fourth Doctor to try and stop Morbius so as to prevent Morbius from coming back as they predicted he would in the aforementioned two-parter. However, by bringing the Fourth and SJS they basically set in motion the events that led to that very two-parter, thus becoming part of a causal loop and therefore ensuring that the Fourth and Eighth Doctor(s) would play an important part in Morbius' resurrection and ultimate demise. Anyway. Back to the EDA's - glad to see you've enjoyed the Eighth Doctor tales more towards the end. Would really like to hear your thoughts on their further adventures if you ever get to go further with them. The Orbis thing and age issue doesn't bother me, per se - I rationalize it as the Doctor resetting his age at the start of his War Doctor persona, ignoring what's gone before, and after the War Doctor, he simply assumed that age because he's both been super long into the super long Time War and he couldn't be arsed to remember how old he actually was. And post-Time of the Doctor, its not as unusual a thing to occur to the Doctor, especially if he's partly amnesiac. I gotta ask, between the first Charley season (I count those stories up until Neverland as one) and the Lucie Miller season (ditto, its just narratively more sensical to see the Cyberman two-parter as a mid-season finale akin to Moff's series 6 one), what's you think of McGann's take on the Doctor and of BF's handling of the Eighth Doctor in general? Going through the marathon since last year, and being near the end of the Eleventh Doctor's era, McGann has risen to be my favorite Doctor of them all, and McGann to be simply amazing in the part. Never listened to all of the ST or the Stage Plays, actually. Come to think of it, none of the miniseries you mention. Does that service have any Jago & Litefoot?
Honestly, they aren't a favorite. They're not bad either, but they're just sort of middle-of-the-road. I find McGann's performance a bit one-note -- the sort of thing that's perfectly fine up to a point but you start to get a bit bored with after a while. Or maybe it's his Doctor's characterization that's one-note, since he only got one screen appearance prior to these and so there wasn't a lot of range established. And I never warmed to either Charlie or Lucie as much as I did to Evelyn. I was starting to like Lucie more toward the end, but she had to climb back from a poor first impression. Hey, turns out it does -- I didn't find it because I only searched under Doctor Who. They have Series 01-08, Voyage to the New World, Voyage to Venus, The Worlds of Doctor Who (apparently a crossover of BF's spinoff series), and the Benjamin & Baxter documentary. I wonder what other spinoffs they might have under different headings.
Well, its too bad you think that low of the Eight, but to each their own I suppose. I'd still heartily recommend everything he's done, cause I genuinely think he's the best Doctor of them all. As for the companions, well... Love 'em. I am still unsure if I prefer Evelyn to Charley, but both Evelyn and Charley are big favorites. Lucie too, but after them. I can definitely say I prefer Charley to all NuWho companions, and all of the Seventh's too. As for Jago & Litefoot... you're in for a treat. An amazing series, and wonderful to listen through on a stroll when in London, as I experienced it. Though that might be a bit unlikely I guess for this current situation. In any case, its a lovely series, and I wish we'd gotten more before Mr. Baxter untimely demise.
Middle eight, then. Still, at least you've experienced some adventures with McGann. So this lockdown period brought you another Doctor you'd only seen once before.
Well, twice, of course. And as I've mentioned before, I did hear a few of the early Eight/Charlie audios quite a few years ago when they were broadcast on radio.
I've listened to so many that I can't recall that well, but I may have commented about that in my posts about the first couple of McGann seasons, so you can search back through this thread if you like.
Fair. Anywya, before you start listening to Jago & Litefoot, be sure to listen to the Companion Chronicle The Mahogany Murders. It was their backdoor pilot and all, and it was successful enough that led to their range made.
I decided to use a couple of my remaining Hoopla borrowings for January to get the audio adaptations of the stage plays Seven Keys to Doomsday and The Ultimate Adventure. They also have the Doctor-less Curse of the Daleks play, but I'm not as interested in that one. Seven Keys was better than I expected. It's a conventional but solid Doctor Who story that just happens to have been written for the stage. It has some familiar elements that were used later in the show, like the planet Karn and the idea of an all-powerful crystal key assembled from multiple pieces (which wasn't handled all that well in the play, since they gathered them far too easily). There's some awkward descriptive dialogue added to adapt the story for audio; Terrance Dicks said in the documentary feature that he tried to avoid that kind of "radio writing" where the characters narrate what they're seeing, but I don't think he succeeded as well as he hoped. Trevor Martin is an excellent Doctor, with a booming John Carradine-ish voice and a wise, authoritative persona that's unlike any screen Doctor (probably closest to Pertwee, for whom the play was initially written) but could've worked well as an alternative. Introducing new companions works fairly well; Jimmy is annoying at first, but having him be an unknown quantity proves effective, since there's some genuine tension about whether he'll betray the Doctor. As for Jenny, I thought they did a good job casting an actress who sounded similar to Wendy Padbury, who originated the role onstage. I didn't realize until afterward that they actually got Padbury's daughter to do the role. I'm a bit surprised that Big Finish never brought Martin's Doctor back for more adventures after this was done in 2008. They've done other alternate Doctors here and there, and he would've been a good one. Unfortunately he passed away in 2017.
The Ultimate Adventure: Wow, what a contrast. Whereas Seven Keys to Doomsday was a solid story, this later play from 1989 was so much worse, even though they were both by Terrance Dicks. This one is overindulgent and barely coherent, and the fact that it's partly a musical doesn't help much, since the songs aren't outstanding and only the first one (performed by a singer at her work) is in any way justified. The plot theoretically involves the Daleks teaming up with the Cybermen and a band of mercenaries, but the Cybermen are a token presence, contributing nothing of note to the story. The plot is also quite dumb; the Doctor has to rescue a diplomatic envoy before a vital peace conference, and the story uses the "San Dimas Time" trope, insisting that the Doctor has a finite time to save the envoy before the conference starts, even though he's in a time machine. It's even a plot point in one sequence that the TARDIS accidentally brings the Doctor's male companion right back to the very moment when the Doctor first rescued him from execution, which directly undercuts the ticking-clock premise. Yet no explanation is ever offered for why the deadline exists. It's very lazy plotting. Judging from the documentary feature, a lot of the problem was that the producer this time had a lot of demands for things to be put into the story so that he could use various bits of stage gimmickry like wirework flight effects and stage-magic illusions, the result being that there were a number of totally arbitrary events that were just put in as excuses for such gimmicks. It seems there was so much attention paid to the parts that not so much thought was put into the whole. There's also a bit where Dicks outright recycles a sequence from Seven Keys, where a companion impersonates a Dalek, gets found out when they fail to give the right recognition code, and is apparently killed before it turns out they slipped out of the Dalek casing before it was blasted. It isn't even handled as well this time as the previous time. But not all the problems come from the play. The adaptation is pretty bad too, in that it goes overboard with having the characters verbally describe every single item or location and narrate every single action, even when it's entirely evident just from the storyline and sound effects (e.g. when the Dalek Emperor orders the Daleks to fire on the TARDIS and a barrage of Dalek gunfire is heard, one of the companions yells "They're all firing at the TARDIS!"). It's annoying as hell. The only thing that made it tolerable was Colin Baker's voice. His Doctor is always marvelous to listen to even when he doesn't have very much worthwhile to say. The play originally had Jon Pertwee reprise his role, with Baker taking over for the second half of its tour, but of course by 2008, Baker was the only option. The other returning cast member from the play was David Banks, who played the mercenary leader. Oddly, they didn't have him play the Cyberleader, with Nicholas Briggs doing double duty as the Daleks and Cybermen. I got the sense from the interviews that Banks specifically asked not to play the Cyberleader in the original play, which was how he got the mercenary role, but it would've been nice if Big Finish could've talked him into reprising the role for old times' sake. So now I think I'm pretty much down to The Companion Chronicles and Short Trips, before getting around to stuff like Jago & Litefoot and the other miniseries. I'm thinking maybe CC first, since I think those started earlier.
Yeah, Jago & Litefoot didn't start until a decade into the company's life. Plus, their pilot to their was, actually, a Companion Chronicle called The Mahogany Murders, which you should definitely check out. Rather nice to read that you're enjoying Colin Baker as the Doctor, I assume as a result of having listened to all his stories up to a point. Did your opinion on his Doctor improve after binge-listening to his Doctor?
Oh, I've always loved Colin Baker's grand, operatic vocal delivery. It's been my favorite thing about his Doctor from the start. I never really had a problem with his characterization as the Doctor, just with the often mediocre writing and concepts of that era of the show. He's had some good stories from BF, but also some weak ones as well, with The Ultimate Adventure being a particular dud.
Never listened to The Ultimate Adventure, and seems like it was a good choice. Shame, given its a Terrance Dicks-penned Sixth Doctor story.
As I said, it seems he was hampered by having to throw in all the stuff the theatrical producer demanded. Still, that's no excuse for the dreadful "describe everything out loud as it happens" approach of the audio adaptation. Really, it seems to me that if the goal was to do a nostalgic, authentic adaptation of the plays, it would've made more sense just to add some narration to establish the visuals, and let the dialogue play out as originally written. Adding so much extra, clumsy dialogue in place of the visuals doesn't seem very authentic to me.
I've started in on The Companion Chronicles, though as I've mentioned, Hoopla only has seasons 2 & 3. Mother Russia was my first, and it was fairly good. Peter Purves is a good narrator, what with working as a TV "presenter" for most of his career, and the story was a pretty good character-driven exploration of Steven Taylor -- similar to the Early Adventures story with Steven and Sara Kingdom, in that it has Steven staying in one place in Earth's past for an extended period and settling down to an extent. (There's even a similar fakeout where he thinks the TARDIS has left without him, but it's only for the length of the cliffhanger this time.) The truth about the shapeshifting alien was obvious long before Steven figured it out, but I think maybe that was intentional; Steven is more a creature of impulse than judgment, I think. The frame story to set up why Steven is telling this story and to whom was kind of awkward and strange, but somewhat interesting. At least, setting it literally inside Steven's mind helped with the character exploration. And it wasn't dull, anyway. But Helicon Prime was rather dull overall. It doesn't do as well as Mother Russia at justifying its companion focus. It's not really a story about Jamie McCrimmon; it's just a fairly routine Two/Jamie adventure that happens to be narrated by Jamie. Okay, the frame and the closing twist happen after Jamie's back on Earth post-"War Games," but even that's not well-justified; the ending could still have happened in a normal story without that aspect. And the story overall isn't very good, just a lot of self-indulgent weirdness and nonsensical ideas crammed together. Which makes it even less suited for a focus on Jamie, because it's not a scenario that draws on his strengths or attributes. He's just along for the ride, aside from the Doctor being uncharacteristically distracted from the crisis. The frame story here is even more pointless. It's set up as Jamie temporarily recovering some of his memories and relating them to a nurse, but there's no way Jamie McCrimmon would tell a story in that way, like a professional narrator doing character voices and "he said" dialogue tags. I get the sense that all the CCs are designed this way, as someone telling a story to someone else, but that's always going to be an implausible contrivance when the stories are narrated so professionally, and I'd be happier if they skipped the setup and just had first-person narration directly to the audience.
Two more Companion Chronicles, both featuring narrators with very strong voices: Old Soldiers is written by TrekBBS's very own James Swallow, and I thought it was a good, solid piece of work. It was good to hear a story told from the Brigadier's point of view and get some insight into his character and its nuances, particularly in the immediate wake of "The Silurians" and his tension with the Doctor at its end. Some nice glimpses into how UNIT operates as well. Courtney's voice is always great to listen to, of course, and he did a fairly good Jon Pertwee impression. I also liked the narrative style better than in the previous ones. I complained about the conceit of the previous one claiming to be Jamie telling someone a story yet somehow telling it in novelistic prose complete with verbatim quotes and dialogue tags. Here, it felt more authentically like we were hearing the Brig tell someone a story later in life, just intercut with snippets of dialogue from the events being related. (The exceptions were the Doctor scenes where speaker tags were needed to specify when it was the Doctor speaking.) And yet there was no attempt to specify who the Brig was telling it to or in what context, so it was unobtrusive as a narrative conceit. It's the best balance of narration and story that I've heard so far. The Catalyst features Leela, and I've gushed before in this thread about Louise Jameson's marvelous vocal performance in these audios. She was still quite good here, with the exception that her Tom Baker impression was rather weak, something she admitted to in the behind-the-scenes featurette. As for the story, it was a fairly good take on Leela's character and her evolving views on violence in contrast to the Doctor's. It let her be rather nuanced in a way she often wasn't on the show, while still being true to herself. But I had issues with the premise. It involved a character from Edwardian England who'd supposedly traveled with an earlier Doctor -- the Third, according to the TARDIS Wiki -- for quite a few years (his daughter said he'd been gone for a year but come back much older). That's a rather major addition to the Doctor's biography to toss out so casually. I guess theoretically there's room for it between Jo and Sarah Jane, but it's an awkward fit.
It's been an age since I listened to that series of Companion Chronicles but I thought those four were mostly solid with Helicon Prime the weakest. They were still figuring out the best way to tell the stories at that point, a few of the framing devices didn't quite come off. The quality lifts in series 3 with Home Truths, The Transit Of Venus & The Mahogany Murderers.
Speaking of Companion Chronicles, The Story of Extinction is currently available for free on the BF website.
On to season 3 of Companion Chronicles: Here There Be Monsters was excellent. A strong Susan-centric story with some nice science fiction concepts. The idea of needing to punch holes in spacetime to benchmark the galaxy was kind of fanciful; in space, there are no horizons, so you can always see all the navigational reference points you'll ever need, and any good computer could correct for lightspeed time lag if you had good parallax measurements of their distance. But the story it was used to set up was quite nice, an effective allegory about fear of the other, with the "First Mate" being an engaging character who bonded well with Susan. The sentient-plant captain was an interesting idea too, though as usual, it's hard to tell where and when this version of future Earth civilization fits in with all the other futures we've been shown. I found it interesting that of her three companions, the one that Carole Ann Ford did the best impression of was Ian. I could always readily recognize it when she dropped into his speech rhythm, even before she specified he was the one speaking. Perhaps it's because she's spent a lot of time with William Russell much more recently than with either of the others. The Great Space Elevator was a cool concept. I like stories about space elevators, and this one did a pretty good job with the science of it, a more hard-SF kind of tale than we usually get from Doctor Who (although there have been a couple of pretty hard-SF audios I've talked about before, like The Bounty of Ceres). Although it got much more fanciful toward the end with the weather control and massive storms being redirected or dispersed in mere moments instead of the hours or days it would take to overcome the inertia of such a sheer mass of air and moisture. Also one bit of very silly technobabble: "Initiate the Coriolis effect." The Coriolis effect is a consequence of the rotation of the Earth -- it's always there. You might as well say "Turn on the ocean." As for the story proper, it's a very authentic Second Doctor base-under-siege tale in every particular, aside from the more up-to-date science. My one quibble is that it's unclear when in the season it takes place. Victoria is characterized as bold and adventurous, determined not to be left out of the excitement, which suggests it's early in her tenure. But the TARDIS Wiki says it's supposed to be set between "The Web of Fear" and "Fury from the Deep," by which point Victoria was getting overwhelmed by the constant death and danger and really seemed unhappy to be there, which was why she was primed to stay behind when she got the chance in "Fury." But I didn't notice anything in the story that required it to be that late. Indeed, Victoria said she and the others had just come from Telos. She was using it as a bluff, claiming it was a Greek island, but the line suggests it's shortly after "Tomb of the Cybermen," which fits her adventurous characterization here much better, as well as an exchange between the Doctor and Victoria about memories that seems to resonate with their conversation about their families in "Tomb." Deborah Watling does a reasonably good job with the performance and differentiating the characters, but of the narrators I've heard so far, she makes the least attempt to mimic her co-stars, not even trying to make Jamie sound Scottish. She captures the broad strokes of their deliveries, though. I have to say, I'm a little disappointed by what The Companion Chronicles has turned out to be. I thought we'd be getting solo adventures for the companions, things they experienced after leaving the Doctor. For instance, I was hoping Susan's story would be about her life on Earth after the Dalek invasion ended. Instead, we just get a bit of that in the frame stories and then get a conventional Doctor-and-companions story that just happens to be narrated. A number of them are good stories, to be sure, but they're not what I was hoping for.