Ian Levine's "Downtime" re-shoots -- Whatever happened?

[JD]

But that's just my point -- it's not a binary choice between mutually exclusive options. GraphicAudio has proven you can have both -- a fully dramatized full-cast audio drama like a radio play, but with novelistic narration like an audiobook. And they've been doing it for over 20 years and have put out more than 2000 titles, so they must be doing something right.

After all, lots of old radio shows did the same thing, mixing dramatized scenes with narration. There used to be plenty of movies and TV shows with narration too, at least to an extent.




Except that a lot of the BF audios are trying to pretend they're just the soundtracks of TV episodes, so you get long stretches of sound effects where it's really hard to tell what's going on. It's senseless to eschew narration in contexts where it's a useful tool -- either to clarify action or to avoid clunky dialogue.

No, I'm talking about a lot of the BF stories where there's a big action scene with lots of shooting or machine noises or running around or whatever, and if there is any explanation of what just happened, it's only in dialogue after the fact. Maybe some people are better at deciphering those audio-only clues than I am, but for me, it's often quite confusing.

I've listened to a few and there usually pretty good at giving you enough information either with dialogue after the fact or during the action for me to know what's going on.

I'm only pointing out that it's factually erroneous to state that audiodramas never have narration, as some earlier comments seemed to assume. Since I've actually written a number of audiodramas with narration, or had them adapted from my prose writings, I'm entitled to point out that they do, in fact, exist.

No, those aren't audio dramas, they're full cast audiobooks, those are two different things. GraphicAudio even refers to themselves as an audiobook company on their website.

 

[Captaindemotion]

It’s not good enough that some people like a narrative device or way of storytelling that he doesn’t like. He won’t let it go until he has absolutely demonstrated that you are all wrong and he is right.

 

[diankra]

A long while ago, when I had just took over editing DWB, Ian rang me. Asked what I thought about Ken Dodd being in Who. Said I didn't like the story, but he was right for the part. Made me persona-non-grata for him (the only good answer was "No, Never").
Actually, we did meet a bit later. He was there when I interviewed Barry Letts at BAFTA. Was saying "You never made a bad story, Barry, everyone says that." Barry then said, "Nice, but not true. Someone, in your magazine, took Claws of Axos to pieces." At which point I raised my hand, and Barry said, "Well you're right, but it was worth trying."

 

[Qonundrum]

Private projects? Does he intend on releasing them on any form, then? If not, then... what the heck? Why go through all that trouble?

As for the unused Season 23 scripts... Didn't most of them get to be novelized, and consequently released as audio dramas by Big Finish?

Yup. The three novelizations of the originally-intended season 23 that were feasible are generally quite good (IMHO), even when released ~4 years after the intended production date. Most feel "right", but I suspect "Mission to Magnus" had a few retcons, as would have Lord Kiv really been in the original production or someone else (now renamed), if anyone to be referenced by Sil? It's so chuck full of characters being juggled around anyhow...

The latter three stories were insufficiently completed or otherwise not available at the time. Save for "In the Hollows of Time", which was produced as an audio, yet never released as part of Target's missing stories range circa 1990.

Audios, especially when done by the original actors and capturing the intended feel of the time in which they were to be made helped, though I've spent more time with the novelizations since buying the audios.

I presume he's doing animation using those recordings as basis, correct?

I believe so. I could have sworn I had seen part of one once, on YouTube, but I must be imagining it. The voices were different, very good ones though.

Also, I read the Eight Doctors, and nothing about it strikes me as remotely episode or film-like. Its one of the rare Dicks novels that do read like novels, oddly enough.

The BBC New Adventure novel, long after they took the range back from Virgin Publications when the licence expired. I don't remember if I'd bought it, or if I still have it. I vaguely remember it, might make for a fun re-read then!

 

[Christopher]

Yup. The three novelizations of the originally-intended season 23 that were feasible are generally quite good (IMHO), even when released ~4 years after the intended production date.

I recall hating the Mission to Magnus novelization and finding The Ultimate Evil mediocre. On the other hand, I was startled by how beautiful Graham Williams's prose style in The Nightmare Fair was, given that, in my opinion, he produced more of the classic series's worst, dumbest serials than any other producer.

 

[diankra]

So

Yup. The three novelizations of the originally-intended season 23 that were feasible are generally quite good (IMHO), even when released ~4 years after the intended production date. Most feel "right", but I suspect "Mission to Magnus" had a few retcons, as would have Lord Kiv really been in the original production or someone else (now renamed), if anyone to be referenced by Sil? It's so chuck full of characters being juggled around anyhow...

The latter three stories were insufficiently completed or otherwise not available at the time. Save for "In the Hollows of Time", which was produced as an audio, yet never released as part of Target's missing stories range circa 1990.

Audios, especially when done by the original actors and capturing the intended feel of the time in which they were to be made helped, though I've spent more time with the novelizations since buying the audios.



I believe so. I could have sworn I had seen part of one once, on YouTube, but I must be imagining it. The voices were different, very good ones though.





The BBC New Adventure novel, long after they took the range back from Virgin Publications when the licence expired. I don't remember if I'd bought it, or if I still have it. I vaguely remember it, might make for a fun re-read then!

Sometimes he insists on making stories that had no more substance than someone mentioning them as a possibility. Like Yellow Fever (a Robert Holmes story for the original season 23 that was never scripted).

 

[diankra]

I recall hating the Mission to Magnus novelization and finding The Ultimate Evil mediocre. On the other hand, I was startled by how beautiful Graham Williams's prose style in The Nightmare Fair was, given that, in my opinion, he produced more of the classic series's worst, dumbest serials than any other producer.

Yep, much as I liked Philip, Magnus isn't great. Similarly Wally K Daly wrote a cracking Juliet Bravo (Flowers Tomorrow, which ends with a suicide), but Ultimate Evil is poor. Nightmare Fair is better.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

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[Allyn Gibson]

Look, I like Death Comes to Time, but no, Ian. No. Just leave it alone.

I can see what he's going for, but he doesn't have the budget or the skills to accomplish it.

 

[Starkers]

Jesus wept. I feel dirty just watching a few minutes of that. How utterly disrespectful to Jacqui Pearce.