Last Doctor Who Story you listened to?

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Thanks for that. The audio isn't among the limited selection available from Hoopla anyway.

Thought as much. Figured you'd enjoy it given that you like the Six-Evelyn dynamic and all. Glad you did!

It was okay, though the unresolved cliffhanger hurts it a bit, and the visuals were almost too limited to be worth it. Yee Jee Tso gave kind of a flat performance, though I guess that fit the character in a way.

The visuals aren't even visuals. It feels like a half-ssed reconstruction quite honestly. Its definitely I get a lot more mileage out of it as an audio story, anyway.

The half-converted Cybermen are an interesting parallel with Torchwood: "Cyberwoman," particularly since they both depicted female half-converts in gratuitously bikini-esque armor pieces (though at least this one somewhat justified it by having the male versions be similar).

I think so, too. Disappointingly, though, Cyberwoman never leaves the floor with those ideas, whereas Real Time does at least try to expand on its own ambitions...

Anyway. Wish the cliffhanger was properly resolved, but we can always assume the Seventh Doctor time-travelled and fixed it anyway. That's my pet theory.

 

[JD]

In broad strokes, sure, but this isn't a binary question. Fans today are way too obsessed with precise details, which isn't what continuity is really about -- it's more about creating the illusion of a unified whole even when the details are all over the place, like the way modern Marvel comics still acknowledge the general events of the original '60s stories while retconning their specifics to the early 2000s. Continuity in concept and character does not require continuity in every other respect.

I'm reminded of when the Paul McGann movie premiered. There was this guy on a local bulletin board who hated the movie with an almost frightening fanaticism, raging nonstop about all the ways it "violated" canon by being inconsistent with what had come before, even though the movie was no more different from "Survival" than "Survival" had been from "An Unearthly Child" -- just without as gradual a transition in between them. He refused to accept that the series had always evolved and grown and redefined things over time, insisting that there had to be a single, inflexible, absolute way of defining the Doctor and his world, which struck me as profoundly missing the point. Change is the strength of Doctor Who. It's what's kept it alive and vital all these decades. The fact that it changes and reimagines itself is something to celebrate, not condemn.

I've never been that concerned with any inconstancies in Dr. Who, since the whole thing revolves around time travel, that is all the explanation you need for anything that doesn't line up. Has there ever really been any kind of consistency when it comes to the futures they visit?

 

[Christopher]

I've never been that concerned with any inconstancies in Dr. Who, since the whole thing revolves around time travel, that is all the explanation you need for anything that doesn't line up. Has there ever really been any kind of consistency when it comes to the futures they visit?

All the explanation I needed was that it was fiction. There have been countless fictional series that played fast and loose with their continuity -- that's more the rule than the exception, or at least it was when I was growing up. TV shows and movie series in the '60s, '70s, and '80s rewrote their history and worldbuilding all the time. And Doctor Who was such a long-running series that it came as no surprise that it did so more than most.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

I just finished my nearly four-month Lockdown chronological marathon of the Seventh Doctor, having listened to Dark Universe today, followed up by a re-viewing of The TV Movie. Its been surprisingly emotional, with a great deal of irony and sadness in his regeneration, more pronounced this time around because I'd stayed with this Doctor for so long (17 seasons, by my reckoning). I admit I've never been the biggest Sylvester McCoy fan, but I was able to properly enjoy him from his beginning to his end, and the audio leg has considerably risen my opinion of him, to bee perfectly honest. They really sell just how uniquely different he is from the rest of the Doctors, and really built on the manipulative, cunning side of his that was shown on TV but probably wouldn't work as well on TV at that time. I genuinely the stories and the man himself.

It was fun, and now its sad. There's still more on the way, of course (more Hex in fact, and BF has mentioned the Last Days box set as a possibility in the new age of monthly range-free releases), and a lot of gaps are visibly and annoyingly there (Ace, Rainey and Benny, for example), but it does feel like a substantive journey nonetheless.

(it goes without saying of course, just how much more enjoyable these seemed after the utterly lackluster series 12 , of course)

 

[Christopher]

Whereas I just listened to my first Hoopla-borrowed audio of the month, The Eye of the Scorpion. Erimem's a cool character so far. Davison and Bryant seem to have recaptured their characters' voices by now, or maybe I'm just getting used to their older voices. The story was fairly good, a blend of historical adventure and alien-invader story that felt authentically Whovian. It was a bit weird how much Erimem's faithful guard commander sounded like the Brigadier, and I found myself visualizing him as the old, bearded Nicholas Courtney at times, until I remembered he should look Egyptian.

I was a bit surprised that everyone in Erimem's court already called her Erimem. I was expecting something more like Romana where she went by her full name and the Doctor or Peri coined the nickname. It's also a bit surprising that it never came up that Peri is short for Perpugilliam.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

I really need to listen to the Erimem audios. They're really quite fun.

Also, Christopher, if you go on with the Sixth, be sure to "visualize" him with his blue coat from now on. Here's a visual aid to that effect (which is also Kirk5555's greatest nightmare):

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[Christopher]

Also, Christopher, if you go on with the Sixth, be sure to "visualize" him with his blue coat from now on.

Yes, I know, I saw Real Time, remember?

Although in principle, there's no reason he couldn't go back and forth between both coats. We know he had to go back to the rainbow one by "Terror of the Vervoids," certainly.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Yes, I know, I saw Real Time, remember?

I just had the excuse for it, ya know? Plus, making kirk suffer is a small joy. (kidding, obviously)

Although in principle, there's no reason he couldn't go back and forth between both coats. We know he had to go back to the rainbow one by "Terror of the Vervoids," certainly.

Sure. Although, its implied in The Wrong Doctors he has changed back to the original one (but with the yellow ribbon) because that's how Mel actually likes him. So its all Mel's fault.

 

[Christopher]

Colditz was pretty good. I see it's from the same guy who did The Fires of Vulcan, which was also good. (I also vaguely recall reading the second of his NA novels, though apparently it's a sequel to one I didn't read. That may have been confusing.) It's very Great Escape-y, with the collegial, respectful rivalry between the prison guards and the captive soldiers, but with a particularly Nasty Nazi on hand in Kurtz. I've seen David Tennant play villains before (e.g. in Harry Potter), but it's kind of incongruous to hear the Tenth Doctor's voice coming out of such a truly reprehensible character in Doctor Who itself. It was easy to imagine his face in the role, though.

I don't really like it when DW goes for time-paradox stories like this. I mean, if it were really that easy in the Who-verse to change history, why does the Doctor constantly wander so freely around history with people from the present/future? It would seem this sort of thing should happen all the time. But it was interesting to get a "created an alternate dystopian history and went back again to repair it" story from the perspective of people in the second loop, as it were, with the blanks being filled in as they went.

I gather that Colditz Castle is a pretty famous location to the British, but I don't think I was familiar with it before, beyond having vaguely heard the name here and there. Luckily I looked it up beforehand, so I had a rough picture of what it looked like.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

As a half-German, I've been aware of Colditz for a long time. Not the details though.

As for the story itself, I love it. Its got a pretty good role for both the Doctor and Ace, and Klein is a wonderfully experimental character by BF. She'll join this Doctor much later on. And that ending is just great, unsettling but not condescending.

And as for time paradoxes, I love 'em. Its a show about a time traveller, surely these should be pretty much included?

 

[Christopher]

And as for time paradoxes, I love 'em. Its a show about a time traveller, surely these should be pretty much included?

Not if it's a show about a time traveler freely taking random Earth girls on random jaunts through space and time and stumbling into crisis situations without any kind of plan. If it's that easy to change history, then the Doctor's standard modus operandi is insanely reckless and irresponsible and it undermines them as a character. In a universe like that, the procedure for time travel should be more like a meticulously planned surgical operation, not just "Oh, we've landed, I don't know where or when, let's just pop outside and see what trouble we can get into."

Besides, time-paradox stories have been done to death, and they never make logical sense. I got sick of them decades ago.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Not if it's a show about a time traveler freely taking random Earth girls on random jaunts through space and time and stumbling into crisis situations without any kind of plan. If it's that easy to change history, then the Doctor's standard modus operandi is insanely reckless and irresponsible and it undermines them as a character. In a universe like that, the procedure for time travel should be more like a meticulously planned surgical operation, not just "Oh, we've landed, I don't know where or when, let's just pop outside and see what trouble we can get into."

I'm not sure I agree, because half the time the paradoxes the Doctor gets himself into are predetermined/already been set in motion by his future. Besides, I think I may be referring to a different time paradox then you refer to, but I could be mistaken.

Besides, time-paradox stories have been done to death, and they never make logical sense. I got sick of them decades ago.

OldWho rarely did them, though. They really became pretty common with Moffat, though.

Do note, that Seven's audios later on, particularly in regards to the Forge and the Elder Gods, will be pretty time-paradox-y. You have been warned, you will be seeing more of those, onwards. Especially with one Charley Pollard...

 

[Christopher]

OldWho rarely did them, though.

Which is exactly why I don't care for them in Doctor Who. It's the one time travel franchise that usually stays away from those cliches, or used to.

They really became pretty common with Moffat, though.

Well, he did some really clever and fresh takes on temporal causality, not just the stock stories that have been done a thousand times in other franchises.

One thing that disappointed me a bit about Chibnall's first season (haven't seen the second) was that it tended to fall back on some pretty standard, run-of-the-mill time-travel story premises, which made it feel less like Doctor Who and more like all the other sci-fi shows dealing with time travel.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Which is exactly why I don't care for them in Doctor Who. It's the one time travel franchise that usually stays away from those cliches, or used to.

I dunno. The time paradox in Day of the Daleks was pretty wild, and I'm miffed we didn't get the repeat at the end (though the novelization does it, and its a nice touch).

Also, City of Death was pretty much a temporal causality tale, and it was rather fine.

Well, he did some really clever and fresh takes on temporal causality, not just the stock stories that have been done a thousand times in other franchises.

I think BF largely followed up on his template for their own stories in that regard. And I certainly count Colditz as a good story with a time paradox twist,

One thing that disappointed me a bit about Chibnall's first season (haven't seen the second) was that it tended to fall back on some pretty standard, run-of-the-mill time-travel story premises, which made it feel less like Doctor Who and more like all the other sci-fi shows dealing with time travel.

Agreed.

 

[Christopher]

Primeval was fairly good. Interesting to get some backstory for Traken, a look into its history. Although as always, I have to wonder why we don't hear the Doctor worrying about the risk of changing history when it's an alien planet's history instead of Earth's. I mean, it's Nyssa's own personal history, so he should be making the same kind of protestations he was making in Colditz about disrupting your own past. Though as it turned out, it was more of a self-consistent loop, which is closer to how classic Who usually treated historical tales.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

I love that they went back to Traken with Nyssa, and its such a good story (which explains why Nyssa wasn't feeling so good in Kinda, to boot), and Davison really starts to reach his old performance. Splendid, underrated stuff.

 

[Christopher]

The One Doctor... Eh. It had some fun moments, but most of it was just mildly amusing, kind of dumb, or trying too hard to be Douglas Adams-ish. Interesting that it had Matt Lucas in a couple of guest roles.

So next comes Eight and Charley's "second season." I recall hearing Invaders from Mars before and not much liking it, both because of the clumsy American accents and the erroneous history. Although I gather now that the historical inconsistencies were intentional to set up a timeline-interference arc, so maybe knowing that will make it better. Still, I generally haven't thought much of Mark Gatiss's writing.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

I love The One Doctor. Its Colin's best, most celebratory performance. I listened to it, in my Seventh Doctor marathon (I basically listened to Colin's "last season", and just listened to all of Seven's in a chronological way).

Meanwhile, I have decided to continue that said marathon by going forward with the Eighth Doctor. I'm finishing the Mary Shelley trilogy today, and will start with Storm Warning this weekend.

 

[Christopher]

I love The One Doctor. Its Colin's best, most celebratory performance.

His performances are always fun. I liked the opening bit where he did a supervillain rant while playing Monopoly. But overall I didn't find the story as funny as it was trying to be.

In other news, I now know there's a localized British version of Monopoly.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

His performances are always fun. I liked the opening bit where he did a supervillain rant while playing Monopoly. But overall I didn't find the story as funny as it was trying to be.

In other news, I now know there's a localized British version of Monopoly.

I literally had the same reaction, the first time. This year was my second listening of it, and I was overjoyed. Its especially contrasting to think of it in retrospect to the entire McCoy era, audio and TV, as its never gonna be this light again for a whole other incarnation.

But yeah, it is very Doug Adams-y. Gareth Roberts is the only writer who manages to channel him but not ape him or seem like a copycat, like Saward did in regards to Holmes.