Last Doctor Who Story you listened to?

[Steve Roby]

Couple more old main range audios listened to. Unregenerate, which has an interesting concept but only becomes listenable halfway through once McCoy tones down his performance, and Thicker Than Water, a pleasant sequel to Arrangements for War, Six and Mel visiting Evelyn Smythe. Not worldshaking, but the Evelyn stories are usually quite enjoyable, and this is no exception.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

The whole Six-Evelyn era is my favorite combination of a Doctor and a companion from the '80's Doctors, full-stop. Although I like Five-Nyssa a lot (just for Primeval and Spare Parts alone), the Evelyn stories really did seem like a natural progression of both the Sixth Doctor as a personality, and in my opinion anyway, a genuine look at how the show could've gone on with Six with someone other than JNT/Saward overlooking Who.

 

[Marc]

The whole Six-Evelyn era is my favorite combination of a Doctor and a companion from the '80's Doctors, full-stop. Although I like Five-Nyssa a lot (just for Primeval and Spare Parts alone), the Evelyn stories really did seem like a natural progression of both the Sixth Doctor as a personality, and in my opinion anyway, a genuine look at how the show could've gone on with Six with someone other than JNT/Saward overlooking Who.

In the extra's for the 6th Doctor's regernation story, C. Baker talks about how he really enjoyed working with Maggie Stables and wished that she could have been part of the story. While he's enjoyed working with all the performers who've played his audio companions, Maggie was different because she was closer to his own age.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Yeah, I definitely she was in that set, as opposed to Charley (who totally ruins the set for me - well, nearly).

 

[Steve Roby]

Listened to The Shadow Vortex, the first part of the third volume of The War Doctor. The idea's interesting -- Time War meets Cold War in East Berlin, with some good moments and a couple of interesting guest characters -- but it ends up being a fairly standard kind of story. Not bad, just not terribly exciting.

 

[Steve Roby]

And now I'm finished the War Doctor audios. I'm glad we have them, and I enjoyed John Hurt's performance (and certain others', like Jacqueline Pearce). But too many of the stories could have been slightly revised to work as main range Dalek adventures for any other Doctors.

The problem isn't with the characterization of the don't-call-me-Doctor. He seemed in line with the character Hurt played in Day of the Doctor, in other words, the Doctor, so it made sense that people like Ollistra just ignored his "I'm dark and sinister, don't call me the Doctor" lines because he still clearly was.

Instead, it didn't feel like they made enough of the weirdness of RTD's Time War. Too often it was fleet against fleet, stasers against Dalek guns.

 

[Steve Roby]

I know there's a rule against "spamming" by making several consecutive posts, but does it count if there are months between them and I'm trying to keep the topic active?

So, I listened to an old main range story featuring the Fifth Doctor and Turlough, Singularity by James Swallow. I like the books I've read by Swallow, but this felt rather like a generic BF main range audio of years past, not helped by some OTT acting and accents (possibly an effort to hide a too small cast). Five and Turlough are certainly captured well but the story drags a bit in the middle. Average.

 

[Steve Roby]

Listened to a couple of Torchwoods.

The Dollhouse is an oddity. The Torchwood main range tends to focus on different main characters from story to story, but no regulars appear in this one. Instead, someone apparently wondered, what if we took a typical episode of Charlie's Angels and turned it into a story about Torchwood Los Angeles? And what if we didn't have any particular ideas or twists beyond that, and just played out a not terribly exciting story with three stereotypical characters? I like the fact that Big Finish does a lot of experimenting with Torchwood, but I don't really see the need for this story. Moderately entertaining at times but not one that needs a revisitation or a sequel.

Corpse Day, on the other hand, was pretty good. Dr Owen Harper and PC Andy Davidson team up for Corpse Day, when Torchwood assists the police with some strange cold case, this one involving missing young women. It's set in season 2, with a dead, frustrated, and fragile Owen. The case turns out to have a Torchwood angle, involving a weevil, but the villain of the story is entirely too human, and it's as dark and grim as I remember Countrycide being. Owen and Andy is a rare pairing, but they work well together here, and there's some fun early on before things get dark.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

If I ever finish watching the second season of Torchwood, I probably will venture into those audios. But the problem is, the show just hasn't really earned my attention all that much.

But, while there's life...

 

[Steve Roby]

The Torchwood audios are, on average, probably better than some seasons of the TV series and generally avoid certain mistakes the show sometimes made.

I've listened to three more of the main range stories. The usual is an hour-long, more or less standalone story centring on one or two of the show's cast. There was aToshiko Sato story that was a bit of an audio experiment, dealing with living software and audio glitches and whatnot; not bad but the sound effects and jumping through the story (which exists as a corrupted recording) occasionally seemed more annoying than clever.

Next up was Ianto Jones in The Office of Never Was, a really good spooky story with a good ending, set in a deserted office building.

Today was one of BF's occasional excursions into Torchwood teams and times we haven't seen, in this case in Nazi-occupied Paris. Pretty good.

ETA: I've listened to the first two stories in The Lives of Captain Jack, one set not long after the Bad Wolf situation, another later on with Jackie Tyler. So far, so good.

 

[Steve Roby]

Listened to the last two Lives of Captain Jack stories. The third one follows on from the moment in The End of Time when the Doctor, on his farewell tour, aims Jack at Midshipman Alonso Frame from Voyage of the Damned. They meet, click, and then of course everything goes to hell, with the space station they're on coming under attack. I found the villain really annoying, a distorted-voiced, scenery-chewing, OTT monster type -- who turned out to be played by Katy Manning (Jo Grant). Oh, well.

The fourth story goes back to Jack's days as a Time Agent, and deals with him first learning about the two years missing from his life. Bit of a runaround, and Barrowman plays this youngest version we've seen as a bit of a smugly annoying git, but an entertaining enough story overall.

No idea if BF has any plans to do any more Lives of Captain Jack material, but it's a neat way to explore the character in a more Doctor Who than Torchwood series of settings.

ETA... to avoid spamming...

So now I'm working through Torchwood: Outbreak, a three-part full cast audio that feels strangely unbalanced. While it does have the characters you'd expect in a story between series two and Children of Earth, it often feels like a series of two-handers. Not in the usual disaster story way where characters end up isolated and the story flips from one character in danger to another to another to ramp up the suspense, but with long, extended scenes that had me wondering, yeah, but what about character so-and-so, and what about....

The story itself is big screen Torchwood, with its outbreak of an alien technology-based epidemic leading to Cardiff being sealed off from the UK. It also ties in with some of the other BF audios, building up the continuity between them.

My one quibble about some of the audios is that I think John Barrowman may need a little more from the directors. Sometimes he plays the role a bit too big in the audios. That may be like complaining that sometimes water's a bit too wet, but he could tone down the broadness of the character when he needed to on the show.

 

[kirk55555]

Decided to listen to The Last Adventure again, because why not, I own it so I might as well listen to it again.

End of the Line is still solid, with a few small flaws. The biggest problems, which aren't huge to be fair, are the side characters being a little annoying and stupid, and Constance being really bland (seriously, she's just about the most generic companion someone could make, not bad but about as standardized as possible). Besides that its an interesting story with a cool premise and having it involve my favorite Master (while having a good reason that he doesn't sound like Ainley even though its that incarnation) is a nice bonus.

Next up is the only one of the four stories that I'm dreading relistening to, The Red House. I remember it as easily the worst story on the set (being the only one I'd call outright bad), so I wonder if I'll like it any better on a relisten with very, very low expectations.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

The Red House sucks for all sorts of reason. For using Charley as a companion, for making her a Moffat companion who doesn't want to ever leave the TARDIS but is forced to (prior to this story, there was rarely a moment when Charley could've left Six, and it was implied that she didn't want to endanger alterning his timeline), for being yet another story with werewolves that sucks (clearly Doctor Who and werewolves don't mix well), and for being overally a very bland, forgettable affair.

The sad thing is, its probably a fairly important in the Valeyard arc. Bummer.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

I listened to the Doom Coalition 1 set, myself. My very, very basic thoughts: Its cool, but its not entirely memorable, is it? The first one's a running-around-corridtors affair, which is as banal as it sounds. The rest all work better, but to me, I just don't find Eleven all that intriguing or fascinating. Sure, he's a psychopath... but I don't think I was able to really get him or his mental disorder. I just didn't really get a character, just a psychopath who wanted to mess up the universe. Like, you know, the Master.

 

[kirk55555]

The Red House sucks for all sorts of reason. For using Charley as a companion, for making her a Moffat companion who doesn't want to ever leave the TARDIS but is forced to (prior to this story, there was rarely a moment when Charley could've left Six, and it was implied that she didn't want to endanger alterning his timeline), for being yet another story with werewolves that sucks (clearly Doctor Who and werewolves don't mix well), and for being overally a very bland, forgettable affair.

The sad thing is, its probably a fairly important in the Valeyard arc. Bummer.

Yeah, Werewolves and Doctor Who just don't work well together in any format. As for Charley, I barely understand her whole deal even looking at her wiki page, but overall I don't remember being too impressed. Then again, its not an impressive story overall.

But, speaking of companions, I still think its unfortunate up that Peri isn't in any of the stories. She could have been in the first one, since no one but The Master knows that the Valyard is involved even at the end of the story, and with time being the way it is the story could have taken place before the Trial of a Timelord from the Doctor's perspective but after it for The Master and The Valeyard. If nothing else, even if BF didn't feel like they could stick Peri in, I still find the companion selection weak.

I mean, the companions for the 6th Doctor's "final adventures" are newcomer Constance, Charley (who was mostly an 8th Doctor companion from what I understand), Mel (which makes sense) and Flip. I put Flip at the end because I have no idea why she is there, and I don't even remember one thing about her, which isn't a good thing (in comparison, I still remembered that Constance was a WW2 nurse even after it having been a long time since I'd listened to End of the Line). Was there no one else that BF could use? I know the one they probably would have used wouldn't work because the actress had passed away at this point, but even the talking Penguin would have been more interesting then Flip.

Then again, Flip is in a story with Jago and Litefoot, so they put the weakest companion (at least in my opinion) with some co-stars who could prop up the supporting cast. I do remember liking Stage Fright despite the weak companion (even if Jago and Litefoot and the 6th Doctor never met, I like Talons of Wang-Chiang too much to really complain about them being in the story), and I can't wait to relisten to it, even if I'm procrastinating because I'm not all that excited in watching Red house.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Doom Coalition 2 - Listened to it in two days. A whole lot of fun. The Gift was my favorite, with McGann being especially on form in that one. But overall, a nice box-set and a significant improvement over the last one.

 

[Pindar]

Just finished the War Master which was pretty good.
I enjoyed Jacobi's Master and his interaction with his Companion. Felt like they used it too sow the seeds of Missi's redemption.

 

[jaime]

Am currently listening to The Myth Makers

 

[jaime]

The last few Destiny of the Doctor stories have been top-notch: Shockwave (Ace), Enemy Aliens (Charley), Night of the Whisper (Nick Briggs), and Death's Deal (Donna) have all encapsulated their particular eras very nicely with ripping yarn of adventures.

I'm pretty excited about listening to the final entry, The Time Machine, with Clara, but it will have to wait: Big Finish just released Gallifrey: Intervention Earth (Romana III, Narvin, and Ace!). I can't wait to listen to it tomorrow, to and fro work.

Am interested in the Gallifrey one if Ace is going the Times Vigilante route in some way...is she a pseudo Timelord now?

 

[Steve Roby]

Three quarters through the first First Doctor box set. It's funny, I like the Blake's 7 equivalent of the Companion Chronicles more than I like the Who version. But these are listenable enough.