Last Doctor Who Story you listened to?

[diankra]

My mum and dad were both born a bit before 39. Their earliest clear memories are of the blackout, picking up stuff from bomb sites (dad got his first pet when his dad rescued a bombed out cat who'd lost its people), so they both have had child memories of the joy at hearing "We won."
Mum told me that, as a child, if the Germans invaded, she would just tell her parents to hide in the shed, while she told the Nazis "They're out." As an adult she knew how naive that was, but as a child growing up then she wanted to protect her parents.

 

[Christopher]

Destiny of the Doctor 3: Vengeance of the Stones: Hmm, mixed feelings. It was nice to get an origin story for Mike Yates (though I gather it totally contradicts the prose version of his origin, but what else is new), but the plot felt too much like a rehash of "The Silurians," which must have been very recent, since the story is evidently before "Inferno" (since the Doctor says he hasn't used Venusian aikido in a long time). And that placement makes me wonder why Liz Shaw isn't in the story. There isn't even an excuse offered for her absence.

I'm starting to get the sense that the crossover gimmick is that the Eleventh Doctor needs each of his earlier selves to preserve some object or information or otherwise maneuver a piece of a puzzle into place so Eleven can put them together at the end. I should try to keep track of what they all are as I go.

 

[Christopher]

Destiny 4 & 5:

Babblesphere was mediocre. An overly broad and heavy-handed allegory condemning the Internet as something that turns people into mindless lotus-eaters addicted to meaningless trivia. The kind of story that feels very misguided after this past year, in which our online interconnection is the only thing that's allowed many of us to keep working and living our lives during a prolonged pandemic. Although the idea of the Doctor and Romana (and Eleven in a surprise cameo) overloading the computer with useless trivia listicles was mildly cute.

Smoke and Mirrors was significantly better. Perhaps not the best Doctor-meets-Houdini story I could've envisioned, but a reasonably good tale giving Tegan, Nyssa, and Adric a lot to do (though Nyssa didn't come off too well for much of it, being too easily hypnotized) and effectively capturing the feel of that era and that TARDIS team. The casting of Houdini wasn't that great, though, as the actor gave a rather stiff, announcerish performance. I figured it was because it was a British actor putting on an American accent, but it turns out the actor is Canadian, so he doesn't have that excuse. On the other hand, narrator Janet Fielding didn't even try to do an English accent for the Doctor, Adric, or Nyssa. Weird to hear them all speaking with Australian accents.

 

[Christopher]

Destiny 6: Trouble in Paradise: I was worried when I read this would feature Christopher Columbus, as I was afraid it would be based on the glorifying myth rather than the reality of what a monster he was. But it pulled no punches in acknowledging his atrocities, and interestingly it was Peri who set the Doctor straight on that point -- although I think the writer was overoptimistic in thinking that an American of Peri's generation (slightly earlier than mine) would've gotten that thorough an education about Columbus's atrocities, many of which I didn't learn about until relatively recent years.

Aside from that, though, the portrayal was more mixed. The story did treat Columbus as an egomaniacal, condescending fool and a sadist, but played him somewhat for laughs regardless, as an amusing scoundrel. And it did embrace the myth originating in the 19th century that mariners of the day feared falling off the edge of the world.

The rest of the story was kind of weird, with the revelation that buffalo used to be a sentient civilization on Earth like the Silurians, and that a time-traveling buffalo person was responsible for bringing Columbus to the New World. It's a bit disingenuous to say that the United States would never have existed without that event, though, as other Europeans would surely have come soon enough. There's a reason the continent was named after Amerigo Vespucci instead of Columbus.

Since this is the halfway point of Destiny of the Doctor, it starts to get more directly into the story arc, with the Eleventh Doctor's message actually initiating the adventure for once, and with the quest for the item Eleven needs actually having a significant impact on the story and giving a sense of the cosmic stakes involved. It remains to be seen if that was just for this one or if it's the start of a trend.

 

[Brendan Moody]

After a lull in Big Finish listening due to a change in my exercise habits, I’m back to walking/running workouts where I’m free to catch up on my backlog. This week I got through the four most recent monthly range releases and finished up the Tenth Doctor/River Song set.

The monthly range releases are unfortunately a reminder of why that range has fallen by the wayside for a lot of listeners. They’re perfectly fine, straightforward renditions of obvious concepts, but executed without any particular flair. The Plight of the Pimpernel gives you exactly what the title would lead you to expect, but unless the Doctor meeting the Scarlet Pimpernel is a concept that sets your world on fire there’s not much point to it. The initial hook (the Pimpernel is a fictional character, so how can the Doctor be meeting him?) has an uninspiring resolution, and a later plot twist is too obviously an attempt to complicate the narrative, without any thematic weight or justification.

The Grey Man of the Mountain features Jon Culshaw as the recast Brigadier. As is usually the case when Big Finish bring impressionists into full-cast audio, there are lines where he sounds great and lines where he’s way off the mark; at times it’s more Group Captain Gilmore than the Brig. I don’t object to recasting where it’s warranted, but what is the point here? There’s no narrative or character reason for him to play a role in events that any guest character could fill, and it’s not like the Seventh Doctor, Ace, and the Brigadier are so well established a team that a reunion was desperately needed. I can’t helpful feeling the main goal was to establish Culshaw’s version of the character as quickly as possible. He’s also popped up in the latest Eighth Doctor set; we’ll see if I find that equally gratuitous.

Colony of Fear is exactly as generic as its title would make you think, and its attempt to set itself apart is a plot twist that’s about fifteen years too late to be fresh. It also feels like a calculated attempt to promote a not formally announced but known to be forthcoming BF project. The Blazing Hour is a strangely by the numbers satire of ultra-capitalist greed; it’s one-sided and without nuance, but in such a rote way that I imagine it would take an effort of will for anyone to be offended. There are a couple semi-interesting guest characters, but they’re stifled by the thematic framework.

The Ten/River set was solid but, given the caliber of previous BF new series projects, a little disappointing. I get what James Goss was trying to do with Expiry Dating, particularly in an era of remote recording, but it results in a flat if superficially clever story where the characters don’t get much proper interaction and the development of their relationship feels mishandled. At least it feels like a Ten/River story, whereas Precious Annihilation could happen to any Doctor and companion. Ghosts is the best of the set. The Tenth Doctor and River Song are poorly characterized, which makes them tiresome to listen to (there’s nothing more annoying than the great David Tennant chewing his way through bad dialogue), but there is a narrative reason for it. Not a hard reason to work out— unlike Jonny Morris’s best stories, in this one you can see the twists coming a few minutes before you really ought to— but still. River Song has been much better served in her own box sets than she is here, which is a shame.

 

[Christopher]

Destiny of the Doctor 7: Shockwave is by TrekBBS's very own James Swallow, my fellow Star Trek novelist, so I'm glad to be able to say it was very good, with some excellent writing in the narration and an effective story, as the Seventh Doctor and Ace infiltrate a ship escaping a cosmic calamity in order to pilfer a vault to retrieve an object that we can easily guess is the Eleventh Doctor's message. It's got some pretty familiar beats -- the Doctor and companion pretending to be authority figures to get accepted, getting found out and arrested, and having to convince the real authorities to let them help in a disaster -- but they're handled effectively, and there's a nice story arc to the religious fanatic who endangers them all and is challenged to question her faith and recognize others' right to decide for themselves.

Sophie Aldred is the narrator, and she's better than I expected at doing a range of character voices. I think her Scottish accent for the Seventh Doctor isn't quite the same as McCoy's, more of a generic Scottish, but it would be a challenge for anyone to capture McCoy's very distinctive delivery, and she does get the broad strokes down pretty well, like when the Doctor gets all thunderous in refusing to let Ace sacrifice her life.

The more I think about it, the weirder it seems that they chose to do this special event featuring all the Doctors (to date) without any of the actual Doctors participating at all, only companions and unfamiliar guest stars. I would surmise that they didn't want the inconsistency of having the Doctors themselves for only about half of them and imitators for the others, so they decided to do it all one way. Or maybe it was a matter of money or scheduling.

Anyway, it is kind of fun to listen to all the companions doing their sundry Matt Smith impressions for the Eleventh Doctor's messages to his past selves. So far they've all done fairly well at it, and the writing has certainly played his dithyrambic quirkiness to the hilt.

 

[Christopher]

Destiny 8 & 9:

Enemy Aliens is another one where the 11th Doctor's message initiates the story, sending Eight and Charlie off on a hunt for something involving William Tell and enemy aliens, but with interference obscuring the message so they have to guess. It's largely a comedy of errors and coincidences as they get drawn into a pre-WWII spy caper, with Charlie falling in with an agent who keeps flirting with her. It's also the only one so far where the two Doctors essentially team up, at least indirectly, with Eight's climactic plan to defeat an invasion depending on the assumption that his future self is also present and able to amplify from wherever he is what Eight initiates on his end.

It had its moments, but I wasn't crazy about the style of dry, snarky humor it adopted; it was just trying a little too hard to be clever, I felt. But it didn't go where I expected in one respect; when the Doctor and Charlie realized they were looking for something involving the William Tell Overture, given that the story was in 1935, I was expecting it to turn out to have something to do with The Lone Ranger, which premiered two years earlier and used the Overture as its theme, so famously that the music became more associated with the Ranger than with William Tell. But come to think of it, that's probably better known in America than the UK, and I think it's still under copyright anyway, so they might not have been able to use it.


Night of the Whisper is something new for me, the first Big Finish production I've heard based on a "modern" Doctor (discounting Eleven's cameos in the previous eight chapters, of course). It's Nine, Rose, and Jack in a noirish/pulpish tale where they go undercover in a futuristic and corrupt New Vegas to hunt for a vigilante. It certainly strives to embrace the tone of the new series, making a striking contrast, with a much more brash, cinematic, action-packed tone and a lot more sexual innuendo (and the obligatory Bad Wolf name drop). Still, I felt it relied a bit too heavily on playing with standard genre cliches with a thin veneer of sci-fi.

This one's unique in not being narrated by a companion actor, though its narrator is someone who's actually played the Doctor, namely Nicholas Briggs. I guess they couldn't get Piper or Barrowman? Anyway, his Ninth Doctor is okay -- he certainly has the Northern accent down and gets the attitude fairly well -- but his Rose isn't very distinct and sometimes hard to tell from his Doctor, and his Jack isn't quite there, too much of a generic booming American accent (a number of these Big Finish actors seem to think that doing an American accent requires talking like a sportcaster). Naturally the role which he fits into most comfortably is the monsterish alien villain.

This is also the only one so far where it's never overtly mentioned that the long-faced weirdo in the bow tie is a future incarnation of the Doctor, since Rose is present to see the message and she can't learn about regeneration until "The Parting of the Ways." It doesn't feel too contrived that Nine doesn't explain, though, since he could be pretty closed off about himself.


Listening to Whisper, I was thinking about how each one of these has tried to capture the iconic tone of its particular Doctor's stories, and I realized in retrospect that Enemy Aliens is kind of the exception to that, since the Eighth Doctor's era has been defined more in audio than onscreen anyway. The story's very British humor style and its period London setting didn't feel like the TV movie at all.

 

[Christopher]

Destiny 10: Death's Deal is a story that reminded me a bit of "Planet of the Dead," with the Tenth Doctor helping a ragtag band of guest characters survive on a barren, lethal planet. I couldn't really get into it much, largely because of Catherine Tate's narration. I never thought I'd say this about Catherine Tate, but her performance is far too subdued. She rushes through the narration and hardly seems interested in what she's describing, making it hard to maintain interest as a listener. Her performances as the guest characters are decent, but her Tenth Doctor only rarely approximates any of Tennant's speech patterns and lacks his enthusiasm and broadness. Even her Donna Noble characterization is surprisingly subdued, with a merely normal level of emotion rather than Donna's usual over-the-top delivery. It's the most disappointing performance by a companion-narrator yet, and by far the most unexpected, relative to the performer's prior work in the series.

So that just leaves the (pardon the expression) big finish with the Eleventh Doctor. Will it manage to tie the arc elements of all ten previous installments together in a way that makes it all feel cohesive and justified? I doubt it, but you never know.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Listening to Whisper, I was thinking about how each one of these has tried to capture the iconic tone of its particular Doctor's stories, and I realized in retrospect that Enemy Aliens is kind of the exception to that, since the Eighth Doctor's era has been defined more in audio than onscreen anyway. The story's very British humor style and its period London setting didn't feel like the TV movie at all.

Its not really supposed to. It was supposed to evoke the Eight/Charley audios from twenty years ago, indeed.

 

[Christopher]

Its not really supposed to. It was supposed to evoke the Eight/Charley audios from twenty years ago, indeed.

Yes, of course -- that's obvious. Making an observation about something does not mean I don't understand the reason for it. I'm just noting that it is, of necessity, the exception to the pattern. Most of these try to evoke the characteristic eras and styles of their Doctors' TV adventures, but McGann only had one TV adventure, and his audio adventures covered a wide range of styles. I wouldn't say this kind of snarky, dryly comic and absurdist tone represents the typical or iconic Eight/Charley story; it's just another Eight/Charley story.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Yes, of course -- that's obvious. Making an observation about something does not mean I don't understand the reason for it.

Pardon, I didn't mean to upset you. Please excuse the purely accidental but still harmful remark, it was unbecoming of me.

I'm just noting that it is, of necessity, the exception to the pattern. Most of these try to evoke the characteristic eras and styles of their Doctors' TV adventures, but McGann only had one TV adventure, and his audio adventures covered a wide range of styles. I wouldn't say this kind of snarky, dryly comic and absurdist tone represents the typical or iconic Eight/Charley story; it's just another Eight/Charley story.

To be fair, the English, dry humor is one of the elements of the Eighth Doctor that came from the audios, so that's one element I suppose. Beyond that, I can't actually comment since I've not listened to this (or any of the Destiny of the Doctor audios, I'm afraid).

 

[Christopher]

Finally, Destiny of the Doctor brings it all together, or tries to, with The Time Machine. It's weird, because it's an Eleventh Doctor story narrated by Jenna Coleman, but Clara isn't in it; instead, it revolves around a one-time companion named Alice Watson. Anyway, it involves a scientist apparently inventing a time machine on November 23, 2013, with it all turning out to be a bootstrap paradox orchestrated by extra-universal temporal predators who want to eat our universe, and who know the future so they're impossible to stop, until the Doctor realizes he can "break the rules" and send messages to his past selves to organize an intricate scheme to out-paradox the bad guys. Does the master plan all come together in a coherent way? Ehh, more or less. A few pieces of the puzzle feel essential, while others feel tacked on to justify including ten pieces, or really stretch to make a connection (e.g. Tegan's actions in #5 impress an alien race enough that they teach humanity an important technology many centuries later). Still, it feels clever if you don't think about it too hard.

As for Coleman as narrator, her Eleventh Doctor impression is only okay, but otherwise... wow. She's as sexy to listen to as she is to look at. Great voice.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

I feel this series really would've worked best if Smith had narrated throughout it, in snippets in the first ten stories and full-on in the last. Too bad that didn't happen.

 

[Christopher]

But then I wouldn't have gotten to delight in Jenna Coleman's dulcet tones for an hour or so. Besides, it was fun listening to the various narrators do their Eleventh Doctor impressions, although oddly the weakest ones came from the most recent companions.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Fair enough. Jenna Coleman probably owns it. But from what I read she didn't enjoy the experience, which led to fans thinking she's the least likely to ever come back via BF.

That said, Matt Smith was, actually, a possibility to cameo in at least the Second Doctor's audio. The writer had even written a scene where they'd have met via holograms and what not. I think I might remember to post it.

 

[Christopher]

Fair enough. Jenna Coleman probably owns it. But from what I read she didn't enjoy the experience, which led to fans thinking she's the least likely to ever come back via BF.

Oh, that's a shame. Did I mention I really love her voice?

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Oh, that's a shame. Did I mention I really love her voice?

I think you might've mentioned it.

 

[Brendan Moody]

I’ve recently listened to “The End of the Beginning,” the final monthly range release, and the second volume of Stranded, the latest Eighth Doctor series. The contrast between them really highlights where Big Finish’s future is and isn’t.

Like “The Sirens of Time,” the first monthly range release, “The End of the Beginning” features multiple Doctors. Like “The Sirens of Time,” it puts each Doctor in a separate story for one episode and then has them meet up in the final episode. And like “The Sirens of Time,” it’s uninspiring at best and bad at worst.

Part of the problem is the use of the “Sirens” format. I understand the impulse to reach back to the beginning of the range, but as most everyone not named Nick Briggs now acknowledges, that story didn’t offer much worth emulating. The callback to it in The Legacy of Time was a low point of that set, and the echo of it here doesn’t help much. The first three stories here are more genuinely standalone than the first three episodes of “Sirens,” which means that they can be enjoyed on their own to some extent. The Eighth Doctor installment, which sees him and Charley battling vampires, is solid fun, though it’s hopelessly derivative and India Fisher isn’t quite her usual bubbly self. The Sixth Doctor episode also has its moments, and Calypso Jonze, a character who didn’t come to life in the same author’s “The Lovecraft Invasion” because they were mostly there for a cheap ideological contrast to Lovecraft, is fun. The Fifth Doctor opener is more forgettable, but it’s still much better than the “grand” finale, in which three (or more?) Doctors join forces to face a threat so generic and cliched that it makes “The Sirens of Time” seem like a marvel of innovation. How on Earth was this the best they could do? And after 20 years, how has Big Finish not found anyone who can write a remotely clever multi-Doctor scene?

Stranded 2 is light-years better. I was disappointed when the story blurbs revealed that the “trapped in 2020 London” angle was already being loosened, but while there’s time travel, it’s still grounded in the characters, including the extended supporting cast introduced in the first volume. It’s been more than a decade since the Eighth Doctor stories adopted the length of new series episodes, but this is the first time they’ve consistently nailed the format too. The arc plot is a slow burn, as ever with these Eighth Doctor sets, but it’s being more intelligently done, with multiple teases of a larger thread rather than a single named element that doesn’t actually come into play until late in the game. The individual stories can be a bit on the formulaic side, but because they bring character interaction to the fore, it’s OK that the plots are familiar. And since I mentioned it upthread, I’ll say that the use of Jon Culshaw’s Brig impression in “UNIT Dating” is not at all gratuitous, but fits right into an unlikely bit of sci-if romantic comedy that balances its lightness of touch with some dark notes at the end. That might be the best story in the set, actually, or it might be “The Long Way Round,” which from a certain perspective is just scenes of characters talking to each other, but when the characters are these characters, it works. Very much looking forward to the remaining two volumes of Stranded, and hoping BF can keep this Eighth Doctor renaissance alive beyond that.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Stranded sounds another win in the Eighth Doctor range. I'm patiently waiting for all sets to be released before I delve right in, but needless to say I'm pretty much looking forward to it.

 

[Christopher]

I've been working my way through the Short Trips audio anthologies, and fortunately it turns out that Hoopla has the first five volumes/seasons (four box sets and a season of standalone releases) instead of just 3-5 as I'd thought. I haven't felt like commenting on the individual stories, since they're too short. As with any anthology, some are better than others. And these are basically just pure audiobooks, rather than audio dramas or hybrids like The Companion Chronicles. As short stories, they tend to be more narrow in focus than your usual Doctor Who story, though some are conventional if brief stories, while others are more experimental or impressionistic. And it's a bit odd how they keep the same narrator for each Doctor throughout the volumes even when their character doesn't appear in the story, e.g. Louise Jameson doing stories with Sarah Jane in them or India Fisher doing one with Lucie Miller. It's an interesting mix of narrators, though. Mostly it's the companion actors you'd expect -- William Russell, Katy Manning, Jameson, Sophie Aldred, Fisher -- but Peter Davison and Colin Baker do their own Doctors' stories, and then the odd one out, David Troughton doing the Second Doctor stories. And Troughton has an excellent narrator voice, though his impersonation of his father isn't quite as good as I'd hoped.

I think my favorite impersonation in these is Katy Manning's Third Doctor. She captures his delivery and personality really well. Conversely, I hope I don't have to hear Peter Davison doing a Peri impression ever again.