The Light at the End-- SPOILER Discussion Thread

[VDCNI]

I enjoyed it but didn't love it.

Having the 4th & 8th Doctor's together was a fun idea but a bit of a lost opportunity really - neither seemed to have an opinion on the other and once Leela & Charlie were gone their interaction was pretty dull. I know this pairing was mainly for logistical reasons but more could have been done with it.

The 7th Doctor seemed wasted - he hardly made any contribution and none of the other Doctors really reacted to him - They could have played up the contrast between him and 6 or 8. Though saying that the scene with him and Peri was nice.

Loved the 5th Doctor & Neela on Earth sequences were great, very creepy though yes Nyssa not really reacting to the Master felt awkward. I can understand why Briggs went with Nyssa in that Sarah Sutton has always supported Big Finish but using Tegan would have avoided that issue and livened things up a bit.

In general the companions could have got more of a look in and would have made the whole thing more interesting.

I have no issues with who voiced 1, 2 & 3 but the added treatment to the voices did make it hard to figure out who was saying what.

To be honest from the extras Briggs heart didn't sound in it so no real surprise it didn't amaze. He seemed to have been the one to write it because he is head writer not because he really cared and although I don't think he's a bad writer I don't think he's really good enough, certainly not creative enough, to be the one to write all of their big stories - I wonder what a Dorney, Morris or Platt would have made of it.

 

[Timofnine]

I bet I can't download this to my phone through iTunes I never synch my phone to a PC so have no way of downloading it! Grrrrr! Imagine the sales that Big Finish would get if they opened up their backlog to the iTunes store! I for one would buy a story per week!

 

[Pindar]

I bet I can't download this to my phone through iTunes I never synch my phone to a PC so have no way of downloading it! Grrrrr! Imagine the sales that Big Finish would get if they opened up their backlog to the iTunes store! I for one would buy a story per week!

You can download their audios straight to your iphone from their website now.

They seem to have sorted out a way of doing it.

 

[Timofnine]

I bet I can't download this to my phone through iTunes I never synch my phone to a PC so have no way of downloading it! Grrrrr! Imagine the sales that Big Finish would get if they opened up their backlog to the iTunes store! I for one would buy a story per week!

You can download their audios straight to your iphone from their website now.

They seem to have sorted out a way of doing it.

oh really?! I shall definitely be looking in to this then! Cheers for the heads up!

 

[Guy Gardener]

I really think that if Jamie and Leela spent any quality time together, they'd be holding hands and blushing in short order.

 

[DalekJim]

I've listened to it twice now, and I just can't get in to it. Formulaic Nicholas Briggs on autopilot, with a plot that feels more like disconnected scenes than a narrative.

I can't believe I didn't find this exciting. After this, Dark Eyes and the Fourth Doctor audios, it's clear that Briggs audios aren't worth me buying.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

I thought Dark Eyes was voted as the favorite Eighth Doctor audio adventure?

 

[VDCNI]

That doesn't mean everyone likes it. I thought it was pretty poor as well.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

I can't judge, personally. I'm nowhere near that far in Eighth's series. But that said, I have heard mostly positives about the release, until here that is.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Darkeyes is where Eight said "A great war across all time between the Daleks and the Time lords where everybody dies? That's the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard!"

The 8th Doctor stories (before the boxsets) ended a long, long, long time ago.

March 2011?

Seems longer.

Never mind.

 

[Pindar]

I quite liked Dark Eyes.

 

[Guy Gardener]

She called it a Tardy-box constantly. Not once, but constantly.

Tardy-box.

(but yes I liked it too, and Darkeyes was a dozen times better than Light at the end, yet Dominion was ten times better than Darkeyes.)

 

[VDCNI]

I thought it started well and the World War I sequences were well done but I'm tired of Daleks and Time Lords and companions having some kind of dark secret connecting them to the whole thing. I lost interest rapidly after the first part.

 

[inflatabledalek]

Hmmm, solid stuff mostly, mainly from the performances rather than the writing, Sophie Aldred especially was a revelation, she seemed to be really pitching her voice up as high as possible to sound like TV Ace and it really worked.

There were lots of nice little moments, such as the 7th and Peri, but there were also a lot of very odd moments as well (Nyssa's complete lack of reaction to meeting the man who killed her father, especially as it's before he killed her father, a more guttural reaction would have made much more sense. Yes, perhaps a bit dark for the tone of the story, but then if you don't want to go into dark places you don't put those two characters in a scene), meaning it sort of levels out as average rather than amazing.

One big shame is that for a chunk of the play it felt as if Briggs was going to pull of the John Dorney/Eddie Robson trick of having the plotting all click together really neatly at the end, but things rapidly fall apart as the Master actually explains his plan (it turns out the First Doctor is actually responsible for all the trouble and if he'd never bothered it's not clear what the Master would have done to have it all play out. What a complete tit 1 is), the title turning out to be overly literal was a bit groan inducing as well.

The usually solid Dorney struggled with a very anaemically written character who only gets one very brief scene at the start where he's "Normal" and thus has no chance to ground the character meaning the performance of the brainwashed/harassed by multi-Doctor visits version is just very, very oddly played.

Still, it sped along and didn't drag and the sound design and music were pretty good (bar the theme of course). I think though, I'd rather have had John Dorney write it and Nicholas Briggs play the confused everyman.

Oddly enough my favourite bit was 6's utterly hilarious first impression of 7 as being a lovely man.

Oh, and does anyone else feel really old now Benedict Briggs is of an age he can play speaking roles? I remember when he used to play babies! Where has the time gone?