Background - I'm driving down to Dragon*Con in six days. They just updated their website ... Sylvester McCoy, aka the Seventh Doctor, was just added to the guest list tonight. It'll be a long drive. So I figure in addition to the other cds and audio I'll be listening to, I'll add one or two Seventh Doctor audios. And thanks to Big Finish being completely awesome, even if I don't already have the cds, I can download them for a reasonable price from their website. What one or two stories (and for the love of Wilf, I mean individual releases, not mini-series!) do you think are the best audio adventures featuring Seven?
Although it's not my favorite Seventh Doctor audio (for reasons I don't want to say until after you listened to it if you haven't already), I think Master is a very gripping and atmospheric story well worth the listen. It's a quieter story than usual (almost a two-man show between McCoy and Geoffery Beevers) but it's absolutely thrilling. If you want more of an adventure romp, go with Colditz with a certain pre-Doctor David Tennant as a rather nasty Nazi. I haven't gotten far into the Hex stories, but his first, The Harvest, is pretty good, too.
Master is indeed quite good. Flip-Flop is a fun one-- a two-disc story where you can listen to the discs in either order. I also like Forty-Five, a series of linked one-parters.
If you like historicals then Fires Of Vulcan is worth a look. Oh and I really enjoyed the newest release - Robophobia.
The Seventh Doc has such a great voice, McCoy is a pleasure to listen to on these audios. I love his rolling of r's.
Oh, if you love those, the obvious audio to get is Red. Rrrrrrred, rrrrrred, rrrrrred, rrrrrred, rrrrrred.
One of my favorites is Bang-Bang-a-Boom, which is a nice parody of Star Trek while still being Doctor Who.
"Colditz" is definately my big recommendation. It's almost Moffat-esque in the way it takes advantage of the time travel aspect of the premise, with the Doctor's alternate future coming into play later in the story. "Flip-Flop" is also a lot of fun and almost demands to be listened to twice just so that you pick up all of the little bits you missed the 1st time with all of the duplicate characters running around. And while not a Big Finish audio but a BBC one, "Death Comes to Time" is a very interesting alternate take on how to end the entire Doctor Who series.
Actually it comes over as more a parody of Space 1999, at least in the form of Graeme Garden's character, despite the name of the station. And, of course, it's far more a parody of the Eurovision Song Contest, and Britain's attitudes to it! I'll second that one as well, but with a certain reservation - the first episode makes it seem that it's going to be like the worst of season 24, episode 2 feels less painful, by #3 you're thinking it's really good, and by #4 you realise it's been brilliant and hilarious all along...
Great suggestions. Thanks everyone! I've listened to everything from 1 to 53, which introduced C'Rizz, and some random ones after that. Last year, when Patricia Quinn was there, I listened to Bang-Bang-A-Boom on the way down. She basically does her Magenta (Rocky Horror) voice all over again, including singing, and I loved it. I don't yet have Forty-Five or Robophobia, so I'll download those, and add The Harvest and Red to the cd case. Over the next couple days, before the trip, I'll give a re-listen to Colditz and Fires of Vulcan - especially FoV, since I remember listening to that one not long after seeing the Fires of Pompeii and loving that two Doctors are in the area on the same day ... and Fearmonger, which for some reason, I don't remember at all. And I've listened to Flip-Flop, Project: Lazarus, and Master within the last couple weeks ... Overload? No such thing. lol!
What in blazes is the Eurovision Song Contest and what are British attitudes towards it? (This isn't the 1st time I've heard references to it. I seem to recall them dropping references to it on The Catherine Tate Show & Red Dwarf and I was just as confused then too.)
The Eurovision Song Contest is basically what it sounds like, every year all the countries of Europe put forward an entrant and then every country votes on who is the best. The winner then hosts the contest next time round. It's been going since the 1950's and isn't connected with the European Union - I believe you have to be a member of the European Broadcasting Union (which includes some countries like Israel who aren't really part of Europe but do get to compete) in order to take part. It is so big these days that they actually hold two semi finals to slim the number of countries in the final down though UK, Germany, France & Spain are always allowed into the final as they are the biggest funders of the EBU. British attitudes are pretty much the same as they are about anything European, we tend to try and act aloof from the whole thing and look down on all those crazy Europeans and their silly songs yet we always enter year after year and it gets big viewing figures in the UK. The other main issue is a lot of the voting seems quite political, Greece always gives maximum points to Cyprus, all the ex Soviet republics vote for each other etc which annoys us as we don't vote like that and we don't have a voting bloc of our own. Its only real musical claim to fame is that it launched the career of Abba back in 1974 when they won for Sweden with Waterloo.