Wednesday 17 July 2013

Big Finish episode 2: the hiatus

Time for another roundup of my Big Finish listening habits. I said I'd do the next one when I'd listened to 50 plays, but in fact I've heard 38. However, with the school term ending - and given that it's the journeys to and from work when I listen - I'm on hiatus and will listen to play no.39 in September.

What should that play be? Advice welcome. The next batch I'm listening to run from November 2003 (immediately after "Zagreus", which was story 50) up until December 2004 (with the end of Paul McGann's Divergent Universe saga - The Next Life is story 64). I'm also including all the Excelis and Unbound audios.

To see my Top 10 of the first 25 I listened to, go here: http://chapwithwings.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/beginning-big-finish.html

*some spoilers below*
The most recent 13 have included a fair few that...well, were a little disappointing or unmemorable. Too many of them don't really seem to be about anything and end up resolving themselves too neatly,. which doesn't matter because nothing that happened made sense anyway. "The Time of the Daleks" is a particular culprit in this regard, but the other Dalek plays - "The Apocalypse Element" and "The Mutant Phase" - were also noisy but empty. Two of these plays are peculiarly well-suited to audio, but "Embrace the Darkness" was more interesting in the end than "Whispers of Terror". "Project Twilight" and "Project Lazarus" promise much, but deliver less: and the Forge just reminds me of the Initiative from Buffy.

Then there are a whole batch of plays that see "Doctor Who" disappear up its own arsehole. "The Sirens of Time" could be forgiven if it were only written a little better. "Auld Mortality" operates by different rules anyway, as the first in the Unbound series with a whole new actor playing the Doctor and it does have a talking elephant in it.  Most interesting are the two plays which bring the Eighth Doctor's second run to a close, resolve the Charley Paradox and celebrate the show's 40th birthday.

In the run-up to the 50th on TV, it's interesting to see how Gary Russell, Alan Barnes and everyone behind the scenes chose to celebrate ten years ago. The Eighth Doctor audios had proved they were best with one-off atmospheric stories with the arc in the background - "Seasons of Fear", "Chimes of Midnight" and "Minuet in Hell" are the best examples. So to "Neverland", which is, essentially, a series of very long conversations in almost unimaginable locations (the Matrix, the Time Station, the Planetoid-cum-TARDIS, the void-like place where the antagonists hang out). Charley transmogrifies into a CVE (or something), Rassilon is reimagined, the web of time becomes almost incomprehensible and the ending is good.

"Zagreus" doesn't really follow through on that cliffhanger, which promises an evil Doctor but instead gives us a confused one. We hear a lot about how powerful Zagreus is, but he never really does anything. There's a lot more guff about Rassilon and anti-time and stuff. Crucially, for the largest part of the story, nothing is really happening. The Brigadier (but not really) and Charley pop in and out of other people's stories while the Doctor talks to a cat.

Of course, I loved it. It's there to push fannish buttons. The gimmick is that almost every part is played by an actor better knows for other roles, from Elisabeth Sladen and Sarah Sutton to Maggie Stables and Conrad Westmaas. Infamously, old clips of Jon Pertwee play the Third Doctor, although with so much production that I couldn't understand half of it. These pieces of stunt casting successfully mask the fact that some of these will become important later in the story, and also made me wish Steven Moffat had adopted something similar for the most recent season. Just imagine - Colin Baker instead of David Warner, Sylvester McCoy instead of Jason Watkins, Peter Davison instead of Dougray Scott.

There's also a great bit where several of the characters realise they're in a location familiar to us through 1980s Who. The moment they say so, I'm begging for a familiar incidental music sting. Then - after a few seconds' tease - it arrives. Cue end of episode. Punch the air, big smiles.

Anyway. I listened to two which enter my top rank. Of these, "Bang-Bang-a-Boom" was constantly entertaining and plays a great trick with the end of episode 4. It is now at No.8 in my chart, between "The Marian Conspiracy" and "Minuet in Hell". Better yet is "Omega" - those three "Classic Villains" audios really were top notch. Not quite as good as "Davros" or "Master", nonetheless it's very clever and contains a genuinely surprising twist. Now at no.6, between "Chimes of Midnight" and "Marian".

OK, see you in September. Please suggest plays for me to buy!