7th Doctor Audio Overview (2 of 7)

 Audios

Main Range

·         The Harvest

·         Dreamtime

·         Live 34

·         Night Thoughts

·         The Settling

·         No Man’s Land

·         Nocturne

·         The Dark Husband

·         Forty-Five

Meet Hex – full name Thomas Hector Schofield, he was working as a nurse at St Gart’s Hospital when he bumped into the Doctor and McShane. This is the part where I tell you that there’s nothing special about Hex (he realised that the middle name ‘Hector’ did him no favours back in school), that until he met the Doctor and Ace he was perfectly ordinary, and from his perspective, that would, to an extent, be true. But there’s something about Hex that makes him special that he doesn’t know. Something the Doctor is keeping secret from him.

It seems to be a bad habit of the Seventh Doctor’s, meeting companions that he immediately keeps secrets from. First when he met Ace, he later admitted he knew or at least strongly suspected right then that Fenric was the reason why she ended up on another planet, that she had Fenric’s curse, but he never told her, right up until he broke her faith in him. It almost destroyed the relationship between the two. Now? It’s interesting to note in these audios that not only has Ace noticeably grown up and matured, but she’s clearly learned a lot from the Doctor. That’s one thing that’s great about introducing a new companion like Hex into the mix – really seeing how much she’s generally become used to the TARDIS life. More than that – she’s become used to the Doctor, even grown fond of him. Now in some cases, this could be just considered rather sweet in a Doctor/companion relationship. But there’s an element to it that’s also slightly worrying. Because the Doctor is not the man he once was, nor the man he’s going to be. He’s not so upfront with his companions in this incarnation. He’s a man who likes his secrets, who is always keen to state that he may not know things but he “has his suspicions”, and these secrets sometimes gets his friends in danger. Sometimes, they’re worse than that. They’re important facts that his friends have a right to know, secrets he likes to keep to himself for a very long time…

Hex, on the other hand, at least questions the Doctor’s methods from time to time. While Ace simply complains and practically jokes about how the Doctor is always deliberately landing them in trouble, Hex will, from time to time, question him and his motives. (And oh boy, does he have a very good reason for that.) This is why the Doctor-Ace-Hex dynamic is so excellent to listen to. Hex isn’t actively against the Doctor, but it’s nice that while one companion will not only be defensive but also joke of the Doctor’s behaviour, the other will, quite rightly, from time to time at least question it.

So, after listening to Hex’s first 9 stories in the main range, what were the highlights?

The Harvest

Hex’s introduction story is a great listen. The way the companion is introduced to the TARDIS especially has a very modern feel to it, which considering this was released a year before the TV series came back, is very impressive. Dan Abnett – an excellent science fiction writer that I’m always keen to read or hear more of – writes the whole team really well here, especially Hex, who’s very much grounded in an almost but not quite (it’s set in the near-future) modern day setting. Add to that a new take on one of my favourite enemies and some slight hints of what’s to come, and you’ve got a really solid introduction story for a great companion. 8/10

Live 34

This might just be the highlight of these early stories. Being a wildly different take on a Doctor Who adventure, the entire story is in the format of four instalments of a radio show for another planet, colony 34, as the Doctor, Ace and Hex investigate a corrupt political system. There’s a lot we have to piece together, as a lot of usual key elements to a Who story – open the story with the team arriving, have them slowly find out what’s going on etc. – are something we only learn about from the main characters being “interviewed”, rumours that the radio reporters here about, scraps of information that we have to piece together. I love the wildly different approach to this, but more than that – dramatically, it’s an approach that completely works. I cannot overstate how impressive that is – for a similar but far weaker approach of having a Doctor Who story told from a completely outside perspective, see Love & Monsters. Unlike a lot of fans, I don’t completely detest the story, but it’s far, far from the best it could’ve been, and Live 34 really shows just how it’s done. There’s some fantastic and absolutely thrilling drama, with one hell of a ridiculously fucking awesome climax in which the Doctor once again proves just how goddamn badass he is. Highly recommended to anyone, whether you’re a Who fan or not. 10/10

Night Thoughts

Night Thoughts is also worth a listen for its sheer creepiness factor alone. It’s interesting in that this story explores time travel and changing history in a way that I’ve never quite seen before, almost like a new spin on classic stories like the Monkey’s Paw or Pet Semetary. There’s some really grotesque and horrific imagery throughout the story – bodies found in a lake, eyes ripped out of sockets, walking embalmed dead girls – and even more disturbing ideas, as most of the main characters in the story try to make up for a terrible, terrible mistake they made ten years before by changing history. It’s also got a fantastic moment for McCoy’s Doctor (and spoilers for the story for what I’m about to describe): the Doctor trying to stop the main characters from changing history. Which sounds like an obvious goal, but in this case, the history that needed to be changed was the team killing an innocent young girl due to believing her to be suffering from a terrible disease and simply easing her pain, when all she had was an eye infection, which they only discover afterwards. A truly horrible decision, but even worse is what happens when they try to change history by sending a message back in time to warn them: only a minor change occurs. They all still have the knowledge of killing the girl, nothing major has changed for any of them in the present day…except this time, the girl is both dead and alive, a walking corpse as a result of history trying to correct itself. It’s a truly horrific idea, and a wonderfully original combination of both time travel and classic horror. Knowing the consequences, the Doctor goes back in time and tries to force them to kill the girl anyway. When they refuse, the Doctor makes the shocking decision of killing the girl himself with carbon dioxide. This was a moment that really shocked me. Even knowing what would happen, killing a young girl still seemed like a step too far for even this Doctor, an incarnation who has been more willing to do terrible things for the “greater good” to take. Could he really do it? As it happens, no, in the end, he reveals to his companions that he couldn’t go through with it. To me, that summed up McCoy’s Doctor nicely and what makes him so great: he may have shades of darkness to him, and he may try to see the “bigger picture” at times, but he is still the Doctor, still someone who wouldn’t kill an innocent life, even for the “greater good”. For that alone, Night Thoughts is well worth listening. 7/10

The Settling

This is a brilliant drama, for two reasons. One, it’s a great story that really uses its historical setting well, really examining both the kind of man Oliver Cromwell was and the lives he affected, most notably those he fought against. Secondly, Hex: this story is a really great one for putting him centre stage and really pushing him into new directions. Firstly, he’s forced to confront not just the ugly side of history, but a history that he knows about, stories of how truly terrible and awful Cromwell was as told by his nan, stories of how he slaughtered so many Irish lives. When Hex finally meets him, is he as terrible as Hex was lead to believe? Well, he’s not quite the completely inhuman monster that Hex was lead to believe, and in some ways, that makes it worse. Because Cromwell is a man of reason, who believes when it’s right to kill and when it’s right to show mercy, who really believes that what he does is right, but is open to some of Hex’s suggestions, finding him an intelligent man and engaging in lively (and more importantly, for serious male bonding, drunken) conversation. Hex wants to try and change history and make Cromwell a better man, which makes the story all the more tragic when, of course, the inevitable happens and Cromwell commits the terrible atrocities that he’s infamous for.  The feeling of knowing the inevitable is increased further in the fact that the story is told almost entirely in flashback, with Hex and Ace going over the events afterwards and trying to work out what went wrong. Even these scenes are important, as Hex begins to realise something: he loves travelling with the Doctor and the adventures, as difficult and terrible as it can be sometimes…but he’s beginning to love Ace even more. And the sad fact is that it’s clear she doesn’t feel the same way, only thinking of him as a friend. This angle of a companion feeling unrequited love for another is another reason why I love the Ace/Hex dynamic, and it’s something that’s explored or at least hinted at more in subsequent releases. In short, a fantastic release for Mr. Hex. 9/10 (One more thing: LOVE the fact that the TV movie TARDIS is “introduced” in this story. It’s another nice link between the end of the classic series and the start of the TV movie, where an older 7 is seen travelling alone in his wonderfully Gothic TARDIS. But more on that later.)

Forty-Five

A great release to celebrate 45 years of Doctor Who (at that point), this is a slightly different release in that it’s four short stories written by four different writers. What’s very impressive about this release is how consistent in quality all the stories are – all the stories are great to listen to and pack in a lot of plot and drama into 25 minutes. Particular favourites are episodes 3 and 4: the former for not only examining more of Ace’s past and mother issues but also for having Hex closer to finding out the truth, and the latter episode for just being so fucking excellent on so many levels. Seriously, The Word Lord, the only episode I had listened to before (as preparation for a later story), strongly stands up to repeat listening. That’s because of the brilliantly clever and bonkers ideas, strong characters and of course, a fantastic villain: Nobody No-One, a being from a far off dimension where the rules of physics are completely different to our own. A smart but completely insane and ruthless bastard, he might just be one of the most powerful foes the Doctor has ever faced, for one simple reason – if someone says that he can do something, he can and probably will do it, and with a name like his, that basically means he can do the impossible. In this story, stuck in a remote and cut off base, he’s not even at his most dangerous. It’s much later, in one of the greatest stories ever (and I mean ever) that we really see just how dangerous he is, and what it would take to truly stop him. And believe me, the cost is higher than you dare believe. But, again, more on that later. (Yes, I am a big fan of How I Met Your Mother. Why do you ask?) For this story, it’s an excellent one-off listen, borderline perfect for a 25-minute episode. 10/10 for The Word Lord alone.

So what do I think of the other releases from this individual run? Dreamtime was a bit too strange for me, especially for Hex’s first journey in the TARDIS. There’re some nice ideas in there, but a little too flat out weird for me. Nocturne was ok, but despite some interesting ideas, the story just didn’t grab me. I’ve also never been particularly keen on stories where the Doctor returns to one of his favourite places in the universe that he’s visited plenty of times and yet we’ve never heard of before. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t – in this case, for me personally, it didn’t quite work. Neither did much of the comedy in The Dark Husband, although there were some cool moments, including the Doctor arranging to get married, the exploration of a single race deeply divided into two, and more hints of just how much Hex really likes Ace, to put it very mildly. No Man’s Land is actually pretty good, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as the highlights in this blog. There’s some nice exploration of Hex’s past as we learn more about his life as an orphan, about how he never knew his mother, and I loved those scenes. I also loved a lot of the drama and exploration of World War I and the different reactions from the soldiers. I think for me the story felt just a bit padded at times and didn’t quite drag me in. I love World War I stories, but this took place far from the true horrors of it for it to interest me, focusing more on brainwashed soldiers being programmed to hate and obey orders, and I would’ve loved it if there was less sci-fi and more exploration of that time period. If it had explored more the horrors of war like the Settling, I think I would’ve loved it, but then, considering it came so soon after that particular story, (including a rather direct reference to it at one point,) I can understand why it didn’t quite go with that angle.

I will admit though that there was something I enjoyed about the ending – namely, the revelation of who were behind the sci-fi elements of the story. A nasty little group that the Doctor has encountered twice before, who like to use alien technology and do what they like in the name of “King and Country”. They’re known as the Forge. And the last time he encountered them, it nearly destroyed a close friendship.

In his Sixth incarnation, he travelled with Evelyn Smythe. The first time they had met the Forge, they had made friends with a young woman, Cassie Schofield. Her life was ruined however when she was infected with a virus and turned into a vampire. The Doctor promised her a cure, and so she waited…and waited…until she was finally picked up by the Forge and turned into one of their most dangerous agents. During the second time she met the Doctor and Evelyn, she was understandably pretty pissed off, but one thing got through to her. One little thing that made her decide to help the Doctor and Evelyn, even at the cost of her own life – her infant son, Tommy. Her death and the Doctor’s shockingly casual reaction to it badly shook things between the Doctor and Evelyn. Eventually, they recovered, but things were never quite the same between the two again.

Eventually Evelyn left the Doctor, fell in love and got married. She eventually reunited with the Sixth Doctor though, and after a rather taxing ordeal which endangered her life, she was recovering in hospital when a little man with a Scottish accent and umbrella appeared. It didn’t take her long to realise that he was the Doctor – from her perspective, the future Doctor, the Seventh Doctor. He decided he owed her, and told her that he had found Cassie’s son, or rather, Thomas Hector Schofield had found him. He hadn’t told Hex about his mother, but he will, in time. He just wanted to tell Evelyn to at least try to make things up to her…not realising that, by keeping such a huge secret from Hex, he’s going to do have to do the exact same thing for him ten times over.

That’s the tragedy of the Seventh Doctor – he doesn’t learn from his mistakes, but instead keeps repeating the same ones over and over. He keeps things from his closest friends because he’s so sure he knows what’s best and always ends up breaking their hearts. He knew about Ace and her relation to Fenric and never told her, and almost destroyed their friendship over it. When Hex finds out about the Doctor’s history with his mother and how he watched her die and never told him, will it finally force the Doctor to change his ways?

What do you think?

7th Doctor Audio Overview (1 of 7)

Audios

·         The Lost Stories: Season 27

-          Thin Ice

-          Crime of the Century

-          Animal

-          Earth Aid

·         Destiny of the Doctor

-          Shockwave

·         Main Range

-          The Fearmonger

-          The Genocide Machine

-          Dust Breeding

-          Colditz

-          The Rapture

In my last blog, I mentioned how it was such a crushing shame that Doctor Who originally ended when it did – when it had been at its best for the first time in over a decade and had seemed to be given a new lease of life. With a new direction in the series of companions with more depth, stories for the family with a touch of darkness, and a Doctor with more mystery to him than ever, it seemed like the show was finally starting to find its feet again, and it looked like the BBC had cancelled it at the wrong time.

However, having listened to the stories that were originally planned for season 27 before its cancellation, I’m instead now wondering if, as terrible as it is to say it, the BBC made the right decision after all.

That’s not to say that season 27 is terrible, in fact, there’s a number of things to enjoy about it. There’s the brilliant character of Raine Creevy for a start, perhaps the only companion in Doctor Who history where the Doctor’s not only been there at her birth, but delivered it, too! I love her mixture of having an excellent education, well manners, and of course, the pleasure she gets from being a thief. Beth Chalmers is excellent at not just playing the posh, clever girl but also Raine’s own mother. That’s one thing I really loved about this season – that it had such a cool idea as introducing a character first as a baby, then have the Doctor skip ahead over 20 years to when she’s grown up and have her tag along for a few adventures. With some characters, that’d probably be considered creepy, but for someone like the Doctor, especially the Seventh Doctor, it’s almost Gandalf-ish in the way he turns up out the blue (or in this case, out of a safe that Raine was trying to break into) and brings Raine along for an adventure due to knowing her parents first.

There’s something else I like about the season – there’s a little more development of the Doctor’s character, of seeing a little more of the man with the master plan at work. What I love is how he not only comes up with such brilliant schemes to fight his enemies with, but how one little thing can bring those plans crashing down. And that’s where the Doctor really shines – when he has to think of something on the spot at the very last minute to save the day, and the fact is, he usually does it brilliantly.

So what’s the problem? Why don’t I enjoy “season 27” as much as seasons 25 and 26? Well, for one thing, there are the stories. Again, they’re not terrible, and I really enjoyed both Thin Ice for the really strong ideas (then again, it was written by Marc Platt), and Crime of the Century especially is such a ridiculously fun listen. But while those two stories are pretty good as the highlights of the season, there’s nothing that matches the greatness and multi-layered complexity of stories such as Remembrance of the Daleks, Ghost Light, or The Curse of Fenric.

One thing that possibly doesn’t help is that, surprisingly, there’s a considerably lighter tone throughout this season, which is a shame, as the darker storytelling of season 26 in particular made it one of my favourites. This is especially noteworthy of the Doctor – while he’s still a man who likes to have his plans, we see less of the secretive, darker nature that we caught glimpses of in Ghost Light and Curse of Fenric, although I must say (and this is another reason why I enjoyed Thin Ice), it was great to see him testing Ace, sometimes being forced to leave her in the lurch to see if she’s ready for a potential major change in her life. It’s disappointing that there wasn’t more of this throughout the season, really.

Interestingly, had Thin Ice been made on television as originally planned, this would’ve been Ace’s last story in the series, as she would’ve been sent away to Gallifrey to become a Time Lord. However, Big Finish made the bold move of adjusting the story accordingly so it fitted better with the continuity that Big Finish had created rather than simply aiming for a “what if?” season and have Ace fail to enter the Time Lord Academy – as a result, the rest of the season contains a significant difference than its original televised form by including Ace for the entire run.

Neither Animal nor Earth Aid left much of an impression on me. There were some good ideas in there, but neither story grabbed me. Good ideas were that in Animal, there was a nice way of dividing the 4-part story into two distinct halves, the first half involving flesh eating plants at a university, the second involving altogether different aliens on a spaceship. Earth Aid has the return of an alien race introduced in Crime of the Century and even reveals more about their origins, so I liked that the season had a number of arc elements throughout.

What I didn’t like was how the stories were executed. The aliens in Animal weren’t particularly interesting, a complaint I also have of another race entirely that’s introduced in Earth Aid. There was also a potentially interesting idea of Ace pretending to be the captain of a starship in the final story, but I felt that it wasn’t written quite as well as it should’ve been, as I often found myself questions such as “Why wasn’t the Doctor pretending to be the captain when he clearly knew more about the job than she did? Wouldn’t it have made more sense for him to be undercover instead of her?”

Overall, I found season 27 to be good with a couple of hit-and-misses, but after the excellent season 25 and 26, it’s just a bit of a disappointment, especially with its slightly lighter take of the 7^th Doctor than what we had seen previously.

The next story I listened to was the seventh release of the Destiny of the Doctor series, which focuses on a different incarnation with every story, all in very different adventures and yet with hints of a much larger story, especially the messages that every incarnation is receiving from a certain guy in a bow tie. Listening to this between season 27 and Big Finish’s main range’s story of the Seventh Doctor and Ace seemed as good a place as any, and honestly, I thought this was much more in tone with the darker Doctor we had seen in the final TV season than in what would’ve been the 27^th. The Doctor and Ace arrive on a spaceship escaping from an exploding star, and Ace thinks that they’ve arrived to help everyone. But the Doctor has his own agenda, arriving there specifically at a point in history when it’s easy to retrieve an object that’s usually impossibly secure. This idea of the Doctor working towards his own agenda and even using history itself in his aims to achieve it, no matter how terrible Ace might feel about it, fits in much more with the Doctor who kept secrets from his companion on why she was taken away from her home in the first place, or forcing her to confront a childhood nightmare than the portrayal we got in the Lost Stories. He may still try to save people, but more and more, he’s becoming more interested in something that’s potentially dangerous: the ‘greater good’. It’s this part of the Seventh Doctor that makes him such an interesting character to me.

Of course, he’s not all bad – after all, the key thing about the Doctor is that, no matter what incarnation he’s in, he always tries to be a hero. This is something I saw throughout the earliest productions from Big Finish featuring the Seventh Doctor and Ace. His character isn’t as dark as what I saw in season 26, but it’s hardly as light as what I listened to in season 27, either. This is helped by the stories having a somewhat darker tone than even the TV series a great deal of the time, although overall I’d say it doesn’t venture too far into ‘adult’, with the possible exception of the Rapture, which I’ll get round to. Grouped together, these 5 stories aren’t perfect, but overall, I enjoyed them more than the Lost Stories.

Highlights are The Fearmonger, Colditz and, for originality and radicalness at least, The Rapture. The Fearmonger’s an excellent tale that examines fear, paranoia and mob mentality. The alien in the story is an intriguing premise in that it’s not out to take over the universe or even ‘possess’ people, it’s just a creature that feeds on fear itself, and the way it does it in the story is so brilliant that I really can’t give anything more away. But it was a story that felt modern while also feeling like a natural extension of where the series was heading, and an excellent use of the audio medium of storytelling, especially with the monster.

The next story, The Genocide Machine, wasn’t so great. Worth listening for being the beginning of the Dalek Empire arc that continued with 6^th Doctor story The Apocalypse Element (featuring the first time the Daleks invaded Gallifrey), 5^th Doctor story The Mutant Phase and 8^th Doctor story Time of the Daleks (with the arc also setting up events for the excellent spinoff series Dalek Empire), but the story of the Daleks invading the greatest library in the universe just didn’t grab me. I loved the return of the Emperor of the Daleks though, and the story is great at highlighting just how dedicated and cunning the Daleks idea – the idea of an ancient ziggurat on the planet turning out to be a Dalek ship that had waited thousands of years for the opportunity to enter the library was especially brilliant.

The story also introduced thief Bev Tarrant, who bumps into the Doctor and Ace in the following story Dust Breeding. Overall, while there were a few characters who didn’t grab my interest (the psychotic artist especially was one I really wasn’t keen on), I liked it a little better than the Genocide Machine, quite possibly helped by the fact that the second part of the story has an AWESOME twist that brought back a much loved enemy into the Big Finish audio range. With how vicious the Krill are, the story could be considered a little too violent at times (although hardly much of a problem on audio), and the story of possessed dust and artwork is ok, but the story didn’t interest me quite as much as it should have.

Thankfully, this is where the excellent Colditz comes in. The Doctor and Ace arriving at an important place in history – in this case, the prison Colditz castle in World War II – is refreshing, and there are a number of excellent characters throughout. The Nazi soldier Kurtz (played by at the time future Doctor David Tennant) is a wonderfully evil and sadistic character who believes that what the Nazis are doing is right but frustrated and paranoid at the thought that he might be too easily ignored by his superior officers. Schafer’s equally excellent in that, while he might be in charge of his prisoners, he treats them with respect, particularly Gower, a man more eager for himself and his fellow prisoners to escape than anyone. It comes as quite a blow when Gower pushes Schafer to do as he asks or Gower will inform the Commandant for all the favours that Schafer has already done for him. As I said, all the characters in this story feel real and three-dimensional, and the fact that the historical part of the story is (minus the Doctor and Ace, of course) inspired by real events more than likely helps.

But the best character of the story, and indeed the best reason for listening to the story in the first place (yes, better than hearing the Tenth Doctor play a Nazi) is Elizabeth Klein. She’s a Nazi, but not from 1944 Germany – she is, in fact, from England in the 1960s, or rather, an alternative timeline accidentally created by the Doctor and Ace’s arrival in Colditz. Played brilliantly by Tracey Childs, Klein is someone who genuinely believes that England is a better place under Nazi leadership, who believes that living in a country of peace is more than worth the cost of both countless lives and freedom. More interestingly, she believes her version of history to be “the real one”, and is surprised that the Doctor seems keen to change it for reasons such as genocide when in her mind there have been far greater crimes across history. Considering how excellent and intriguing Klein’s character is, and the implications of not just an alternative history, but also an alternative timeline Doctor manipulating Klein to alert ‘our’ Doctor and put history back on track, it’s no wonder that Klein not only returned later in the audios (much, much later – it was 8 years before Klein finally returned in a Big Finish story), but has arguably become one of its most popular original characters. As for how her story develops, well…more on that later.

Overall, I’d rate Colditz as highly as my favourite 7th Doctor TV stories, and believe me, that’s saying a lot. A mixture of some fantastic time travel ideas with excellent characters and a great use of history, this is a highly recommended listen.

The Rapture, while not being quite as good, is still another great listen in how radical its approach to Doctor Who really is. Featuring the Doctor and Ace arriving in Ibiza and a story that involves clubbing, drugs and long lost family members, this story at times almost seems closer to Torchwood than Doctor Who (unsurprisingly, writer Joseph Lidster later wrote an episode for series 2 of Torchwood). And that’s why I like it. It tries something different, and while at times, especially with the clubbing scenes, it tries too hard to be ‘hip’, for the most part, I think it succeeds really well. With a story that features characters trying to escape depression through drugs and dancing and one of the alien characters of the story being less ‘mad’ and more genuinely mentally ill, this is certainly a story with a lot of darkness to it. But, and this is where I really appreciate Lidster as a writer, he’s not afraid to throw in some humour in there, too.  The Doctor’s usual routine of trying to check up on Ace is given a great twist when Ace is at a club and the Doctor is struggling to convince the bouncer to let him in is a wonderful example. There’s not a lot of humour, but it’s enough to add a little bit of light in a very dark story with some surprising depth.

Overall, the audios have been enjoyable to listen to so far. A little hit-and-miss in some places, but ultimately worth it for such excellent stories like The Fearmonger and Colditz. And thinking about that, it brings me back to my earlier point. When I began this blog, I said I wondered if the BBC actually made the right decision in cancelling Doctor Who when it did, which I’ll finally explain. Firstly, as I mentioned, the stories planned to follow the final season of classic Who weren’t particularly great, or at least, they didn’t match the standard that had been set by the previous 2 seasons, and Doctor Who had been living with the axe over its head for a number of years at that point. I was frustrated that the BBC had decided to end it just as it was starting to become great again, but having listened to season 27, I beginning to wonder if it might have been a blessing in disguise. When the show finished, it ended at such a high point that it left the fans wanting more and no one felt it had outstayed its welcome (well, not the people who were still watching the show at least, anyway).

The second reason why I think that the BBC letting Doctor Who go is a good thing is that, as I said before but to re-emphasise, the fans wanted more. And one way or another, we got that. It was no longer on television, but we got it. We got it from books, we got it from comics, and of course, we got it from audios. Based on Big Finish’s earliest stories featuring the excellent pair of the Doctor and Ace and compared with what was planned for season 27, in my opinion I think we’re rather lucky with the directions they’ve taken both the Doctor and especially Ace in, the latter of which growing up in Colditz and finally deciding to use her real name of “Dorothy McShane” (well ok, maybe not the first name, but it’s still a wonderful bit of development). I’ve really been enjoying the earliest Big Finish stories featuring the two, and I can’t wait to hear the next lot. Especially as they’re about to introduce the brilliant companion Thomas Hector Schofield aka Hex. I am so eager to start listening to that team from the start.

Actually speaking of which, there’s a lot of things I’m looking forward to about listening to all of the Seventh Doctor audios in chronological order. These include:

·         Arcs. Bloody hell, there’s so many that I don’t even know where to start. The excellent thing about Big Finish is that they love setting up arcs or little threads that can take years to pay off – there’s a secret the Doctor keeps from Hex that Hex doesn’t find out about until six years after he was introduced. Admittedly, this is helped by the fact that Big Finish have not just four Doctors to include in their main range but even more multiple on-going storylines – in fact, Big Finish being able to have such variety based on one single series is just another reason why I love Doctor Who so much – but still, having on-going threads that pay off in big ways like Project: Destiny and Gods and Monsters is a rewarding experience. The latter especially had so many details – including elements from a whole mixture of arcs, not just the season it was in but the Black TARDIS from the season before, the Elder Gods appearance from Lurkers at Sunlight’s Edge from the season before that and even a hint of a returning villain in 2009’s The Magic Mousetrap – that I’ve been dying for an excuse to listen to all of it all over again and try and make as much sense of it as possible.

·         The return of Klein. Like I said, I loved her first appearance in Colditz, and I’m really keen to re-listen to her further appearances, especially the excellent epic UNIT Dominion. She’s also in the current season that Big Finish are releasing, which I’m really eager to get round to, especially as it’s set very near to the Seventh Doctor’s final chronological appearance in the TV movie, but I think it’s better to wait it out and reward myself with such a trilogy when I finish.

·         A Death in the Family. I love this story. I think it’s a beautiful, beautiful story that…well, like I said, more on that later, but it honestly is one of my favourite Doctor Who stories in any medium, and I’m hugely eager to re-listen to it.

·         Hex. Did I mention Hex? Hex is awesome! But shockingly, there are a number of his earlier stories that I’ve yet to listen to, which is almost everything between his first story The Harvest and The Magic Mousetrap, so it’ll be great to hear his whole story for the first time.

Right, that’s my thoughts on the first part on my journey with the Seventh Doctor done. Time for me to take a short break by listening to Dalek Empire III while waiting for my next cds to arrive. Hope you enjoyed the blog!

Diary of a Who Addict: The End of the Classic Series (Why It Sucks and What To Do Afterwards)

Well, that’s it. Almost 3 years after finally starting to watch (or, in the case of missing episodes, of which in Troughton’s case there are far, far too many, listen to) every episode of the original series in order, today, I have finally completed that task with Survival, Part Three. And, to be honest, I’m feeling a little sad about that. Oh, I know I’ve got the entire new series to re-watch (of which I’ve done a considerable number of times already), but the ending of Survival is a harsh reminder of the age I grew up in: the age without Doctor Who.

Oddly enough, despite watching some repeats of Pertwee's Doctor beforehand, it wasn’t until the TV movie was shown on television 7 years later that I really noticed it, so in some ways, I’m rather lucky, but having discovered a show with such beautiful and brilliant ideas as that of an alien who travels through time and space in a magic box that was bigger on the inside than the outside, a man who dies and is reborn in a completely different body, a man who was once old but is now young, a man who fights against monsters, gods and demons with nothing but his wit, his intelligence and his friends, that it was harsh as hell, growing up as a child knowing how brilliant this show was but never having an era that I could truly call my own.

There were novels and audios, of course, but the novels always seemed to be aimed at a more ‘mature’ audience than I was, including graphic violence and sex that wouldn’t have likely been included in the tea-time tv series (perhaps understandable, given that the tv series itself was 26 years old by the time it had finished and it was assumed that most of the main fandom by then were adults anyway. Whether that assumption was correct or not, it was what Virgin and BBC novels tended to aim for). The audios weren’t necessarily been a bad option, (although even they tended to go for the ‘mature’ angle, but not too often, certainly not recently), but costing £14 each was a little out of my high school price range back then, especially with a story released every single month. I partially regret not aiming for releases that featured ‘my’ Doctor though, Paul McGann, as he was not only the current Doctor at the time, but it would’ve been the closest to growing up with ‘new’ Who that I would’ve gotten as a child. I did get Neverland, the finale to the 2^nd season of the Eighth Doctor audios, to prepare myself for the 40^th anniversary’s 3 cd epic Zagreus. I loved Neverland. I was disappointed by Zagreus, but that whole discussion should be saved for another blog. Let’s just say that, after listening to that story and realising that it didn’t quite match my expectations for it, I decided not to invest any time or money in Big Finish for quite some time.

It wasn’t until 2005 that I could finally watch Doctor Who on the television and have it be brand new for the first time since 1996. At which point, I was 16, so it had just missed my childhood, unfortunately. But that didn’t stop me from feeling like a big kid when watching it, the best thing that truly great Doctor Who can do, in my opinion. But, like discussion on the 8^th Doctor audios, that’s something that should be saved for a later blog, really. The key discussion of this one is the original series, why it ended, and how I really feel about that.

I really enjoyed watching the series in order, seeing how it had such humble beginnings as a children’s show that was designed to entertain while possibly teaching children about science and history (with the help of the two school teachers that were stuck with the Doctor), to one of the longest and greatest science-fiction shows in the world. Throughout the 60s and 70s, the show went through multiple Doctors, all who played the part brilliantly, numerous companions, and just as importantly, a huge range of monsters! The longer the show went on, the more the producers realised that, while it did purely historical stories (ie stories set in the past where the only science fiction element where the main characters themselves) brilliantly, the scifi stories, particularly the ones where the Doctor would fight some scary monsters, were more popular with the kids, particularly the recurring enemy introduced in the show’s second ever serial, the Daleks.

Of the first two decades, the series continued to adapt and grow. Sure, it followed the basic formula of the Doctor fighting monsters all the time, but it always did it so damn well. Arguably the best period for the show were the first three years of the Fourth Doctor, Tom Baker, and not primarily for Baker (although he was absolutely brilliant throughout). No, it was the fantastic production team of Philip Hinchcliffe as Producer and Robert Holmes as Script Editor that gave Doctor Who an edge like never before. Suddenly, a lot of the stories weren’t just about monsters - they were scary, they were gothic, and they were violent. That last point did perhaps go a little too far in some stories, but just a little, just enough for the little children to get a good taste of how fantastic truly great horror could be without making them run away from it. It was also filled with such excellent, one-off characters: the cold and distant Vira who slowly opens up in The Ark in Space; Davros and his completely devoted assistant Nyder in Genesis of the Daleks; the mad Dr. Solon in The Brain of Morbius; Henry-Gordon Jago and Professor George Litefoot, two characters so wonderfully written that more than 30 years after their first and only appearance in The Talons of Weng-Chiang, they got their own audio spinoff, and a truly brilliant and fantastic spinoff it is that truly evokes the greatness of the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era. Close to everything about seasons 12 to 14 – the casting, the writing, the directing, hell, even the fucking lighting (there are a considerable number of times where the horror of a situation in another era was more than slightly dampened by how keen the lighting technicians were to do their job and make the sets as BRIGHT as possible) – was consistently excellent. To be honest, I’m almost tempted to dig those seasons out right now.

So where did it start to go wrong? Certainly not in the rest of the Tom Baker era – true, its significantly reduced horror and increased humour wasn’t always something I was keen on (although City of Death is one of the greatest stories ever because of how beautifully witty it is), and, to my surprise, not even the early 80s – Tom Baker’s last season, while a little too serious about its science sometimes, really was terrific to watch, and I did enjoy a lot about Peter Davison’s first year, particularly the wonderful Kinda – but, the longer the show went on, the more you got the feeling that the BBC started to care less and less about their once favourite science fiction show. The production started looking cheaper, exterior shots that were once shot on film were instead shot on video, and even the production team struggled to find an identity.

This is perhaps most clear during season 22, with the production team trying to make the show more appealing to the ‘adult’ fans while still potentially aiming for the family audience and simultaneously trying to remind long-term fans that it is the same show. The violence was increased while generally lacking horror, there were continuity references in a lot of episodes, sometimes at the expense of a truly great and original plot, and the Doctor was more difficult to like than ever, with the great idea of making the 6^th Doctor totally unlikeable at first, with a more arrogant and alien attitude than before, not exactly handled well. Don’t get me wrong, I love Colin’s Doctor now, but at first, especially in his first story, the attempt at making him unlikeable was, perhaps, too successful, as the Doctor not only comes across as a pompous git but attacks his companion Peri, continually acts like a coward and, worst of all, gets the worst taste in fashion of any incarnation ever.

Now there’s ‘unlikeable’ and then there’s seriously fucking unlikeable. The first is where the character is presented as someone you’d hate to meet in real life, but on television or film is just brilliant to watch. Classic examples are Fitz in Cracker, who acts like a total arsehole and sees the worst in everyone, and more importantly, turns it into a skill; Randall in Clerks, who’s pretty much an asshole to every customer and yet somehow gets away with it because he’s hysterical to watch; and finally Withnail in Withnail & I, who arguably has less redeeming features than Randall and yet, again, is at times both hilarious and tragic to watch.

The other kind of unlikeable is the kind where a character’s so difficult to watch that you feel compelled to switch off the TV. That was an impulse I strongly felt when watching Colin’s Doctor in the Twin Dilemma i.e. his opening story. As a result, it’s probably not much of a surprise that perhaps the viewers or the BBC were less interested in the show in his next season.

Which is a shame, as after watching season 22, despite the problems I have with it, Colin Baker was one of the best things about it, as his character was still arrogant and boisterous but more recognisably the Doctor than in his first serial. The season wasn’t even terrible; it just had its problems that made it difficult for the show to connect to the wide ranging family audience that it had once been so popular with. Both Vengeance on Varos and Revelation of the Daleks were brilliant original stories, particularly the latter, but not ideal family storytelling, and I think that Who is consistently at its best when it knows exactly how to appeal to both children and adults, a skill that very few television shows have achieved but which Doctor Who has often excelled at, both past and present.

However, perhaps the final nail in the show’s coffin was made two years later, with McCoy’s first season, by going too far in the opposite direction. I said that season 22 has its faults but isn’t terrible, at least. I definitely cannot say the same of season 24. The show seemed to aim for the children’s demographic far, far too hard in a truly terrible way. It was almost pantomime in its execution at times, with characters coming across less as people you can believe in and more like clichés, especially in the first two stories. The production design looked tacky and terrible, and it was just hard to take seriously as a truly great show anymore. Things started to improve with its final story, Dragonfire, with the introduction of Ace, a more juvenile but ultimately more interesting and developed character than many of the 80s ones, but even then, it’s a fairly average story overall. With a season as bad as season 24, it’s no wonder the BBC were so keen to get rid of it.

So why, upon finishing the series, was I left feeling a mixture of sadness and frustration? Because something happened in the final two seasons. Something which no one expected and, sadly, not many other than the remaining faithful fans paid attention to. The series didn’t just improve, it wasn’t even “pretty good”. It was brilliant.

Kicking off with Remembrance of the Daleks, there were just so many things the series started to get right. First: the balance in storytelling is finally restored to be enjoyable for both children and adults in equal measures i.e. it’s a family show again, and a family show done right. For those looking for easy entertainment, there’s truly awesome sights like Daleks vs. Daleks and exploding all over the place (seriously, how did they get the budget for that stuff?), epic fights involving Arthurian knights and modern day soldiers, scary monsters and villains like the Chief Clown in the Greatest Show in the Galaxy, the husks in Ghost Light and the vampires in the Curse of Fenric. Doctor Who was truly great entertainment again, appealing not just to children but to the child in all of us, and that’s when Doctor Who is, for me personally, at its very best.

But even better than that is that there’s plenty for the viewers who wanted more. There were themes like racism in Remembrance and political correctness gone extremely mad in The Happiness Patrol, all explored perfectly and in a realistic way, avoiding feeling tacked on as a transparently clear moral lesson as a lot of children’s programmes tend to do and instead being a natural part of the story. Another of my favourite stories, The Curse of Fenric, has a large number of themes – facing up to your past, the importance of faith, war, what is and isn’t worth fighting for, all wrapped up in a story about the Doctor battling vampires and an ancient evil god.

Ah, the Doctor. Another reason why it really does well and truly suck that the series ended when it did – the Doctor had finally got his mystery back. For a long time, we thought we knew everything about him – that he’s a Time Lord from Gallifrey, that he ran away from his own people, that he’s an alien hero who loves Earth etc. But then two things happened. The first was that Ace came along, and with it, a whole new Doctor/companion dynamic. Ace wasn’t just the Doctor’s assistant, she wasn’t his intellectual equal, and she certainly wasn’t a damsel in distress, as whacking a Dalek with a baseball bat proved. No, the relationship the Doctor had with Ace was more interesting than any of those. At times, it was almost like he was tutoring her, helping her…other times, well…he still continued to ‘help’ her, but in a very cold and alien way. The best example of this was in Ghost Light, when the Doctor takes Ace on a surprise visit to a Victorian mansion. Then Ace realises that she was there before, in her time, back when she was a child. She told the Doctor about it once, about how terrified she was of it, of how she sensed something evil there. The Doctor’s reaction? Take her straight to it to not only investigate the evil, but have Ace face up to her fear, to try and make her emotionally stronger. It’s a twisted way of doing it, with almost a complete lack of sympathy and compassion on the Doctor’s part, but it’s also a solid reminder that the Doctor, while he may be a hero, is never a human being.

This leads me to the second thing that changed how we saw the Doctor in these final two seasons – himself. Oh, not in a physical, regenerative way, but how he started to act, how he wasn’t just arriving somewhere by accident and getting mixed up in events like he used to. This time, he starts taking a much more pro-active role, actually aiming to arrive somewhere if he hears something odd or dangerous is happening, always working to his own agenda, and this could very well be because of Ace, as he reveals later that he knows it was no accident that they met, and that she was ultimately just a pawn in a much larger game. This is a crucial point about the Doctor, that as much regeneration changes him, his companions affect who he is even more. They can bring out his humanity and his compassion, they can bring out his happiness and his love, they can even bring out the hero and the fighter in him. What does Ace bring out? Not just a hero anymore, but something else, something greater, if perhaps not as ‘good’. She brings out a side more alien and more mysterious than we’ve ever seen before, but more importantly, she also brings out his past. Because just as Ace represents a mystery for the Doctor to solve at times, so too does the Doctor become a mystery to his young companion, and to us.

Suddenly, he’s no longer just another Time Lord but “far more”. There are subtle hints that there’s far more to his past than he’s been letting on, that maybe there’s a part of him that’s more ancient and greater than perhaps even he knows. This is a man who fought with not just monsters but gods as well. For the first time, we are forced to ask: who is this man?

Not that I wanted an answer, of course. I’m not interested in the answers when it comes to the Doctor, I’m interested in the questions. Not too many that it threatens to overwhelm the show, but just enough to remind us the second word in the title. I love the hero and the mystery, and the show at this point had finally found the right balance to it. So of course, just as it had barely started to become as great as it once had…they cancelled it. If they had cancelled it in 1985, after Colin Baker’s first season, I honestly wouldn’t have blamed them. It wasn’t completely awful, but it wasn’t the show it once was. At that point, I think it needed a few years rest at least to fully recover. Instead, they put it on hiatus for 18 months before bringing it back, little better than the previous season.

As I finished watching the series, listening to the Doctor’s final words, I wondered why I was feeling as sad and frustrated about it as I was. After all, I live in an age where there’s now a ton of Doctor Who, on TV, books and audio, where it’s never been more popular, especially in America where it’s really getting a lot of attention. And when I had originally planned to finish Survival, my next plan was just to stick on the TV Movie (especially since it’s now August, the 8^th month of the year – perfect month for the perfect Doctor) and then start watching the whole of the new series before the 23^rd November comes along.

But I don’t think I can do that, not now, at least. When the series ended, it hadn’t just been great – the worst thing was, it had barely even started. The series was like new again, and there were so many directions it could go in – where will the Doctor go from here? Who was he? And, now that he’s more focused on the greater scale than possibly the well-being of his companions, what will he become? When the show came back – both times, really – it kind of moved away from that aspect, of the Doctor walking down a darker, mysterious path. Both kind of returned him to a lighter, more heroic character, although in the case of the new series, a hero who has been affected by War.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom in the 90s, though. Virgin at least started publishing their own series of books: Doctor Who: The New Adventures. I am eager to read these, but the sad part about these novels is, as I mentioned earlier, that they were no longer aimed at both children and adults – with mentions of sex, graphic violence and swearing, this range firmly belonged to the latter group. I will get round to these in time, but not quite yet. So what else is there to do? The answer’s simple: Big Finish.

While Big Finish also sometimes aimed more for the ‘adult’ audience than the family one, mostly, it goes for just the right sort of tone. More than that, though: unlike the novels, I get the performance. While McCoy isn’t my favourite actor to have played the Doctor – sometimes, watching the show, I was never that convinced when he tried to express rage or hate – but he is great at the more low-key stuff, at playing the alien who likes to keep secrets to himself. When he’s given that kind of material, he’s brilliant to watch and listen to. And I’ve heard many Big Finish stories with him, and enjoyed many. But not in chronological order, unsurprisingly – Big Finish tend to do a mix between the 7^th Doctor who travels with his companions, and others where he’s alone and much closer to his end in the TV movie. Still, I’m eager to listen to the 7^th Doctor’s journey, and see how much he changes and how far he goes.

As I finish this blog to dig out Big Finish’s excellent audio production of the originally planned season 27, I’ll finish this on one of my favourite quotes from one of my favourite stories ever that, like many of the 7^th Doctor’s audios, I’m so eager to re-listen to, concerning a companion’s thoughts upon seeing the 7^th Doctor’s future:

“That other Doctor. The older one. Was he really trying to make us happy, do you think, or…was it all just part of some massive scheme? Was he better than our Doctor in the end, or a million times worse?”

It’s time to start finding out.

The Name of the Doctor Analysis (MAJOR SPOILERS)

Wow. What a finale. You gotta hand it to Moffat – after all that worry over whether an anniversary ep would be able to celebrate 50 years of continuity, he practically gives us the equivalent of such an ep 6 months early, with multiple Doctors, a ton of references from all over the history of the show, and of course, what makes Doctor Who arguably so great, a cliffhanger. No, not just any cliffhanger: after a season of practically no cliffhangers (with the possible exception of The Snowmen), we get the MOTHER of all cliffhangers.

So where to begin? The beginning seems appropriate, since we are talking about THE beginning here: seeing the moment when an old man leaves Gallifrey with his granddaughter, in an old type 40 capsule, was just fucking glorious for so many fan-gasming reasons. I mean, for starters, there’s the obvious, like seeing the actual beginning of the story like never before, seeing not only Gallifrey itself but some nice clips of William Hartnell included, but there’s also the little things, like the early TARDISes being reminiscent to the TARDIS capsules that we saw in classic story The War Games. Followed by some nicely included clips of The Five Doctors, Castrovalva, The Invasion of Time and Dragonfire, to name a few. All of which involving Clara, the Impossible Girl we had been wondering about since Asylum of the Daleks kicked off. What a way to kick off the story by celebrating both the past 50 years and building up the finale to the past 13 episodes all in one.

Then we got cracking on with the main plot, involving Trenzalore. Having been built up since the end of season 6, I was eager to see it. And what is Trenzalore, exactly? The place where the Doctor will one day be buried. The place where his entire timeline exists and could potentially be accessed by anyone. Now, I've gotta wonder, is this worth all the build up? Not just since the ending of the series 6 finale in which Trenzalore was first directly mentioned and “The Question” was fully revealed, but since The Eleventh Hour, when the arc of the Silence first started and which slowly revealed over time how an entire order had been set up to make sure that the Doctor never, ever answered “the Question that must never be answered”? Well…yes and no.  Yes in that trying to protect the Doctor’s entire timeline – a timeline in which he has not repeatedly saved the universe but also visited so many places and so many times – would be something you’d want to make sure never got touched by the wrong hands, even if it meant ending the life of that person, (and the irony that River, some who was originally meant to kill the person who was supposed to answer the most dangerous question is the one who gives the answer is absolutely fucking delicious,) but I still think there’s numerous questions left to be answered, including why they blew up the TARDIS in The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang (if it was really them). I still don’t buy that the explosion was caused by either the events of Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, which was clearly an accidental explosion or by the Great Intelligence accessing his timeline (although a voice without a body COULD explain the “Silence Will Fall” moment in Pandorica, it is, at the moment, not entirely satisfactory, considering the Intelligence re-wrote EVERYTHING in the Doctor’s history and Clara helped re-write it back). To be honest, I really think the Silence should’ve returned for this episode, although we still have the anniversary episode to look forward to, with some massive rumours going around that it will answer MANY questions from across Moffat’s entire run of the show. Gotta say, I really hope those rumours are true.

Now, that’s pretty much my main complaints out of the way, now onto what else I enjoyed about the episode. First, how much of a rollercoaster it was for my emotions to go through. Honestly, there were some beautiful moments for me to watch, including, but not limited to: the Doctor’s reaction to finding out about Trenzalore and what it really means to him; the site of the dead TARDIS as the Doctor’s tomb (“where else would they bury me?”); Clara accepting her fate and jumping into the Doctor’s timeline to save him; even the kiss between the Doctor and River was great, not to mention hysterical (“since I’m the only one who can see you right now, god knows how that looked”). There was something emotional about the episode in general, as it is, as with season 6, the Doctor confronting his own mortality – only here, he really is confronting it literally. He’s seeing that, no matter how much he’s cheated death before and no matter how many more times he’ll continue to cheat it, one day, he will die, and his beloved blue box will be buried with him with no one to look after her. Neither he nor we know when it’ll happen, but still, it’s a sad sight for all when the Doctor is forced to accept that his story will have, one day, an ending.

It’s not just the future the Doctor has to face in this episode, however. It’s also his past, which brings us to the Great Intelligence, (of which I was glad to see make a return appearance, rounding off not just the trilogy of stories that he’s appeared in this season, but also his entire story since The Abominable Snowmen with the Second Doctor), and of course, River. Now, bringing River back post-Forest of the Dead was a bold move on Moffat, but it wasn’t a decision I minded, for two reasons. First, the fact that they didn’t really bring her back from the dead, considering it was always made clear in the episode Forest of the Dead that she still lived on, just in data format, and what’s beautiful here is that she’s still just that. She isn’t magically given a new body, she is, essentially, still a ghost. And I really do hope it stays that way.

The other thing I liked about including this particular version of River in this story is how fitting it is, both for the story of the episode and for season 7 in general. It’s the Doctor not just facing up to his past; it’s facing up to another ending. He’ll continue to see River perhaps, but (hopefully) not as she is now. It’s saying goodbye to another Pond. That, more than anything, is why I liked seeing this version of River in the season 7 finale.

As for the other returning characters…I like the trio of Vastra, Jenny and Strax, but I do think they are overused at times, especially as comic relief. It was great to see Strax acting as a proper Sontaran though when history started to change, I must admit. It was a great reminder of how scary and how ruthless the Sontarans can be and how much the Doctor can change things so drastically. Can we have more scary Sontarans back soon Moffat? Please? And less of the, to quote The Office (UK), “She’s deaaaaaaad…” “SHE’S NOT DEAD!” moments, thanks? Hearing Jenny say, “I think I’ve been murdered,” I couldn’t help but think, “Don’t worry, it’s a Moffat script, you’ll be back in no time.” And sure enough, she was…before she died again fifteen minutes later, and was brought back from the dead less than five minutes later! That’s gotta be some kind of record, even for Moffat!

Still, the climax and the resolution of the “Clara mystery” was worth it. I’ll be honest, I did guess some time ago that there was never anything special about this version of Clara, not until some kind of future event would cause the whole multiple Clara thing would one day happen, but only because we all know how much Moffat loves his timey-wimey plots, and to be honest, so do I, so I was glad to see that the resolution made sense, at least.

And now, onto the biggest part of the episode of all: the cliffhanger. “Introducing John Hurt…as the Doctor.” Wow. Bold, Moffat, definitely bold. How do I feel about it? Well, if it is who I suspect it’s meant to be, it completely writes out my McGann death scene fanfic. Ok, seriously, do I think that Hurt is supposed to be the “original” Ninth Doctor? Yes. Looking back, there are clear hints about it, if you rewatch Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS – where Clara discovers the Doctor’s name, where does she discover it? In a book about the Time War. Not of Gallifrey in general, but specifically the Time War. I thought it was odd that the book would mention his real name, but now it kinda makes sense. If the Doctor gave up his chosen name when he did the things he did in the War, it not only explains why his name would appear in a book specifically about the War, it also gives greater significance to where the series began again in 2005. Suddenly, the idea of Eccleston’s Doctor being so different to all before makes more sense than ever – he’s not just recovering from the War, he’s learning to be “the Doctor” all over again. And I’ve gotta be honest, that’s an idea I really, really like. I could be wrong, he could be a pre-Hartnell Doctor, but considering the leather jacket and the idea that he “broke the promise”, I’m convinced that he’s meant to be the incarnation between the 8^th and the 9^th.

I do have to say though that there is a bit of a missed opportunity here, especially if Moffat’s had this planned for a while. Namely, who’s cast as the “missing” Doctor. Now don’t get me wrong, John Hurt’s brilliant, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what he’ll do with it. But I can’t help but be reminded of Scream of the Shalka. In 2003, an animated webcast, Scream of the Shalka, was made to celebrate the 40^th anniversary. What was so special about this particular story? It was set after the end of the TV movie and featured a brand new Doctor and was supposedly the start for a brand new online series. Who played this Ninth Doctor? Richard E Grant. That’s right, the guy that played the Great Intelligence. Now this story wasn’t AMAZING, but it did have plenty of great little ideas (my favourite being the Master being turned into a robot servant of the Doctor and was forced to be his companion), was funny and was a pretty cool way of bringing Doctor Who into the 21^st century, or so it seemed at the time. Then of course, in November, they announced that Doctor Who was coming back anyway and Scream of the Shalka was written out of canon altogether, along with Grant’s version of the Doctor. Now, with this episode, I can’t help but imagine how much cooler it would've been if they had held off casting Richard E Grant until this particular episode, therefore revealing that actually Shalka was canon after all. Would’ve been even more of an amazing twist for this fan. Still, like I said, Hurt’s a fine choice for playing the part, and I’m looking forward to seeing more of his incarnation.

One more thing I'll mention: the title, and how the story relates to it. I think it was genius of Moffat to have the title suggest one thing, something I was very afraid of, before revealing it meant something else entirely. We thought "The Name of the Doctor" referred to his real name, or at least, the name he had before he became the Doctor. I was incredibly worried that Moffat would actually reveal it, as in my opinion, the name had been so shrouded in mystery for so long, and that mystery was so important to the series, that I didn't think there was any possible way that the revelation of the name itself could've been anything better than anti-climactic. (Unless his name turned out to be Batman, that would've been cool enough.) But instead, it's about something else entirely. It's about the Doctor's identity. About what it is to be the Doctor, and not just any Time Lord. About his life, his death and, most importantly, why being the Doctor is so important. "What I did...I did in the name of peace and sanity." "But not in the name of the Doctor." Perfect words to end on.

So that’s my analysis of the episode: flawed, but overall a great episode. 8/10. As for season 7 overall? I’m not going to give it a rating until I watch it a 2^nd time through, but I must be honest, this season hasn’t impressed me as much as season 6. Don’t get me wrong, there are a number of individual episodes that I enjoyed, particularly Asylum of the Daleks, the Snowmen, the Bells of Saint John, Cold War, Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS and of course The Name of the Doctor, but I haven’t been as eager to watch it week in, week out as I did last season. I do think that the lack of cliffhangers is partly responsible for that. I love cliffhangers, I love going “WTF?!?” and wondering what the hell’s going to happen next, and more importantly I think that they’ve been a vital part of the show’s 50 year legacy. Season 6 was full of some amazing examples, too many to list, although my favourite still remains The Almost People, and I wasn’t even much of a fan of that story. Season 7, by comparison, hasn’t had nearly as many. Aside from this episode, there’s been no stand-out cliffhanger, other than the Snowmen – the closest thing we’ve had to a cliffhanger since then was “Oh no! The Doctor’s going to be stuck with KIDS in the next episode!” So, as great as it was to have a terrific cliffhanger for the finale, I hope to God Moffat brings the cliffhanger back on a more regular basis for season 8. There’s also been not much development for either the characters or the arcs this season, so I think that’s affected it. But most of all, season 6 really was one of my favourite seasons ever, in fact it was pretty much my ideal season of Who. Anything after that was, for this fan at least, going to seem like a step down. I’m looking forward to re-watching season 7 in full at least, hopefully after catching up on my entire series watch, anyway.

(One more thing that I couldn’t fit into the analysis: LOVED the mention of the Valeyard, one of my favourite ideas for a Who villain ever. Wasn’t an overall fan of the story he appeared in in the Classic series (The Trial of a Time Lord), but the revelation that he was the Doctor more than paid off. Glad to see that he’s finally been name-checked in the new series at last.)

Big Finish Review - January

It occurred to me earlier that, with this year being the 50^th anniversary of one of the greatest shows ever, audio company Big Finish has a number of ranges dedicated to telling a large number of Doctor Who stories every year. Hell, at the moment, I’m currently subscribed to 4 monthly ranges – that’s 4 Doctor Who stories every month on audio alone! Fortunately, I subscribe well in advance, but for those who can at best afford only one cd per month, out of each month’s releases, what would be the best ones to buy? That is why I’ve written this: the first in what I hope will be a regular review of the monthly output of a number of ranges of Doctor Who that Big Finish releases. A great way to further blog and discuss my favourite show, and, to those who can afford it, to perhaps help some decide what would be the ideal releases to listen to, including a couple of recommendations, one for the new fans and one for those who appreciates their serious continuity.

Main Range

The Wrong Doctors

What better way to kick off the 50^th anniversary year than by having a multi-Doctor story? But this is a “multi-Doctor” story with a difference. It does feature two Doctors, but instead of the usual take of having multiple incarnations argue with each other, we instead have something quite original in which its two versions of the same incarnation, at two different points in life. Really thinking about it, this is probably the most full-on multi-Doctor story we’ve had from Big Finish – others have involved either clones, doubles or the briefest of exchanges (yes, this includes The Four Doctors, although to be fair, that’s still a cool story). But here, we have two Doctors, one older and wiser than the other, arguing with himself. Himself. Thank you, Big Finish, for finally having the balls to do something like this.

Bear in mind though that this isn’t just about the gimmick of having two Sixes. This is a tribute to two things. The first is Mel Bush, of which this story pays a lot of respect to, as the Sixth Doctor finally tries to meet her. Tries and spectacularly fails as…well, I’d rather not go into detail, as (a) I wouldn’t want to spoil too much here, and (b) it’d just be too difficult to explain even if I did want to spoil it (especially for those who haven’t seen The Trial of a Time Lord). We get it all here – her home of Pease Pottage, her excellent memory, her knack at computers and her travels with the Doctor – all are important to the story here, and it’s a testament to Matt Fitton’s writing ability that none of it feels forced whatsoever.  I’m not sure I completely understood the plot all the time, but it didn’t matter: there were numerous well drawn out characters, especially the villain, Mr Petherbridge, brilliantly played by Tony Gardner, to really draw me into the world of the story, at least.

There’s something else that’s great about this story though, and what really makes it a good one to kick off the anniversary year – the Sixth Doctor. Specifically, the Sixth Doctor of the Big Finish adventures at least, with a few nods to even beyond that. (Including BBC novel Business Unusual, where the Sixth Doctor really meets Mel for the first time – yes guys, amazingly, this story doesn’t contradict that story whatsoever.) The contrast of the two Doctors is amazing – yes, they’re the same incarnation, but still quite, quite different. Whereas the younger Doctor is his usual “bolshy” self as we saw on television, his older self is definitely mellower by comparison – both of which are of course amazingly portrayed by Colin Baker. We’re reminded that really, this is a Doctor that we never really saw on television, at least not with this amount of development. He is the Big Finish Doctor – a kind, intelligent, at times sombre but mostly happy incarnation who is, at least in the audio medium, considerably popular. There is no finer way for Big Finish to kick off such an important anniversary of a show nearly half a century old than to celebrate just what they (and indeed other formats of the expanded universe) can do that the tv series couldn’t or wouldn’t – take the scattered seeds that were left untended in the tv series, and let them grow. And that includes the potential brilliance of the Sixth Doctor. 8/10

Companion Chronicles

The Flames of Cadiz

Marc Platt? Writing a story that’s purely historical? Can it be true? Indeed it is! And, even better folks, compared to the usual 1 disc release of the Companion Chronicles, this is the special 2 disc release that comes every January, so it feels even closer to the more fleshed out 4-part historicals of the early seasons.

I was pretty impressed with this story. Partly for how much it draws you into its historical setting, with its fleshed-out characters, both regular and of the story in particular, giving you a good insight in what it was like living in the time of the Spanish Inquisition, specifically near the time of the Spanish Armada.

Another thing I was impressed by was how much Platt nailed the era of the kind of story this would’ve taken place in, tv series wise. The dark tone of the story showing the horrors of history, the well fleshed out companions of Ian and Barbara being caught up in it, sometimes being caught up in the sheer thrill of it, and of course, just how alien, dark and mysterious the Doctor is at this point – one of the best traits of a great deal of Platt’s stories is reminding us that the Doctor is an alien, not just biologically but psychologically, seeing people, events and morals completely differently to how a human would. This is a key aspect to the first Doctor at this point, so it’s no surprise that Marc Platt has written a number of stories for this particular incarnation, even one set before the beginning of the tv series. (One Companion Chronicle I’m especially looking forward to that’s released in November has the simple title of The Beginning, a story involving the Doctor and Susan leaving Gallifrey. Naturally, I’m greatly looking forward to listening to such a story.)

One more thing I enjoyed about the story was the added layer of how dangerous it can be wanting to meet your heroes. An old story perhaps, but still a classic, especially when it’s done as beautifully as this. Because some men may disappoint, perhaps inevitably, but still be great men. Not necessarily good men, but still great.

This is a fantastic story that really feels like it could’ve been shot and filmed in 1963 (well ok, maybe 1964, the second story hadn’t even finished in ’63), and is another nice way to kick off the anniversary year – a story that does a great job at reminding us just how wonderful both the first TARDIS crew and their stories really were. 9/10

The Fourth Doctor Adventures – Season 2

1. The Auntie Matter

And so another season begins for one of the series’ most popular Doctors! Last season was set during his time with Leela, which overall I thought was a pretty strong start, including just the right balance between old school and modern day storytelling, with 4^th Doctor stories that fitted perfectly in between the gothic horror of the Holmes/Hinchcliffe era with the lighter scifi of the Graham Williams era, in a faster pace and further expansion of companion Leela, all stories brilliantly performed by Tom Baker and Louise Jameson, acting as though it had only been a matter of months since they worked together and not over 35 years (in the roles of the Doctor and Leela, at least). So that first season has set a very high standard. What of the second?

The second season has gone for a different approach, taking place later in the Fourth Doctor’s life as he travels with Romana in her first incarnation. One thing that comes across clearly right from the start is how easily these two make us believe that no time has passed at all since we last saw the pair on screen, especially with Mary Tamm as Romana, who plays the role with the same intellect and strong attitude that we saw in the tv series. It’s a tragic and shocking loss to think that she’s been gone for over six months now, as her performance here was so full of life, you could really believe that she could’ve easily done it for many more years.

The first story is a bit of a fun if basic romp, taking place in 1920s England and featuring androids, body stealing aliens and ultra-posh Englishmen who can’t pronounce their r’s. Overall, it’s a nice start to the season, but I’m eager for darker and meatier stuff that is surely yet to come. (Or at least, another Doctor Who story featuring the great, great, great David Warner and of course, the reunion of Jago & Litefoot with Four.) 6/10

Destiny of the Doctor

1. Hunters of Earth

The Flames of Cadiz isn’t the only First Doctor story this month. We also have the beginning of a brand new series, specially made to not only celebrate the 50^th anniversary but to also be more welcoming to new listeners who haven’t discovered the wonderful classic Doctors and their stories. This is an unusual series that Big Finish is involved in as (a) the narration for the stories is done in the third-person, unlike the Companion Chronicles which usually use the first-person narrative structure, and (b) due to being co-produced with AudioGo, the later stories will involve Doctors from the New Series, which Big Finish aren’t normally allowed to touch. So it’ll be great to have a series with Big Finish involvement that’ll allow them to make great stories for all the Doctors, not just the first eight.

So how is the first one? Definitely an interesting opening, as it begins not long before the very start of the series. It’s very reflective of both the era and of the very time of when the original series began, in days of when random violence between groups like mods and rockers would break out. And violence is very much key to this story. This is a very dark and disturbing tale in which Susan finds herself not only distinctly branded as an outsider, but dangerously targeted for it. There are some really creepy images – particularly one of Susan being completely surrounded while people try and throw rocks at her – but along the way, the story occasionally soaks in the lighter aspects of 60s culture, too. There’s also a small but vital moment in the story that’s very clearly important to the arc of the whole series. Mostly though, it’s a fantastic standalone story that gives us a glimpse both of Susan’s life (the Doctor is more of a background presense here) before the start of the series as well as 60s life in general. This is a really great jumping on point for anyone who’s yet to discover the joys of the classic stuff. 8/10

Recommendations

For the newbie: Hunters of Earth

If you know nothing of classic Who or even new Who and are wanting to buy a story that you can just switch on without worrying about any background knowledge beforehand, this is definitely your safest bet, as being a jumping-on point is what this particular series was designed for in the first place. It’s also a great standalone drama to boot, so you should fully enjoy it. Another story to enjoy that's also not too bad continuity wise is The Flames of Cadiz.

For the continuity obsessed: The Wrong Doctors

Starting with direct references to previous companions, thorny tv continuity issues and even an out-of-print novel, this is definitely one for someone with at least a basic knowledge of the Sixth Doctor. It’s not too bad, and it is a wonderful celebration of the life that the Sixth Doctor has had in audio form at least, but that’s exactly it – it’s paying tribute to over a decade of this incarnation on cd, and while you hardly need to know all of it, it helps to know just how much this Doctor has changed and why to fully appreciate it.

So overall, a very strong start to the year for Big Finish. Can they continue such a high standard? Who knows. Judging from the February releases I've listened to so far, very possibly, although I'll save discussion for that for the next blog. (Which hopefully won't take too long.) Personal favourite for the month? It's tied between Hunters of Earth and Flames of Cadiz, probably because I have a soft spot for Hartnell's darker and more mysterious Doctor, but mostly because those stories are simply great, mature (but not too mature) stories that completely stand on their own. Keep it coming, Big Finish!

Berberian Sound Studio review

There were three main reasons why I wanted to watch Berberian Sound Studio from the moment I heard about it. One was a lot of positive reception around film and cult review websites and magazines. Two was it was supposed to be a homage to the Giallo genre, only ironically, without showing any imagery and focusing purely on sound. Three was Toby Jones – ever since playing the Dream Lord in, yep, you guessed it, Doctor Who, he’s been an actor that I've been very keen to check out more of. (Not realising that actually, I had already seen a couple of film’s he’d been in, or at least, his voice – I am of course referring to his role of Dobby in the Harry Potter movies.) Hearing about a film he actually had a lead role in really got my attention. And what a role he was given: the typically repressed English soundman working on an Italian horror.

I’ve put off writing this review because there’s so much for me to write about, in a case like this. This isn't your typical horror, or at least, anything along the lines of most of the kind of horror films that Hollywood releases these days. There aren't any jumpy scares, no violent deaths of stupid characters, no psychopathic maniacs, none of that. Instead, this is a horror that wants its audience to think, to feel, and to empathise with its main character. In all these aspects, I felt it was very successful. 

The story is of a sound engineer, Gilderoy, who has been hired to work on a highly violent horror movie in Italy. As he continues to work on it, the film starts to deeply affect him in numerous ways, and the longer the film goes on, the more Gilderoy loses his grip on reality.

One film that sprang to mind while watching this was Roman Polanski’s The Tennant (which Jean, a very good friend of mine recommended to me - any credit for my craving for deep and thoughtful psychological horror should be given to him, as before I'd more than likely have avoided such films, if I'm honest, so thank you again, Jean). The protagonists of both films are foreigners to the country, always made to feel excluded, not just through cultural differences but through personal differences, too. This is a world where Gilderoy simply doesn’t belong in the slightest, something that’s made clear from the very beginning: a typical, deeply repressed Englishman among a film crew of highly emotional Italians, a man who takes his Catholic faith very seriously working on an exploitation movie that forces him to watch an ugly side to it, a man who didn’t even know what kind of film he would be working on until the day he arrived and saw the horrific images. “I didn’t know I’d be working on this type of film…” he quietly says. From that moment on, you know that it will not be a film that would be easy for him to work on.

“A new world of sound awaits you.” There are a number of really wonderful quotes that sum up how wonderful this movie is, and this is one of them. For we see none of the images that Gilderoy sees, only hear, with the occasional description of some truly horrific acts. But the sound is the key thing. Chopped melons become sliced heads and severed limbs, blenders become chainsaws, cooking fat becomes horrifically burned skin. This wonderful use of sound imprints some truly disturbing imagery when really showing us nothing, and it’s wonderful use is something I truly appreciate in a film such as this.

Oddly enough though, while the sounds do give us the clear image, the shots are also important. Now just how the sounds are made, but also including some really nice tributes to the giallo genre in numerous ways - extreme close up of eyes and mouths, cut from mouth to red sauce in blender and, my particular favourite, a close-up of a hand in a black glove while simply turning on the projector. It’s clear that the director, Peter Strickland, is a massive fan of the genre. This is not a giallo movie, nor is it intended to be, but it’s certainly effective in being a respectful tribute to the genre, and kudos must be given to the cinematography for adding to that.

As the film goes on, tension and uneasiness builds as Gilderoy grows to be more and more uncomfortable with the images that he (but not we) sees. It truly becomes difficult for him to work on the film while continuing to see such horrific images that don’t just offend him but also deeply, deeply disturb him on numerous levels – as an Englishman, as a Catholic, as simply himself. He doesn't want these horrific acts to happen, even trying to stop the sounds from happening so the images don’t happen, but it’s no use – whether the sound happens or not, the image of the horrific act still happens. Over and over again until he adds his part. And that’s the worst thing – it’s not being forced to watch such graphic violence, it’s being, as the producer of such a work says, a “part of it”. Gilderoy is adding his own part to the violence and the suffering, the vital part, the sound, and that is something he cannot bear to live with.

Inevitably, he tries to quit, to leave, to escape, but it’s no use. “There’s no reason to escape.” The man is effectively trapped, far from all that he loves in every possible way, and there’s nothing that he can do about it. This feeling of entrapment is, again, another theme that instantly reminds me of Polanski in many of his films.

Despite all this darkness, there’s still a nice amount of humour in the film, but fortunately not the kind that goes against the themes and dark tone of the story. Rather, it is an awkward humour that empathises even more the differences between Gilderoy and his Italian colleagues, as Gilderoy finds it difficult to get on with them at all, whether due to a barrier in language or in culture. The humour in these instances only help to add to the feeling of isolation that Gilderoy is going through.

Eventually, for Gilderoy, and for us, reality and fantasy become blurred. He’s no longer just a part of the Italian horror he’s working on, he’s a part of his own, and the last act of the film involves surreal dream sequences and even dubbing in Italian, as Gilderoy’s life becomes a film that he’s uncomfortable to watch.

As I said, this was a film that I had been eager to watch since the moment I heard about it, and sure enough, it did not disappoint. At times, there were moments that were almost too bizarre, particularly the very end, but perhaps these will be more rewarding with understanding on repeat viewings. In any case, this was a horror that I deeply, deeply enjoyed, a wonderful break from all the typical sensationalist horror that Hollywood is making these days. 9/10