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 7th
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 27th.
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 6th
Doctor story The Apocalypse Element (featuring the first time the Daleks invaded Gallifrey), 5th Doctor
story The Mutant Phase and 8th 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!
