I've also just finished listening to the second box set of The Tenth Doctor Adventures from Big Finish, on my walk to work on these very frosty mornings.
The three audio plays in this box set mirror the forma of the first three stories in Eccleston's series and Tennant's first year. A story set on modern-day Earth; one set in Earth's history; a third in the faintly 2000 A.D.-flavoured far future, such as we might find in a Doctor Who Weekly/Dave Gibbons comic strip.
+++SPOILERS AHEAD+++
The opener is Infamy of the Zaross by John Dorney. An award-winner for BF, I have found some of Dorney's scripts mawkishly sentimental and over-rated, frankly. However, I enjoyed the conceit here very much. An invasion of Earth by warthog aliens begins in Norwich. And why not?
The invasion however, turns out to be the premise behind an alien scripted reality television series and not only that, the warlike Zaross, trying to re-brand themselves as conquerors, are only the latest stars of the series, destined to be canned when ratings plummet.
At first, it took time to recognise Billie Piper's Rose- or for the actress to find the character, perhaps. It's always interesting, and a little sobering, to hear how voices change with time. The satirical tone of the story is darkened by the "onscreen" killing of a teenager while the subplot of a starstruck schoolgirl and would-be pop idol didn't quite come off for me. But Tennant and Camille Coduri as Jackie Tyler are engaging and charming throughout.
My favourite instalment of this set- and one of my favourite BF audios in a while was Guy Adams'
The Sword of the Chevalier. This is set in the 18th century and revolves around the astonishing and quite real Chevalier D'Eon: diplomat, spy, ferocious fencer and Europe's first transgender celebrity.
The Chevalier D'Eon: anime/manga star!
Nickolas "Anthony Blanche" Grace plays the Mademoiselle and of course, there is an alien menace in the grisly form of conjoined slave merchants, Hempel and Joxer from the Consortium of the Obsidian Asp.
This story is quite similar to tv's The Girl In the Fireplace (and the Twelfth Doctor's comicbook adventure with the fantastic, bawdy opera star and swordswoman Julie D'Aubigny) but I would really like to hear more of the Chevalier's exploits.
The third audio play, Matt Fitton's Cold Vengeance, pits Doctor Ten and Rose against Lord Hasskor's Ice Warriors on the ColdStar freezer satellite- Iceland in Space? It feels a bit like the two Mark Gattis Martian adventures for the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors but the presence of plucky garbage collector Lorna links back to the plumbers and street sweepers of the RTD Years.
I especially liked hearing the Scottish accents of Maureen Beattie and Sean Biggerstaff as mother-and -son space pirates, Brona and Callum Volta. This was a rather "vanilla" story, to be honest- the hissing Ice Warriors' code of honour makes them the Klingons of Doctor Who but I'm never very interested in those faintly samurai cultures. Nevertheless, it was pacy with appealing female characters.
This is an entertaining listen - it's not demanding and it's not doing anything BF hasn't done (well) elsewhere, aside from the participation of Billie Piper. It's pleasing to hear the spontaneous, reckless, righteous Tenth Doctor again- even if he's not one of my favourites, with his vulnerability and arrogance. The Mockney accent always irritated me but, whatever I think, Tennant's Doctor is one of the most popular of all time. It would be nice, then, to hear a future set with Martha Jones, whom I feel never quite made the impact I think RTD expected, as the first woman of colour accompany the Doctor on television.
Sean Biggerstaff, coincidentally, appeared as Chris Parsons in the BF version of Shada- which was re-written to accommodate McGann's Eighth Doctor, when he was a novelty. The most famous of the Lost Stories, from the Douglas Adams era, Shada has had several incarnations so to all intents in purposes, it's hardly "lost".
The most recent edition (on dvd) is partially animated and features a rather sweet coda with the twenty-first century Tom Baker. However, I found the decision to make it a feature-length story frustrating. It was conceived as a six-parter and it can be repetitive, so I wanted to dip in and out of it -but there are no discrete episodes.
The BF version was a webcast and is less successful as an audio play. Gareth Roberts' adaptation has a Dick Emery joke ( of course it does) which I really liked. Ultimately, though, I still prefer the original BBC video version, eccentrically hosted by Tom.
Coming attractions: Hawkaaaa!! Harlem and Hell's Kitchen; the War Master and Dare-ing the Future
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