We also celebrated World Book Day with a super-heroes and villains event and a round of Just A Minute. I got Stan Lee, would ya believe, and I rambled about Kirby, Ditko and even She-Hulk. I could barely see in my Riddler mask but at least I got more wear out of my four-or-five year old costume.
Our acting head, dressed as Batman and earnestly talking about the Mr. Men was the funniest thing I've seen in weeks; it was like the Chris Evans Cap informercials.
I'm reading about the real Macbeth and a Star Trek paperback about Christopher Pike. Comics-wise, I'm working through the True Believers Carol Danvers reprints. Today's post is about Big Finish audios again, however.
Two weeks ago, I started the third box set of First Doctor Adventures. I was especially looking forward to The Phoenicians by Marc Platt. I've enjoyed his First Doctor stories The Flames of Cadiz and The Doctor's Tale; this story of Pygmalion of Tyre and the foundation of Carthage is in that improving and educational vein.
It's about myth, civilization and barbarism- the cliffhanger with Ian an unwilling participant in the bloody blessing of a ship encapsulates those themes perfectly. The heady world of masked Amazon assassins, killer birds, kings and elephants is quite reminiscent of the Lost Story Farewell Great Macedon. I was entertained by the future queen Dido's flirtation with Ian, her Aeneas, but the temple prostitutes would never have been mentioned in a Sixties story.
But then, I suppose this isn't a recreation of the Hartnell era- it's a parallel world of sorts: new stories from the world of David Bradley's Doctor Who.
Guy Adams' Tick-Tock World firmly elicits impressions of Marc Platt's work, specifically his 90s novel Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible. A shipwrecked Tardis crew meet a band of female survivors in a haunted world ravaged by monster worms. One by one, the time travellers are killed. Poignantly, Ian's last thoughts are of Barbara:"Who will protect her now?" Happily, the Susan of the future ( Carole Ann Ford, naturally) helps her teenage self reset things.
I was a little disappointed in this story, since it's undone by the end, like a Gerry Anderson episode. If the listening order were reversed, perhaps, I might have liked this box set more. 3/5 Talmars
Some Doctors feel more suited to certain times of the year. Tom's Fourth Doctor seems autumnal to me while Tennant's Doctor is summery, evoking long sunny evenings. Peter Davison's Fifth Doctor is the one for the earlier months of the year and winter turning to spring. I had a hankering to listen to a lot of Fifth Doctor stories these last two weeks; he was the one I really felt was" mine" in my late teens, much like Chris Chibnall did, I think.
Devil in the Mist is a cartoony but surprisingly tense and exciting adventure by Cavan Scott. It's the first of a trilogy reintroducing obscure 80s robot Kamelion, now voiced by Jon Culshaw. Space hippos last seen with the Ninth Doctor in Titan's The Bidding War (and heard in the audio The Bleeding Heart) crash-land with the Tardis crew on a jungle planet. The Doctor faces a lifetime of paralysis or regeneration. But are they all in more danger from gaseous criminal Nustana or the shape-changing Kamelion? A lively and unexpected 4/5 Talmars
Hexagora was on sale in Forbidden Panet in Aberdeen. It's a lost 80s story from the creators of Crossroads. This is the kind of thing I think Big Finish fans really want: old luvvies declaiming Space Dialogue like "Then, it is settled!" or the glorious " Tegan, do you know this insect?!"
In a world modelled on Tudor London, alien arthropods are abducting Earth people like Tegan's schooldays heartthrob, reporter Mike. There's courtly intrigue as the late Jacqueline Pearce imperiously proposes marriage to the Doctor. And there's a charming coda where we discover her human host is a prototype Angie Watts but, in the words of the writers themselves, it's all a "ludicrous pantomime". 2/5 Talmars
The Boy That Time Forgot by Paul Magrs was also on sale, on the BF website. I'd read quite a bit over the years about this infamous audio, which is, in the awful idiom, a Marmite release to say the least. It's outrageous fanfic with some gruesome comic book flourishes as Magrs recreates the atmosphere of At The Earth's Core and Warlords of Atlantis for ( quite unbelievably) the resurrection of Adric.
Andrew Sachs plays the precocious Alzarian as a deranged immortal, emperor of the scorpion people. This 2008 audio predates Matthew Waterhouse's work with BF and smiling assassin Peter Davison is, of course, horrendous about him in the audio extras. Ghostly goings-on and magic, effectively,bring about plot reversals in an audio that's ridiculous but inexplicably engaging. The innuendo in today's title is straight from Magrs. 3/5 Talmars
Adric would have made The Whispering Forest, from 2010, more interesting. Another sale audio, this, but one I heard, in part, on BBC radio in my earliest days working up here. Steve Cole's Who novels from the early Noughties ( Vanishing Point, Ten Little Aliens) are virtually unreadable, I think, although his new series books are vastly improved.
This is, therefore, also a dry, rather grim story, the middle of a trilogy that saw Janet Fielding's Tegan return as a regular. It's very derivative, too, of Face of Evil and Full Circle- hence why Adric would have been an intriguing POV. A crashed hospital ship has spawned a tribe obsessed with hygiene and cleanliness and the Tardis crew become embroiled in their internecine strife. (Channelling the prose of Eric Saward here). It's a well-developed sci-fi world, if a pretty humourless one. 3/5 Talmars
Beyond Who, I'm also reading comics by Kelly Thompson and I'll sample her version of Captain Marvel before I see the film next week- just a little late for International Women's Day. Still planning to blog about Mike Grell and maybe Superman and New Super-Man, by the way!
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