Cream Horns and Were-Owls

Exams are almost over and the new timetable starts on Monday. I've been under the weather for the last three weeks with diverticulitis- what a drag it is, getting old. I've started Pulitzer Prize winner The Overstory by Richard Powers, which is the most mind-expanding novel I've read in a long time. Meanwhile, the following have been played on my walk into work:

Dalek creator Terry Nation's subsequent BBC series Blake's Seven is a cult favourite of course but post-apocalyptic seventies drama Survivors ( and its re-imagined Noughties successor) don't seem as well-remembered.

I first read Nation's novelisation of the first 1975 series some two years after the show had ended. In the last week, I've been listening to Carolyn Seymour's reading for Big Finish. Seymour played the gamine leader Abby Grant on tv until she was written out after having issues with the producer. As a reader, she has the same kind of cool, aloof voice as Jean Marsh. The audiobook is curiously Americanised, with its references to sidewalks and gasoline.

The novel diverges from the tv series around the end of episode 3, skipping the two Jack Ronder stories and resumes with episode six and the introduction of Abby's romantic interest, aristo Jimmy Garland. Then, the novel diverges again : crippled Vic is never discovered alive and the innocent Barney is not introduced, avoiding the whole rape- and- execution storyline of episode 9, "Law and Order" ( the injustice of which made a huge impact on me as a kid).

The farming toil in the remainder of the novel is grinding and a bit dreary. And, in a final divergence from the original tv series, the tragically ironic fate of Abby Grant is blunt and brutal. The uncertain future of the hungry community, relocating in France, is a miserable note on which to conclude. (3/5 Talmars)

Survivors can be seen as the ancestor of tv post-apocalyptic dramas such as CBS's Jericho or the UK's The Last Train, back in 1999. Of course, the BBC  re-imagined Survivors with a more diverse cast.in 2008, and a  second and final series was screened in 2010. Four years later, Big Finish expanded and continued the saga of the Seventies series and there are now seven box-sets.

Meanwhile, the most release in the continuing adventures of Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor precedes the Time War strand and reveals more about the Time Lords' apex predator, in Ravenous 3. 
In the first episode, Deeptime Frontier,  a human scientist on a Time Lord research scientist plays a dangerous game with her employers-cum-captors. This is a Base Under Siege /zombie movie, in effect. I hadn't picked up before on the way the Ravenous embody the Evil Clown meme. I liked the way a regenerating Time Lord became female but maintained a Welsh accent.

Companion Piece is a team-up for River Song, Charley Pollard, Bliss from the Time War series ( before she meets the Doctor) and Helen and Liv. They are all imprisoned by the Nine, a Time Lord kleptomaniac and they're saved by a very early companion from beyond the grave. Spoilers! I suppose it satirises completists and collectors like me.

There are cameos from Jamie. Jo, Leela and Romana II. There's also a tantalising appearance by Nerys Hughes as Margaret, a Companion we haven't actually met yet. I had to go back to try and figure out who the voice actor was and where I might've missed her.

In LEGEND, the Brothers Grimm are pursued by an alien celebrity academic and the Tardis crew are joined by the Nine's future self, the Eleven. I was reminded of the BBC EDA Grimm Reality but the duplication of ideas is an inevitable result of such a proliferation in BF's output, I suppose.

The fourth and final episode The Odd Against pitted the Eleven and the Doctor against a religious order called the Ix. This was one of those fun "In Plain Sight" mysteries which the listener works out just as the characters do.

This was quite and enjoyable set. I wonder if it will be resolved with the regeneration of the Eleven into the Twelve? The last series- if it is the last- with its bevy of Masters,  is out in October. ( 4/5 Talmars)

Paul Magrs writes again for the AudioGo range with The Winged Coven. This isn't a sequel to last year's The Thing from the Sea- so the Cagliostro subplot is unresolved- but it's another outing for Mrs. Wibbsey. Magrs's Fourth Doctor inhabits the world of Tom Baker's imagination. Like Scratchman, elderly spinsters and brassy floozies clash in a welter of  florid prose, Wayne Hemingway kitsch and Seventies tv horror. It's the audio equivalent of Creme de Menthe. ( 2/5 Talmars).

Yet again, I ask: why are there no audiobooks for Jodie Whittaker's Thirteenth Doctor? Although she shared a Judoon photo( above ) in the media this week, I feel that the most ground-breaking Doctor de nos jours is being criminally overlooked.

Finally, on the audio front I also listened to the box set of  Cyberman I and II. This is an attractively packaged item that ,while if not quite as epic as Dalek Empire, was quite engaging- and includes some of the same cast.
It expands on the Orion/ Android war from 2001's Sword of Orion (eighteen years ago!)  and is a story of spying, betrayal, paranoia, eugenics and sacrifice. It utilises most if not all of the Cyber-voices from the Sixties and while the Cyber-spy in deep cover was comically easy to spot, I enjoyed its space opera derring-do. ( 5/5 Talmars)

Coming soon: Catwoman, Mera, and the Super-Sons
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