I was going to post after work yesterday but a junkie was too distracting, shouting about Bruce Lee in the library- quite a contrast to the stately residence of Angus and Zara this morning.
Last Saurday, I was preoccupied with meetings about my mortgage; I was thinking of moving house again but I'm loath to lose what has become my comics room, cluttered and chaotic though it is. Today, though, once again, here are my thoughts on the Big Finish audios from the world of Doctor Who, to which I've been listening as I walk back and forth from work.
Emissary of the Daleks is a script by 80s fan writer Andrew Smith and is inspired by the plenipotentiaries of antiquity. This is the second release in a series of three, the first for Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant in five years. This surprised me because I have vivid recollections of listening to The Widow's Assassin and Masters of Earth in Elgin and on the bus to Inverness. It seems like mere months ago. Sadly, Colin Baker is beginning to sound distinctly older than tv's Sixie but the actors speak enthusiastically about Smith's scripts. I suspect this is the kind of adventure BF fans and/or detractors of Dr. Jodie yearn for. Yet it's as bland and slight as any of the weakest entries in Series Eleven.
Of course the gruff-but-friendly ex-soldier is baiting a trap. Of course the emissary sacrifices herself to atone for her collaboration. As if the "Vitanium" mines weren't corny enough, one episode ends with a cave-in only to be resolved with "Phew! are you all right?!/Yes, fine." An exchange worthy of the Flash Gordon serials of the author's and my childhood Xmases. While I doin't think it was quite as dismal as last year's Hour of the Cybermen: (
https://somefantasticplace-dougie.blogspot.com/2018/08/daughter-of-time.html), the only real entertainment I had was mishearing "Gordus" as "Gorgeous". 1.5/5 Tamars
I was much more enthusiastic for the combo of Companion and Doctor in The Further Adventures of Lucie Miller. This is a box set reuniting McGann's Eighth Doctor with Sheridan Smith's Northern Ladette for the first time since 2011. There's a poignancy knowing Blackpool's transtemporal adventuress is doomed further down the line but it's great to hear her back in the Tardis with the ponce in the cravat.
Nicholas Briggs makes use of Jo Grant's memo recorder from 1973 in The Dalek Trap for Lucie's monologuing. The scenario here is not dissimilar to Capaldi's World Enough and Time as a sleeper ship orbits a black hole. While the play explores dementia and identity loss, it may also have the dubious honour be the first DW audio where a character exclaims "Shit". It's clearly not Tea-Time in 1977 any more.
The Revolution Game was my favourite in this set, somewhat to my surprise. Alice Cavender melds a corporate society exploiting insect people with the spectacle of roller derby. I found this a charming piece of vintage 2000 AD world-building.
House on the Edge of Chaos by Eddie Robson wrong-footed me. I thought it might be a two-parter but there's an abrupt ending to this cosmic parody of Upstairs Downstairs. It was a bit too close to the legendary Chimes of Midnight for comfort, also.
Island of the Fendahl ties back into the first play cleverly. If Image of the Fendahl was Quatermass and the Pit , then this outing for the frilly, killer caterpillars from the Dawn of Time is The Wicker Man. Alan Barnes serves up Folk Horror in an homage to Edward Woodward's flaming outing to Galloway and to Horror Channel perennial, Island of Terror.
Despite the over-familiarity of some elements, I'd award this set 4/5 chuffin' Talmars.
Perhaps temporal machinations can still save Lucie Bleedin' Miller. They are employed to smooth out continuity wrinkles in War Master: Rage of the Time Lords, the penultimate box set for Derek Jacob's mellifluous- but- malignant Master. Again, there are four episodes on four discs, written alternately by Matt Fitton and David Llewellyn.
In The Survivor, the Master revives his clerical guise as Reverend Magister to exploit the faith of a 1940s Land Girl in a dark parody of Clark Kent's early life in Smallville, incorporating a flavour elements of the Crucible.
The Coney Island Chameleon is a picaresque story of the Master's pursuit of fairground folk in 1890s America with a twist ending. Jacobi's US accent isn't the most convincing and at first, I couldn't tell the eponymous alien from the protagonist of the first disc.
In The Missing Link, we begin to realise why the Master has been collecting individuals with special abilities in a tie-in to the Diary of River Song episode Concealed Weapon. The experiments in a deep time medical space station are a trap for the Eight Doctor, who ends up on the operating table for Darkness and Light.
Here, the Master creates a living super-weapon for the Time War in the form of the Rage with the aid of assistants who are a reference to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Of course, a memory bomb is used on Eight since the Tenth Doctor doesn't recall the War Master when he next encounters "Professor Yana" in Utopia. This kind of bait and switch does rob the audio team-ups of their power and significance however. 4/5 Tamars because the set has no lasting impact for either Time Lord.
I have Big Finish's re-imagining of Space: 1999 and the latest box set for River lined up for the end of the month. I also recently bought the new DC Ink YA graphic novel about Raven from the Titans and the reissue of Silver Surfer: Parable by Moebius. That's all potential material for posts in the weeks to come!
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