Cliff Hanger Posted April 22, 2014 Share Posted April 22, 2014 So after working through the first New 8 season, I've gone back to buying a few of the $3 volumes, mostly 6th though this week I picked up one each for 5 (Spare Parts) and 7 (Master, though I'll likely hold off on listening to it until I've had a chance to read the original 7th Doc version of "Human Nature.") Holy Terror is FUCKING AWESOME. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted May 9, 2014 Author Share Posted May 9, 2014 For you Big Finish listeners, Paul Spragg passed away yestetday. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Hanger Posted May 9, 2014 Share Posted May 9, 2014 Oh shit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Control Posted May 17, 2014 Share Posted May 17, 2014 So what are some of the best Big Finish stories? I might have to give 'em a try. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Hanger Posted May 17, 2014 Share Posted May 17, 2014 If you only get one and want to keep it to the $3 pile, I would say Spare Parts (5th), Jubilee (6th) or an 8th. Chimes at Midnight is probably the best 8 from that bloc, but I donno how well it plays if you haven't heard Storm Warning, which is good but not remarkable. Maybe Invaders From Mars (written by Gatiss, has Simon Pegg) or Sword of Orion (a fun 80s style Cybermen story). Light at the End is 12 bucks, has all 5 surviving Doctors from the classic era, and I've heard it's very good but I haven't heard it yet. I also haven't heard much at all of 7th Doctor, and neither of the ones I have (Genocide Machine and Master) are what I'd start with. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cool arrow Posted May 18, 2014 Share Posted May 18, 2014 Light at the End is good. Well, I like it anyway. YMMV, of course. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Hanger Posted May 22, 2014 Share Posted May 22, 2014 Big Finish are doing a one-day sale on box sets: Dark Eyes I, UNIT Dominion, Love and War and a couple of Jago and Litefoot singles. I picked up DE, but I'm only through the first season of New Adventures; is the rest necessary, or is it only necessary to know what happens to Lucie at the end of the radio series (on which I've been spoiled)? Super irritated to be three hours' drive from Doctors 5-8 in Houston this weekend and not get to go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted May 23, 2014 Author Share Posted May 23, 2014 New Series in august 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Hanger Posted May 23, 2014 Share Posted May 23, 2014 Hope for a big party and early screening at Dragoncon like the one they did in 2011 (the last two years the show wasn't in season Labor Day weekend, but that year we got to see the new ep between the UK and US airings on a big screen with BBC blessings and Sylvester McCoy on hand.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Hanger Posted May 26, 2014 Share Posted May 26, 2014 Looking forward to listening to "The Maltese Penguin" (the second Frobisher story, written by Shearman of course) tomorrow at work. Currently trying to decide whether I can justify $55 for season two of New Eight this month or whether to just say fuck it, plow ahead through Dark Eyes and come back to the BBC show when I have more cash in pocket. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted May 26, 2014 Author Share Posted May 26, 2014 How do you know had reached mainstream recognition? There are (now?) Doctor Who porn parodies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raziel Posted May 27, 2014 Share Posted May 27, 2014 Rule 34 man. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheVileOne Posted May 28, 2014 Share Posted May 28, 2014 Filming at Aberthaw Beach Using the sonic screwdriver Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
muhammedboehm Posted May 28, 2014 Share Posted May 28, 2014 How do you know had reached mainstream recognition? There are (now?) Doctor Who porn parodies. With the actual companions right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Hanger Posted May 28, 2014 Share Posted May 28, 2014 Listened to the first Charlotte Pollard solo story today. Decent little space opera story about an operative trying to slip her leash, but honestly by the end of the Sixth Doctor stories she's evolved enough since her days with Eight that, along with the fact that they've moved away from anything associated with traditional Doctor Who (no races not exclusive to BF, etc., probably at least in part for legal reasons if they ever need to divorce her from continuity like Virgin did with Bernice for a while in the 90s), it doesn't always feel as familiar as it seems like it should. The Sixth Doctor stories are an absolute must, by the way; you'll be TOTALLY lost if you try to jump from "The Girl Who Wasn't There" or any other point that isn't "Blue Forgotten Planet." I can't really evaluate how a total BF newbie would come in; it feels like it would probably be easier for someone who's never "met" Charley than for someone who has but left off before BFP. The exposition felt like it covered most of the important stuff regarding her current relationships and tasks, but I already knew it all. All in all, it's okay. Glad I didn't wait til the price goes up on 5/31, though; $35 on MP3 is a little steep for the quantity provided (says the man who has been irrevocably spoiled by all the sales they ran from December to March, and has somehow managed to acquire the entire 8th Doctor Monthly Range run plus a half dozen others outside the $3 bin without paying over $5 for anything). It makes me fairly hesitant to jump on any of the other spinoffs, though, since a lot of those look very much like a character or two got created with the specific purpose of creating a tenuously-linked solo run. Charley at least had a good ten years worth of proper Doctor Who stories. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted May 29, 2014 Share Posted May 29, 2014 I listened to the first 6th and Charley story and liked it but didn't move on from there. You're saying I need to? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Hanger Posted May 29, 2014 Share Posted May 29, 2014 At the very least, get Patient Zero and BFP. The other four are enjoyable (and "Brotherhood of the Daleks" is maybe the most utterly insane Dalek story not written by RTD) but those two specifically set up Charley's post-Doctor status quo with the Viyrans. There's one in between those two, but it's relatively skippable. (Shame you missed out on the $5 sale the day the Charlotte box came out, that's when I picked them up. Did I post about that here? I forget.) I'll be listening to the rest of the episodes at work this week, so I'll mention if shit gets really good or goes off the rails heavily, and whether they fill in any more of the gaps for Charley's backstory. After that, much as I want to get New 8th season 2 I think I'm more likely to circle back and do more First 50 since they're so damned cheap; I've got about half the Sixes now but only two each from Five and Seven. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Hanger Posted May 29, 2014 Share Posted May 29, 2014 (Double-post so this will still show up if Matt looked at the prior one already) Actually, fuck that, no need to shell out money for decent-but-not-amazing stories. The minimally-spoilery version of Charley's general arc with the Sixth follows: So Charley takes some very dumb chances with time travel, having come to the conclusion that everything will turn out all right because she's met later Doctors. The Daleks figure out what's going on but fail to weaponize it, and she keeps telling unconvincing tales when the Doctor asks her to explain. The TARDIS, meanwhile, freaking hates her for obvious reasons, and manages to withdraw the companions' usual onboard immunity to disease. Charley gets something really nasty that was released from a giant space station designed to warehouse all the biological weapons in an entire galaxy (the Daleks destroyed it) and is taken into the care of the Viyrans, who were in charge of the station. They save her, but don't release her; the Doctor unknowingly leaves with a doppelganger while the Viyrans use her as their human face for interacting with people. Several generations of linear time later (with Charley spending much of it in suspended animation) the Sixth and Mila cross paths with the Viyrans again. The two "Charleys" come to blows, Mila ultimately sacrifices herself and the Doctor agrees to have his memories of Charley erased to protect the Web of Time so she'll be a stranger in two regenerations. EDITED: All edits are to add words and such that I left out in the first pass, because I was trying to figure out why my D key was typing Ns in Chrome but Ds in other windows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Hanger Posted June 3, 2014 Share Posted June 3, 2014 Finished Season 1 of Charlotte Pollard. Basically you get two space opera stories as bookends, with a horror story and a period piece in between, all tied together with the running theme of Charley trying to escape her "employment" as the Viyrans' organic liason. I'm still not entirely sold on the whole Viyran mythos introduced in the Sixth Doctor story "Patient Zero", and after "Blue Forgotten Planet" the way they go off the rails toward the end doesn't feel like a natural progression OR a cheat, it just feels like a thing that happens to raise the stakes. I enjoyed it well enough, particularly episode 3, "The Fall of the House of Pollard", but there's nothing about it to make it essential. And as before, the fact that they so carefully avoid mentioning the Doctor (beyond the vaguest, most lawyer-friendly fashion) or any races that appear outside the Viyran stories makes it feel like we're not just on the fringes anymore, but in a completely different universe. Catch it when it's on sale and you probably won't be disappointed, but I couldn't recommend paying $35 for it. Tomorrow I'll be listening to ep one of Dark Eyes; whether I continue through the serial or forcibly put on the brakes until I can afford the $200 or so to get the rest of the New Eight stories will depend on that first ep. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted June 3, 2014 Author Share Posted June 3, 2014 New Big Finish mag is a tribute to Paul Spragg. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Hanger Posted June 4, 2014 Share Posted June 4, 2014 So, um, today was pretty emphatically not the right day for me to listen to a story that starts with the Doctor so crushed and desperate for any sign of hope in the universe that he literally tries to get to the End of Time 'to see how it all works out', only to be waylaid to the trenches in France just in time to suck up some mustard gas. I think "Dark Eyes" is going back on the shelf for now and I'm going to listen to "Invaders from Mars" again instead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Hanger Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 My copy of the 8th Doc version of Shada (the Flash animated production minus the Flash) came yesterday. I remember when I was in high school and just discovering Who, when the VHS "the bits we still have, with Tom Baker storytelling what was never shot" VHS came out, reading a really savage review in Starlog. I never got round to it, or the novelization from a couple of years ago, because it just didn't feel right. I listened to the first 3 eps today and it's pretty fabulous; I don't know if I have the patience for circa 2003 Flash rips on Youtube, but part of me wants to seek it out just because it's clear that the audio wasn't "staged" to be heard without visuals. It still holds up very well, and feels more DNAish than, say, Pirate Planet (to the point that a couple of the gags don't really work with the Eighth, who is certainly loopy but often the 'wrong kind' of loopy for the joke to work). I really desperately need to read DIRK GENTLY'S HOLISTIC DETECTIVE AGENCY again after I listen to the second half tomorrow. The new opening segment is really fun, with the Doctor barging into President Romana's office and basically press-ganging her and K9 into joining him by bringing up that time they all went to Cambridge to see Professor Chronotis, then got locked outside space and time and forgot what they were planning to do when they were freed, so they did something else. It acknowledges the story's status as "lost" recycled, the fact that bits of it were used in Five Doctors, and provides a reason (kind of) for the Doctor to seek out a previous incarnation's traveling companions, something he hasn't really done before or since. It's also damned funny; I wonder who wrote it since I'm pretty sure it wasn't DNA. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ace Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 The new opening segment is really fun, with the Doctor barging into President Romana's office and basically press-ganging her and K9 into joining him by bringing up that time they all went to Cambridge to see Professor Chronotis, then got locked outside space and time and forgot what they were planning to do when they were freed, so they did something else. It acknowledges the story's status as "lost" recycled, the fact that bits of it were used in Five Doctors, and provides a reason (kind of) for the Doctor to seek out a previous incarnation's traveling companions, something he hasn't really done before or since. It's also damned funny; I wonder who wrote it since I'm pretty sure it wasn't DNA. Gary Russell wrote the prologue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliff Hanger Posted June 13, 2014 Share Posted June 13, 2014 Thanks. That's probably on the liner notes, but I can't read them without a magnifier, so I didn't look. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
odessasteps Posted July 4, 2014 Author Share Posted July 4, 2014 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0225wyr New teaser trailer 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now