Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Big Finish - Scavenger

Scavenger is release number 184 and it's written by William Gallagher and directed by Nicholas Briggs.


Thursday 28 May 2071: the day the Anglo-Indian Salvage 2 rocket launches. Its mission: to clean up space; to remove from Earth’s orbit over a century’s worth of man-made junk, and the Doctor and Flip are there to watch. However they are soon separated with Flip floating about in a spacesuit while the Doctor is down on Earth trying to persuade mission control to let him save the day.

This was recorded back in June 2013 and goodness knows how long before that it was commissioned and written. So it is just an unfortunate coincidence that the set up seems quite similar to the Sandra Bullock movie Gravity. There's a similar chain reaction of destroyed satellites and a couple of astronauts floating in space having to use their wits to save themselves.

I've been struggling so far with this Sixth and Flip trilogy, neither Antidote to Oblivion or The Brood of Erys really grabbed me. This is better than either of those but not by much. The story works a bit better and Flip is less annoying than normal, but I think I need a bit of a Colin Baker break. I do love him and his grumpy Doctor but his stories seem a bit dull at the moment. And I had a slight problem with the way he pronounced one character's names. It's an unusual Indian name which most of the cast manage perfectly easily but each time the Doctor tries it sounds like Baker is taking a bit of a run at it. It's just a little thing but it stood out and bothered me.

Another problem was once the nature of Scavenger's host was revealed it was fairly obvious how this was going to end and I don't usually see these things coming. Best of the trilogy but only 3 out of 5 space helmets and bring on Peter Davison please.

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