Big Finish - Winter for the Adept

Big Finish release 10 from July 2000 - Winter for the Adept, written by Andrew Cartmel and directed by Gary Russell. Starring Peter Davison and Sarah Sutton, with an early Big Finish appearance from India Fisher.

My flurry of Big Finish reviews continue as I go back to the first stories I bought from them. I think I have had at least two different computers since the one I first downloaded this story on to, but fortunately the new Big Finish site makes it very easy to download all stories purchased in the past. It is a model of digital distribution that other pay for content sites could learn from. Once you have bought your story it remains in your account from then on, so you can download it to new devices as you acquire them.

This was another CD that Brian from British Invaders recommended to me because he knows I like a good ghost story. Somehow Nyssa arrives by herself at a remote school high in the Alps and she is soon caught up in an investigation into a Poltergeist, something that her very logical mind rejects as impossible. Fortunately the Fifth Doctor is not too far behind and on hand to help out when things get rather dangerous.

I must be getting rather spoilt by the high standard of Big Finish dramas lately because this was not quite as good as I remembered it. I was bothered by the accents that two of the supporting actors were using which kept taking me out from the story. Also the Doctor doesn't seem to be acting in a very rational fashion here, particularly when he keeps arranging seances, which seems out of character for him. We're used to him spouting scientific sounding techno-babble but when he starts talking about hauntings, seances and psychic ability it seems a bit strange to me.

Apart from the accents the rest of the cast are fine. India Fisher is good as one of the schoolgirls at the centre of the Poltergeist activity. I presume it was her work here that got her the role as Charley Pollard who becomes a companion to the Eighth Doctor in Big Finish 16 - Storm Warning. And the writer was Andrew Cartmel, he of the masterplan that never got a chance to happen because the television show was cancelled in 1989. Although he did get to supervise the lost stories series for Big Finish.

I think if he had rated this story the first time I listened to it I would have given it 4 stars. However in comparison with some of the stuff I have been listening to recently it is going to get downgraded to 3 out of 5 spillage detectors. But Big Finish and their digital delivery gets 6 out of 5!

I have just ordered another 12 Big Finish releases so plenty more reviews coming soon.

Big Finish - The Spectre of Lanyon Moor

The ninth title in the Big Finish monthly range was The Spectre of Lanyon Moor Released in 2000, written and directed by Nicholas Pegg, and starring Colin Baker, Maggie Stables and Nicholas Courtney.

This was one of the first Big Finish stories I ever bought, I think it was on special offer at the time and Brian from British Invaders recommended it to me as a spooky story with the Sixth Doctor and the Brigadier. I have gone back and listened to it again as part of my look back at some earlier Big Finish releases.

The Doctor and Evelyn Smythe show up at an archaeological dig in Cornwall and, as ever, all is not what it seems. There are strange sightings on the moor, mysterious goings on at the Manor house, and somebody is trying to get hold of a missing and very powerful artefact.

Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart has come out of semi-retirement to represent UNIT at the dig. The Brig never met the Sixth Doctor on television so it is nice to have them encounter each other here. I doesn't take the Brigadier long to recognise the Doctor and soon they are working together just like the old days. Nicholas Courtney was a terrific presence throughout the years of classic Doctor Who. A talented actor and, by all accounts, a lovely person. If there was one person from the television show I wish I could have met it would be Mr Courtney. Sadly he is no longer with us and after the Wedding of River Song we know he is no longer a part of the Who-niverse, which is a sad thought.

Courtney and Baker are on fine form here, as is Maggie Stables as Evelyn Smythe. She gets a job to do which suits her background as a historian, and, inevitably, she gets into trouble but is able to get out of it without the Doctor's help. The rest of the cast are also very good. I have always been a fan of James Bolam and it was great to hear him, and his wife Susan Jameson, in this story.

My only criticism is of the decision to give us an opening scene that tells us what the secret of Lanyon Moor is right at the start. It is unusual position for us to know more about the threat than the Doctor does, but that was just a story telling decision and apart from working out which of the various characters is the villain there are not too many surprises in this adventure. The sound design is as effective as ever, things go bump, strange creatures make strange noises, and large bits of scentific equipment whizz and bang in a suitable fashion.

It's all rather good but perhaps didn't stand up as well as I remembered it. I am going to give it a solid 3.5 out of 5 focus amplifiers rating. My trawl through the back catalogue will continue with Winter for the Adept.

Big Finish - The Sirens of Time

This is the first ever Big Finish monthly release - The Sirens of Time, written and directed by Nicholas Briggs, and starring Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy.

I have gone right back to the beginnings of Big Finish after reading a review by Mike from the TimeVault podcast on The Colour for Monsters is Green blog. I was curious to see what Big Finish was like when it first started in 1999. A lot of the people involved had been producing high quality audio dramas based in the Doctor Who universe so they already knew what they were doing when the BBC gave them a licence to produce official stories. And they certainly hit the ground running with this production.

As the cover picture suggests this is a multi doctor story with incarnations five, six and seven all facing an individual challenge before uniting in the final act to overcome the villain. The Doctors are flying solo without companions, Tegan and Turlough are mentioned but are conveniently locked in the Tardis and not heard from. Of the three actors Peter Davison and Colin Baker seem to drop straight back into their roles with ease. Only Sylvester McCoy seemed to me to be searching for his character in the opening episode. Certainly he has found it in all the other Big Finish stories I have listened to, so it did not take him long to pick it up again. The rest of the cast are all very good indeed and Mark Gatiss does a brilliant accent as the German U-boat captain that is so good I didn't realise it was him until I looked at the cast list.

I assumed that this early Big Finish might be lacking some of the production values that we have come to expect from them but it is all terrific. Right from the start they seem to have mastered the sound effects, music and general recording quality. I listened to this as a download from the Big Finish site and was it was great that all the individual chapters had the appropriate track names on them. I presume that data was not on the original CD pressings in 1999 so maybe they have gone back and added them since. Some of the recent CD releases have been a bit variable in track naming but that is just nerdy nit-picking on my part.

The script is great and I enjoyed the episodic nature of the story. Having read the TimeVault review I knew there was a twist coming but still had fun trying to guess what was going on. I know Mike had problems with one of the actor's performance in the first episode but it did not bother me so much. It reminded me of some of the terrible monster performances in the television show in a rather charming fashion. All in all I am tremendously impressed with the high standard set by Big Finish in this first release. It's going to get 3.5 out of 5 Tardis keys.

I'm not planning to work my way through the back catalogue like Mike is. I can't afford to for one reason. However, I am going to be listening to one or two older stories and reviewing them here in between the regular monthly releases.

Big Finish - Jubilee

Big Finish release 40 - Jubilee by Robert Shearman, and directed by Shearman and Nicholas Briggs. Colin Baker plays the sixth Doctor and Maggie Stables is Evelyn Smythe.

This is diving into Big Finish's back catalogue again. The latest issue of Doctor Who magazine features an article about the episode Dalek from the first season of the new Doctor Who. The episode was loosely adapted by Shearman himself from this Big Finish story. I am quite interested in episodes of the television show that have been adapted from other formats. I have read the Paul Cornell novel that went on to become the Tenth Doctor episodes Human Nature and Family of Blood, and enjoyed both versions and the differences between them. And the episode Blink was based on a short story by Steven Moffat which first appeared in the 2006 Doctor Who annual.

In Jubilee the Doctor and Evelyn have somehow appeared in a parallel time stream where the English empire is celebrating the anniversary of their victory over the Daleks 100 years ago. The only element common to this story and to the TV episode it became is the idea of the single Dalek held prisoner and tortured by its captors. Evelyn Smythe forms a sort of relationship with the creature which obviously influenced what happened with Rose on television.

This is my first encounter with the Big Finish companion Evelyn, and I was quite impressed. I like the idea of an older companion who can give as good as she gets from the somewhat abrupt Sixth Doctor. Her scenes with the Dalek are very good and, as this is a four part story, she gets more time in the cell than Rose does, so the depth of the relationship she forms with one of the Doctor's implacable enemies is more convincing. I shall certainly be seeking out more Evelyn stories.

The rest of the cast are mostly fine and Nicholas Briggs does an absolutely splendid job with the Dalek voices, foreshadowing what he would go on to when Doctor Who returned to television two years after this story was released. I was slightly bothered by the accent that Martin Jarvis chose for his performance as the English President. Normally Jarvis is a fantastic voice actor so it was strange that he was the weakest part of this production for me.

However, this is another great Big Finish story. It bears almost no resemblance to the television episode it became and is almost more interesting as a result. This is getting another strong 4 out of 5 Dalek manipulator arms. Next up might be some more Evelyn.

James Bond - Casino Royale

While I am working my way through the Superman films, all the Alien movies and the latest Big Finish releases I have set myself another challenge. Last month I went to a book talk by the historian Ben Macintyre about his most recent book Double Cross. I was intrigued to learn that he had written a biography of Ian Fleming and James Bond. I bought it and it was a fascinating read which has prompted me to go back and look at the original novels and to try and read them in the order they were published. So here goes with the original Bond novel from 1953.

The plot is well known. Bond is sent to beat the villain Le Chiffre at Baccarat in the eponymous Casino. I don't think it is too much of a spoiler to say that Bond wins the card game but things don't go entirely according to plan from then on.

The strange thing is how little Bond actually does in this first book. Apart from the card game, he is involved in one brief scuffle at the Casino and he drives and then crashes his Bentley. Otherwise he is a mostly passive participant in the events which happen to him or to those around him. He isn't the punching, shooting man of action that he becomes in the films.

However, all the well known facets of Bond's lifestyle are filled in. His clothes are described in beautiful detail. He goes on about drink a lot, and invents the famous Vodka martini. He orders expensive food with great precision and then asks the head waiter if he approves of the choices in a combination of snobbery and wishing to impress. As Macintyre points out in his book these meals must have been instantly attractive to Fleming's audience in post war austerity Britain. Some foods were still rationed until 1954, Bond's menu could only be dreamed about by the majority of his readers.

And, of course, there are Bond's views about women which are also spelt out in some detail and are really quite reprehensible, even for the time. All in all James Bond comes across as an unpleasant character. We might admire his actions and nerve, but we probably wouldn't choose to be in a room with him. Especially with his 60 cigarettes a day habit. This is certainly not the James Bond from the films. It is slightly difficult to see what set the public's imagination alight but maybe it was all those fabulous meals.

One final point of note. Bond has a few minutes between winning his card game and taking Vesper Lynd out to dinner, in which he has to hide the cheque in his hotel room. The way he does so, which defeats both the villains and his accomplice Mathis, is a fantastic little bit of spy-craft which I have never seen used in any of the films. Very clever indeed.

The Bond checklist for this book includes: one villain with a medical condition or deformity, one beautiful girl, one torture scene and one sporting or gambling encounter with the bad guy. Next up is Live and Let Die.

Big Finish - The Butcher of Brisbane

Back to the main monthly releases and this is number 161 The Butcher of Brisbane by Marc Platt, directed by Ken Bentley. Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton and Mark Strickson all return as the Tardis crew and Angus Wright plays Magnus Greel.

Let me get my confession out of the way first. As the co-host of a podcast all about British science-fiction television it is rather shameful to admit that I have never seen The Talons of Weng-Chiang. It is reputed to be quite possibly the best Fourth Doctor serial ever and one of the best Doctor Who stories of all time. And yet I still have not got round to watching it. Maybe that puts me in a unique position to review this story which is a sort of prequel to Weng-Chiang with a rather complicated time structure. This is the Fifth Doctor meeting a man who he first encountered in his Fourth incarnation. However it is a younger Greel who has yet to acquire the time machine which he will use to travel back from the 51st century to Victorian London for the encounter depicted in Weng-Chiang. So the writer has to be careful about how much time Greel has with the Doctor himself in order to not interfere with continuity.

Marc Platt solves this problem by making full use of the Doctor's three companions. The role of a companion has varied over the years. Some have been required to do the action stuff for the Doctor such as Ian, Steven, Jamie and Leela in classic Who and Captain Jack, Micky and Rory in new Who. Other companions are needed to ask the Doctor questions so that he can explain to them and us what is going on. Examples include, well just about all of them apart from Liz Shaw, Romana and K-9. The one standard for all companions is that they must get separated from the Doctor and get into some form of trouble. The neat trick that Platt pulls off in this story is to explore the concept of time travel and have the companions separated by time rather than space. It is an idea that has been explored in recent Doctor Who television stories, in particular with Amy Pond and her dilemmas in The Eleventh Hour and The Girl who Waited. The result is a very interesting story which has Nyssa and Turlough embroiled in political intrigues and espionage.

The Doctor himself has a back-seat role in this one. It's almost like one of the Doctor-light episodes that new Who does once a season. As ever the Big Finish production values are top class and the whole thing cracks along at an enjoyable pace. I particularly liked the music by Fool Circle which reminded me of some of the incidental pieces used in the BBC TV version of The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

This maintains the recent high standard of Big Finish stories that I have been listening to. It gets 4 out of 5 Time Cabinets. Now I get a bit of a break before Protect and Survive. Time to catch up on some of the shows I am supposed to be watching for British Invaders.

Predatory Instincts

My plan was to watch all of the Alien movies before setting off to see Prometheus. Some family business has meant that I haven't managed to see Ridley Scott's new film but I did watch Alien vs Predator and Aliens vs Predator: Requiem.

 

These are two terrible films. The first one is just about watch-able and the lead female character is pretty good, but AVP Requiem is truly awful. Every possible action and horror film cliché is used, some of them several times. Characters wander off on their own, "bad" people get punished for their character flaws, while the good guys have some unresolved business which will lead to a neat pay-off at the end of the film. Heroes and villains spout terrible action film nonsense and both movies are devoid of any horror or tense moments.

The second film is slightly interesting as an exercise in film making. It starts out as a standard "teens under threat" slasher movie. Then about half way through the production team appear to have had a discussion about how good Aliens was and decided to remake it with their cardboard characters. Except without any of the wit, verve and slowly building tension that James Cameron added to the Alien franchise.

At least the monsters are mostly of the man in a suit variety as opposed to terrible, lightweight CGI sprites. Unfortunately that does lead to some odd moments when the tall and slender actors in the suits look rather ungainly and lumbering instead of the fast Aliens or powerful Predators they are playing. This could have been fixed with clever editing but even that is a disappointment.

Really, these two films are best avoided. Stick to the original Alien movies. Let us hope that Prometheus does not disappoint although early reports are not good.