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Post by TimPendragon on Nov 10, 2018 7:25:08 GMT
How do you prefer listening to the missing serials for the First and Second Doctors? The narrated soundtracks released by BBC, or the audiobook versions of the Target novelisations?
Normally, I'd tend to go for the audiobooks, but yesterday, I tried to listen to The Highlanders, and it just wasn't working. It might have been different if Frazer had read it instead of Anneke, but it just felt very clumsy (not her fault, I've loved her readings of other things). So I paused it and started listening to the soundtrack release, which just seems to flow better.
Which way of experiencing the missing stories do you prefer? I can imagine some soundtracks work better than others, but sometimes an audiobook is just a richer experience because of all the extra information and description it can present. Having heard The Abominable Snowman audiobook, and having seen bits of the telesnap recon, I really don't think that soundtrack would work as well as The Highlanders' is.
So do you have a preference of one over the other? And any recommendations in either category?
I have a whole slew of Sara Kingdom Chronicles to listen to, but I want to hear The Daleks' Master Plan first. So which format would you go for with that one? Same question applies to The Myth Makers, Marco Polo, The Massacre and all the others.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 10, 2018 8:31:46 GMT
Ooh, tricky. I'd go for Marco Polo's soundtrack for the performances. The Myth Makers and The Massacre both have really illustrative novelisations. The latter is markedly different from what turned up on television, having been based on Lucarotti's original scripts. The Daleks' Master Plan, though... They're both equally good. I'd recommend the Loose Cannon reconstruction, but without any visuals, the audiobook narrated by Peter Purves and Jean Marsh might just edge it out. It's very animated -- danger, panic, it's all there. Have a listen to a sample from Audible and see what you think. For me, I'd say it tends to vary depending on the author. I love the novellas for The Crusaders and The Ark, primarily because of what they can offer outside of the serial itself, but Fury from the Deep's soundtrack is just so creepy in places. I find the stories that tended to be written more like stageplays or were very dialogue-heavy tend to fare a bit better as a soundtrack.
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Post by TimPendragon on Nov 10, 2018 9:22:01 GMT
Ooh, tricky. I'd go for Marco Polo's soundtrack for the performances. The Myth Makers and The Massacre both have really illustrative novelisations. The latter is markedly different from what turned up on television, having been based on Lucarotti's original scripts. The Daleks' Master Plan, though... They're both equally good. I'd recommend the Loose Cannon reconstruction, but without any visuals, the audiobook narrated by Peter Purves and Jean Marsh might just edge it out. It's very animated -- danger, panic, it's all there. Have a listen to a sample from Audible and see what you think. For me, I'd say it tends to vary depending on the author. I love the novellas for The Crusaders and The Ark, primarily because of what they can offer outside of the serial itself, but Fury from the Deep's soundtrack is just so creepy in places. I find the stories that tended to be written more like stageplays or were very dialogue-heavy tend to fare a bit better as a soundtrack.
Thanks for the insight, that's very helpful!
I just finished The Highlanders, and it was excellent. Now more than ever, I wish it had survived, if only just to see Patrick's performance. Shifting back and forth between so many disguises, accents and fake identities, he must've been loving it!
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Post by Deleted on Nov 10, 2018 11:02:30 GMT
I prefer the BBC soundtracks for those missing/incomplete First and Second Doctor stories. It's great to listen to those episodes that I will never see and hear the original characters talking and sound effects. They're very atmospheric. The Target novelisations are very good too, but they often have differences to the TV episodes so I'd always recommend people hear the original episodes first. The BBC soundtracks give a real feel of what Doctor Who was like in the 1960's, which for me the audiobooks with one narrator don't.
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Post by number13 on Nov 10, 2018 11:38:03 GMT
I love listening to both and I have to say that Anneke Wills' performance of 'The Highlanders' audiobook is a joy imo!
As Wolfie said, some of the novels for these 'lost' stories do things quite differently from the broadcast show. Sometimes this was down to a difference of opinion in production (like 'The Massacre'), sometimes I think the novel authors felt freed by the fact the story was missing and just went for it in print. 'The Myth Makers' is top of that list for me, totally brilliant. Donald Cotton did it again with 'The Gunfighters' and both those audiobooks and 'The Massacre' are excellent imo.
'Fury From The Deep' is an interesting one - the novel is close to the TV story for the most part but a very different experience. I love it and David Troughton performs the audiobook superbly. Because it was a 'lost' story, the Target publishers allowed Victor Pemberton a much longer novel than the usual 160-ish pages (seven hours on six CDs!) and he used the opportunity so well with the literary 'sound-motifs' and sense of the environment he wove through it - the ‘bubbling’ white foam, the ‘hissing’ gas, the ‘squealing, wriggling’ seaweed clumps and the ‘thumping, pulsating heartbeat’ that heralds the monstrous weed-creature itself. And beyond the struggling people and the encroaching weed, he brilliantly evokes the wild, windswept east coast of England in the depths of winter; a landscape of frost, thin snow, biting air and the ‘cruel, unyielding sea’…
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Post by mark687 on Nov 10, 2018 12:00:49 GMT
Missing TV Soundtracks, never needed the Audiobook versions of the Targets cause I have all the books gifted to me as a kid.
As I think I've said Fury is my all time favourite Missing Soundtrack, the Novel of it is very good as well, but the Novels set me up for a fall with Pertwee Tv Eps, Day of the Daleks and Doomsday Weapon, really enjoyable Novels, TV Eps not so much.
Regards
mark687
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Post by Deleted on Nov 10, 2018 12:08:19 GMT
BBC Soundtracks for me. Audiobooks are great but depend very much on the reader (I couldn't get into The Gunfighters because of the reader, unfortunately - and Ghost Light presented a bit of a challenge also).
The release of the soundtracks has been sporadic. After those JN-T/Eric Saward produced audio cassettes segued by Tom Baker and company, I had a real thirst for discovering these lost stories, but it wasn't until the release of The Massacre many years later that the range continued in any form or fashion. There were rumours - possibly fan-wishful-thinking, I don't know - that all of the black and white stories would eventually be released on audio, but then the BBC decided to release later stories that were already available in other formats. I would still love Doctors 1 and 2 to be entirely represented in the same format. Watching their stories is a joy of course, but there are often practical reasons for wanting to listen to them with narration. Ridiculous I know, but my preference is for audio soundtracks above DVD reconstructions and animations.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 10, 2018 15:35:48 GMT
For myself, an opportunity to listen the soundtracks is always something special. That we can listen to often high quality remasters of lost stories/episodes of which are unseen since transmission and of which existed only as Target novelisations until the Telesnaps emerged fills in a very substantial void in the long term fans collective experience of the B/W serials.
Daleks Masterplan makes for a pretty dramatic listen, thanks to the narration, especially by Peter Purves, and Frazer Hines also does an excellent job of evocation of the visual aspects in a way that does not interrupt the flow of the episodes.
For Novelisation readings, I find these of interest as a more leisurely take on stories more familiar from watching on Video or DVD, as the narration throws new light on the additional descriptions provided by the likes of Terrance Dicks, Malcolm Hulke, Ian Marter and others.
For many of the Soundtracks though, I find that watching at least an episode apiece of the Loose Cannon reconstructions helps to get a flavour of the visuals prior to an Audio listen through. There was far more of visual interest in the missing episodes of Abominable Snowmen via Telesnaps than the surviving episode, in my opinion, at least.
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Post by constonks on Nov 10, 2018 19:52:14 GMT
There's a clear winner for me - 1) telesnaps never hold my attention the way narrated audio does* and 2) the only novelisation I've read is Remembrance of the Daleks. *BUT I did find myself half-watching the telesnaps and reading the chakoteya.net transcript while listening to The Abominable Snowmen the other day - I agree with your assumption, TimPendragon, it doesn't work super well on audio. I had to kept checking who was talking and was just not paying enough attention to the dialogue. And you're right on your other point, too - The Highlanders is a great listen.
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Post by agentten on Nov 10, 2018 20:49:09 GMT
It depends on the story whether I go for the soundtrack or the novel. I'd say I lean toward the soundtracks, though. Many of them are quite effectively done. Web of Fear comes to mind as one that I found particularly creepy when I listened to the soundtrack late one night. I have every soundtrack that's been released, but I tend to pick and chose a bit with the audio book novelizations of episodes, so perhaps that tells the story of my preference the most.
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Post by TimPendragon on Oct 5, 2022 5:43:34 GMT
Any more recommendations from the Target audiobooks released in the last few years?
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lidar2
Castellan
You know, now that you mention it, I actually do rather like Attack of the Cybermen ...
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Post by lidar2 on Oct 5, 2022 7:27:12 GMT
Any more recommendations from the Target audiobooks released in the last few years? Reign of Terror & Battlefield the highlights of this year so far
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