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Post by theotherjosh on Apr 18, 2019 17:56:54 GMT
Which characters do you like the least and what could Big Finish do to change your mind?
Before I started listening to Big Finish, I didn't much care for Sixie. His television run was not the program's finest era, but Big Finish allowed the character to mature into what Colin always knew he could become.
I didn't like Peri until I listened to ...Ish. I didn't like Mel until Red and the Wrong Doctors. I didn't come around to Tegan until well until 2018, with the recent crop of excellent Fifth Doctor stories.
I barely had any opinion on Kamelion at all because I considered him more of a punchline than a companion. In my group of Who-watching friends the appropriate response to his name was to snicker and move on. And yet I find myself liking and caring about him after the three excellent stories in which he was featured.
Do you have any characters you feel that were rehabilitated by Big Finish? Are there any you feel that didn't have a chance to reach their potential in their televised appearances? Is there anyone you really hate, but you feel that you could grow to like if they were done right?
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Post by Digi on Apr 18, 2019 18:14:58 GMT
I'm cautiously optimistic, once the Jones family comes to Big Finish, that Martha's mum can be rehabilitated. I thought she was a dreadful character on TV, but I think there's a lot of room to make her decent if they were to do a story set during The Year That Never Was.
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Post by antartiks on Apr 18, 2019 18:24:06 GMT
Well, Big Finish has made Rose Tyler more tolerable to me, which is a bloody miracle given how much I loathe her.
I don't know if there are many more characters they could rehabilitate in my eyes? Amy Pond maybe? Never liked her even though I don't think I hate her as much as I hate Clara.
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Post by themeddlingmonk on Apr 18, 2019 18:42:40 GMT
Adric. I absolutely despised him until I heard the Fifth Doctor Boxset. Now I quite like him.
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Post by mark687 on Apr 18, 2019 21:48:02 GMT
Mel definitely Mel!
Turlough's been made more interesting, and recently the dynamic of Tegen and Kamelion worked surprisingly well.
Regards
mark687
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Post by barnabaslives on Apr 18, 2019 23:28:08 GMT
Relative to Big Finish, I'm not sure I feel like anyone had the chance to realize their full potential in the TV series.
I don't quite think I like any characters better because of Big Finish and I don't think I dislike any, but I certainly do think that many have been given better stories on audio.
Klein I think I still like least of any companion and I'm not sure what they do about that, just more stories where she isn't getting into trouble maybe?
I think Big Finish has lots of room to improve on the quality of stories for Amy and Clara, or the quality of their characterization. I'm almost still tempted to think I don't like the characters because of some of things that happened in the TV series. Things with Clara especially seemed to get a bit silly.
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Post by number13 on Apr 19, 2019 1:12:17 GMT
Agree with Mark - Mel !! I used to joke that Seven had two TV Companions - Ace and 'Mace' (Most Annoying Companion Ever.) Mel annoyed me in so many ways in S24, not least because she was supposed to be super-intelligent but ran around screaming and getting into trouble worse than any Companion from the 60s. And I thought she could outscream Victoria without hardly needing to draw breath; earplug time... Then I heard very good things (from Timelord007 I think) about BF Mel and bought 'The Wrong Doctors'... and instantly bought the other two in the trilogy. What a great Companion - clever, brave, quiet  , a whiz with computers and as I later discovered in 'The One Doctor', a natural for comedy too. Mel? I wish she was in more stories!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 19, 2019 3:10:38 GMT
I'll jump on the Mel bandwagon as well, while there's still room.  She's marvellous in that grimmer run with Seven, but The Juggernauts was the story that opened my eyes to her character. There's no loss of optimism, but it's balanced with a tangible sense of realism. She falls in love, she puzzles out computerised dilemmas, she reacts badly when betrayed. A reaction that's not out of keeping with what we saw on television, but balanced with that additional dimension of character growth. Truthful, honest, but boring? Far from that. She and Sixie make an archetypal pair.
But I have to give it to Tegan. I think that's a large part of what entranced me about the run from Cobwebs to The Entropy Plague. Again, her character is all still there, but it lacks the sourness of her televised counterpart. It's a bit like what was done with the Sixth Doctor, in some respects; her criticality comes from a deep sense of empathy, rather than selfishness. Plus, Big Finish writers have used her character as a foil for Five's properness in a way that's rather playful. Stroppy vs. proper. Still tsun, but more dere (thank you to the three people who got that).
Just goes to show, all most characters need is an added dimension. I found it hard to warm to Clara because her characterisation tended to err towards the inconstant (particularly in Series 9). That and there was a transactional aspect to her partnership with Twelve, which felt distinctly off. Unhealthy. Particularly after she lost Danny as the Doctor knows she's deliberately putting herself in harm's way. Nevertheless, I was surprised by how much the arc for Series 8 clicked into place once you put Four Doctors in there. And Graham's grief was essentially what I wanted to see for Series 9, so it's not as if there isn't anything to explore with her character. There's a tonne.
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Post by relativetime on Apr 19, 2019 4:36:34 GMT
If there's still room on the Mel bandwagon, I'll join the fun. The Fires of Vulcan and The One Doctor completely changed my opinion of this companion.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 19, 2019 18:45:12 GMT
Relative to Big Finish, I'm not sure I feel like anyone had the chance to realize their full potential in the TV series. I don't quite think I like any characters better because of Big Finish and I don't think I dislike any, but I certainly do think that many have been given better stories on audio. Though the tv series will always be my first love, I agree completely with this, personally. For me Big Finish hasn't rehabilitated any characters at all. The characters themselves, and the performers performing them are largely the same as they always were. The key difference is that they have now been given more high quality stories to be in, with far more variety, and also given a lot more to do as an active participant of those stories. This in turn has reflected well on each character in question as it has the overall effect of lifting the bar somewhat in each respective era in certain areas where it arguably may have originally been lacking. So for me Big Finish hasn't rehabilitated characters, because the characters themselves have remained remarkably consistent, but have instead made a meal of drawing out more of the potential that already existed within these characters, and bringing that to the fore. |
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Post by muckypup on Apr 19, 2019 20:26:59 GMT
Never really liked 1st n 2nd doc.......but david Bradley’s take has been a real revelation ......
Now just need a second doc recast.........
Early adventures are great but I do like both 1st and 3rd doc recast adventures better.......
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Post by Deleted on Apr 20, 2019 1:08:32 GMT
Relative to Big Finish, I'm not sure I feel like anyone had the chance to realize their full potential in the TV series. I don't quite think I like any characters better because of Big Finish and I don't think I dislike any, but I certainly do think that many have been given better stories on audio. Though the tv series will always be my first love, I agree completely with this, personally. For me Big Finish hasn't rehabilitated any characters at all. The characters themselves, and the performers performing them are largely the same as they always were. The key difference is that they have now been given more high quality stories to be in, with far more variety, and also given a lot more to do as an active participant of those stories. This in turn has reflected well on each character in question as it has the overall effect of lifting the bar somewhat in each respective era in certain areas where it arguably may have originally been lacking. So for me Big Finish hasn't rehabilitated characters, because the characters themselves have remained remarkably consistent, but have instead made a meal of drawing out more of the potential that already existed within these characters, and bringing that to the fore. Yeah, it's that marvellous ability to ask characters not just who they are, but why they are as well. One of the sharpest knife-edges of an audio medium is its strong reliance on dialogue for everything. You can't have a character react solely in a smile, frown or quizzical tilt of the head. That dimension doesn't exist. How a character acts, how a character reacts, what they're thinking... None of it can be explained visually, so each character has to be verbally well-defined not only in their actions, but their intent as well. I think the television series never really lost that desire for character study, it's there as the fundamental makeup of the show from An Unearthly Child (who/why is Susan?). But on audio, what they say (or refuse to say) and what's on their mind defines their presence in the narrative. Without a voice, they don't exist. With a voice, we get all manner of exploration.
There've never been characters I've outright hated, particularly in Doctor Who. But there are characters who I think we didn't get to know quite as well as we could have on television. Although Mel is definitely one (I knew her only through Vervoids at the time), Audio!Peri's one of my favourite creations for that reason. We went from a character who admittedly wasn't given much to do at times on television to one of the strongest defined companions for Five/Six. She's mimicking 16th century royalty, formenting rebellion against a cybernetic killer from folklore, trying to mediate the Doctor and Erimem's arguments, attacking Transylvanian soldiers with a tentpole, and so on. There's a richness of experiences there that you can bundle up together and call a compelling character. And remarkably, that's unilateral across the board. There has consistently been something they can hook into and draw out to expand the "why".
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Post by Deleted on Apr 20, 2019 13:44:03 GMT
The only Doctor (on TV) that I really really disliked was the Sixth Doctor and Big Finish rehabilitated him as a character many moons ago, with some excellent well written stories and some great performances by Colin Baker. (Both of which were lacking in his TV era, in my opinion!)
As I grew up I grew out of a lot of the companions on the TV but the ones that I did find annoying have all found a new life in Big Finish Doctor Who adventures, so I can listen to stories now and find characters with a bit of depth to their personality which on TV it wasn't always possible to develop... although I would probably have left Kamelion in the closet to save him having the misfortune of constantly being possessed!
Of course, not everything needs to be redeemed... we don't want Big Finish to go and rehabilite the Dalek Supreme in to a nice well mannered mutant [in a travel machine] that loves cute little kittens do we? So Big Finish need to let some bad things remain in the world of Doctor Who... and the Dalek Supreme needs to be evil all of the time!
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Post by sherlock on Apr 20, 2019 13:52:14 GMT
Adric in Big Finish’s hands is actually likeable. That is some improvement.
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Post by glutamodo on Apr 21, 2019 7:18:08 GMT
I'm glad I was insulated from "fandom" in my day. I never disliked Adric, Tegan, and was rather chuffed by Ol' Sixie. Okay, I didn't connect much with Mel, but that was tied up in the transition of colin getting the undeserved axe. I never cared much for Seven at the time and having Mel along didn't make it any better. BF has given all of the above excellent things to do (once the actors decided they wanted to give it a shot), and they do them well.
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Post by number13 on Apr 21, 2019 11:28:10 GMT
The only Doctor (on TV) that I really really disliked was the Sixth Doctor and Big Finish rehabilitated him as a character many moons ago, with some excellent well written stories and some great performances by Colin Baker. (Both of which were lacking in his TV era, in my opinion!) I liked TV Sixie when he was given a big stage which suited his big character - facing off against the Valeyard for example - and CB also did the quiet moments really well, like the death of his old friend Azmael or the moment in 'Trial' when he asks the Master 'is Peri dead?', sounding so vulnerable for a moment.
But I don't think the writers always got his character right, the brash, arrogant exterior with the hearts of gold was the hardest of all the classic Doctors to realise and for plots imo his time coincided with the writing low-point of 26 seasons (always excepting season 24 as beyond all comparison!) I like 'The Two Doctors' very much and enjoy 'Timelash' for the OTT fun of it all, but every other season (not 24!) has at least one hand-on-hearts 'Classic' and I'd be hard pushed to find one in Sixie's run.
But as you say, BF have given him heaps of great stories and Colin Baker's my favourite audio Doctor.
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, a whiz with computers and as I later discovered in 'The One Doctor', a natural for comedy too.
She's marvellous in that grimmer run with Seven, but The Juggernauts was the story that opened my eyes to her character. There's no loss of optimism, but it's balanced with a tangible sense of realism. She falls in love, she puzzles out computerised dilemmas, she reacts badly when betrayed. A reaction that's not out of keeping with what we saw on television, but balanced with that additional dimension of character growth. Truthful, honest, but boring? Far from that. She and Sixie make an archetypal pair.
