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Post by Deleted on Dec 21, 2016 22:33:28 GMT
Well! That might be my favourite Early Adventure yet. Previously, it was Domain of the Voord. With the exception of The Isos Network, I love what these stories have done with their returning monsters. There is a thin vein of humour here, but Dan Starkey isn't playing anyone at all like Strax - these Sontarans are more like Styre in their way of going about things - and Steven really gets put through the mill here. Simon Guerrier is such a good writer - I liked his tiny asides to previous stories he has written. We don't seem to have heard from him for a while. Along with Graceless just around the corner, I'm hopeful we'll hear a lot more soon.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 22, 2016 4:10:51 GMT
That was an amazing tour de force. Everyone and everything has been used extremely well by Simon Guerrier, from the Doctor to the first appearance of the Sontarans (outside of a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo in The Empire of Glass) and boy are the latter a serious threat. The asteroid location and Space Security Service's mission feels like they were plucked straight out of TV Century 21, the kind of trials and traumas that the humans experience really fits into the ruthlessness of that particular "season". I got a bit sad towards the end with the lead into "Volcano" actually, I know that we'll have more adventures from the Doctor, Steven and Sara (surely we must?), but there's a horrible sense of foreboding as the Daleks prep for their first test of the Time Destructor. It's all about to come crashing down...
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Post by dastari on Feb 9, 2017 0:00:33 GMT
Jean marsh sounds really well... actually she sounds about 20... audio really is stunning I noticed this as well, and it's strange because she's sounded so old and tired in the last few releases. I wonder if this one might have been recorded a long time ago and is just now getting released. The ending though leaves me a bit curious about future One/Steven/Sara releases. Will they just take place before this? Haven't listened to the interviews yet, so perhaps this is addressed. I'm actually really nervous about that ending. It makes me think that they know that Marsh isn't going to do any more of these, so they wanted to create a definite link back to The Daleks Master Plan, which is a shame honestly. I'd have preferred if Home Truths were the very last Sara story before The Daleks Master Plan just so that the House Sara could have all of her adventures in her memory except for the end DMP. Now we know that there's at least one other adventure that she won't have any knowledge of. Through four stories alone, Simon Guerrier has managed to prise open The Daleks' Master Plan and make a bold new era for the First Doctor he can call his very own. Isn't it five stories? Home Truths, The Drowned World, The Guardian of the Solar System, The Anachronauts, and now this. I was kind of surprised by this review. What about the torture scenes in this seemed so unique and awful for the series? I mean, on television in the 60's, they probably wouldn't have done something like this, but it's no different than similar torture scenes in some of the 70's Who stories. Just some electrocutey sounds and some grunting and yelling. One thing that I found surprising by the comments is the lack of discussion of the music. I mean, Big Finish is almost always great with sounds and music, but the score for this is particularly good. The way that the Sontaran imposing, repetitive theme is interwoven with the eerie and disturbing music for the asteroid is just beautiful. It was one of the highlights of the piece for me. Like everyone else I was blown away by Marsh and Purves. Purves is always amazing, but he's blessed with a voice that hasn't changed much in fifty years. Marsh turned in one of her best performances to date, which is great, since I wasn't impressed with her at all in An Ordinary Life. The story itself was good. As others have said, the Sontarans come off far stronger here than they usually do. It always annoys me to hear about the indestructibility of Sontarans only to find that there are dozens of ways to get around it. Here, they're treated as an unbeatable foe. I mean, they drop hundreds of feet into magma and keep coming! There's also some nice characterization for Steven and Sara. Sara's come a long way with the Doctor and Steven, but given a chance to slip back into battle with some fellow SSS officers and it all melts away as she falls naturally back into type. That's some great foreshadowing of what we all know is to come. My one gripe is my usual one that Guerrier seems to treat all of time and space external to Earth as if it's one big place where everything happens pretty much all at once. We're expected to believe that Sara, an agent from the year 4000 charged with protecting the Earth has no idea what a Sontaran looks like with its helmet off? Seriously? After all the centuries that humanity would have fought the Sontarans at that point? And the Sontarans act as if they idea of military officers moving to a civilian life is unheard of despite the fact that humans aren't even unique in that respect and Sontarans have been fighting humans for centuries at this point (the presence of SSS officers means that it's somewhere after the fall of the Adjudicators, so it's at least the mid-late 4th millennium). I wasn't a huge fan of the Doctor not even being aware of the Sontarans, but that's just as bad as his not recognizing the Daleks even though we discover late that there's a whole history of ancient Gallifreyans and Daleks, so at least it fits in with the era. I still would have preferred that he were aware of the Sontarans and just had never personally met one. I found how much he expressed his ignorance to be a bit over-the-top for Hartnell's Doctor who liked to pretend that he knew everything even when he didn't, but at least that's not a continuity mixup per se just a quibble. Otherwise it was a pretty excellent story. This ranks up there with The Bounty of Ceres and The Ravelli Conspiracy as the best in the range. Here's hoping for a better success rate with the next round of Hartnell EA's. I post a few other thoughts here: Review: Doctor Who The Early Adventures - The Sontarans
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Post by Deleted on Feb 9, 2017 0:14:49 GMT
Isn't it five stories? Home Truths, The Drowned World, The Guardian of the Solar System, The Anachronauts, and now this. To be fair, at that point I don't think I'd actually listened to The Sontarans yet. I was kind of surprised by this review. What about the torture scenes in this seemed so unique and awful for the series? I mean, on television in the 60's, they probably wouldn't have done something like this, but it's no different than similar torture scenes in some of the 70's Who stories. Just some electrocutey sounds and some grunting and yelling. Oh, I think that there would have been a pan away to the Sontarans and flickering light. I think it's more likely that we'd hear it rather than see it, which could arguably have been so much worse with Bill Hartnell's reaction to Sara.
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Post by Audio Watchdog on Feb 10, 2017 0:22:00 GMT
I can hardly wait to hear this.
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Post by nottenst on Sept 20, 2017 22:27:49 GMT
My oh my that was a wonderful release I really like the ending cliffhanger lead in to Episode 8 of The Daleks' Master Plan. Felt good and proper Just finished it. I enjoyed it quite a lot. It made me find where I have The Daleks' Master Plan audio CDs. It really put me in the mood to hear it next. Added Sept. 21: I tweeted that I listened to it, tagging Simon Guerrier. He liked the tweet and I tweeted to him that I was going to listed to The Daleks' Master Plan. He wrote back "Good. I love DMP. You might have guessed"
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Post by shallacatop on Oct 24, 2017 20:13:49 GMT
Another great and seemingly final instalment from this terrific TARDIS team. The Sontarans are used very effectively in this, more in the vein of Styre, with some rather grim torture scenes and their grip of humanity. And a very good use of the Doctor to boot, something which I don’t think the Early Adventures always does.
The Daleks’ Master Plan has gone from an epic to something so much more; its own season. And a lot of that is down to Simon Guerrier, who penned five top drawer stories for the Doctor, Steven and Sara. This is coming from someone who isn’t normally a fan of trying to cram gaps into existing stories, but I make an exception for this!
Events are closing in, and the Doctor and co. go back into the fight...
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