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Post by Whovitt on May 16, 2018 15:15:56 GMT
The Shadow of London
This was a fun story, and I did enjoy it, but it felt very rushed. There were lots of different ideas in it but I felt none of them really got the time they deserved to be explored. I almost missed a couple of key moments as the story rushed straight on passed them with lingering to discuss the points; the points were made and then (basically) forgotten in favour of moving onto the next aspect of the story.
So, like I say, I enjoyed it, but it should have been longer in order to flesh out the story (and character motivations, which didn't get enough attention either).
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Post by iainmclaughlin on May 16, 2018 20:54:07 GMT
Well, that's tomorrow's listening taken care of. Woohoo! Sorted.
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Post by Whovitt on May 18, 2018 2:42:41 GMT
The Bad Penny
That was a lot of fun! A temporally complex story, but not too complex as to leave the listener confused. Keith Barron gave a wonderful performance as Tulip, and Tom and Louise sounded like they were having a ball too, which always elevates how good the final product is. So far, Series 7 has had a really strong run (and I'm highly doubtful that the two-part finale is going to let it down either!)
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Post by mark687 on May 18, 2018 19:10:45 GMT
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Post by iainmclaughlin on May 19, 2018 23:46:39 GMT
Hugely enjoyed listening to these. Tom's giving it full beans, successfully rolling the years back and Louise Jameson is alsways excellent. I shuld have rationed them to a story a week, but... I'm a weak man, I couldn't wait.
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Post by Whovitt on May 20, 2018 0:51:22 GMT
Kill the Doctor!/ The Age of SutekhA fantastic finale to a fantastic series! As with most of the Fourth Doctor Adventures two-disc stories, the first half is noticeably different to the second, but that tends to work in the story's favour. This one allowed for a nice dig at modern society and it's obsession with mobile devices in the first half and a second half to allow us all to bask in the magnificent performance of Gabriel Woolf as Sutekh. Some great guest performances in this one too, as well as our regulars on the top of their game (but who would expect anything less?). A great script from Guy Adams, who is on quite the winning streak of amazing stories! Now to wait for next year for the next lot of 4DAs
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Post by number13 on May 22, 2018 11:38:31 GMT
The Shadow of London A very era-authentic opening story of people who are not quite what they seem in a place that isn't quite as British as it looks, don't you know?! I liked the nod to 'The Android Invasion' and the double-bluff that was pulled on us. I guess we were mostly expecting alien copies, parallel worlds etc. (I certainly was), but it turns out the monsters behind it all are human and the 'shadow' is being created and cast by their foul regime. It's almost an historical deceiving us that it's science-fiction and very successfully too - and very appropriately, for a story of spies, counter-agents and deception. {Spoiler}Author Justin Richards successfully used a similar trick in another recent story but that time I worked it out - this time he fooled me completely! {Other Story Spoiler}'The Morton Legacy' was a pure historical neatly fooling us that it wasn't - one of the recent, excellent run of Second Doctor Early Adventures, all recommended. There's just the one science-fiction element and even the 'creature' turns out to be an 'augmented' human, too close to the possible truth for comfort - if they could have done it, no doubt the Nazis would have. I liked that Leela with her huntress' instincts did realise the truth when even the Doctor didn't - that the 'creature' was a person in fear and pain, and she tries to help. But sadly, he is beyond all help and the Doctor does what he has to do. As does 'Mr Hemmings'. In a war of survival, morality is being blurred on both sides, but far less on one than the other - and if the Doctor can't approve, he does understand.
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Post by TinDogPodcast on May 22, 2018 14:29:42 GMT
Review recorded...
Just need to edit.
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Post by number13 on May 23, 2018 9:01:49 GMT
The Bad Penny That was fun, a great story by Dan Starkey which makes full use of Time and the times - a complicated timey-wimey adventure which hops around in a way only the Doctor could hope to solve, and gets great value from revisiting "The Decade That Taste Forgot" (or the 1970s, as we called it at the time.) And it has Tom Baker and Louise Jameson still sounding as if it really is 1977 (I know there's a point where you can't improve on perfection but I'm sure they get better with every series!) in a story with plenty of jokes and 'Gothic' horror too with a Big Monster which wants to eat your Time.
Keith Barron (very impressive casting, and a brilliant performance of course) & Greg Haiste are excellent as the Tulips... and naturally, Dan Starkey plays the monsters (plus other cameos) in style.
I enjoy stories which put a capital 'Time' into Time Lord and make use of the Doctor's very special abilities. Stories like this one where he even talks to himself (literally) with previews and flashbacks (not necessarily in the right order) score even more highly and are always high on my list for a priority re-listen. This story is not only fun and exciting but manages to keep the alternative approach to Time remarkably clear and easy to follow compared with some of this type (I did say I was going to draw a diagram of one such story! - not required this time. ) But it's still sure to get a relisten soon because not only are there bound to be timey-wimey bits that make more sense the second time round, it's a treasure trove of 1970s memorabilia for those of us who were around at the time or are fans of 70s TV. (British TV's output was one of the best things about that decade imo, ITV as well as the Beeb.) 'I didn't get where I am today' without watching a lot of 70s TV along the way and I'd guess that was true for Dan Starkey too, judging by the number of fun nods and winks there are to some famous products of the decade*. At the 'Cross-Keys Hotel' the walls are genuinely wobbly, but that's Time distortion rather than 'daily soap' sets, on the top floor "the devil" seems to be rising, not just the damp and if ever an hotel was a faulty tower, this is it. (And if I'm not much mistaken, even the voice in which a character orders 'mo uuve!' is a nod to 'Porridge's Mr. McKay... ) {Literary Spoiler}And do we also have a solution to 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood'?? Edwin vanishes from Victorian London sure enough, but - thanks to the Doctor - he comes back!
* He mentions some of them in the interview tracks, which I've now heard. The interviews for this story were really good, fun and very informative.
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Post by Deleted on May 28, 2018 17:43:34 GMT
Halfway through this release. Loving it. Tom Baker seems to have an energy of a much younger man & everyone else seems to up their game when on one of his adventures.
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Post by Deleted on May 28, 2018 19:53:02 GMT
Halfway through this release. Loving it. Tom Baker seems to have an energy of a much younger man & everyone else seems to up their game when on one of his adventures. I finished this last night and all four stories are brilliant. Tom is 100% bang on The Doctor in these and I enjoyed them immensely. I'd give the set of four stories 10/10 no question.
How the f**k does Tom Baker still manage to put in performances like that at his age? You'd think his Fourth Doctor performances would be tailing off at this stage and the stories fading out, but they're getting better! Amazing.
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Post by Deleted on May 28, 2018 20:41:07 GMT
Halfway through this release. Loving it. Tom Baker seems to have an energy of a much younger man & everyone else seems to up their game when on one of his adventures. I finished this last night and all four stories are brilliant. Tom is 100% bang on The Doctor in these and I enjoyed them immensely. I'd give the set of four stories 10/10 no question.
How the f**k does Tom Baker still manage to put in performances like that at his age? You'd think his Fourth Doctor performances would be tailing off at this stage and the stories fading out, but they're getting better! Amazing. Agree 100%. We are so lucky that BF got Tom to do audio, along with Louise Jameson who is also brilliant. You would have thought no time had passed!
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Post by barnabaslives on May 28, 2018 22:06:13 GMT
I was going to try to only listen to one story from this set every month or so as with the last one, so as to not end up with no new 4th Doctor stories for a very looooooonnng time (or what will certainly seem like it with no new 4th Doctor stories), but I got off to a poor start by Listening-While-Distracted to the first story, which seems to have been a bad idea with a story closer to the length of a two-parter and what seemed to me like minimal use of music that might have helped draw my attention back to the story. I know, I must have been really distracted to lose track of a 4th Doctor story, but I thought about something else for a moment and suddenly the story was mostly over, and having missed what must have been a suspenseful build-up, ended up getting very little in the way of thrills upon meeting the monster. :-)
Thankfully things are well back on track with today's listen to The Bad Penny. Just the sort of story I love to hear! (Brought back wonderful memories of my first 4DA, The Darkness of Glass - an excellent and well-crafted adventure with lines in a couple of places that had me grinning ear-to-ear and laughing out loud, I was sold on the whole range right there). I'm sure The Bad Penny must be Dan Starkey's best yet for Big Finish, but I also think the audio is an outstanding effort in all respects. I'll certainly second all the comments here on the excellent performances, particularly our beloved - and outright uncanny - leads. You could have told me this was made before a Fifth Doctor had yet to even be conceived, and I'd never have guessed otherwise if I hadn't already known better. Bravo!!!
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Post by Audio Watchdog on Jun 3, 2018 22:43:10 GMT
Kill the Doctor!/ The Age of SutekhA fantastic finale to a fantastic series! As with most of the Fourth Doctor Adventures two-disc stories, the first half is noticeably different to the second, but that tends to work in the story's favour. This one allowed for a nice dig at modern society and it's obsession with mobile devices in the first half and a second half to allow us all to bask in the magnificent performance of Gabriel Woolf as Sutekh. Some great guest performances in this one too, as well as our regulars on the top of their game (but who would expect anything less?). A great script from Guy Adams, who is on quite the winning streak of amazing stories! Now to wait for next year for the next lot of 4DAs I don’t have a lot to add to that. This year’s run of stories was outstanding and they were capped off by this four parter. If not the best of the Fourth Doctor storiesa from Tom’s time with Big Finish, it is certainly in the top two or three. Hats off to everyone.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 2, 2018 0:57:56 GMT
Really enjoyed Shadow Of London. It had echoes of Brave New Town and The Android Invasion while remaining quite original. Appreciated The Doctor explaining time to Leela relative to when they met Jago And Litefoot. Loved Timothy Speyer as Fenshaw. I'd agree with the above...Tom sounds more energised in these than he did for the first few years. It's like BF have found audios he recorded 25 years ago!
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Post by Timelord007 on Jul 2, 2018 5:20:21 GMT
Tom Baker smashing these audios, his zest of energy & enthusiasm shines in these stories.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 2, 2018 13:18:15 GMT
Oh man....Tom doing the reverse of Sutekh's iconic speech for the cliffhanger in Age Of Sutekh was absolutely inspired. What a spinetingling moment.
I loved the realisation of the whole world of Kill The Doctor changing to become more Egyptian, with police becoming mummies etc. That's an incredibly evocative image.
I'd maybe like The Doctor to be more worried about Sutekh - he rarely seemed as doomed as he was in Pyramids - but that's a minor niggle since we know this isn't going to be their last meeting, given Benny and The Seventh Doctor's encounter with Sutekh.
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Post by Ela on Jul 5, 2018 15:33:32 GMT
Sounds like these stories have been good. (I skimmed the thread and avoided spoilers.) I need to get to them soon. So behind in my listening!
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Post by shallacatop on Sept 11, 2018 9:41:31 GMT
Shadows of London; there’s some good ideas in there, but like the previous two stories, it feels like they’re just abandoned and not given enough time. The Nazi reveal is great, but it comes out of nowhere, halfway through Part Two. I think it should have happened halfway through Part One and ran with that idea.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s the format that’s the issue? Feels like Part One is often wasted building up to a cliffhanger in a way we don’t get with the McGann, Hurt, Tennant audios.
Tom is on blistering form this season.
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Post by shallacatop on Sept 11, 2018 16:06:45 GMT
The Bad Penny is lightweight, fun, rattles along at a great pace and is timey wimey without being complicated. And Tom continues to be on good form, with material that matches!
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