Main Range 122: The Angel of Scutari (spoilers)

Week 6 of the Hex listen through

notthebigfinishforum.freeforums.net/thread/4463/oh-god-hex-listen

In terms of quality and variety, this is a fantastic trilogy. From surreal to straight up action to a reflective pure historical. What should be a break for Hex turns into his worst nightmare yet as his luck with historical warzones remains bad. He desperately just wants to help people to recover, but he's battling terrible hygiene conditions, the limited medical tools of the time and two men out to get him because of their beef with the Doctor, who has his own role in events that he needs to make sure play out. You've got to wonder if Hex is indeed hexxed (he's Big Finish's Prince of Sorrows).

The weak link I think is Ace. For most of the story she's sidelined, in the care of the lovestruck historical guest star (unlike the headlining historical guest star, who the other companion is lovestruck with). Paul Sutton likes to get romances into his stories, and Leo Tolstoy in love with Ace ticks the box here. It's not bad or anything, but it's the only storyline Ace has any significance in beyond the beginning of the White TARDIS saga, which would take a few years to be developed and pay off.

That cliffhanger. It wouldn't be resolved for fifteen months (this was released June 2009, Project: Destiny in 2010). This involves an interesting marketing thing I'll bring up next week. It also rams home that history isn't like a museum exhibit, and there are dangers beyond potentially changing it. Hex was bruised by Cromwell's march across Ireland, but those proved skin deep. He was conditioned in No Man's Land, but the mental damage healed. Barty Kitchen shot him with a musket ball, hardly a clean, accurate or merciful weapon (one way they complication damage is introducing foreign matter like fabric into the wound). It will be a long time before Hex is out of agony, physical and mental.

Rounds out what is one of the best trilogies BF have done in fine style. Possibly THE best? Certainly the one that really hooked me on BF

It was ok, I'm not to fond of the slower paced historical type stories but it concludes this trilogy well & delivers a cracking twist to set up the next story.

3/5.

Musket balls introduce foreign matter like cloth into the entry wound, and very hard to aim properly precisely because a musket ball isn't as streamlined as a modern bullet. Nanites may not have realised cloth isn't mean to be in there (unless Hex spent his last hour in Scutari shirtless).

Also, Hex did ask for St Garts in his own time, not a poncy space hospital, and he's in no state to argue nor would arguing help his condition. Easier to take the TARDIS to St Garts and take things from there.

Not to mention the TARDIS has undergone something of a change, and with the Doctor and Ace not thinking rationally, someone else doing the treatment is preferable.

The only time I can remember medicine or medical tools in the TARDIS in a Hex story are the bruise cream and the foreceps in The Settling and the laser scalpel in this story. Bruise cream won't help a musket ball, Hex isn't pregnant and the laser scalpel would make things worse.

The TARDIS's personnel defences have always been a bit shoddy, to be honest, even in her early days. If it hadn't been for Brett Vyon, Steven would have been dead from blood poisoning not long after the start of The Daleks' Master Plan. I have a very nasty suspicion that a lot of their medical supplies -- the ones needed for the humans, at least -- end up being used in situations just like this and they run out (maybe they haven't restocked since LIVE 34?).

Come to think of it, if the radiation counter had been working properly way back in The Daleks, they could have avoided a lot of strife to begin with... The TARDIS seems always in desperate need of a service.

Thanks. From the pen of Wolfie (a pen that can be visited at feeding times during the hours of 12 and 4 on a weekday).

Gets even better with the comics. Apparently, during the Sixth Doctor's tenure (closely prior to Trial), the State of Grace only typically functions while the TARDIS is in flight. Whether or not that's true is open to the individual story. Like the isomorphic locks.

Maybe the TARDIS nanites are like being immunised? Everything in the database is covered... as documented on Gallifrey at her departure way back when. Her viral protection systems are hopelessly out-of-date. That and the Viyran viruses were always a bit of an exception anyway, more like hyper-plagues than the common cold. If not, well, it could be like how the TARDIS is virtually indestructible. You know, in much the same way as a meteor strike doesn't destroy the Earth. The planet itself is fine, but everything on it is gonna have a very rough time.

Could also be the product of restrictive programming too. In an emergency, the medical nanites may exist to stabilise Gallifreyans for regeneration, so when the TARDIS detects a human (roughly the same biology, the "deformities" could be inflicted damage), she prepares them in much the same way -- comatose, virtually brain dead -- as her protocols dictate.

Ok so while I’ve heard of Florence Nightingale and the charge of the lightbrigade I don’t know as much as I probably should so I’m sure a lot of the characters in this would have had a deeper meaning if I knew.
And having listened to later stuff I know Hex does get seriously shot

But oh boy we started off with a big mystery haven’t see jumping time lines and all that but then of course it’s 7...
A chopped up Tardis now wow that’s definitely a mystery.
If I had worked with someone for a month during a war especially that type of war I don’t think I’d care if they had friends who might be a traitors especially if they hadn’t left my side in that time.

But typical Hex dropping himself in it like that

Oh damn the WHITE TARDIS !!!!

Very enjoyable if a little muddled and definitely not the story you thing it is going in
Know I do feel it’s a lot like No Mans Land