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Post by elkawho on Jan 1, 2019 17:11:23 GMT
I find it so odd to think that when Peter was doing this...he'd only been gone for a couple of years more than Eccleston has now. Makes me think "new WHo" is not the best moniker any more I've never liked New Who as a descriptor of the era from 2005 onward. I usually call it Modern Who as opposed to Classic Who, and still have a hard time deciding where McGann fits in as he is more of a bridge between the two rather than fitting in to either period.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 2, 2019 3:02:52 GMT
I find it so odd to think that when Peter was doing this...he'd only been gone for a couple of years more than Eccleston has now. Makes me think "new WHo" is not the best moniker any more I've never liked New Who as a descriptor of the era from 2005 onward. I usually call it Modern Who as opposed to Classic Who, and still have a hard time deciding where McGann fits in as he is more of a bridge between the two rather than fitting in to either period. I tend to think he's both...? In Big Finish terms, everything prior to The Girl Who Never Was is Classic Who, whereas Blood of the Daleks onward counts as Modern Who. It all gets fairly complex when comics and prose are thrown in, but the two brackets between one half and the other for me are The Gallifrey Chronicles and The Infinity Doctors. As a pair. One dealing with the restoration of Gallifrey, the other about Eight deciding to leave it again.
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Post by meanmrmustid on Jan 2, 2019 3:37:13 GMT
Hearing the Production story makes this go up a bit in my opinion its still an average story but in light of the turnaround time put very together well. Regards mark687 Is there a link to this?
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Post by Deleted on Jan 2, 2019 8:50:14 GMT
Production story is from the Book Big Finish Companion Volume 1
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Post by meanmrmustid on Jan 2, 2019 9:59:14 GMT
Production story is from the Book Big Finish Companion Volume 1 The original post mentioned was in Podcast Archive Review so thought was an audio link somewhere
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Post by mark687 on Jan 2, 2019 10:39:01 GMT
Hearing the Production story makes this go up a bit in my opinion its still an average story but in light of the turnaround time put very together well. Regards mark687 Is there a link to this? Now added to the Op
Regards
mark687
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Post by Deleted on Jan 5, 2019 21:17:04 GMT
Not wanting to create a new dedicated thread, but I gave Winter for the Adept a re-listen earlier in the week. I often get the two mixed up in terms of cover art and title/setting.
Any thoughts of Winter/Adept? I have always liked it. A nice feel of setting a location, isolated with a few individuals cut off, like 'The Shining' but in a cosy kind of eery way, just a kind of situation that JK Rowling sought in Harry Potter with the characters who did not have a home to go to over the holiday period.
I am also a sucker for any story with a supernatural element, even when it proves to be pseudo paranormal, with a Sci-fi explanation at the end (Cloisters of Terror for eg.). I also like the restricted setting and small cast, which allows all to be distinctive and for one to create a mental picture to sustain the listen. Too many characters and changes of scene can be to the detriment of many audio BF productions, where one can lose track and require a re-listen at the very least.
I am also intrigued at the fact that Andrew Cartmel scripted this, and that Nyssa has been noted as being uncharacteristically irritable and sharper with the Doctor than on screen. Was Andrew Cartmel visualising Ace and The Seventh Doctor when drafting this? Is this perhaps a reflection of his perception of the role of the companion perhaps?
Point is, I quite appreciate the less is more aspect of these earlier productions which do not aspire to be epic. It certainly allows Davisons more gentle Doctor space to interact coolly without his oft resorted to sense of exasperation or vocally expressed heightened urgency.
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Post by Kestrel on Jul 2, 2022 8:38:00 GMT
Now that I've got all the early MRs, it's time to go back and start listening to all the ones I missed! First up is Land of the Dead!
I can see why no one ever recommended it to me: it's not a bad story, by any means, but it's not really particularly notable, either, and the early MR is especially crowded with fantastic tales. But I can at least say that the opening scene here is one of my all-time favorites: just the howling of the wind for a few seconds and then, just barely, overlapping the wind you start to hear the TARDIS dematerializing. It's very a very simple, brief intro but is marvelously evocative. You really get a sense of the landscape--lonely and harsh--just through a few seconds of ambient audio. I love it. If any of y'all have t listened to this one in a while, I'd suggest Re listening just to the first 15-20 seconds or so. It's a very simple thing, but executed so well.
Quote of the story: "Oh, I'm afraid it's Earth again, Nyssa."
On the Really Embarrassingly Large List of Ill-Used Companions, Nyssa is very near the top, I think. She's one of the few nonhuman companions, but it just... never comes up. Think about what traveling with the Doctor must be like from her perspective: the guy just keeps taking them ti Earth. Again and again and again. It probably seems like some kind of weird fetish to her, right? It's bizarre. Certainly we can assume that ever civilized planet in the universe has a rich history to explore. Does the Doctor never even consider taking Nyssa to visit Traken's past?
Might do her a world of good, you know, considering.
Anyway, here we've got a fun monster--basically animated dinosaur skeletons--and a fun setting with a decent secondary cast. At first I was pleased to see two native characters that both avoided the usual cliches... the story even seemed to briefly flirt with themes of cultural appropriation. How very forward-thinking for the early-00s--I thought. And then one of them decided to transition into a mystical anti-science savage, so that wasn't great.
Ah well, guess I shouldn't be surprised, but it started with such potential.
Beyond that, it was... an interesting choice to date the alien creature to 260 million years ago. I'm kind of curious why (this is an additional 200 million years further back than the end of the Cretaceous) -- it's an obscenely, impossibly huge difference, and if it adds anything to the story, I'm not sure what. 60 million years is already an impossibly, unimaginably huge span of time!
And, technically, that placement means that these alien creatures are a good 20 million years older than the earliest dinosaurs--another impossible, unimaginable number.
Such are my thoughts. Overall I found Land of the Dead to be an enjoyable ride, but it definitely sits very squarely in the middle of the road (the platonic ideal of a 3/5). I can definitely see why it's been overlooked--it's neither good enough nor bad enough to be especially memorable.
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