MR 010: 5DA-Winter for the Adept-Andrew Cartmel

yep...cold audio ...not that the title gave anything away.I do enjoy an audio with just Nyssa and Peter am not sure Nyssa would work with any other Doctor as well as she does with Peter and this is pre 

Winter for the Adept isn't great, and I dont think the music helps which I've always found quite intrusive.

The performances aren't bad at all, and a real positive is the God-fearing Scottish head teacher. To say she is sexually frustrated to the point of insanity isn't far off the mark. She probably sleeps in front of the fridge with the door open to drive out the warmth.

I always bracket this one with The Land of the Dead, probably due to the naff front covers, both are meandering and a bit wishy-washy but I prefer 'Land' for comfort listening if nothing else.

It isn’t perfect but I did enjoy it I get that Nyssa was a slightly more tetchy Nyssa than we are used to but hey Sarah can play that aspect too....one thing I did love as I was listening in the dark this time was the squelchy transformation of the spillages towards the end it was quite an unsettling creepy effect and really worked in my imagination.
I have played it a few Times over the years and I will again and given that it was among the earliest releases I forgive the cover 😂🤪

I'm fond of Winter for the Adept as it one of the first seven BF audios I listened too. Nyssa is a strangely petulant in it, although her predicament at the beginning would justify that! I love Sally Faulkener as Miss Tremayne - someone who is right and yet someone to despise at the same time. The music is lovely too. It's only failing is it's 'too small a cast' with too many reveals; like I say Miss Tremayne is the only one to come out of it spotless!

This is perhaps BFs 1st miss-fire Release.

For obvious reasons the Writers clearly writing for 7th and Ace. Nyssa's in a outright strop and 5th's withholding info and drugging Young Women with "Tea" left and center.

Plot wise its a case of "don't forget to add your Alien" but then it doesn't add to the plot anyway. The plot would work just as well if Sandoz and Maupassant were members of a cult or organization that want to abuse to trios power.

Its also strangely mellow at Cliffhanger points.

I will say though the Piano worked for me particularly at the opening and close of the story

Oh its also the 1st instance of an Extended scene/Outtake at very end after the Promos for other stories. An extension of the "Shooting Star" exchange. Davison starts of very sincere then ends it very silly.


Overall its a

3/5


Regards

mark687

Always one of my Xmas Listen List. Fun to hear Londo Mollari with a different Voice

Really shocked to see this is MR 10. How have I not listened to this until now? I usually try to order my listening from oldest-to-newest....

Ah well.

Anyway:

This was a really fun story, overall. Perhaps a bit closer to the generic side of things than I'd prefer, but for being generic it's very well executed--scenes have energy and proceed at a nice clip, balancing the unraveling mystery and humor fairly well throughout. The framing device was also pretty fun, if a tad tonally discordant: the elder Allison recounting events has a pretty melancholy tone, whereas the story being related is far from sad, being more of a comedy/adventure thing. The two just... do not mesh.

Speaking of, it's the comedy that really bumps this one up to a 4/5 for me. The scene with the seance was especially fun. As was the implication at the end that both Allison and her pet ghost traveled along with the Doctor for a brief while. I didn't leave the story with the expectation that we'd ever see them again, but I'd still like to. The idea of an invisible ghost as a companion seems pretty interesting.

Quote of the story: "What do you mean, only theoretically?"

Moving on... anyone spend far too much time thinking, "gee, Peril sounds an awfully lot like Charlie." I really ought to have looked it up, because it kept distracting me through the whole story. (And yes, Peril is indeed voiced by India Fisher).

I also kept thinking of Babylon 5, because that one guy's accent felt so similar to Londo's... and the French teacher's accent so similar to Adria's. Once again, distracting me the whole way through. (And once again, yup, he was indeed voiced by the inimitable Peter Jurasik.)

Not a whole lot more to say beyond that. Though, really, it does need to be acknowledged that "spillager" is a deeply silly term. And the explanation was also quite silly--it being a portmanteau of, "spiller," and, "pillager." Makes me wonder if the writer was aware that, "spillage," is already a word.

And also made me want to see, "Villager," used as a portmanteau of, "villain," and, "pillager."

Last thing to add--a minor issue, perhaps even less significant back when the Monthly range was less than a year old--was how predictable the villains were. The elderly religious zealot is a baddie? Shocking. The middle-aged man who seduced a teenager? Whoever could've guessedSo. And the latter character--Sandoz?--felt pretty weird overall because the script never really treated his relationship with Allison for the creepy thing it was.

So: overall a pretty by-the-numbers plot buoyed by some solid humor, nice pacing, and delicious fanservice from certain beloved actors. Not necessarily a story I'd recommend, but certainly one I'd be happy to listen to again someday.

I think your right, I did get them switched. IIRC the script used Peril's name quite a bit (or maybe it just stuck out more) but not as much with Allison.

As for the creep factor, really the only one who calls it out is the headmistress... who is also written as a crazy person, so the condemnation feels rather toothless. There's not much in the script to indicate that it's a significantly bad thing--it's basically a shrug and a "what can ya' do?" at best, or a middle-aged male writer who desperately wants to believe middle-aged men hooking up with teenage girls is an acceptable thing--a depressingly common trope. And I'm kinda leaning toward the latter since it's implied that the other (even younger) girl is attracted to the Doctor.

Like I get that the Doctor might not be one to comment, but there were plenty of other characters who might've said something, not least of all Nyssa.

But I don't want to blow it out of proportion. It's an annoyance, but a minor issue. And I may be a bit sensitive to it because I listened to this story immediately on the heels of a LS that was extremely misogynistic.