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Post by Tim Bradley on Jan 15, 2021 20:57:31 GMT
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Post by nucleusofswarm on Jan 18, 2021 15:05:38 GMT
An excellent play, and one of the most creepy uses of the Cybermen I had heard in quite some time. I find Lidster a bit underrated among BF writers.
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Post by Kestrel on Jan 20, 2021 8:12:44 GMT
This is one of those stories that was recommended to me pretty heavily, but didn't wind up doing much for me. I enjoyed it plenty--Colin Baker is always a delight--but I don't know... it just never clicked. Part of it was possibly my general apathy w/r/t Cybermen (I can count on one hand the number of stories where they're used effectively as villains); part of it was Peri.
I think maybe I also expected it to be more ambitious than it was. I knew it connected to 'The Gathering' and 'The Harvest,' so I expected it to be more of a trilogy... or for there at least to be more connective tissue between the three stories.
So... perhaps it would benefit from another listen.
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Post by Kestrel on Apr 7, 2021 4:04:53 GMT
I gave it another listen. My opinion is not improved. Now that I've more experience with Peri on audio, I probably think much less of this story. Claudia Christian is really the only thing This Release has going for it. My initial reaction, posted elsewhere: Oh god, oh god, oh god. Again I wound up listening to another story again, and this time it's a really, really bad one. And to think I even said it might benefit from a second listen--I was so wrong! I had to give up at the halfway point, and I was only able to make it that far thanks to Susan freakin' Ivanova (Big Finish B5 when?). It's not technically the worst Big Finish story I've heard, but goddamn, it really pulls out all the stops on making Peri just the worst possible person. She's just so incredibly vile. It's bad enough seeing her treat the random people she meets with contempt, but to see her do the same to her own family? And no, the one scene--while very well directed--of her crying while eavesdropping(!) on her family and friends as they comment on her awful behavior does nothing to rectify that. I just don't get it. Big Finish has really done remarkable work rehabilitating so many other characters, Colin Baker's Doctor first and foremost, but they seem to be going in the exact opposite direction with Peri. Was she this bad in the TV show? I don't remember her being this bad with Davison, though admittedly I abandoned the show almost immediately after the 5th Doctor regenerated.... Minus the unprompted Dorney fanboying. All of that said, it was interesting how many similarities this story had to RTD's first season--specifically the fallout from a companion's departure--but the wiki says 2006, so I'm not sure whether not either was based on the other. Could just be a coincidence. The hidden-messages-in-recorded-video thing definitely predates Moffat's Blink, though. Anyway, while Peri is spectacularly awful here, I want to highlight one especially insipid moment. Imagine that this is your first Doctor Who audio. Or one of your first. Imagine this is your first introduction to the character of Perpugilliam (ulgh) "Peri" Brown. She's a(n ostensibly) normal human girl from 1980s Earth. She's traveling through space and time with an eccentric old man--an immortal magician--in a magic blue box. She's just arrived at a wondrous place: the ultimate historical archive, where every recorded event in human history has been carefully preserved. Millennia of human experience, achievement and tragedy--all there for Peru's immediate and casual access. This is what we call a character-defining moment.
What will Peri look up first? What most fascinates her as a person? What is she most curious about? Will she look up the life of a favorite author, to see what their legacy was? Or perhaps research an old family mystery that she remembers from childhood? Maybe she wants to know what Humankind's first contact with extra-terrestrial life was like? Or when the planet was unified? Or our first settlement on another world? Or how human language, society, culture or even biology changed and evolved through the centuries and millennia? What Peri decides to view will tell us exactly who she is. And it does. Peri wants to loom up the local news. The local TV news, from the same approximate date as when she was last on Earth. From which we can gather that Peri is a deeply self-centered and profoundly incurious person. Imagine being in her situation and doing the same. Would anyone here make the same choice? We are, none of us, fictional characters. These establishing moments do not exist in reality. We are not bound by the same rules and conventions. But I have full--total and absolute--confidence that all of us--every single person here--would make a much more interesting choice. And the above, my friends, is a long and more nuanced version of a reaction that was, initially, no more than a string of expletives I will not share here. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2021 6:24:39 GMT
I gave it another listen. My opinion is not improved. Now that I've more experience with Peri on audio, I probably think much less of this story. Claudia Christian is really the only thing This Release has going for it. My initial reaction, posted elsewhere: Oh god, oh god, oh god. Again I wound up listening to another story again, and this time it's a really, really bad one. And to think I even said it might benefit from a second listen--I was so wrong! I had to give up at the halfway point, and I was only able to make it that far thanks to Susan freakin' Ivanova (Big Finish B5 when?). It's not technically the worst Big Finish story I've heard, but goddamn, it really pulls out all the stops on making Peri just the worst possible person. She's just so incredibly vile. It's bad enough seeing her treat the random people she meets with contempt, but to see her do the same to her own family? And no, the one scene--while very well directed--of her crying while eavesdropping(!) on her family and friends as they comment on her awful behavior does nothing to rectify that. I just don't get it. Big Finish has really done remarkable work rehabilitating so many other characters, Colin Baker's Doctor first and foremost, but they seem to be going in the exact opposite direction with Peri. Was she this bad in the TV show? I don't remember her being this bad with Davison, though admittedly I abandoned the show almost immediately after the 5th Doctor regenerated.... Minus the unprompted Dorney fanboying. All of that said, it was interesting how many similarities this story had to RTD's first season--specifically the fallout from a companion's departure--but the wiki says 2006, so I'm not sure whether not either was based on the other. Could just be a coincidence. The hidden-messages-in-recorded-video thing definitely predates Moffat's Blink, though. Anyway, while Peri is spectacularly awful here, I want to highlight one especially insipid moment. Imagine that this is your first Doctor Who audio. Or one of your first. Imagine this is your first introduction to the character of Perpugilliam (ulgh) "Peri" Brown. She's a(n ostensibly) normal human girl from 1980s Earth. She's traveling through space and time with an eccentric old man--an immortal magician--in a magic blue box. She's just arrived at a wondrous place: the ultimate historical archive, where every recorded event in human history has been carefully preserved. Millennia of human experience, achievement and tragedy--all there for Peru's immediate and casual access. This is what we call a character-defining moment.
What will Peri look up first? What most fascinates her as a person? What is she most curious about? Will she look up the life of a favorite author, to see what their legacy was? Or perhaps research an old family mystery that she remembers from childhood? Maybe she wants to know what Humankind's first contact with extra-terrestrial life was like? Or when the planet was unified? Or our first settlement on another world? Or how human language, society, culture or even biology changed and evolved through the centuries and millennia? What Peri decides to view will tell us exactly who she is. And it does. Peri wants to loom up the local news. The local TV news, from the same approximate date as when she was last on Earth. From which we can gather that Peri is a deeply self-centered and profoundly incurious person. Imagine being in her situation and doing the same. Would anyone here make the same choice? We are, none of us, fictional characters. These establishing moments do not exist in reality. We are not bound by the same rules and conventions. But I have full--total and absolute--confidence that all of us--every single person here--would make a much more interesting choice. And the above, my friends, is a long and more nuanced version of a reaction that was, initially, no more than a string of expletives I will not share here. Honestly, materialising in the Gogglebox, I'd make the same decision as Peri. It's always interesting to see how your own time is regarded through historical eyes. Besides, if you wanted to visit a favourite author, research a family mystery, touch base on first contact or find out what united the Earth, you'd visit it in the TARDIS. You'd go there. Home seems like the perfect thing to examine from a historical database. As for being incurious, she's the only one among the grievers who actually honours Anthony Chambers's final words on the tape -- " Keep playing." She has to actually fight for it and makes a vital link between Chambers's death and the Cybermen as a result. |
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Post by Kestrel on Apr 7, 2021 8:33:27 GMT
Except she's very deliberately not going for the historical perspective, she's going for the contemporary perspective. Which makes it abundantly clear that she doesn't care one iota about the historical perspective--and her subsequent panic and insistence that they immediately investigate the situation also betrays her baffling ignorance of the most basic and fundamental reality of Time travel: that it involves traveling through time.
As for insisting that they listen to the rest of the tape, in defiance of her grieving mother and "best friend," I am unconvinced that speaks well of her character. Perhaps she only did so out of a desperate attempt to demonstrate the one function she is proficient at? Being the Doctor's sidekick in a TV adventure show. Or maybe, as the story indicates, she simply took his words literally--but had such a poor grasp of the possibility of metaphor that she was incapable of articulating this possibility to the others.
Im sure there's a story out there, somewhere, that depicts Peri as intelligent, kind, curious or capable. But it ain't this one.
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Post by relativetime on Apr 7, 2021 13:23:18 GMT
I love this story. It’s one of the stories that really made me a fan of the Six and Peri team after finding their relationship on TV to be a little too harsh. In fact, I think this story comes across as a major turning point in their friendship. It certainly changed the way I saw how Peri’s adventures with Six. I also especially like stories where we get a glimpse into the home lives of the Classic Who companions.
My only problem with this story is that I’ve always felt like its ending was way too open ended. Peri goes through some really traumatic stuff, especially at the end, and to me that’s always just begged to have an immediate follow-up. In fact, I think this story comes up far less than it should in other Six and Peri stories, unless I’m misremembering things. At the very least, I don’t feel like any Six and Peri story after this has ever once adequately explored Peri’s emotional state as a result of this story or how she might have changed or how her relationship with the Doctor is affected. It doesn’t sit well with me that this story happens and then they go back to traveling together as normal. Something HAD to happen in between. This story just leaves me desperate for some closure and while that’s a testament to the strength of its emotional storytelling, it also feels as if some of the most devastating scenes with Peri remain unseen.
I freely admit I could be missing a story that provides said closure, though. For all I know I’ve probably listened to it too and just forgot all about it!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2021 13:54:03 GMT
I love this story. It’s one of the stories that really made me a fan of the Six and Peri team after finding their relationship on TV to be a little too harsh. In fact, I think this story comes across as a major turning point in their friendship. It certainly changed the way I saw how Peri’s adventures with Six. I also especially like stories where we get a glimpse into the home lives of the Classic Who companions. My only problem with this story is that I’ve always felt like its ending was way too open ended. Peri goes through some really traumatic stuff, especially at the end, and to me that’s always just begged to have an immediate follow-up. In fact, I think this story comes up far less than it should in other Six and Peri stories, unless I’m misremembering things. At the very least, I don’t feel like any Six and Peri story after this has ever once adequately explored Peri’s emotional state as a result of this story or how she might have changed or how her relationship with the Doctor is affected. It doesn’t sit well with me that this story happens and then they go back to traveling together as normal. Something HAD to happen in between. This story just leaves me desperate for some closure and while that’s a testament to the strength of its emotional storytelling, it also feels as if some of the most devastating scenes with Peri remain unseen. I freely admit I could be missing a story that provides said closure, though. For all I know I’ve probably listened to it too and just forgot all about it! Ditto, honestly. It's the end of the Season 22 block for me. By the end, things cannot be as they were between the Doctor and Peri, and maybe that's okay. They've grown enough that things feel as though maybe they should change. And they do. If you'd like a follow-up, I can heartily recommend Memories of a Tyrant. The character development between the pair feels like a natural extension of the carnage from The Reaping and those opening scenes aboard the Memory Farm are probably Sixie at his sweetest. It makes a lovely capstone. ( *rummage* *rummage* *rummage* Ahh, thought I got a sense of deja vu from this... We did this story for the Cyber-marathon back last year, I had a few thoughts on it from then.) |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2021 14:43:54 GMT
Honestly i don’t see it that way at all i think this is a great story and a great turning point for Peri and Sixie. Yes she can be selfish and irrational and, well human. Its so human to act like that. Like roses reaction in the end of the world. Its silly but at the same time its easy to see the rationale as yes every companion travels to a time when their family and friends are dead but to them in their own mind they are still a trip back home.
I almost like to see this story as a tragedy. Its almost all avoidable, just little actions from all the cast cause this devastating string if events. Had he not taken the job, would he have been controlled? If Peri hadn’t looked it up would anyone else have died? Every character makes a little mistake and it leads to a truly upsetting listen but thats what makes it so good.
Im even fine not seeing the aftermath. Peri’s life has been plagued with people abusing and hurting her, with pain and sadness. Her best friend (the doctor) the man she has traveller with for months has just strangled her. But shes peri so she moves on and keeps going. Its what makes her such a great character, her resilience. The fact that the later adventures of six and peri are much kinder and a much warmer relationship - even on tv like in the mysterious planet - thats enough. This awful event happened and they started being nicer.
And i really love the idea of this being the “finale” to season 22, perfect mirroring with Attack and showing how far they have came.
Great stuff
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Post by Star Platinum on Apr 7, 2021 18:36:23 GMT
I’ve always enjoyed this story, but it does have it’s issues.
My biggest complaint is the performance turned in by Jeremy Lindsey Taylor. It’s so wooden it actually works as brilliant foreshadowing for his role in the gathering.
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Post by J.A. Prentice on Apr 9, 2021 2:24:10 GMT
I gave it another listen. My opinion is not improved. Now that I've more experience with Peri on audio, I probably think much less of this story. Claudia Christian is really the only thing This Release has going for it. My initial reaction, posted elsewhere: Oh god, oh god, oh god. Again I wound up listening to another story again, and this time it's a really, really bad one. And to think I even said it might benefit from a second listen--I was so wrong! I had to give up at the halfway point, and I was only able to make it that far thanks to Susan freakin' Ivanova (Big Finish B5 when?). It's not technically the worst Big Finish story I've heard, but goddamn, it really pulls out all the stops on making Peri just the worst possible person. She's just so incredibly vile. It's bad enough seeing her treat the random people she meets with contempt, but to see her do the same to her own family? And no, the one scene--while very well directed--of her crying while eavesdropping(!) on her family and friends as they comment on her awful behavior does nothing to rectify that. I just don't get it. Big Finish has really done remarkable work rehabilitating so many other characters, Colin Baker's Doctor first and foremost, but they seem to be going in the exact opposite direction with Peri. Was she this bad in the TV show? I don't remember her being this bad with Davison, though admittedly I abandoned the show almost immediately after the 5th Doctor regenerated.... Minus the unprompted Dorney fanboying. All of that said, it was interesting how many similarities this story had to RTD's first season--specifically the fallout from a companion's departure--but the wiki says 2006, so I'm not sure whether not either was based on the other. Could just be a coincidence. The hidden-messages-in-recorded-video thing definitely predates Moffat's Blink, though. Anyway, while Peri is spectacularly awful here, I want to highlight one especially insipid moment. Imagine that this is your first Doctor Who audio. Or one of your first. Imagine this is your first introduction to the character of Perpugilliam (ulgh) "Peri" Brown. She's a(n ostensibly) normal human girl from 1980s Earth. She's traveling through space and time with an eccentric old man--an immortal magician--in a magic blue box. She's just arrived at a wondrous place: the ultimate historical archive, where every recorded event in human history has been carefully preserved. Millennia of human experience, achievement and tragedy--all there for Peru's immediate and casual access. This is what we call a character-defining moment.
What will Peri look up first? What most fascinates her as a person? What is she most curious about? Will she look up the life of a favorite author, to see what their legacy was? Or perhaps research an old family mystery that she remembers from childhood? Maybe she wants to know what Humankind's first contact with extra-terrestrial life was like? Or when the planet was unified? Or our first settlement on another world? Or how human language, society, culture or even biology changed and evolved through the centuries and millennia? What Peri decides to view will tell us exactly who she is. And it does. Peri wants to loom up the local news. The local TV news, from the same approximate date as when she was last on Earth. From which we can gather that Peri is a deeply self-centered and profoundly incurious person. Imagine being in her situation and doing the same. Would anyone here make the same choice? We are, none of us, fictional characters. These establishing moments do not exist in reality. We are not bound by the same rules and conventions. But I have full--total and absolute--confidence that all of us--every single person here--would make a much more interesting choice. And the above, my friends, is a long and more nuanced version of a reaction that was, initially, no more than a string of expletives I will not share here. If you’d been travelling for years, would you not want to see what was happening back home? I don’t see that as selfish or incurious at all. |
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Post by grinch on Apr 9, 2021 10:38:00 GMT
I gave it another listen. My opinion is not improved. Now that I've more experience with Peri on audio, I probably think much less of this story. Claudia Christian is really the only thing This Release has going for it. My initial reaction, posted elsewhere: Minus the unprompted Dorney fanboying. All of that said, it was interesting how many similarities this story had to RTD's first season--specifically the fallout from a companion's departure--but the wiki says 2006, so I'm not sure whether not either was based on the other. Could just be a coincidence. The hidden-messages-in-recorded-video thing definitely predates Moffat's Blink, though. Anyway, while Peri is spectacularly awful here, I want to highlight one especially insipid moment. Imagine that this is your first Doctor Who audio. Or one of your first. Imagine this is your first introduction to the character of Perpugilliam (ulgh) "Peri" Brown. She's a(n ostensibly) normal human girl from 1980s Earth. She's traveling through space and time with an eccentric old man--an immortal magician--in a magic blue box. She's just arrived at a wondrous place: the ultimate historical archive, where every recorded event in human history has been carefully preserved. Millennia of human experience, achievement and tragedy--all there for Peru's immediate and casual access. This is what we call a character-defining moment.
What will Peri look up first? What most fascinates her as a person? What is she most curious about? Will she look up the life of a favorite author, to see what their legacy was? Or perhaps research an old family mystery that she remembers from childhood? Maybe she wants to know what Humankind's first contact with extra-terrestrial life was like? Or when the planet was unified? Or our first settlement on another world? Or how human language, society, culture or even biology changed and evolved through the centuries and millennia? What Peri decides to view will tell us exactly who she is. And it does. Peri wants to loom up the local news. The local TV news, from the same approximate date as when she was last on Earth. From which we can gather that Peri is a deeply self-centered and profoundly incurious person. Imagine being in her situation and doing the same. Would anyone here make the same choice? We are, none of us, fictional characters. These establishing moments do not exist in reality. We are not bound by the same rules and conventions. But I have full--total and absolute--confidence that all of us--every single person here--would make a much more interesting choice. And the above, my friends, is a long and more nuanced version of a reaction that was, initially, no more than a string of expletives I will not share here. If you’d been travelling for years, would you not want to see what was happening back home? I don’t see that as selfish or incurious at all. I mean I’d probably do the same thing. Be pretty overwhelming I’d imagine having the entirety of human knowledge at your fingertips so I’d probably start off with something I know and would be comfortable with to help ease me in. Even it did just turn out to be the local news. |
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ljwilson
Chancellery Guard
It's tangerine....not orange
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Post by ljwilson on Apr 9, 2021 13:23:25 GMT
I'd probably ask for the Blackpool FC score, but there you go.
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