Post by Kestrel on Oct 20, 2021 19:36:26 GMT
Y'all can ignore this post. It's long and rambly and doesn't say much. Anyway--
I've never quite been able to articulate why: the 5th Doctor's is an era I loved on the TV show, but I've never been able to muster the same enthusiasm for his audio adventures as I do for, say, the 6th or 7th or 8th Doctors. I can speculate that perhaps it's because Davison can't really project the same presence through his voice alone as he could on camera, but I literally don't know what that means. So mostly I just blame Teagan, because it's easier, and she's like a joyless black hole that sucks the energy out of every scene. But that's just hyperbolic teasing--I honestly don't know why these stories don't just click for me.
Which is a clumsy preamble to this rather banal conclusion: I thought The Lost Resort and Other Stories was good. Really, really good--still not exciting, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it.
I think, perhaps, it's because this set really leans in hard to the (retroactive?) character arc for the 5th Doctor--as he endures loss after loss (building, of course, on top of all the other companions who departed)and just... endures it. To the point where you could almost say that, in The Caves of Androzani, his regeneration didn't go well because of his deeply wounded psyche. I feel like maybe I'm just stating the obvious here, but it helps me to talk things out, at least to an extent. So, anyway, the arc I see, spanning the 60-or-so years of the franchise, goes some like this--and I may as well just write out the whole thing in full, rather than stopping at #5, yeah?
Which leads into the 9->10->11->12 arc we're all familiar with, that I think can be framed as a repeat of the Classic Doctors' arc--or, rather, the part of the arc that started with the 5th Doctor--where the trauma is rooted in the war and the Doctor's responsibility for his actions in it, rather than the trauma from so many lost friend and the Doctor's role in their departures.
All of which is to say: I think the core of the 5th Doctor's "identity," such as it is, is the clear juxtaposition between the cheery, affable nature he projects (but seldom convincingly) and the sorrow constantly simmering underneath. And I think that's something difficult to capture in audio, especially when it's not directly relevant to the plot.
So: I am really glad to see Big Finish really doubling down on this aspect of the 5th Doctor in the second 5DA boxset (okay, technically the third, but doesn't it kind of feel like volume 1 is separate?). I'm definitely finding myself more excited, now, for future 5DAs than I imagined I would be. If they can keep this level of quality up... let's just say I am very hopeful.
.... .... .... ....
More than a dozen embarrassing paragraphs later, it's (finally) time to talk about the individual stories here. Maybe this bit'll be briefer?I'm shall endeavor to try.
5DA 3.1: The Lost Resort
5DA 3.2: The Perils of Nellie Bly
Quote of the story: "Miss, uh?" (This line should never, never be used in a story with Nyssa.)
Interesting that they never bothered to have the Doctor justify why he suddenly turned up on an ocean liner near the end of its voyage, out of nowhere. I don't exactly miss that big, cliched as it is, but it's absence is kind of conspicuous.
I really love the lighthearted tone this one strikes, as well as the fact that it's a pure historical. Doctor Who needs more pure historicals! I mean, has the 4th Doctor ever had even one?
I don't really want to, but I've gotta comment on the big "name drop" in this story. Christopher Columbus, really? Helped him with his seasickness, really? Definitely looking forward to hearing the Doctor cheerily redound how he cured Joseph Goebbels' migraines next time. Yeesh.
That bit, along with the scene where Nellie explains to Teagan what sexism is (written so very As-You-Know) are the two bits that drag this episode down. But only a little. For the most part it's a delightful adventure story--one I could easily, more easily, perhaps, see working with the 8th Doctor and Charlie. Absolutely great fun, and the bit with the Doctor betting on the precise moment of Nellie's arrival was a solid joke that capped off the story pretty well. If the ideal fantasy adventure is structured around Tolkien's, "There and back again," I think maybe the ideal Doctor Story is structured around, "In and out--hopefully before anyone notices."
And while it wasn't immediately evident, this story does a phenomenal job setting the stage for the boxset's conclusion, functioning as a kind of insulation between two fairly self-serious, dramatic stories. I think it's fair to say that without this silly, lighthearted adventure this set would not be nearly so good.
5DA 3.3: Nightmare of the Daleks
I went into this story questioning the necessity of the Daleks--did they really need to be in this story? I don't think so. They're a pretty minor threat here, relative to their usual shenanigans, and it seems like almost any other foe could have substituted. I almost suspect that this could've been a cut script from the Shadows of the Daleks two-parter back in the Monthly range--especially considering that the Daleks here are essentially just psychic shadows.
I think it probably would have worked better in that case. As it Stands, This story is a bit confusing--why did the Daleks come to this planet? How did they leave these psychic residuals behind? Questions that can easily be explained--with little exposition necessary--by Time War shenanigans. Without that, their presence here just feels kind of arbitrary, and I think that kind of diminishes their threat as villains, in a general sense. Not that is is even remotely a unique problem for Dalek stories, of course.
Overall this was a great story with some fantastic emotional payoff at the end, and it serves as a perfect capstone to an excellent boxset--and that's sufficient superlatives, I suspect. The only thing that didn't quite work for me was Marc's Ultimate fate. Don't get me wrong, the 5th Doctor having to leave another companion behind? I've seen it before: I love it. A companion "dying" only to wind up in not-heaven? I've seen it before: I hate it. I was well and truly done with this trope by the second time Moffat did it--and then he just kept on doing it. It feels like a copout. Surely there are other methods to have "tragic" companion exits beyond simply killing them and almost killing them but "trapping" them in paradise. Right? Right?
Goddamn this wound up being longer, by several orders of magnitude, than what I expected I'd end up with when I started this post. Can you tell I'm having a bad day and on my pain meds? Trick question: yes, you can. You can always tell because that is what produces these inane, meandering posts. I just keep going. I agree, it's very odd.
.... .... .... ....
TL;DR -- Ultimately, and I may regret saying this, I think this boxset is very nearly my favorite release with the 5th Doctor. It basically has everything I love about Davison's Doctor: the lighthearted adventure, the sorrowful undercurrents, the inevitable tragedy. And also delightful robots, a purely historical setting, and loud squawky Daleks. It's absolutely phenomenal. Off the top of my head, I can only think of MR: Creatures of Beauty as being similarly, uniformly perfect. If I have any one, singular ideal for what a 5DA boxset is and/or can be... this is it.
I've never quite been able to articulate why: the 5th Doctor's is an era I loved on the TV show, but I've never been able to muster the same enthusiasm for his audio adventures as I do for, say, the 6th or 7th or 8th Doctors. I can speculate that perhaps it's because Davison can't really project the same presence through his voice alone as he could on camera, but I literally don't know what that means. So mostly I just blame Teagan, because it's easier, and she's like a joyless black hole that sucks the energy out of every scene. But that's just hyperbolic teasing--I honestly don't know why these stories don't just click for me.
Which is a clumsy preamble to this rather banal conclusion: I thought The Lost Resort and Other Stories was good. Really, really good--still not exciting, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it.
I think, perhaps, it's because this set really leans in hard to the (retroactive?) character arc for the 5th Doctor--as he endures loss after loss (building, of course, on top of all the other companions who departed)and just... endures it. To the point where you could almost say that, in The Caves of Androzani, his regeneration didn't go well because of his deeply wounded psyche. I feel like maybe I'm just stating the obvious here, but it helps me to talk things out, at least to an extent. So, anyway, the arc I see, spanning the 60-or-so years of the franchise, goes some like this--and I may as well just write out the whole thing in full, rather than stopping at #5, yeah?
- The first Doctor begins full of bluster and overconfidence, fairly self-contained, but with a mischievous streak. He slowly opens up to other people through his travels--you get the impression he'd not have many, if any, genuinely close friends other than his granddaughter prior to departing Totter's lane.
- The second Doctor becomes a more proactive and confident person through his travels, developing a stronger sense of his own morals, in part through his relationship with his companions.
- The third Doctor's experience with UNIT and the Time Lords hardens his anti-authoritarian nature, while simultaneously exposing him to a greater "scale" or moral dilemma. This is the incarnation where, I think, he gradually learns to fully appreciate the responsibility--and dangers--of time travel (and, for that matter, immortality).
- And then the fourth Doctor tries to shrug all that off, and go back to haphazard adventuring, but cannot escape--culminating in what is, I think most of us would agree, the defining moment of this era: "Have I the right?"
- Which brings us to the fifth Doctor--the weary Doctor. He's crushed under the weight of the decisions he's had to make, and all the people who've left his life--and he has to keep making those decisions, and saying those goodbyes. You can tell (or, rather, project) that all of this weight is slowly crushing him.
- We could say that the 5th Doctor's trauma produced the unstable 6th Doctor, whose--in his travels with Evelyn, and the succeeding companions--relearned the value of these personal relationships, while also (finally) coming to accept their fleeting nature.
- The seventh Doctor, then, builds on top of all of that to try and become more proactive in both his approach to traveling and his relationships... but he goes too far and bad things happen, which he deeply regrets, leading to what is arguably the Doctor's ideal incarnation:
- The eighth Doctor then pulls back, withdraws from all that in order to focus on doing what he most loves: traveling and meeting people. Finally mature enough to accept loss, determined enough to try and make things better where he can, but experienced enough to know where the line is. (This is why he avoids the Time War: he knows, from his seventh incarnation, that it's not a fixable problem, and trying to control the course of the war himself will ultimately be destructive. This makes his final years so tragic, as he is the Doctor "at his best," but still powerless in the face of the war, which--presumably--overladens him with trauma and regret.
Which leads into the 9->10->11->12 arc we're all familiar with, that I think can be framed as a repeat of the Classic Doctors' arc--or, rather, the part of the arc that started with the 5th Doctor--where the trauma is rooted in the war and the Doctor's responsibility for his actions in it, rather than the trauma from so many lost friend and the Doctor's role in their departures.
All of which is to say: I think the core of the 5th Doctor's "identity," such as it is, is the clear juxtaposition between the cheery, affable nature he projects (but seldom convincingly) and the sorrow constantly simmering underneath. And I think that's something difficult to capture in audio, especially when it's not directly relevant to the plot.
So: I am really glad to see Big Finish really doubling down on this aspect of the 5th Doctor in the second 5DA boxset (okay, technically the third, but doesn't it kind of feel like volume 1 is separate?). I'm definitely finding myself more excited, now, for future 5DAs than I imagined I would be. If they can keep this level of quality up... let's just say I am very hopeful.
.... .... .... ....
More than a dozen embarrassing paragraphs later, it's (finally) time to talk about the individual stories here. Maybe this bit'll be briefer?I'm shall endeavor to try.
5DA 3.1: The Lost Resort
Quote of the story: "Never ask a Time Lord their age, Nyssa. They'd only lie to you." (This really ought to be at the top of the Wiki's "Doctor's age" page.)
The opening/premise confuses me a bit--they make it sound as though Adric has only just recently died, yet Marc also seems to have been on the TARDIS for a while now. I'd assumed Marc only ever joined up after Adric, but perhaps there's more overlap there than I thought? This is actually only my second time seeing Marc, after his debut in MR: Tartarus. Seems like he's been through quite a lot in the interim....
I tend to find the typical Doctor Who villains kind of wearying. I often say the greatest strength of this franchise is that it can tell any kind of story, and it's biggest weakness that it so often tells slight variations of the same one. I'm therefore delighted with stories like these that don't really have any proper villains--just people, doing what they can, sometimes cooperative, sometimes antagonistic, but never unforgivable. I'm also a great fan of robots, and I adored that the robot here was originally framed as possibly being nefarious, only to ultimately wind up being (understandably) kind of bitchy and flighty. Really wish she'd had more banter with the Doctor, but all not complain--she was a highlight (one of many) of the story.
Meanwhile, in the lowlights... Teagan. I just don't know why she's written this way. Her first instinct is always to be dismissive and rude. She's just... too abrasive. Perhaps on TV it was clearer, perhaps, that she doesn't always mean what she says, but on audio I can only take her at her word, and her word makes me wonder why she ever bothers leaving her room. She seldom seems to have fun, seldom expresses any curiosity about the worlds she visits... I just don't get it.
But enough of that whinging. Another thing I loved? The structure. Splitting the story into four clean acts makes it feel much larger in scope and scale than, perhaps, it is. I really hope Big Finish continues to use different formats for stories, and doesn't fall into the trap of homogenizing everything in the XDAs to the 60-minute "TV" format. Something else I loved? That melancholy music during the climax. I've said this before, and I hope to say it again, but the music and sound mixing seems to keep getting better and better with each new release.
The opening/premise confuses me a bit--they make it sound as though Adric has only just recently died, yet Marc also seems to have been on the TARDIS for a while now. I'd assumed Marc only ever joined up after Adric, but perhaps there's more overlap there than I thought? This is actually only my second time seeing Marc, after his debut in MR: Tartarus. Seems like he's been through quite a lot in the interim....
I tend to find the typical Doctor Who villains kind of wearying. I often say the greatest strength of this franchise is that it can tell any kind of story, and it's biggest weakness that it so often tells slight variations of the same one. I'm therefore delighted with stories like these that don't really have any proper villains--just people, doing what they can, sometimes cooperative, sometimes antagonistic, but never unforgivable. I'm also a great fan of robots, and I adored that the robot here was originally framed as possibly being nefarious, only to ultimately wind up being (understandably) kind of bitchy and flighty. Really wish she'd had more banter with the Doctor, but all not complain--she was a highlight (one of many) of the story.
Meanwhile, in the lowlights... Teagan. I just don't know why she's written this way. Her first instinct is always to be dismissive and rude. She's just... too abrasive. Perhaps on TV it was clearer, perhaps, that she doesn't always mean what she says, but on audio I can only take her at her word, and her word makes me wonder why she ever bothers leaving her room. She seldom seems to have fun, seldom expresses any curiosity about the worlds she visits... I just don't get it.
But enough of that whinging. Another thing I loved? The structure. Splitting the story into four clean acts makes it feel much larger in scope and scale than, perhaps, it is. I really hope Big Finish continues to use different formats for stories, and doesn't fall into the trap of homogenizing everything in the XDAs to the 60-minute "TV" format. Something else I loved? That melancholy music during the climax. I've said this before, and I hope to say it again, but the music and sound mixing seems to keep getting better and better with each new release.
5DA 3.2: The Perils of Nellie Bly
Quote of the story: "Miss, uh?" (This line should never, never be used in a story with Nyssa.)
Interesting that they never bothered to have the Doctor justify why he suddenly turned up on an ocean liner near the end of its voyage, out of nowhere. I don't exactly miss that big, cliched as it is, but it's absence is kind of conspicuous.
I really love the lighthearted tone this one strikes, as well as the fact that it's a pure historical. Doctor Who needs more pure historicals! I mean, has the 4th Doctor ever had even one?
I don't really want to, but I've gotta comment on the big "name drop" in this story. Christopher Columbus, really? Helped him with his seasickness, really? Definitely looking forward to hearing the Doctor cheerily redound how he cured Joseph Goebbels' migraines next time. Yeesh.
That bit, along with the scene where Nellie explains to Teagan what sexism is (written so very As-You-Know) are the two bits that drag this episode down. But only a little. For the most part it's a delightful adventure story--one I could easily, more easily, perhaps, see working with the 8th Doctor and Charlie. Absolutely great fun, and the bit with the Doctor betting on the precise moment of Nellie's arrival was a solid joke that capped off the story pretty well. If the ideal fantasy adventure is structured around Tolkien's, "There and back again," I think maybe the ideal Doctor Story is structured around, "In and out--hopefully before anyone notices."
And while it wasn't immediately evident, this story does a phenomenal job setting the stage for the boxset's conclusion, functioning as a kind of insulation between two fairly self-serious, dramatic stories. I think it's fair to say that without this silly, lighthearted adventure this set would not be nearly so good.
5DA 3.3: Nightmare of the Daleks
I went into this story questioning the necessity of the Daleks--did they really need to be in this story? I don't think so. They're a pretty minor threat here, relative to their usual shenanigans, and it seems like almost any other foe could have substituted. I almost suspect that this could've been a cut script from the Shadows of the Daleks two-parter back in the Monthly range--especially considering that the Daleks here are essentially just psychic shadows.
I think it probably would have worked better in that case. As it Stands, This story is a bit confusing--why did the Daleks come to this planet? How did they leave these psychic residuals behind? Questions that can easily be explained--with little exposition necessary--by Time War shenanigans. Without that, their presence here just feels kind of arbitrary, and I think that kind of diminishes their threat as villains, in a general sense. Not that is is even remotely a unique problem for Dalek stories, of course.
Overall this was a great story with some fantastic emotional payoff at the end, and it serves as a perfect capstone to an excellent boxset--and that's sufficient superlatives, I suspect. The only thing that didn't quite work for me was Marc's Ultimate fate. Don't get me wrong, the 5th Doctor having to leave another companion behind? I've seen it before: I love it. A companion "dying" only to wind up in not-heaven? I've seen it before: I hate it. I was well and truly done with this trope by the second time Moffat did it--and then he just kept on doing it. It feels like a copout. Surely there are other methods to have "tragic" companion exits beyond simply killing them and almost killing them but "trapping" them in paradise. Right? Right?
Goddamn this wound up being longer, by several orders of magnitude, than what I expected I'd end up with when I started this post. Can you tell I'm having a bad day and on my pain meds? Trick question: yes, you can. You can always tell because that is what produces these inane, meandering posts. I just keep going. I agree, it's very odd.
.... .... .... ....
TL;DR -- Ultimately, and I may regret saying this, I think this boxset is very nearly my favorite release with the 5th Doctor. It basically has everything I love about Davison's Doctor: the lighthearted adventure, the sorrowful undercurrents, the inevitable tragedy. And also delightful robots, a purely historical setting, and loud squawky Daleks. It's absolutely phenomenal. Off the top of my head, I can only think of MR: Creatures of Beauty as being similarly, uniformly perfect. If I have any one, singular ideal for what a 5DA boxset is and/or can be... this is it.