8DA Stranded Vol 4 Spoilers Aware from P4 On

Late to the party here, as I like to do my first listen to a new release of the CD version, not the DL. Don’t ask why, I just do. A lot of the points I would make have already been made and the debates have heated up and then cooled down weeks ago.

[Housekeeping announcement first – this is going to be a longish post so I am typing on Word and will copy it into the thread. But the Autocorrect on Word keeps substituting in American spellings – so apologies if elements of this are not in the Queen’s English.]

In a way its hard to comment on this box set because as well as being a box set in its own right, it serves as a book end not just to Stranded, but also to the whole era of 16-part-epics for the 8th Dr and maybe even to the era that began with Blood of the Daleks all those years ago.

I think there is an element with Stranded of “be careful what you wish for . . . “. After the time and space spanning epics that were Dark Eyes, Doom Coalition and Ravenous, it was refreshing to have a change of pace and scale and I think the 8DA range needed it. Just imagine the sort of “fed-up-with-16-part-all-of-time-and-space-epics” threads there would have been on this forum and others if the follow up to Ravenous had been more of the same. So full marks to BF for recognising that change was needed and to having the guts to try something different. And on the whole, I think they succeeded. A change is as good as a rest as the saying goes and if I had to sum up my feelings about Stranded in one word it would be refreshing. The soap opera – ish set up, the large ensemble cast, the sci fi elements taking a back seat at times, even the colourful covers. However, the other side of the coin is that it can come across as anti-climactic or underwhelming. I don’t think the Stranded concept could have sustained another 4 boxsets, but I think it worked well and served as nice coda to this whole era of the 8th Dr’s travels.  The key to enjoying Stranded for me is to accept it for what it is, not bemoan what it isn’t.

In terms of the individual episodes, all 4 were good and enjoyable – all well written, acted and sound designed. At times it started to feel like we were veering into Samuel Beckett territory, but we never went very far down that road. I was tempted to dismiss Colin’s casting as yet another BF gimmick but, given that 8 meets the Curator and they didn’t want to take away from 11’s meeting with the Curator onscreen, it made sense for the Curator to be wearing a different face when he meets 8.

I think with Robin, and his need for more attention from his Dad, they could have tapped into something quite powerful, like the DS9 episode The Visitor, but they shied away from it and didn’t really make too much of that theme.

The 2 issues that seem to have generated the most heated discussion are the decision to bring in Covid in the final episode and the handling of Liv’s departure, or non-departure as the case may be.
I think in fairness to BF it was fairly well signposted that Covid was coming in the final episode in the blurb, the announcements, and Vortex, etc. At the same time, I don’t think it’s reasonable for BF to assume everyone reads these and even if they do, it’s a bit late now to forewarn someone who had bought the bundle back in early 2020 before anyone had heard of covid. I personally like that they grounded Stranded in reality as I prefer Who to be as grounded in the real world as practicable, but I can see how it would be perhaps too close to home for anyone who had lost someone close due to Covid.

I am in 2 minds about it. I can see from the posts here how it has upset some listeners, and speaking personally, I was glad I listened alone out of earshot of my wife, whose mother died (alone) due to covid in January 2021. So although, I personally did not lose anyone close, I have had a front row seat view on someone who has. My wife and one of her sisters were allowed to stand outside her mother’s room in the hospital, wearing masks and gowns and watch as their mother slipped away. I had spent the day at home trying to comfort / distract my 8 and 9 year old children as their Granny died and I had to break the news to them when the expected phone call came from my wife. Although I did shed a few tears, I can’t claim to have lost anyone as close to me personally as some other forum members, but I do get where they are coming as much as anyone can who didn’t experience the same loss.

I don’t think BF were wrong to tackle the whole issue, and it shouldn’t be taboo. After all, WW2 films must be painful for those who lost loved ones in that conflict, yet we can still produce them and nobody objects. Soap operas handle very difficult subjects that resonate for some viewers and affect them deeply, yet as I understand it the writers/actors to do a lot of research to ensure they handle it appropriately. I don’t know what research went into the final episode, but I just feel BF were maybe a little too superficial about it and got a bit out of their depth. Perhaps, and this is just a thought, if the story had made more of Tony’s loss and subsequent grief, it could have been a more cathartic experience for the listener and maybe better received. Instead it felt a bit glossed over. Dorney wrote Absent Friends and said in the extras how it was affected by his father’s death, so he clearly gets it where grief is concerned (not everyone does, if they are fortunate enough not to have experienced it in their life so far) so I am a little surprised at this story. But that’s just my opinion. Overall, on the basis that I wasn't really too affected by the issues it raised, I enjoyed the episode and its approach to handling the real 2020 and thought it worked well as a time out from the normal adventures. To use a second Star Trek comparison, it reminded me of the TNG episode Family.

Best Year Ever was a seriously tactless title. I wonder if the original pre-covid plan for the final episode was a happy year of Liv and Tania living an idyllic life building up to the gut punch of Liv’s departure, and they came up with the title for that episode. Then when covid forced a rewrite, they liked the title and kept it. But that’s pure speculation on my part. It would however be interesting to hear at some point what the original pre covid plan was for Stranded.

The other issue is Liv’s (non)departure. I didn’t like that – it felt like BF wanting to have their cake and eat it, or sitting on the fence unable to decide what to do. For all the talk beforehand about the “risks” they were taking this was the most low-risk, keep-all-options-open, cop-out ending they could have gone for. Whatever emotional punch the episode may have packed on first unspoilered listen, it will fall flat on relistens when you know how it is going to end. It’s as if they didn’t have the guts to take a decision, so they tried to be clever and give us both options. I also didn’t like the implication that Liv treats Tania as a second best fallback option, which undermined the idea of Liv finding true love, and doesn’t say much for Liv as a person either. I don’t understand why BF did it, after all there are gaps between some of the episodes in Doom Coalition and Ravenous that BF could use for any future Further Adventures type release if they wanted more 8/Liv/Helen and that would have been the better option imho. I think for the next couple of years there is more mileage in 8/Helen travelling together, maybe with a new companion joining after a few episodes, than more 8/Liv/Helen.

I probably have said more about the negatives than the positives and that is not fair as I enjoyed the set overall and, subject to the caveat that it might be distressing for some listeners, would recommend it to any Who fan as a good and refreshing, if different, set of stories.

I think I must have missed how Robin got an extended lifespan and/or more. The Robin at the end... that's an older Robin who still sounds like teenage Robin, yes? Courtesy of "Mr. Bird", himself a really really older Robin that now doesn't come to exist, the Doctor et. al. having failed to prevent it all on their own? And Older-But-Not-Bird-Robin is now going to basically play himself as a teenager (while being part of a Divine Intervention 'takeover') through life until...

....until what? People notice the guy just isn't aging normally? Ok, I guess. It did at least tie up the whole mess, and I do admit I liked this set more than some of the others.




I've also been reading through the thread, which I avoided until I finally got around to listening to this. The people I lost were lost before COVID, but I fully understand the reaction of those who lost people during COVID. And BF wasn't going to do it. What an awful thing to go back on. And what an awful subject for an argument on this forum.

Doctor Who is supposed to be an escape, BF perhaps even moreso given just how niche it is. It can visit the horrors of WWI or Cromwell slaughtering the Irish because we weren't there ourselves. We're removed. They shouldn't have touched something like this. It's not like there's some rule saying the Doctor can only visit contemporary Earth. Quite the opposite.