|
|
Post by Star Platinum on Jul 19, 2022 0:10:47 GMT
Here we are, the finale for series two.
There’s a lot packed into this story, so much so it needed a second disk! (Speaking of, the fact that the story is on both disks should have been more clearly marked on the cd case! I was very confused the first time I finished the first disk and went to 3.01!)
First off, the story starts off with a bang (haha), and there Romana is left grasping at straws trying to hold onto her office.
Darkel finally drops her act and her machanayare exposed, I’m looking forward to the remainder of her storyline.
Poor k9 deserved better, still, I appreciate the fact that Leela rejects rebuilding him, it gives that death more weight.
I like the tone of this story, it deftly handles the remaining plot threads from this series, while doing a lot of legwork to set up the next series.
All in all a great finale, up next, civil war!
|
|
|
|
Post by Digi on Jul 22, 2022 23:53:42 GMT
Aha, this week you're early and I'm behind. Will get to this in the next couple days, and really looking forward to it!
|
|
|
|
Post by Kestrel on Jul 27, 2022 3:54:09 GMT
I'm also gonna be a bit behind with this one. Can't really muster the will to listen to anything after hearing about David Warner.
|
|
|
|
Post by Digi on Jul 31, 2022 15:31:26 GMT
Still behind but finally listened to this one yesterday. Had to do it over the course of the day but that was just my day, not a reflection of the material.
I enjoy this one quite a bit. There's a lot going on in it so I think the 2h runtime really helps give it room to breathe; we run the gamut of genuine grief and sadness, mystery/confusion, intense politicking, suspense...quite a bit to cover and I think, had this one only been 1h, it wouldn't have worked at all.
The loss of Leela's K9 does genuinely sting. As a thing seen from the POV of a Whoniverse fan it hurts, but what really sells it is Lou Jameson's wonderful performance, from her coming upon his remains, to her proudly but with a tear in her eye saying he was a good dog for saving many lives, to her rejection of having another built. Her K9, her connection to the Doctor....
I can't help but notice that it's an odd quirk that this also means that in this story the series migrates from removing a 'duplicate' character by killing off one of the K9s, only to introduce a different 'duplicate' character in Romana by the end. This isn't a criticism, just something I was lightly amused by as I was finishing up listening late last night.
More broadly, I really think this story does a wonderful job of weaving together the various story threads that the range has been weaving up till this point. Darkel's machinations, the Free Timers, Romana's reforms, the Pandora mystery and the inexorable march toward the Imperiatrix....it's quite a feat of writing.
And one character note that I find particularly interesting (given that we're all familiar with the wider scope of the series) is how this story is something of a redemption story for Narvin. Up to here he's been a little bit of a snake, but (IMO at least) still a lean toward being a patriot. Here it's finally revealed that no matter how clever he thinks he's been, he was being used all along by people with greater/wronger ambitions. It's a real 'come to jesus' moment for the character, and a good pivot point for his relationships with Romana and Leela.
That's a bit of a scattershot review, but I quite enjoyed revisiting this one.
|
|
|
|
Post by Kestrel on Sept 3, 2022 2:11:25 GMT
The first time I listened to this episode, it didn't do much for me.
Then, I listened to it a second time. I still didn't care for it.
But, through the course of this Re-Listening project we're in, and as a newfound matter of habit, I've begun taking notes as I listen. It also give my fingers something to do, which is nice. The point it, while listening to the following episode, Fractures, many of those notes were variations on a common theme: Wait, what? When did that happen.
It's not altogether unprecedented for me to simply forget large swaths of a story immediately after consuming it -- plenty of tales out there are simply that unremarkable. So I elected to listen to Imperiatrix a third time.
That's where the charm is, right?
And to tease it out no further, that's where I made a discovery: I'd never actually listened to Imperiatrix. Not all of it, at least. For whatever reason, Big Finish chose to separate the episode into two parts, partitioning off the final act behind a curiously long wall of music -- the exact same music they typically end episodes on. Both the first and second time through, I got to that break (it's something like two full minutes of music), assumed the episode was over, and moved on. No wonder the third series was so confusing!
A formatting choice which generates the same question in response: a resounding WHY?
But enough of that. I have more than one formatting complaint to make here! That was about the end of the story, but I've also got a bone to pick with the beginning: what the heck is up with the sound mixing in this episode? I mean, it ain't great in the range itself, or "early Early Finish" in general, but it's especially bad here. All echoey and full of layered distortions that make the voices all-but impossible to parse out. That first scene is the worst, but in general, I think there's considerably less clarity to the audio than their should be.
And I realize now -- or at least suspect -- that part of the reason I've been so keen to praise Big Finish recently for the excellent and very-much-improved sound mixing is the lingering memory of this Pandora Arc. Good grief were things rough back then.
Right, right, right: onto the story -- the thing I should have been talking about here in the first place.
Quote of the story: "My presidency is hanging by a thread!"
Isn't it always?
Anyway, I think I've made it clear in the past that, as much as I love this range, I find the Pandora Arc to be a distinct low point. Imperiatrix does little to change that opinion. We've got a lot of political maneuvering, conspiracy and revelations (shocking absolutely no one, it turns out that Inquisitor Darkel was the villainous mastermind behind Fire Time, somehow being influenced by Pandora's ghost-in-the-machine). Anton is revealed to be behind the bomber, originally employed by Darkel, but gone rogue -- motivated by a strong desire to... do something, I'm sure. It's not clear exactly what. It's also not clear what, exactly, Darkel saw as the benefit to her working with Pandora. Nor is it clear how Pandora -- or more specifically, the remaining fraction of Pandora, is able to manifest herself in the body of Romana's prior regeneration. It's also a bit bizarre, thematically, as this is a past version of Romana being inhabited by the future aspect of Pandora.
(Speaking of which, did I mention also that the whole splitting of Pandora into past, present and future aspects -- as discrete entities -- never made an iota of sense to me?)
Oh, and also this whole time Pandora was somehow able to possess Romana's body without her or anyone else noticing anything was amiss, and used one of these haunting stories murder Andred.
And in the tumult of these expository avalanche, we get the big twist at the end: Pandora declares herself Imperiatrix and ruler of Gallifrey. And... this works? This is the Doctor Who version of Michael Scott walking out of his office and shouting, "I declare bankruptcy!" At the top of his lungs. That's not how this works. That's not how anything works.
But we're expected to just turn off our brains and accept the story's logic, because tropes. So now Pandora, a lone woman of questionable legal status, with no official position and zero support among anyone on Gallifrey... is now the unquestioned supreme ruler of Gallifrey.
And also Romana runs out of her office and shouts, "I declare civil war!"
The only thing that comes to mind to sum up my thoughts on Imperiatrix are, "it's messy." It's a mess of ideas and reveals and twists and disruptions to the status quo and absolutely none of it comes together along anything resembling a proper dramatic arc. It's all just game pieces being moved around a board by the all-too-visible hand of a writer eager to pen to a "civil war arc," without laying the proper groundwork to justify it. Grading on a five-point scale (or any scale, really) is always difficult. For the moment, I'm landing on a 2. If 3s are middling quality and 1s represent the lowest of the low, the egregious, it seems the only option.
EDIT: It occurs to me that I should probably ask how well those The Office reference work for y'all. I know our small community here is quite global and I've no idea just how much, if at all, the American version of that TV show has permeated elsewhere.
|
|
