7DA The Last Day 2 Out Now Spoilers OK

Admittedly going off topic but Fandoms have become "I don't this therefore no one should" on Repeat.

Regards

mark687

Now you've confused my spreadsheet of production credits... What did Richardson do on this set? I can't see his name anywhere on the website or sleeve credits and it's a few years since he left the senior producer job.

We were talking about bringing on new listeners, and their reputation to others.

If anyone thinks River And Jackie Vs Quarks sounds like anything other than stupid fan-fic - regardless of the story, we're talking about IMPRESSIONS, remember - then you're blinkered.

Yep, I think the news article announcing the first set basically confirmed he gave Fitton & Adams a shopping list of characters which they then added to.

Honestly, just pairing River and Jackie sounds like a potentially fun time to me, though that's more something I'd expect/want from, you know, a River Song story.

And I'm right here, too, hoping to hear what people liked about this set. Absolutely nothing so far has given me much desire to move it up much in my backlog -- stowed away for a rainy day is where it'll be stuck for a while, I guess.


I feel like Big Finish has a bit of a problem taking concepts with really obvious, appealing story hooks, and then just... not doing them any justice. Like that time they made a story promising to untangle Mel's timeline, and only knotted it up even more. They don't seem to want to tell the stories that people would expect them to... and while I certainly think that "subverting audience expectations" is just about the worst possible goal a writer could have while crafting a story (short of, you know, anything unethical) -- I do think there may be some merit in that approach.

Or at least I'm willing to very briefly play devil's advocate here.

The thing is, where we see an obvious story hook, just begging to be told... is also where we can already imagine those stories. Which means anyone seeking to actually write those kinds of stories will find themselves in competition with the imagined version, and when a real story faces off against an imagined one, the former very rarely triumphs over the latter. This is why, I think, prequels are so often disappointing.

And in some cases, subverting expectations can be a good thing -- anticlimax can be a powerful thing, but it's also a very difficult art. The 7th Doctor's death in the TV movie, itself, is an anticlimax that subverts our expectations for how that Doctor's life would end: the ultimate schemer, defeated by a random roll of the dice: critical failure. That's the kind of thing that, if executed well, can be immensely compelling.

One of my favorite story resolutions of all time (which I will definitely post about eventually in a certain thread here that, I'm sorry to say, I've rather conspicuously not yet posted in) culminates in anticlimax!

And telling the expected story of the Seventh Doctor going toe-to-toe with the Master here, in his final days, (or, erm, day) would kind of undermine the Doctor's deliberately(?) anticlimactic demise in the TV movie. (Not that I'd count the his death in the TV movie as a particularly well-executed use of anticlimax....)

Of course, the obvious problem with that is simply if they don't wind up undermining the Doctor's death in the TV movie, then they must necessarily undermine the premise of this boxset. Or, erm, boxsets. It's not really possible to have it both ways: one must be prioritized over the other. And the obvious response to that, I'm well aware, is simply, "The TV movie isn't very good, so the audios should be prioritized."

I don't disagree. But that does not seem to have been what happened.

I just finished it. I started Part 1 a week ago. Overall, it is a fun ride, but it is a confusing mess, especially for folk who don't recall (or hadn't listened to) a lot of relevant stories. And I guess they have put some things in from the novels I hadn't read. I still think a good guide of references would have helped enjoyment of this. The image included in the Part 1 discussion helps, but more information would be good.

A flashback to the 7th Doctor making the decisions that led up to this story would have improved the story.

Now, maybe I missed something, but this is how I understand what happened in the end:

Ace plucked up an alternate 7th Doctor from somewhere who at first didn't know what he was doing. Over the course of several episodes he starts to become like the 7th Doctor that we do know. At the end of the story when they encounter the "gone too far" 7th Doctor, that "gone too far" Doctor takes the Dark Citizens through the mirror and then Kane freezes it so they can't return. Then this plucked 7th Doctor is the one who gets the call which leads into the TV movie. So, that 7th Doctor didn't really experience all the adventures that occurred on TV and the Big Finish range, but the one that did and went "too far" has been exiled away never to return. Is that right?

I have a headache.