…ish

This is part of a series of reviews of Doctor Who in chronological timeline order.

Previous Story: Whispers of Terror

I wasn't really enjoying this story at the start, a bit disappointed that we had another murder mystery around what seemed to be a suicide that turned out to be manipulated by an abstract entity for Six and Peri (odd that there's two like this in a row). The first two parts were fairly slow and generally uninteresting. I found it all a bit pretentious honestly. I was very much wrong by the second half when it shifted to be extremely bizarre and surreal.

I applaud that the writer of this managed to make linguistics so thrilling and eldritch. It helps that they clearly have a very verbose vocabulary and that none other than Colin Baker is the Doctor here. There genuinely isn't anyone else who could be the Doctor in this story. Being paired up with Nicola Bryant's Peri is also a fitting choice for this story with her much simpler American dialect being a perfect foil to the high-level academic vocabulary present in this story.

This story delves into a fair bit of genuine horror and the climax is very high-stakes and intense. While I wouldn't say this is the greatest Big Finish ever it's incredibly unique and it takes a theme it wants to use and absolutely runs with it. The only thing I'm disappointed by is how similar in structure this is to Whispers of Terror but this blows that story out of the park. Overall, I'd strongly recommend this if you want to hear Colin Baker flawlessly deliver words that you never even knew existed.

Next Story: Cryptobiosis

8️⃣⏹️ = ENJOYABLE TIER: HIGH

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“WHEN YOU SAY BOOK, I SAY…!”

...ish is tremendously original. There is nothing quite like it in Doctor Who or sci-fi in general. The 2016 film Arrival comes pretty close, and that came out 14 years later. Kudos to the writer Phil Pascoe (in his first and only contribution to the Main Range) for the ingenious originality of the script and the many clever word plays and intelligent jokes littered throughout the four episodes.

This story has one of those few plots I can't really wrap my head around. It is multi-layered and intelligent, yet confined and not too majestic. It’s something of a murder mystery with similar vibes to Whispers of Terror, but even more demanding. The scholarly quality of most of the dialogue makes the story seem more educated than most Doctor Who adventures, and the atypical subject matter is unlikely to entice first-time listeners. The first two episodes don't achieve much in terms of plot progression, but the two latter parts still manage to wrap things up neatly.

...ish delves deep into what could be described as intelligent academic writing, actually utilising linguistics as a plot device. It's a unique concept well-suited for the audio format, but it also takes away a lot of the magic of a science fiction story by turning everything overly complex and confusing. All this being said, there are some interesting things and concepts buried beneath all that pretentiously complicated dialogue, and the second half of the adventure turns up the dial on tension and the creepy factor.

The Sixth Doctor fits this story better than any other Doctor would. His obsession with language makes him the perfect candidate to save language itself. Colin Baker clearly enjoys himself in this one, and the intelligent dialogue (which could easily sound pretentious when performed by any other Doctor) fits his personality perfectly.

The other characters are also fairly enjoyable, especially Moray Treadwell as the ambiguous but creepy Book. Peri gets entangled in the intricacies of language as well, and Nicola Bryant provides another fine performance, and she gets a lot to do in the second half.

The atmosphere turns from complex and confusing to complex and weirdly fascinating. The idea of language itself being destroyed (as it starts doing in Part 3; the characters are slowly losing more and more of their vocabulary) is actually a pretty grim one, and clever writing makes the threat feel real. Much of the atmosphere is downplayed by the messy first half that risks imploding the entire adventure, but it's made up by the more tightly paced second half.

Things turn real interesting once the Doctor blocks his and Peri’s ability to say "...ish," which affects any word with that sound in it, before things are switched so that “...ish” sneaks itself into words it doesn’t belong in.

The unprecedented subject matter, brilliant acting, and surprisingly well-realised themes keep this story intriguing. Had all four episodes been similar to the first two, I would have lost interest fairly quickly and most likely given up on the story.

The climax is breathtaking, clever, and sharp, made all the better by Baker and Bryant, who put their hearts into the performances.

With a tighter-paced first half and a somewhat more coherent plot, this story would likely be another timeless classic. As it stands now, it is brilliantly original and surprisingly clever, but not the best example of an all-time great Big Finish story.

The Monthly Adventures #035 - “...ish" by Phil Pascoe

It’s been quite a while since I’ve listened to a story that I hadn’t already experienced (discounting The Maltese Penguin as I don’t want to think about The Maltese Penguin as it makes me sad). In fact, the last Monthly Adventure that I hadn’t already listened to was The One Doctor, eight whole audios back, so when I finally found myself with a new and shiny story to dig into, boy was I glad it was ...ish. A story I had been looking forward to since I began my marathon, the blurb to …ish fascinated me and my fascination was only furthered when I heard glowing reviews from multiple members of this site. An abstract murder mystery where the killer is the English language? Sounds unmissable.

The Articulate Worlds: a star system of words, where lexicographers gather to discuss the complexities and mysteries of language. At the grand opening of a new, universal dictionary, the Doctor has found himself once again embroiled in a deadly affair, where the oldest word in the universe is out for blood.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

If you had to give …ish one positive, one thing about it that could be talked about in depth, it would be that it is overflowing with ideas. Pascoe clearly had a fantastic concept and ran with it until it became a story, and it worked in the most glorious way possible. From the endlessly fascinating setting of the Articulate Worlds, a whole solar system built on the study of language, to the threat itself, the first word in existence that has gained sentience, Pascoe turned a neat little idea into a maelstrom of stellar concepts that make for an endlessly fascinating listen. And I think I need to stress how good of an idea the antagonist - the Omniverbum - is. The birth cries of the universe formed the longest word in existence and it is alive; a suffix of that word, the endlessly changing “...ish” has infected a living dictionary and is now spreading to all known languages in the articulate worlds. It is a genuinely terrifying and endlessly existential creature that absolutely excels as our villain and works to be this nigh lovecraftian enemy whose presence hangs over the entire listen. Well, at least for the first half, which is an incredibly engaging little mystery with some fantastic atmosphere. The first part alone is a clean 10/10 from the setting, to the incredible and evocative performances to the maddening intrigue of what exactly this “...ish” is, it all works to build some incredible tension that crescendos at the brilliant Part 2 cliffhanger, when the Ish manages to infect the attendees of the convention.

However, I feel that this story could’ve done with this climactic moment coming at some point later in the narrative because I feel that, after this, everything just sort of loses steam. At this point, the Ish has taken over and basically succeeded, so all we have to do is run around until we can think of a way to save the day. The mystery and atmosphere both pretty much crumble, mostly in part to how bad the exposition becomes at this point. Sure, a lot of the first half was explaining the mechanics of the world, which I’m fine with since it allows the plot to introduce itself but three quarters in? By that point, I feel like we should be moving a lot faster, not to mention that everything becomes near incomprehensible. …Ish definitely feels like a story you have to listen to at least twice to fully appreciate, considering how much is dumped on you at once with not so great explanations. And in the end, I think the conclusion just bores me. Everything feels far too easy and it’s one of those ending we’re all the characters sort of sit around and chat about the adventure they just had like it wasn’t a near death experience. But, I do have to say the second half isn’t a complete let down, there are some really fun moments that really take advantage of the story’s ideas, like the Doctor and Peri confusing the Omniverbum by using the British and American forms of certain words or the syllable “ish” getting bleeped out to try and resist infection, leading to a everybody sounding like their in a censored episode of South Park.

…Ish was a fascinating story with a treasure trove of golden ideas behind it. Rarely do you get a story that so effectively uses its premise to its advantage and actually allows it to play a major role in every plot beat. It didn’t manage to keep its momentum and I do agree with the seemingly popular sentiment that it gets too wrapped up in its own ideas to keep making sense, but it was such an interesting experience that I don’t mind it and overall, I feel it was just a few polishes away from a shimmer.

8/10

Pros:

+ Brimming with fascinating and wholly original ideas

+ The Omniverbum is a terrific and oddly lovecraftian concept

+ Brilliant first half with an engaging mystery

+ Great performances all round

Cons:

- Loses steam by the second half

- Becomes too convoluted for its own good

- Underwhelming ending that feels far to convenient

26.07.2022

What a disappointment. A story with such a creative title, with the premise of fighting the language evolution itself, this absolute mess is the best they could come up with. No mechanic makes even remote sense, new words like Lexisphere and Omniverben are thrown at you with little regard to whether the listener gets what they mean or not. I don't get what they meant by it. You probably won't either. The writers just found an excuse to flex their vocabulary. 1/5

MR 035: ...ish

Oh dear. Another incompressible one. There definitely was a point where I lost the plot and never got it back. But it was much later into the story than Time of the Daleks at least. Probably around the middle.

There's a linguistic conference with professors who are working to compile literally every single word spoken ever. Which is insane. That's an insane person thing to do. Thus they have created an AI called "Book" to compile the words and define their meanings for them. But one of the professors winds up dead by suicide and some rogue "anti-linguist" (lol wut) is stalking the conference seeking to cause trouble.

The Doctor is in his season 22 rude phase, like with Whispers of Terror. In a way you can kind of call this one a little brother to that one. It had a creature made up of sound and this one has a creature made of words. Only this is not as good and makes less sense. The Doctor is very weirdly obsessed with British language purity, going after Peri for using American English. Which is just bizarre and so petty for the Doctor. Why is he obsessed with saying one country on one planet's version of language is the best one? Aren't you someone who explores all of time and space? What are you on about? It's so colonial for no reason.

That said, this particular Doctor is known to use big words. There's a funny part where he says a bunch of flowery language and one of the linguists says "and again in words with more than one syllable please?"

It turns out the AI Book and the dead professor went to look for the longest word ever spoken, a myth. But they collected a part of it somehow. It's just a part of the word that says "ish" and it makes everyone else say "ish" all the time. For reasons.
There is a cute part mid way through where the Doctor uses something to censor "ish" so every time anyone says it or says a word with "ish" as a suffix it gets bleeped. That's kind of hilarious. There's another cute part where Peri and the Doctor go back and forth with British versus American ways of saying the same thing to confuse the bad guy.

It turns out that the rogue anti-linguist guy is also an AI but it's turned against its creator for some reason. This was past the point I stopped understanding what was happening so. He wants to destroy all language for some stupid reason I'm sure.

Yeah, I'm not a fan as you can tell. There's some cute stuff here, but I'm not a fan of how overly complex it is.