Brazil in 2080 is such a vibe, Marc Platt is great with interesting locations and the sound design in part 1 is awesome, i could easily imagine the whole thing, shout out to the cool carnival segment with them mentioning the use of holograms, if i could choose a BF story to be animated this surely would be on the podium, now talking about the story itself it really grabbed me from the get go, varied cast of recognizable characters with interesting drama attached to them, specially Ileana, easy to follow story and i highly reccomend it

03.06.2022

A mish-mash of different ideas that don't fit together no matter how hard they try (not really hard tbh). Turlough is a werewolf? apparently? The Doctor gets another wife, violence is not the answer unless it is, forest spirits for five minutes?? This story is a mess, I had trouble just keeping focus. The only good thing I would point out is Turlough having fun at the carnival, that was a geniune joy to listen to. 1.5/5

MR 020: Loups-Garoux

Why is the audio mixing so terrible? Literally everyone's audio is clipping like crazy. I feel like my ears are bleeding. The audio mixing was terrible in Minuet in Hell, but for a very different reason: the terrible accents and immediate cutting between scenes.

Literally the entire summary is: the Doctor and Turlough hang out with a werewolf clan for two hours and twenty minutes. Yes, there really is that little story to this thing. The werewolf clan has a lady in charge whose son is sick and is getting cured by an asian doctor who wants to cure lycanthropy in general. And there's an evil werewolf that's the original werewolf that wants to mate with her. Aaaannnnddd that's about it. 😴 🛌 💤

This audio could definitely have benefited from being cut down to a single hour long episode. But even then there might not have been enough story to sustain it honestly. And that god awful audio mixing, what the hell. If it wasn't for that, this would be pretty average, but the audio drags it down.

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

Previous Story: Phantasmagoria

This adventure isn't groundbreaking, but it is refreshingly unique. The South American setting really helps with that, especially in the first part. Something I think Marc Platt does really well is his worldbuilding, he makes the 2080s feel like a real potential future and not the "generic sci-fi future" that every writer defaults to full of laser guns and generically named organisations. The way the werewolves are explored here is also very interesting, it truly feels like they have a fully fleshed out culture and are themselves part of other mythologies and cultures. The supporting cast stood out to me. Nicky Henson's chilling performance as Stubbe was phenomenal. You also have Eleanor Bron as Ileana who had an interesting dynamic with the Doctor. Turlough gets a decently solid role here, even getting a little romance subplot with the tribeswoman Rosa. Overall it's a story that never once feels derivative. While it has some flaws, the exotic setting and stellar cast make this story a worthwhile listen.

Next Story: Singularity

The Monthly Adventures #020 - "Loups-Garoux" by Marc Platt

Doctor Who, being a science-fantasy show, has many a time dabbled in the realms of folklore and famous brands of monster. It’s done vampires and ghosts and things that go bump in the night over and over again. And a couple times it’s done werewolves. From Tooth and Claw to Kursaal, there is no shortage of lupine metamorphers howling at the moon and Loups-Garoux is an interesting entry into this subcategory of story. Marc Platt is a very hit or miss writer in my opinion, some of his stories are gold and some are dull trudging, so you never really know what you’re going to get. Whilst I’d hesitate to call Loups-Garoux a bad story, I will call it an incredibly strange one.

On holiday in Rio, the Doctor and Turlough discover a secret society that has lived for millennia, a secret society that hunts at the dead of night, that can transform into wolves at will.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Loups-Garoux is a story I can confidently say I haven’t seen done before. Marc Platt, for all his flaws, certainly doesn’t write anything generic and Loups-Garoux is brimming with fascinating ideas for you to get swallowed up by. The worldbuilding is magnificent, the near future Brazil turned into a desolate dustbowl by advanced industrialisation is an evocative setting and the Loups-Garoux themselves, our strain of werewolf this time around, is a whole new take on the mythos, which I feel it would have to be to keep it interesting. The werewolves here can transform at will and have eternal life, but are also not infected via bite of curse, instead by unlocking some deep, inner darkness present in every human. It’s a cool idea and I like that the story chose to not just make them “werewolves from space”. However, I don’t think this audio ever explains exactly what they are, werewolves are just real I guess, there isn’t any extraterrestrial techno-babble explanation, human beings are just one particularly bad day off growing teeth and ripping peoples’ heads off. It’s a weird idea but this whole audio is weird, so it evens out; there’s a dream-like quality to the entire script and it often feels like walking through some strange nightmare, with werewolves and spirits all darting about. And making this nightmare reality is Pieter Stubbe, our big bad and a werewolf of legend: “The Grey One” and the father of all other Loups-Garoux. Nicky Henson’s audio performance has this very deep and gravelly quality that lends itself well to the character, and I think it was the main reason why I was so threatened by Stubbe, he served nicely as an antagonist.

Unfortunately, for as much as I loved the idea of Loups-Garoux, the story leaves something to be desired. Marc Platt stories can often get too convoluted - just look at Cat’s Cradle: Time’s Crucible - and by the end, so many different plot threads were happening that it was hard to keep track. On one hand you have Stubbe trying to wed Iliana, and the Doctor becoming her champion, and on the other you have Rosa, the random woman with spirits living in her head that feels a few bad mistakes of a racial stereotype, running around with Turlough. There’s also two different romance subplots, Rosa with Turlough and Five with Iliana. Neither of these land for me, both have very little time relegated to them due to how much stuff is happening and end up feeling underbaked. Also, the audio sounded strange pretty much the whole time, all the voices sounded oddly tinny, like they weren’t mixed properly. Other than that, as much as I like the setting, I don’t think it’s utilised enough. You’re in a barren Rio in the middle of carnival and you spend half your audio on a train? A lot more interesting stuff could’ve been done with the city in my opinion.

Loups-Garoux was a story I could massively appreciate. It was new, it was bold, it toyed with new ideas and gave me a bleak but dream-like future world I could get immersed in. Using vampires and ghouls and werewolves for your antagonist is an idea that’s getting stale, but Loups-Garoux does enough new that I still find it interesting. An overencumbered story and some failed romance significantly harms the audio for me, but it’s definitely an interesting listen.

6/10

Pros:

+ Has a surreal, dream-like quality that lends itself well to the audio

+ Some great world building, I loved the idea of an underground ring of werewolves

+ Tries something different with the werewolf mythos, which I can respect it for

+ Stubbe was a well acted and often threatening antagonist

Cons:

- Doesn’t make good enough use of its setting

- Neither of the romantic subplots landed

- Too much going on, gets rather hard to follow

- Strangely tinny audio

🙏🏼64% = Fine! = Recommended!

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

NOTES & COMMENTS ON “LOUPS-GAROUX”

Marc Platt (Ghostlight; Spare Parts; Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible; Lungbarrow) makes his Big Finish debut with this 5th Doctor adventure set in Brazil and featuring a Doctor Who take on werewolves.

The opening installment sets the scene and introduces the characters, though it's slightly confusing to put things together at first. The main plot takes place in Brazil in the 2080s, with Five and Turlough joining the carnival and meeting a mother, her sickly son, and a mysterious physician who are currently escaping an unknown danger.

I like the energy of Five and Turlough together in the TARDIS. I usually struggle with Five audios, but these two mostly work for me. Peter Davison is his usual self, while Mark Strickson is uncommonly good, and Turlough gets the most intriguing scenes in this adventure.

This one is occasionally confusing to follow because of the editing. Platt also likes to go to strange and abstract tangents sporadically, which adds to the confusing feel.

The guest characters don't leave much of an impression here, and the performances feel a bit like caricatures. The best ones are Nicky Henson as the comically villainous Pieter Stubbe and the classic monster hunter Rosa, as played by Sarah Gale.

Asian actor Burt Kwouk, who also starred in the 4th Doctor serial Four to Doomsday and the 1964 Bond film Goldfinger, plays Hayashi.

This story is fairly slow, and Part 2 hardly develops anything. The dialogue establishes the werewolf lore, which is interesting, but it also builds tension very slowly.

It's refreshing to hear a Doctor Who story set in South America, which is why it's a pity that most of it is set inside a moving train.

Turlough's arc in this story is somewhat unusual. Werewolves stalk him, after which he joins Rosa, the werewolf hunter, and seemingly gets laid.

In a pretty effective cliffhanger, the final moments of Part 2 finally turn tense and exciting!

Part 3 begins to tighten the atmosphere a bit, especially in the cliffhanger, which sees the Doctor getting accidentally betrothed again (as he did in The Aztecs).

Part 4 is arguably the most intriguing episode. It sees the Doctor get relationship advice from Turlough while confronting Stubbe. However, the story reaches a very minimalist conclusion by the end, completely deflating the suspense.

I liked it, but there were definitely some problems. The setting of a devastated Amazon was very interesting and I think the country of Brazil was used well in the audio. I liked the werewolves and enjoyed their rich backstory that dominated much of the audio. The idea of them messing around with human perception was interesting and went a ways into explaining why werewolves would remain a myth in human consciousness, even into the future that this story takes place in.  Characters like Anton and Ileana were also well-written and entertaining.

On the other hand, Pieter and Rosa were very underwhelming as characters. I didn’t like their performers and really didn’t like the cultural appropriation going on with Rosa’s character. She had a charming story and chemistry going on with Turlough but some of that writing and her accent were just painful to listen to.

Overall it wasn’t bad, and I really enjoyed having an entertaining Turlough story, as it feels he really got to shine here. He and the Doctor were great overall and a big part of what makes this audio work for me. Turlough felt intimately involved in the story and I love the scenes where the werewolves were messing around with him. The Doctor also had a really compelling relationship with Ileana and had a lot of solid moments. I rate it an 8/10 for these reasons, in spite of the audio’s issues.