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This review contains spoilers!

The one Adam story, its alright

This story does feel like a S1 story, with The Doctor again dealing with the fallout from the Time War, this time getting separated in time from Rose and Adam. We get to see how Adam acts on adventures. It's more of what we saw in The Long Game, with him being too scared when he needs to do something and too reckless when he doesn't


Jonathan_

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This review contains spoilers!

This was not a particularly great story.

In my quest to find any and every story set in Birmingham, I approached this one, understanding that it is one of those very few stories set in the city.

The story itself is basically a rehash of The Unquiet Dead, only without the charm of that story's setting, cast, visuals (granted The Other Side is an audio drama so can't exactly compete), etc.

The villains in this, the Bygone Horde, are literally just the Gelth but more annoying. So annoying, in fact, it took me out of the story and left me dumbfounded. They are a grouping of species that were erased in the Time War, and now, in the post-War universe are trying to break back into reality by (whoever could guess this) sacrificing humanity. The Doctor tells them this is obviously a dumb idea and that he can actually save them and do so without destroying another race in the process, which is an absolute win-win. The Doctor was offering them everything they wanted and more... and they inexplicably turn his offer down, and the Doctor inevitably stops them, because of course he would.

This just infuriates me. Any semblance of logic or realism is tossed out the window because the Horde are the bad guys and therefore cannot have any nuance.

Given this is set not long after The Unquiet Dead, this story would have actually worked much better if it subverted the expectations set by that story; to show a species that did take up the Doctor's offer.

The sound design was about average, the music didn't really feel very Murray Gold-y, and as for the acting, Langley gives a good, if a slightly roped-in, performance. Nicholas Briggs is a good actor, but his impression of Nine isn't the best, but it is better than his Rose.

This story doesn't add much to the overarching plot of series 1, as its events — by dint of it featuring Adam — can't be impactful else discontinuity with *The Long Game*.

And as for Birmingham? The only thing this story had to really say about it was its location and that it has a cinema. It didn't even make fun of Birmingham!


Epsilon

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This review contains spoilers!

Doctor Who – The Ninth Doctor Chronicles

#1.03. The Other Side ~ 8/10


◆ An Introduction

Cinemas are magical places that transport you to different worlds; often by assaulting your ears with loud speakers, whilst your eyes are glued to an IMAX screen. The last time I visited one was when I watched Oppenheimer with my mate Andrew, and I can still remember feeling my chair shake during the nuclear testing scenes.

Cinemas are magical places filled with shadows, and become beautifully sad when they’re abandoned. But they can still transport you to different times, as the Doctor and his friends are about to discover…


◆ Publisher’s Summary

Rose has invited a new friend on board the TARDIS, against the Doctor’s better judgement. But when the Time Lord tries to take his unwelcome guest home, a temporal tsunami cuts the journey short. The travellers find the source of the disturbance inside an abandoned cinema. Will Adam Mitchell help or hinder when the Doctor and Rose discover what is lurking on the other side of the screen?


◆ DISCLAIMER

Bruno Langley became a convicted criminal only a couple of months after this story was released, which is why I’m separating the art from the artist whilst writing this review.


◆ The Ninth Doctor

Someone has finally written this incarnation well, after two lacklustre episodes that bored me into a coma! One of the high points from this episode was the banter between the Doctor and his companions; you could easily imagine the lines being written for Eccleston.

Briggsy has finally gotten to grips with this impersonation and manages to deliver a pretty good performance.

Nine is the Doctor’s lucky number. 1922 is a lot slower than he remembers it.


◆ Rose Tyler

Rose has been given a fair amount of material in ‘The Other Side’, including being swept backwards in time to the 1920s, when the cinema was a busy little dance hall. Handcock does a great job with her.

I have to take my hat off to Briggsy, because his impersonation of Billie Piper has improved tenfold since the previous episode. He sounds a lot more comfortable in the role, and the accent sounds a lot more natural too. A really good performance.


◆ Adam Mitchell

It was a strange choice to bring back the “failed companion”. An arrogant genius who was promptly booted out of the Tardis when he attempted to change the course of human history; refusing to take responsibility for his actions or realise what could’ve happened had he succeeded. Adam only existed to make Rose look better, which he managed to do by consistently being the most aggravating person in the room. Scott Handcock attempts to make him a bit more likeable in ‘The Other Side’, and gives him a chance to actually impress the Doctor.

Langley’s performance is honestly the best of the episode, a fact which leaves a really bitter taste in my mouth for pretty obvious reasons.

He really has to work harder at the questions. Twenty-four hours ago, Adam had been in a position of authority; responsible for cataloguing an array of alien artefacts, documenting what they were, and where they came from. More than that, his opinion had actually counted for something.


◆ Temporal Erasure

The Bygone Horde were casualties of the Time War that were erased from existence. The memory of them survived and they were left as echoes displaced from time on a plane of non-reality. It was in this reduced state that they banded together and became the Horde. They planned on resurrecting themselves – returning to a plane of existence – by emerging on Earth and sacrificing the human race.

I found the Horde to be an interesting antagonist, but they greatly reminded me of the people made of anti-time from ‘Neverland’.


◆ Sound Design

The voice of the Bygone Horde is rather impressive; this menagerie of low, rumbling voices coming out of the cinema’s decaying speakers. It’s somewhat reminiscent of how the 456 communicated with humanity during ‘Children of Earth’.


◆ Conclusion

The veins that shape reality are bleeding. Once the wound is opened, we shall flee this non-existence.”

A temporal tsunami knocks the Tardis slightly off course, and the trio find themselves at a dilapidated cinema in the Midlands. Anomalies have been plaguing this site for decades, because a collection of echoes erased by the Time War are attempting to return to reality.

Scott Handcock delivers the most enjoyable story so far, in this release… which isn’t saying much, given the previous two episodes were nothing short of terrible. I was really interested in the Bygone Horde, despite their obvious similarities to the anti-time people from ‘Neverland’; they could easily return in another script and be greatly fleshed out.

A solid plot paired with fantastic performances all around. ‘The Other Side’ could quite easily slot into Series One, which is very high praise indeed.


PalindromeRose

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This review contains spoilers!

Lots to say about this one. This was my first taste of Briggs' impression of the Ninth Doctor and I have to say he really knocks it out of the park. In spite of Bruno Langley now being a convicted criminal, I was able to enjoy his (what I guess will be one-time) return. I've always thought Adam Mitchell was a bit of an interesting figure in Doctor Who history as the "failed companion" - who pretty much exists just to have made Rose look better.

It's interesting having a story, here, that humanizes him a bit and smooths out some of the kinks in his tenuous relationship with the Doctor. With all that in mind, the story rather refreshingly focuses on a rather basic plot of our time travellers being stranded from the TARDIS and needing to work their way home. Though, personally, the story works better for me when it is just a simple "Time Tsunami" rather than a plot by villainous aliens. The aliens are pretty interesting but they don't become part of the story until later into the game, by which point I was more invested in our main characters working their way back to the TARDIS and into the present. If the story just stuck with that stuff, I would probably have liked The Other Side even more. Effects aren't much to write home about and don't really add much to things, either.

Still, it's a fun story for fans of the Ninth Doctor era, as Big Finish perfectly recreates the tone of Series 1 here. I would recommend it to said fans of the Ninth Doctor (and pretty much only them, unfortunately). For fans of the larger franchise that don't really care for Rose or Adam, or for casual viewers, there's definitely better options out there before coming to this particular story.


dema1020

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