The Monthly Adventures #90 - "Year of the Pig" by Matthew Sweet

Wow, people really don’t like this one, do they? I’ve listened to Matthew Sweet’s work before - namely The Magic Mousetrap further along in The Monthly Adventures - but I distinctly remember struggling with that one due to a disappointing story and number of half baked tonal decisions. So, my expectations going into the rather maligned Year of the Pig were low and yet, what I got I can genuinely say I loved. But why is that? Why did I love this when so many didn’t? What separates this from my previous views on Sweet as a writer? And what exactly was going on with that pig?

A reading holiday for the Doctor and Peri is foiled when the pair find themselves wrapped up in the hunt for a mysterious circus performer. One with a ceaseless appetite, impeccably good manners, a snout and trotters.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

I can fully understand why this story is disliked. It’s most definitely a matter of taste and even though I enjoyed the audio, I can admit where its obvious faults lie. This entire thing is just conversations, and I think you should know that before going in. There are one or two admittedly pretty good scenes of action but a solid 90% of the runtime is taken up by characters having pleasant chats with one another over a constantly increasing list of different foodstuffs. But even then, these are some entertaining bits of back and forth. I think the thing that really clinches it for me is the cast; these characters could so easily be unbearable if the casting on this story wasn’t incredible. The personalities are heightened, the characters characterful, a couple seem more quirk than person but then you have actors like Michael Keeting, Adjoa Andoh and even Maureen O’Brien. Each one of these impressive performers gives this decidedly unserious story their all and I think without such a strong list of people behind it, I would’ve enjoyed this a lot less.

Not to say I don’t believe it has merit of its own, quite the contrary in fact. I think the dialogue is a real strongpoint of this story and moves with fantastic pace, which is lucky considering how much of this script is dialogue. It hits that nice balance of witty and believable and each character feels equally distinct. And even though the plot mainly consists of various luncheons, I think it works incredibly well. I fully thought I had the whole thing worked out by the halfway point but then it kept on throwing twists at me. It’s not blow-your-mind crazy but it’s enough to feel like a satisfying resolution. The pacing is good, the plot is interesting, the reveals are great. For all intents and purposes, I found this whole story an incredibly solid Doctor Who adventure.

So where is it this story goes wrong for so many? I think the main thing is that a lot of people didn’t take to the structure, what with the relatively drawn out lengths of dialogue and only short bursts of action. Now, I was hardly bothered by this, but I do have to concede with a different aspect. This story is way too long, clocking in at just over two and half hours. Now, very few Doctor Who scripts should last that long, but even less so when we’re considering the actual amount of things this story had to say. By the end, we’re basically just having the same conversation over and over again and there was a point where I realised a good chunk of this could have been cut out. And yes, even though it didn’t particularly bother me like it did to others, this story needed more stuff happening. It relies far too much on its central joke of a talking pig and struggles to move past it, causing a very large chunk of the plot to take a hit.

However, even then, I feel other reviews exaggerate this point. There are still a number of really fun moments, like the halfway-point cliffhanger or the opening scene of Six saving a man from drowning. My favourite moment was probably when Chardalot tries to kill the Doctor with a “time bomb” (a bomb that literally affects time as well as space), as the scene has some really nice tension and a pretty good idea behind it. Not only that but it’s even decently set up by an earlier scene where dead cows began raining from the sky. Yeah, I haven’t mentioned how weird Year of the Pig is yet, have I? First and foremost, this is a comedy, and I really dig its style. As I said before, this story is zany and is full of tons of personality but never loses its emotional core. Sweet has some real comedic chops and I like how he never went too full on with the humour, allowing it to settle in the background. It’s a tonal balance that really aided this story in my opinion.

Whilst I can see where the dislike for this story stems from, I do disagree with a lot of the points. This is a genuinely great comedy with an incredible cast and a decent story. Perhaps overbloated at points, yes, but this has got me interested in Matthew Sweet’s other works, and I’m wondering if I’ll change my mind on The Magic Mousetrap when I eventually get around to it. Until then, I’ll just be content with this hidden gem.

8/10

Pros:

+ All star cast on top form

+ The dialogue is snappy and witty

+ Interesting plot that unfurled nicely

+ Pretty funny at times

Cons:

- Far too long for what it is

- Too much of the runtime is made up of small talk

The Monthly Adventures #89 - "No Man's Land" by Martin Day

We’ve seen our fair share of World War Two stories in Doctor Who, from chess matches with Fenric to escapades with gas mask zombies. Yet somehow, World War One is often missed. There’s something about the mud-caked misery of the Great War that seems ripe for story telling and yet it’s bigger, deadlier brother seems to always hog the spotlight. Because of this, the plot to No Man’s Land initially intrigued me, with shady experiments going down in a world war one hospital, but upon listening to it, I found my expectations matched in some places but utterly missed in others.

Rescued from the middle of No Man’s Land, the Doctor, Ace and Hex are transported to an army hospital, where they find they are to investigate a murder - one that hasn’t happened yet. A grisly product of time travel? Or something far more human?

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

When I think of the First World War as a setting, I think trenches, I think misery, I think tension, I think despair. Whilst No Man’s Land doesn’t quite manage a few of those points, I think it for the most part manages to capture the atmosphere of the time period well, the mildewed halls of the old army hospital vivid in my head. The scenes actually set in the titular No Man’s Land are also incredibly tense and even somewhat surreal, what with the fact we never actually see the enemy, only the death they cause. Superficially, this audio succeeds.

But of course, my main concern is always going to be story and if an audio can’t get that right, it’s usually going to lose my favour. The blurb instantly grabbed me; I adore the idea of “investigating a murder that hasn’t happened yet” and I was really looking forward to a timey-wimey murder mystery, á la The Chimes of Midnight. What I got wasn’t that but I can confidently say the mystery had me intrigued for at least the first half. I think there could’ve been bits and pieces it could've tightened up and I wasn’t exactly on the edge of my seat, but it kept the plot moving and kept me interested, which is all it needed to do.

And to carry any good mystery, you have to have a good cast. I am happy to say that No Man’s Land has an especially strong group of characters leading it, from the sympathetic Taylor to the brutish Sergeant Wood. Our main antagonist, the duplicitous Brooks, also excels and I think Michael Cochrane’s performance captures the descent from disarmingly amicable to full on crazy super well. As for our main cast, we get good performances out of everybody but I don’t love how Ace and Hex are written here. Hex gets sort of brainwashed pretty early on in the story but literally the only thing that comes of it is him and Ace bickering like it’s the JNT era.

Finally, something that really stood out to me in No Man’s Land was the use of theming and imagery. The basic plot boils down to a rogue army captain brainwashing troopers into becoming perfect soldiers by ridding them of feelings of regret or cowardice, but only succeeding in turning them into raging psychopaths. It’s a pretty simple anti-war message but it’s done fantastically, and I love scenes like Taylor describing how he couldn’t bring himself to kill a German soldier when he had the chance or the final conversation between our surviving characters. The criticisms of the concepts of cowardice that killed so many during this war is excellently explored and for all of the problems I think plague this script, Day really excelled when it came to the subtext.

But like I said, I have some problems. First and foremost, this story just really does not interest me. I don’t know how else to put this, but especially once the initial mystery wraps up halfway through, I found the story to thoroughly uninvest me. It moves along incredibly slowly and the fact that this is only two hours long is astounding because it felt like so much more. The biggest detractor is tension because for whatever reason, at no point did I feel particularly worried about what was going to happen. It’s a slow burn story applied to a script that really needed a little more action or compelling build up. When the soldiers finally lose it in the final part and kill Brooks, that should feel like an explosion the whole story’s been building up to. Instead, it sort of just happens and I feel absolutely nothing in the way of pay off.

It also doesn’t help that the script keeps doing too many things at once. Some of the plot lines don’t go anywhere; I’ve already mentioned how Hex’s brainwashing is entirely incidental but there’s also stuff like the insane private they meet at the very end immediately losing it or Sergeant Wood dying halfway through. Even that central mystery feels like a copout. Turns out, there’s no kind of time travel involved, Taylor just heard the Doctor, Ace and Hex’s names when they arrived in No Man’s Land, and then in his sleep wrote the army summons naming them and the murder they were trying to investigate was his subconscious feeling that he would kill somebody. It’s unbelievably contrived and an absolute let down after the descent mystery that preceded it. Not to mention, once Taylor actually kills Woods, that whole plot line is mostly dropped, no true consequences come out of Taylor’s crime.

No Man’s Land is by no means a bad story, it has a great number of strengths and some really strong thematic elements. It’s just that its script is kind of weak. The story doesn’t grab me but there’s definitely a lot to love here and I feel like with a little more focus in certain areas, this could’ve been a whole lot better. As it stands, it’s yet another story that ends up being just fine.

6/10

Pros:

+ Interesting cast

+ Fantastically evocative setting

+ Decent central mystery

+ Well realised themes and imagery

Cons:

- Slow script that fails to invest me

- A lot of plot lines feel like they go nowhere

- Wasn’t particularly tense or exciting

The Monthly Adventures #88 - "Memory Lane" by Eddie Robson

The TARDIS team of Eight, Charley and C’rizz is, I believe, the most underappreciated and underdeveloped set of lead characters we’ve ever gotten; one of the best depictions of the family dynamic trope, C’rizz’s darker leanings, the chemistry between all three cast members, it’s genuinely really great stuff and the idea of a full fledged alien being the companion is one I wish the show would explore more. Unfortunately, the focus on the Divergence Saga kind of killed the character development, the audios afterwards got buried beneath their blossoming team of Seven, Ace and Hex and repeatedly, writers missed opportunities to do interesting things with the characters. The next story with these leads will be Absolution, which is when they begin to exit the show, so did Memory Lane manage to strengthen our characters at the eleventh hour? Let’s find out.

An idyllic Summer’s afternoon in suburbia is interrupted by the arrival of three travellers, who find something very strange is going on. The houses are all identical, down to their occupants, and the street goes on forever. What’s more, something wants them to stay.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Eddie Robson is one of those writers who, even at his worst, will make a compelling script. His style, humour and pacing is all near perfect and you can expect to come out of his stories having at least had a good time. And that’s just what Memory Lane is, it’s fun. Whilst I think this omits some much needed deeper levels of complexity, take it out of its arc, take it away from previous stories, and you have an absolute blast of a script. Firstly, the idea is amazing - take the uniform endlessness of suburbia, and crank it up to eleven. The setting and the exploration of it were by far the best things about the story and what I enjoyed the most; this is a good sci-fi concept taken to its furthest extreme and fully explored. 

Furthermore, Robson’s understated comedic leanings really shine through. The pacing is fast but not inconsiderate, everything evolves and flows naturally throughout. The scenes are snappy, the dialogue is witty and plot points are never around long enough to exhaust themselves. This is an expertly balanced piece of writing that knows when to move its story along. Carrying a lot of the pace is just Robson’s general ability as a writer, his characters and dialogue are charming and quotable but never to the detriment of his cast’s believability.

And what a cast that is, practically everybody here is on top form. Kim makes for an interesting side character and I love the idea of a Planet of the Apes style fish out of water situation for a pioneering space traveller. Tom’s actor puts in a great performance and manages to capture the energy and mannerisms of a ten year old really well and Ms. Braudy is another piece of pure fun. McGann’s also putting in a brilliant performance, when he likes a script he can be one of the best performers the show’s ever had. His intellect, his witticisms and his innate mysticism is all at its peak here.

I think the only member of the cast I have any kind of problem with is C’rizz, because his character journey begins to really struggle by this point and you can tell there’s not really anywhere else for him to go. The psychopathic undertones that have been building the last few audios turns into JNT style bickering with Kim that really got on my nerves after a while. It wouldn’t be as bad if it wasn’t with a character I was promised more from. Also the conclusion of him using his weird personality storage thing that’s been barely explained to break the prison is… flimsy.

Actually, quite a bit of the resolution of this story is flimsy. It’s eventually revealed that Tom is in a prison that traps him with his own memories and he’s being kept so as to repeatedly reenact the crash that served as the planet he’s on’s first contact. An interesting idea but it feels a little humdrum in my opinion. The reveal of “it was all a simulation” is a lot less interesting than I was hoping it’d be. Not that it’s all bad, a lot of cool stuff is done with the concept, like trapping the Doctor in his own memories or using the invention of television to resolve the plot, but for me I was just not personally taken by the answer to this story’s conundrums.

However, this is still an utterly brilliant piece of Doctor Who. It’s certainly not the deepest, there’s very little character development besides some stuff with Charley and her mother, but it’s what the show is best at: the adventure. The pace and character of it all is sublime and makes for an incredibly enjoyable experience, which is what I always value the most. 

9/10

Pros:

+ Incredibly fun

+ Witty and fast paced

+ Great setting and idea

+ Interesting sidecast

Cons:

- The reveal behind what’s going on feels a little pedestrian

- C’rizz and Kim’s bickering got old fast

Eighth Doctor Adventures #11 - "Dreamstone Moon" by Paul Leonard

One thing keeps bugging me about the EDAs, one thing that keeps coming up, and resolving itself and unresolving itself and taking over my reviews: Sam. Sam, for a long time, was my least favourite companion ever. I found her a bland retreading of better companions that had nothing new to say or do. Then came the Finding Sam arc and with Longest Day, I had finally started to come around to her. And now I don’t know anymore. I have a confused relationship with Paul Leonard - I remember reading and liking quite a few of his works, but then I forgot them and read the absolute mess that is Genocide. Dreamstone Moon isn’t quite as annoyingly convoluted as that one - in fact, it’s astoundingly simple - but it still carries over his worst qualities, leading to yet another dud for the EDAs.

Separated from the Doctor, Sam finds herself on Dreamstone Moon, where the eponymous mineral that records unconscious thoughts is mined. But with the Doctor hot on her tail, she discovers the horrifying secret about Dreamstone Moon, and how it might just kill them both.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Leonard is often called a “complex writer”; I remember from collection videos back in the day his works being described as having complicated plots and being hard to follow. I disagree, from what I’ve seen of his work, he’s relatively bland with his storytelling. However, he is mind numbingly confounding with his prose. I had the same problem with Genocide, where he comes up with all these unique, detailed alien locations and then fundamentally fails at conveying them to the reader. His worldbuilding is thorough - I may criticize the man’s storytelling capabilities, but he has some great sci-fi concepts in him - but it’s so hard to visualise anything he’s writing. His descriptions are always a little too short or a little too vague, they focus on the wrong things or entirely omit details. For the record, I love how interesting and alien the setting of Dreamstone Moon is, it really feels like a lived in galaxy and not the usual convergence of future humans. However, reading this book is a chore and so often I just ignored some of his descriptions because they were so confusing.

The purpose of this little rant was to tell you the backdrop with which I read the rest of this book, because for all intents and purposes, this is a very simple story. We’re on a moon, there’s a mysterious substance, the moon is alive. Throw in some action, some character deaths and a snappy climax, and you have yourself a book. Now, a simple story doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad one and I can go as far as to say I enjoyed quite a bit of Dreamstone Moon; it didn’t blow me away, but it was a decently engaging story with a nice little mystery to it. For all of the problems I have with it, this book is not substantial enough for my issues to be more than surface level. This is certainly not a terrible book and after Legacy of the Daleks, it’s a godsend. However, I still have some points I really struggled with.

For one, let’s talk characters. Our sidecast this time around is actually pretty good. The stand out character is alien environmental protester Aloisse, who’s paired up with Sam for most of the book and is by far the most realistic and interesting. The friendship the two form is actually quite endearing and she was at the centre of most of this book’s political allegory. There is also temporary sidekick Daniel, who’s somewhat bland but gets the job done and then there’s Cleomides. See, like I said earlier, this book has some political allegory in it. The main thing is environmentalism - a company is harvesting parts of a living being for profit, it isn’t subtle - but there’s also some stuff about racism, with Cleomides being a soldier with a harsh distrust of aliens. She’s a little all over the place for me, I like the idea of her character arc and learning to trust the Doctor but it’s really not handled well. The story ends with her siding with the Doctor and that’s kind of the point where we see she’s redeemed, but she’s also just left two people for dead because they’re aliens. Her character doesn’t change naturally, it changes for the plot. And that’s my biggest problem with this book’s commentary, it doesn’t feel well written into the story, it feels like window dressing. It comes and goes and there are glimmers of interesting stuff in there but it feels entirely disposable.

And then there’s Sam. So, Sam’s been growing on me recently and, especially in Longest Day, I’ve been accepting her more and more as a nuanced character. And it all came crashing back down in this book because I really don’t care about her here. She’s the central focus for most of this novel and I don’t really know what it is about her that makes her so lifeless to me but there’s definitely something. She’s spunky and foolhardy and optimistic but it’s all so one note. The fact that she feels so much like earlier, better companions really harms her but also, it might be that all these traits feel less like traits of Sam Jones and more like traits of a generic companion. Sam is a seventeen year old girl from 90s London and it barely shows. She’s confident, mature, determined and none of that really feels to me like it lines up with that backstory. She’s far too generic and what possible uses she could have are overlooked. There was some stuff later on I did like, where she feels guilty for leaving the Doctor and is conflicted on her feelings for him. I do really like the idea of a companion being in love with the Doctor but being completely unreciprocated, it fits the character a lot better and is a nice subversion of expectations. I also think Eight’s a little bland in this one, I couldn’t picture McGann speaking a lot of the lines and he seems very uninterested in getting Sam back. The whole Sam and the Doctor being separated thing feels very contrived here, there’s literally a moment where the Doctor has the option to go get Sam and says “oh, that can wait”.

So, as it stands, we have a generic but entertaining story with a decent side cast but some really weak theming and characterisation. Not a terrible book, but also not the end of the world. However, the conclusion really screws this book up for me. Dreamstone Moon doesn’t have an ending, not really. It wraps up incredibly abruptly and leaves a bunch of plot threads unceremoniously dumped. Everything goes from zero to a hundred in a second, the moon is destroyed and we’re dumped on the planet below for a bit. We barely get to explore it, some technobabble is thrown at us and we leave the story behind with very little satisfying resolution. Combining all of this with Leonard's miserably convoluted prose and the final thirty or so pages were utterly tensionless for me. It’s a real shame because I was looking forward to seeing where everything was going, but it all really went nowhere. It’s not like everything before this was amazing and this was all a massive let down, but it’s still a great disappointment in my opinion.

I did enjoy Dreamstone Moon, it engaged me for most of its page count and I think that’s the main thing a book should do. However, I was not invested in the real meat of it all, none of the arcs or themes engrossed me and I left it feeling a little cheated. It probably doesn’t help that I really don’t get on with how Paul Leonard writes things, but this was an unfortunate dud. The EDAs are slipping back into painful mediocrity, can anybody save us? Maybe Kate Orman.

5/10

Pros:

+ Really unique and thorough world building

+ Decent side cast

+ The story, whilst simple, is relatively engaging

Cons:

- I really struggle with Leonard’s prose

- The entire conclusion feels rushed and underdeveloped

- Has a thin allegory shoehorned in

- Sam goes back to being bland and generic

The Monthly Adventures #87 - "The Gathering" by Joseph Lidster

As The Monthly Adventures moved past the number fifty mark, it began to lose some of the experimentation that so defined its original run. But as we near our next milestone, we begin to see a different kind of trail blazing. The Main Range really began to play around with format from this point on; some changes stuck - like the anthology releases - and some didn’t. And then there’s this two part adventure from Joe Lidster, who begins his story with the heart wrenching The Reaping and then continues to absolutely destroy my feelings with his follow up, The Gathering. But does this experiment work?

Tracing a strange pattern through time, the Doctor finds himself in mid-2000s Brisbane, where he runs into his old companion, Tegan Jovanka. Tegan’s moved on with her life, but it hasn’t moved on with her. The Doctor’s up against a familiar face, only he hasn’t met her yet.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Joe, my guy, could you do me a favour and write a story that doesn’t absolutely destroy me for once? Our themes of life and death are carried on from The Reaping, and Lidster does not give you a single second to recover. The central dynamic of this story revolves around Five and Tegan and like with Peri in the previous story, Lidster works his magic on them. A question I often see raised about the companions is what happens after they leave? How do you carry on with your life, how do you settle down after such an experience? It’s been explored dozens of times, some better, some worse, but I can’t think of anybody more capable of doing it than Lidster. And of course, the interpretation he gives us is tragic as anything. His use of down to earth characters really excels here as he explores the nature of a simple but content life and settling down, Tegan’s humdrum existence is a very relatable image. I like the unglamourised portrayal, I like that it’s not 100% good or bad; this is what real life is like, without the childlike whimsy of Doctor Who, this is the real world, for better or for worse. And then Tegan gets cancer. On paper, this shouldn’t work, it sounds too forced or too sad for this show, but it’s executed really well. I love Tegan’s acceptance of it, I like how it symbolises the hard truths of life Lidster is trying to portray. Sometimes, tragic things happen, and we are unable to stop it. I’m not fully on board with the reveal that the tumor was caused by her time aboard the TARDIS because it kind of takes away from the message about moving on and living in the real world, but it was minor.

If The Reaping was about grief and the suddenness of death, The Gathering is about acceptance and moving on, and I think it’s done brilliantly. Tying into this is our villain - the returning Katherine Chambers, utilising cyber technology to try and save her dying brother. The idea of having a side character turn into the main villain is pretty good on its own but tie in the parallels to Mondas and the connection to themes about letting go of the past and she becomes an incredibly tragic villain. We still have a crazy psychopath with her accomplice - James - but it’s nice to have a morally grey antagonist with some real nuance and realism to them. I don’t particularly love the rest of the sidecast - Jodi feels like a plot device and Michael is sympathetic but kind of bland - but I should shout out Tegan and Five, who both get fantastic performances that really complete the story.

And the story itself, whilst not fantastic, has some nice bells and whistles to it. It’s not quite as grim as some other Lidster stories but like all of his scripts, I loved every scene of character development, which is good because that makes up the entire first half of our story. In fact, the first part has a pretty neat structure to it, told non-linearly and framed by a conversation between Kathy and a particularly chatty waiter. It’s really fun seeing everything slot into place and erupt at the end of Part One. However, this structure does have a few issues to it. For one, I think the pacing is off. Basically, this is a two part story, the first part is set up and the second part is action. Both are fine on their own but it feels like going from 0 to 100. Also doesn’t help that I didn’t feel that invested in the story. I loved the themes, I loved the development, but what was actually happening didn’t exactly leave me on the edge of my seat. And what’s more, there wasn’t much tension. Jodi going into the building to disable the cameras was a little nail-biting but it’s blindingly obvious where it’s going.

And finally, we should talk about that gimmick; does the two part story work? Not really. Whilst the thematic link is super strong, the actual stories really don’t. You could very easily remove all the links to The Reaping and have this be entirely stand alone, which I feel means this doesn’t really deliver on its previous episode. Also, the conclusion to the whole pattern thing is super dumb and feels entirely arbitrary.

The Gathering wasn’t quite as good as The Reaping for me, purely because of a less engaging story, but it was still an emotionally devastating rollercoaster. There are bits and pieces that could be tightened, sure, but the themes and subject matter are all on point. This is an incredible moral allegory that is expertly tied into the characters, absolutely expected of Joseph Lidster. Whilst its existence as a duology could’ve been better utilised, I really like these two stories, even with their imperfections.

8/10

Pros:

+ Builds excellently on Tegan

+ Really great analysis on companions

+ Interesting non-linear structure

+ Katherine makes for a tragic villain

Cons:

- Poorly paced

- Lacking in a lot of tension

- The links to The Reaping are poorly handled

The Monthly Adventures #86 - "The Reaping" by Joseph Lidster

I don’t think Joseph Lidster is a writer, I think his chosen profession is just absolutely ruining my day. Every time, every single time I listen to one of his audios, that’s it until tomorrow, I am completely inconsolable. I don’t know when he decided that his entire career should be made up of the most devastating scripts known to man, but that was both a great and terrible day. I haven’t felt like this since Broken. And like with Broken, this story turns a character I liked into a character I would go into battle to protect. The only thing I thought this whole time was “man, poor Peri”. The ultimate character builder is back at it and with him, the most tragic depiction of the cybermen.

Peri is going home. After learning of an old family friend’s murder, she’s returned to Baltimore, but things aren’t like they used to be. Her family’s moved on without her and the world is leaving her behind. But a familiar and devastating force is awakening and the world might not have a say in the matter.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

So, we’ve just had the darkest Doctor Who story with Red, and now we have possibly the saddest. Front and centre, this is an audio about Peri. Now, I like Peri, she’s a fun character and Nicola Bryant is an incredible actress, but I’ve never really grown to particularly care about her. Mostly residing in the most confused and batshit season of the show, she’s never gotten a great amount of time to shine, even in her stories with Erimem. That’s where The Reaping comes in because by god does this one go some places with her character. Returning home to attend a funeral, she finds herself at odds with a family who have grown to resent her in her absence, and the studies of grief and growing apart from your family are utterly devastating. It’s like Aliens of London, but written by somebody who isn’t completely delusional. Bryant puts in her best performance, Lidster gives some incredible, intelligent character interactions and there’s an honestly groundbreaking portrayal of the companion’s family. There’s one particular scene, where Peri overhears her former best friend and mother talking about how they preferred it when she was gone, and it’s genuinely the most tragic scene of Doctor Who I’ve ever heard.

But this story wouldn’t really work without the rest of our cast being on top form, and luckily they absolutely are. Baker is firing on all cylinders and I think Lidster strikes a great balance between the Season 22 and Big Finish styles of characterisation. As for the rest of the cast, Lidster has a real affinity for creating down to earth, homegrown characters so this story about family and loss is just perfect for him. The real star is Peri’s mother - Justine - and the relationship she has with her daughter. Claudia Christian puts in a fantastic performance and I got extremely invested in the pair of them. The way Lidster concludes their relationship, I wasn’t a fan of, but I’ll get onto that.

The Cybermen make an appearance too, and for me, it’s always a gamble with them. I love them conceptually and the original idea and design is perfect in my opinion. I don’t love The Tenth Planet, but I do love that portrayal of Cybermen. Cybermen, for me, rarely get great stories and are far too often portrayed as generic robot men rather than the body horror monster they truly are. Spare Parts had an excellent portrayal of their bleakness, but The Reaping gives an excellent portrayal of their tragedy. Linking cyber conversion and grief is a genius idea and I really like the despondent, dying Cyberleader, letting his lost emotions slip in the throes of death. The scenes between the converted Anthony Chambers and his children hit a little too close to the Yvonne stuff from Spare Parts but I still like the idea and the performance sells it.

I think the thing that really makes The Reaping for me, however, is the funereal tone of it all. The constant rain, the urban setting, the themes of grief, there’s this melancholy that is draped over the whole audio making it a brilliantly atmospheric listen that really puts you in the shoes of the characters. David Darlington also delivers a score very unusual for him but one I’d go as far as to call his best. The haunting acoustics lends a very understated personality to a lot of the scenes, adding to the tragic undertones but avoiding any melodrama that could hamper the message. The Reaping is one of Who’s best depictions of tragedy, and for that I can only commend Lidster.

The story itself is also pretty great; standard Cyberman fare in terms of action but it’s certainly not unenjoyable. It’s carried a lot by its atmosphere, however the first half did posit an engaging mystery with some nice pacing; the scene where Peri realises the Cybermen killed Anthony is really good. My main problem with it is that it begins to take precedence in the final act and I think that’s a real mistake. The twist that there’s only one Cyberman and the whole plot has been a trap to ensnare the Doctor I think is contrived and the script spends too long trying to justify what is a pretty outlandish reveal. I like the solution to the problem - the Doctor tricking the CyberLeader into going to Mondas - but the third act feels pretty much tensionless to me, and mostly because this is a character piece choosing to focus on action. All that stuff I loved in the first act with Peri’s relationship with her family doesn’t really go that far. I think what we get is serviceable but I would’ve loved the conflict to go on a bit longer and have the Cybermen be the backdrop to that rather than the other way around. And the ending genuinely annoys me. So, the story wraps up and Peri randomly decides to keep some Cyber tech, which then promptly blows up and kills her mother. I like the idea of Justine dying, it feels like a fitting ending to Peri’s character arc in this story, but why couldn’t she have been killed by the Cybermen, why did the story end first and then kill her off? The way it’s constructed now, it feels shoehorned in for some extra shedded tears and little else. It’s surprisingly clumsy for this story and was a bit of a sour note to end it on.

However, overall, The Reaping’s pretty close to a masterpiece. This is peak Lidster character writing, but he loses focus towards the end and Janine’s death was the final nail in the coffin for me, causing this story to lose what was close to a 10/10 score. But that first half, the atmosphere, the gorgeous score, the detailed characters all make it worth it. Peri has massively risen in my companion ranking because of this script alone, which is something impressive all by itself. Now I’ve just got to hope The Gathering delivers just as much.

9/10

Pros:

+ Adds some brilliant layers of complexity to Peri

+ Well characterised and likeable side cast

+ Excellent depiction of the Cybermen

+ Wonderfully sombre tone aided by a brilliant score

+ Devastatingly heartbreaking

Cons:

- The story begins to fall apart towards the end

- The script loses focus

The Monthly Adventures #85 - "Red" by Stewart Sheargold

The EU is a strange place. It’s a messy, extravagant, imaginative playground with just the slightest hint of depravity and every so often, it forgets where it came from. A common topic discussed within Doctor Who fandom is how dark can the show go? When do disturbing themes turn to pointless cruelty? Already, some of my favourite stories are criticised for this; Project: Twilight I loved for its well realised grittiness whilst some others loathe it for the same reason. So, what am I meant to do with Red? Headed by a pair I’d dare to call the goofiest TARDIS team, Red is a story that truly shook me to my core, and I’m not certain if I loved it.

The Needle: a symbiotic apartment complex that changes with its inhabitants, who have all lost the need for violence thanks to the ruling supercomputer. But the loss of primal instinct has made the residents bloodthirsty, and something’s letting the rage out.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

I guess the first thing I have to say about Red is jesus christ, this thing is f**ked up. Genuinely, I think this is the darkest Doctor Who story I’ve seen by a mile. In a futuristic society where violence has been eradicated, a mysterious, sentient virus is causing people to go on violent killing sprees. It’s a really dark, miserable time with some absolutely horrific stuff in it. Combined with some brilliant world building and you have a deeply unsettling story about a society obsessed with feeling pain. If you ever wanted to hear Sandi Toksvig calmly talk about her obsession with having violence inflicted upon her, then boy do I have the story for you! The world of Red is some truly incredible stuff, the little details we get about how the society functions, how the Needle works, how the lack of any kind of violence has affected the population, it’s really immersive and endlessly fascinating.

And that’s where Red’s greatest strength lies: its immersion. The atmosphere is on point all the way through - there’s a real grim oppression to everything with some neat cyberpunk leanings. The sound design is a tricky one for me because it’s sometimes incredible and sometimes noticeably awful. I love the rain sodden sounds of the undercity and the mechanical glitch noises used for the absolutely terrifying Red Virus but then sometimes things will just be completely silent when they really shouldn’t be and break the immersion the story’s built up so well. Also, I am a hundred percent sure they use that shitty violin sound effect those “GHOST FOUND AT 3AM!!!” videos use at least a few times. For the most part though, it’s great and at its absolute best when realising the villain.

Our main antagonist - the mysterious Red Virus - is an absolutely terrifying entity. Randomly infecting the chips that suppress violence in the Needle, they cause those infected to become deranged, chanting “red” and releasing corrupted, static sounds. Genuinely frightening stuff that really unnerved me when I listened to it (I love creepy motifs). McCoy is also doing some weird s**t with his voice in a performance that just teeters on being silly but manages to land on the side of utterly bone chilling. Langford’s also putting in a good - if more restrained - performance.

However, Red is a very style over substance story for me. I loved the aspects of the world and the ideas and the atmosphere but I really did not take to the plot of this thing. There are a lot of things going on in Red, Sheargold throws around a lot of ideas but he really struggles to make a lot of them clear. A lot of the story feels like it would be better with visuals and because of that it’s really hard to follow. I struggled listening to this one because I kept getting lost - so much happens and so much feels like it's lacking the image that should be going with it. This would never get made on TV, which is a shame, because that feels like the only place that could properly house it. And even looking past the convoluted elements, Red just hasn’t got a whole lot of substance past its ideas. The story is very slow and consists mostly of watching things on a monitor, the rest delegated to running around empty corridors and needlessly extending the story with extra plot beats. Also, as much as I love the creativity on display here, you have to know when to cut your losses. Sheargold had way more than one story’s worth of ideas bouncing around here, with stuff like the time-altering drug Slow and the supercomputer Whitenoise having temporal energy in it from time travellers. Yeah, that was the bit that really lost me, I still don’t know what the whole “Celia was a time traveller” reveal meant or why it created the Red Virus.

Red is a masterclass in atmosphere, disturbing themes and detailed world building but as an actual story, I wasn’t too into it. I loved just existing in this world and getting creeped out by the absolutely horrific things happening in it but I couldn’t really have cared less what happened to the characters.

7/10

Pros:

+ Great performance from McCoy and Langford

+ Atmospheric and disturbing

+ Brilliant central concept and antagonist

+ Oppressive and unnerving sound design

Cons:

- The script struggles to make things clear to the listener

- Story is pretty uneventful and poorly paced

The Monthly Adventures #84 - "The Nowhere Place" by Nicholas Briggs

Nick Briggs is a truly confounding writer - an author who never seems to stick to a single style or tone or even level of quality and will just insert his own stories into ranges whenever he gets an idea he likes, for better or for worse. This has sometimes worked - with stories such as Creatures of Beauty - and sometimes really hasn’t - like with the boring as sin The Mutant Phase. Here though, he’s posited a story whose premise intrigued me. No, not just intrigued me, fascinated me, absolutely drew me in and grabbed me by the ears. But in the end, I don’t feel he delivered on it properly, but I’m not really sure why.

There is a sound. A sound that rings through time. And those who hear it are drawn away. Away to nowhere. The Doctor and Evelyn are on the trail of a centuries long mystery, and at the end of it is a place only ever theorised to even exist: Time’s End.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Nick Briggs is a writer who can really excel in atmosphere when he wants to - Creatures of Beauty and the first half of Embrace the Darkness are both proof of that - but somehow, The Nowhere Place just falls shy of the mark for me. On the surface, I love everything about this. The Doctor hears the sound of a bell projected through time and discovers that the crew of a spacecraft carrier can hear it too. When they do, they are compelled to walk through a door that shouldn’t exist into a mysterious “nowhere place”. Cosmic and existential themes combined with unique imagery and an omnipresent threat, what isn’t to like there? Well, I honestly don’t know. I love the idea of the door and for the first half of this story, I was really interested in knowing more about what exactly was happening, but nothing felt particularly tense. I think it was the fact that the door somewhat felt like an afterthought and not enough focus was placed on it. It was treated more like a neat sci-fi idea rather than the root of a cosmic evil and it caused the atmosphere surrounding it to dissipate somewhat.

There are still some brilliant moments and Briggs conjures up some incredible imagery: the bell portending death, the door on a wall that should lead into space but doesn’t, Evelyn seeing screaming faces inside the mouth of an unknowable horror beyond imagination, it was really gripping for a long while. However, I think things began to really turn when we got to the train. See, it’s discovered half way through that the bell people keep hearing is from a steam train in the 1950s carrying two British cold war agents and it's here where the story stops feeling like a ghostly base under siege and more like another one of Briggs’ stray ideas running amok. Things become too tangible, what was something beyond comprehension doing things beyond comprehension becomes a plot to stop humanity developing space travel, which feels like an idea out of a much different, more generic story. And that’s a real shame because if the script had focussed more on the cosmic horror aspects of it all, I think I would’ve liked it a hell of a lot better.

And that’s what this story really needs, it needs focus. We spend the first half on a freighter at the edge of the Solar System, whose crew is slowly being picked off one by one. Great premise, ripe for possibilities, but then we change focus to the stuff on the train and then when we return, it’s two months later and we’re back in the first location but now with the changed tone and it all feels very jumpy. The ending also really annoys me because it amounts to a lot of technobabble. The Doctor finds the entity behind the door and discovers it’s an alternate version of humanity who experimented with time travel and got trapped in “Time’s End”, the theoretical point in the future where the laws of physics break. Bitter, they then began to sabotage other versions of humanity - including ours - out of spite, trying to stop them from advancing past the edge of the Solar System. It’s a weird ending that is the final nail in the coffin towards the atmosphere here, it really sucks the life out of the script and makes it feel less like the atmospheric horror story it wants to be and more like a weird speculative fiction thing. Funny considering Embrace the Darkness had literally the exact same problem; I guess Briggs just does this for some reason.

Now, this review has basically amounted to me trying to work out why this story didn’t click with me as it should’ve but that’s not to say I disliked it. It’s still a neat little idea box with some great imagery and whilst it fell apart in the second half, the mystery was intriguing for the first hour or so. I also think that Briggs’ character work is a lot better here, especially with the overwrought Captain Oswin, who was a very interesting and layered take on the authority figure trope so often seen in the Classic Era. I also liked Briggs’ own performance as wishful astrophysicist Trevor, who became very likable in the short amount of time we spend with him. For all intents and purposes, this is a good script with a pleasant pace to it. It was just missing something for me, a certain spark, a certain extra level of atmosphere or scope that would’ve made it all click into place but as it stands, it’s more like a grab bag of different ideas.

A Briggs story could really go either way and I’m swinging to the positive side on this one. This was an enjoyable but muddled horror story whose greatest crime was not living up to potential. It’s well worth a listen but I can’t help but imagine what could’ve been if all these cool ideas and images were handled a little better. Briggs certainly has some worthy concepts rattling around in his head but he doesn’t always succeed at executing them.

7/10

Pros:

+ Really interesting existential themes

+ Contains some brilliant imagery

+ The mystery is incredibly intriguing

+ Interesting and intelligent side cast

Cons:

- Missing a certain spark

- Needed to focus in on one of its aspects

- The ending is a lot of technobabble

8th Doctor DWM #1.3 - "Fire and Brimstone" by Alan Barnes

Returning to a place he helped create, the Doctor finds all of reality in danger from a powerful invader, and a mysterious puppet master pulling the strings.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Fire and Brimstone was the first DWM comic I felt really worked. Somehow, Barnes managed to do a big, high stakes story and not make it feel rushed. The pacing here is great, the cast is great, there’s a brilliant rise and fall in action and it makes sure to plan around its length.

I really like that it’s a sequel to the previous story as it really does make this feel like a proper narrative season of Who and not just some random stories. This is also my first encounter with The Threshold, apparently responsible for Ace’s death at some point (did not realise that happened in the comics), and I have to say I really like them. A mixture of a really great visual design and some super fun character beats make them both joyous to read and a genuine threat.

As for our main characters, I think McGann’s voice is really nailed here and I could practically hear him talking as I read it. Plus, I think Izzy’s finally getting some development, having a decent amount of agency in this strip. I really like the headstrong, geeky angle they’re going for, I have high hopes for this.

In other news, the Daleks are back! That was a fun twist and I think they’re pretty good here. I didn’t love them using a weird nanobot wasp thing because it did take a little bit of agency away from them but the idea of them fighting parallel universe versions of daleks is super cool. Didn’t love that they were defeated by deus ex machina Dalek wasps though.

I think the climax could be a little stronger; I liked the Threshold but how they were implemented felt super clunky and they were only really there to exposit. In fact, quite a lot of this story is exposition, which is a shame but it’s by far the most satisfying and competent arc we’ve gotten from 8DWM.

8/10

Pros:

+ Izzy and the Doctor are both fantastic

+ Loved the idea and presence of the Threshold

+ Had great pacing and a satisfying arc to it

+ I enjoyed its ties to the previous story

Cons:

- The climax feels muddled and janky

- Too much focus on Dalek Wasps and not Daleks

The Monthly Adventures #83 - "Something Inside" by Trevor Baxendale

f**k Trevor Baxendale.

Ok, now that’s out of the way, let’s talk about Something Inside. There’s a recurring theme with Eight and I won’t be the first to admit, it’s a strange one. The poor guy can’t seem to keep his memory. Already, we’ve seen this in the Main Range, when he went full crazy during the events of Minuet in Hell but it’s been a prominent thing since his very first appearance, collapsing in an abandoned hospital wing and screaming “Who am I!” like some kind of artificial intelligence with a split personality. And there’s a point where every trope starts to become a cliché, and I think Something Inside solidifies that. What we have here is a pretty run of the mill story that uses the familiar amnesia trope in a way that ends up really boring me.

Separated and trapped inside a prison for psychics, the TARDIS crew find themselves up against a brutal warden and a ravenous creature of mental energy feasting on the inmates’ minds. 

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Something Inside seemed promising on the outside. The cover was intriguing, the synopsis was vague but drip fed me some interesting information and putting aside everything wrong with him as a person, Trevor Baxendale can be a really compelling writer from time to time. However, it was upon learning that this was another Eight story where he magically contracts amnesia that I began to doubt it. First of all, I really like the premise of psychic-proof prison meant to house telepaths; I like psychic stuff and that was a fun concept to play around in, especially when you learn who the psychics are and how they came to be. However, the material we’re given inside this premise is thoroughly average.

Eight’s amnesia, advertised in the DWM teaser, is completely incidental and contained mostly within a couple drawn out scenes in the first half, confusingly and unnecessarily being in non chronological order. If it had used the reveal of the Doctor’s amnesia as the Part One cliffhanger rather than a muddled flash forward, it could’ve derived some decent tension but as it stands it just feels a little pointless. It isn’t utilised well at all, he still acts exactly like the Doctor - the amnesia not hindering him one bit - and then he magically gets his memories back for the final act. This might sound like a big, noticeable blemish on this story but really, it’s just another symptom of a tired plot. Something Inside is a lot of running backwards and forwards, with little in the way of structure or pay off. By the time it had ended, it didn’t feel like a victory, it just felt like the last thing that happened. It’s a real shame the story feels so rehashed to me because there were some good ideas in there that could’ve used a little more dynamic exploration than this.

For one, we have two decent antagonists. The Brain Worm, as it’s somewhat stupidly called, is the sentient psychic powers of one of the inmates and it’s started hunting down the other prisoners. It’s a decent monster that can even be quite creepy, hiding inside an unknown character’s head. I also like how the characters can’t see it either, as it puts us in the same position as them. However, I do think it would work better in a different story. This is two for two with Baxendale scripts that feel like they should be horror stories but instead feel tonally lifeless, both this and The Dark Flame would have benefitted from a little more personality. Something Inside, as it stands, is a generic action flick desperately wanting to be something different. The worst offender of this tonal disparity is the score, which is overall quite bland but the sound mixing tends to make it egregiously loud, turning into an obtrusive, overdramatic mess.

I mentioned earlier that there were two excellent villains and I wasn’t lying when I said that. Also playing antagonist is cruel prison warden Rowden, who created the inmates as psychic soldiers but was unable to remove their powers. He’s a truly slimy piece of s**t with a really great performance from Steven Elder backing him up, I love his smug personality immediately crumbling at the first sign of danger. However, this is the only member of the sidecast I like, everybody else is entirely one-dimensional to me and when they start getting picked off I really struggle to care. I will say though that there isn’t a bad performance here and even a couple I really liked, especially John Killoran as Latch, a character I couldn’t care less about but had some really great lines in the final part, read brilliantly by Killoran.

Something Inside is a very thin story with some great ideas and some real talent making it bearable. It’s not exactly a boring listen but leaves very little impact and doesn't live up to many of its ideas. If it had leant more into its horror undertones rather than going for a bland thriller, it could’ve been a lot better but as it stands, it’s an incredibly skippable script that doesn’t make any kind of impact on me.

6/10

Pros:

+ Both antagonists are pretty compelling

+ The cast is incredibly strong

+ Interesting and original setting

Cons:

- Obtrusive score

- Whilst well acted, the characters are bland

- Uneventful and formulaic plot