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Finally Reviewing Doctor Who Unbound #2 - Sympathy for the Devil
This is another carcast while I'm on my way to pick up the Peanut from her grandparents late at night.
Doing some pontificating during the drive on basic irrelavent issues and wasted valuable time for the show.
Playing "The Doctor Who (Multidimensional Mix)" by Chris Adams aka Hardwire in the middle of the show as well as "Doctor Who - Mergeance (Opening Theme)" in the opening.
I did review "Sympathy for the Devil" starring David Warner as the Doctor and Nicholas Courtney as the retired Brigadier. Not a great performance by either of the lead stars, but a well-written story. Lots of references to the episodes of U.N.I.T. adventures during the Pertwee and T. Baker eras. Good plotline and lots of surprises. I don't want to give away any spoilers, but do invite you to listen to it.
One note of contention was in the role of Colonel Woods - portrayed by a little known actor by the name of David Tennant.
We'll be back later this week with another Whocast and a review of the Sonic Screwdriver and TARDIS Phone Alert.
Enjoy!
-Tom
2 comments:
I'm surprised at your comments regarding the performances of the leads, as I thought Warner's Doctor was a pleasant change from others without being deliberately made behaviourly opposite in some respect. He came across as a person who could have been one of the normal run of Doctors, rather than an aberration (like Weir and Collings).
The Brigadier was slightly less "so", though I think that was mostly in the initial stages due to the vast majority of the character's "canon" backstory being jettisoned, leaving only Web of Fear (and possibly The Invasion) to define his character.
Gatiss's Master was excellent in the earlier sections with a very understated presence. I'm not sure about the later moments when he gets loud, but whether this was a weakness of Gatiss's performance, or simply echoing the Master's on-screen persona, I'm not sure.
I liked the references to "canon" events which had turned out differently in the unbound universe eg Spearhead (the plastic men), Inferno (Stahlman Gas), Terror of the Autons (the plastic flowers), Invasion of the Dinosaurs (the massive hole in the centre of London), Ambassadors of Death (Probe 7 incident) amongst others (eg the mile wide crates across America - Claws of Axos?, some hints of the Silurians, and the saturation bombing of Surrey). And of course, The Mind of Evil, for obvious reasons.
There was certainly an animosity between Lethbridge-Stewart and Brimmicombe-Wood, but whilst Tennant does his best to make him the worst kind of Army officer, you realise he's actually not a bad man, just a lot less tolerant of things he doesn't believe in than even the Brigadier once was.
Marlowe,
I am a long-term fan of the Big Finish productions (and the AVs before them), and whilst I believe they generally do some very good stories, there are times when I guess the commissioning process got a bit bogged down in itself and we end up with a sequence of stories with similar flaws or styles.
The Zagreus arc was one such time when I actually wasn't too fussed about the next release coming out each month. It had the potential to tell a big story, but fell into the old cliche of creating a universe simply for the ability to tell stories with no backstory/characters. Much like some of the 8DA authors who wrote science fiction novels bearing little resemblance to the characters and situations we are familiar with, then slapped the Doctor Who brand on (the cynic in me wondering if it's because they'd sell more copies of the book with a Who logo on, than if it were a generic sf novel). Personally, I'd have been happy with the arc consisting of Neverland, Zagreus, maybe one or two (at the most) stories set within the divergent universe, and The Next Life. Still... lucky the new series came along when it did or the arc would have been a lot longer.
I guess when it comes to Who, I'm "trad" rather than "rad", although a little bit of deconstruction occasionally can be good.
That said, Full Fathom Five was a good story despite the amoral Doctor portrayed in it. The ending was certainly definitive, and would probably suggest that if there's a 3rd "season 2" Unbound release, it would likely not feature Collings' Doctor.
Deadline was probably as radical a story as the Unbounds did, and I guess if you take it at face value as a drama about a man who writes for TV and is slipping into dementia, then it works well.
Exile - drinking... vomiting... proclaimed as a comedy, but not really funny. It was one of Tennant's many BF appearances though.
As 3 of the six Unbounds are not conjusive to a sequel, I wonder who might work well as an Unbound Doctor.
Incidentally, a few years ago, there was a rumour circulating that Big Finish wanted to do stories with the first 4 Doctors as well as 5-8, and were looking to "recast" them. Gary categorically denied it as being against BF policy to recast. Of the names mentioned, Bayldon as first Doctor seemed the most reasonable at the time. As it turned out, this rumour probably sprang from the idea of the Unbound series.
On a related BF note, I finally got caught up with the Tomorrow People stories and whilst they are released about half as regularly as Who stories (and have no spin-offs), I find I sometimes look forward to them more than some of the Who releases.
Hmm... I hope you aren't raising your expectations too high with Roof of the World. I found it pretty poor all told.
Medicinal Purposes - very good
Faith Stealer
The Last
Caerdroia
The Next Life - a bit overlong, but a decent conclusion to the Divergent arc (though I'm still unhappy at the change of Rassilon to being a power-mad despot)
The Juggernauts - Mechanoids, Daleks, Davros
The Game - 6 parter... and showing all the traits of one.. overlong
Dreamtime - still haven't a clue what this was about
Catch-1782 - Baker excellent as ever, but dunno who "Mel" is in the story, but she doesn't behave a bit like the one we know
Three's a crowd - cliched
Unregenerate - seems to take a premise then shoe-horns it in regardless
Council of Nicaea - reminded me of the low points of season 19/20... argue shout whinge all the time
Terror Firma - not sure where it fits into established continuity - the damage done to the planet seems pretty significant to be cleared up practically overnight
Thicker Than Water - Imagine Arrangements for War... take away the war... and the arrangements... add Mel... oh and marry off Evelyn
Live 34 - One of the experimental formats (it's all played through the medium of a radio show either live as news, or as a documentary segment). I actually quite liked it.
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