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zagreuswaits, which is where I usually confine my extended ramblings about the Big Finish Doctor Who audios, but I screwed up and posted it here. I suppose I might as well leave it.
I finished listening to The Next Life this morning. It was better than I thought it would be. I had relatively few expectations going in to this story. All I knew was that it was three discs long; it ended the Divergent Universe Arc; and it had Daphne Ashbrook in playing someone who was not Grace Holloway. So, I was kind of expecting something like Zagreus without the crackfic aspect. Which would be no fun at all.
What we got instead was a fairly intense sequence of a villain really messing with the companions' heads (always a good thing), coupled to an extended chase scene in which everyone manages to find time to deliver tons of exposition, wrapped up with a lot of shouting and guns.
I really did enjoy the way Rassilon played on Charley's and C'Rizz's desires and insecurities. For all that Rassilon is supposed to be uber-smart and powerful, he doesn't often get to show it, but in the early episodes of The Next Life, he does that pretty well. (With one odd exception - I can't understand why he tells Charley and C'Rizz two completely different things about the Doctor's Zagreus-infection. He must know that they'll compare notes at the first opportunity.)
I was also really touched by C'Rizz's terror at the prospect of Charley finding out about all the people he's killed. Unfortunately, that was about the last point in the story that I really understood or sympathized with C'Rizz. Poor guy. He's not bad - he's just written that way.
Perfection had me really confused, because part of the time she's played as a submissive trophy wife, and part of the time she's running around with a shotgun and propositioning the Doctor. It sort of all makes sense at the end, when we find out that Perfection isn't really Perfection, but it makes for a lot of WTF along the way.
Speaking of WTF: that scene where Perfection and the Doctor have to half strip and pull leeches off each other. Now, I've got no objection to a half-naked 8th Doctor, and I've dabbled enough in fanfic to know that it's far from easy to contrive a solidly-plotted excuse for our favorite Time Lord to disrobe. But let's examine the situation here: The Doctor and Perfection are wading through a swamp. It's not actually clear how deep it is, but since Charley talks about getting her boots wet, and the characters seem to move fairly rapidly, let's assume that it's maybe knee deep. After their passage through this swamp, they've picked up leeches, but apparently only on their upper torsos, which don't seem to have been submerged. Perhaps the Divergent Universe has tree-dwelling leeches? Well, okay, but it also appears that Perfection only picks up leeches on her back. These are clearly PG-13 leeches, engineered to allow for the maximum amount of schoolboy sniggering and "sexual tension" without any danger of anyone actually coming into contact with anyone's pink bits.
In summary - Sexuality in Doctor Who: You're Doing It Wrong. (Though, I'll admit, the shallow part of me rather enjoyed the scene. When I could stop myself from worrying about them both dropping dead from blood poisoning from the leeches that had undoubtedly crawled up their trouser legs.)
Anyway, moving along, we get a huge infodump of about everyone's backstory, which worked better than it had a right to. I liked the explanation for the purpose of Bortresoye, and the whole cyclical nature of the Divergent Universe. The importance of the Eutermesans, the exact nature of C'Rizz's backstory, and Keep's identity as the product of the experiment from Scherzo felt a bit pasted on.
I found it rather peculiarly charming that Alan Barnes and Gary Russell maintained the decades-old Doctor Who tradition of talking about "galaxies" when they really seem to mean "solar systems".
Then, shouting, corridors, guns. And then the Doctor makes Charley and C'Rizz settle their differences before going back into "our universe". I'll admit to being conflicted about that scene. Taken on its own terms, it's a terrific little character moment, and a necessary airing of the interpersonal tensions that have developed among the three characters over the course of this story. And yet, on a meta-level, it almost feels like a repudiation of some of the character development that they tried to do over the course of the Divergent Universe stories: no more love stories, no more dark secrets lurking in companion's pasts. It's to be hand-holding and "What is it, Doctor?" from here on out!
Perhaps I'm reading too much into that scene. From what I've heard, we haven't heard the last of C'Rizz's tortured past, in any case.
Then, of course, the icing on the cake - the Kroka and Rassilon re-enacting a scene from Scherzo. Oh, Alan and Gary, you gave me a little crackfic after all!
zagreuswaits, which is where I usually confine my extended ramblings about the Big Finish Doctor Who audios, but I screwed up and posted it here. I suppose I might as well leave it. I finished listening to The Next Life this morning. It was better than I thought it would be. I had relatively few expectations going in to this story. All I knew was that it was three discs long; it ended the Divergent Universe Arc; and it had Daphne Ashbrook in playing someone who was not Grace Holloway. So, I was kind of expecting something like Zagreus without the crackfic aspect. Which would be no fun at all.
What we got instead was a fairly intense sequence of a villain really messing with the companions' heads (always a good thing), coupled to an extended chase scene in which everyone manages to find time to deliver tons of exposition, wrapped up with a lot of shouting and guns.
I really did enjoy the way Rassilon played on Charley's and C'Rizz's desires and insecurities. For all that Rassilon is supposed to be uber-smart and powerful, he doesn't often get to show it, but in the early episodes of The Next Life, he does that pretty well. (With one odd exception - I can't understand why he tells Charley and C'Rizz two completely different things about the Doctor's Zagreus-infection. He must know that they'll compare notes at the first opportunity.)
I was also really touched by C'Rizz's terror at the prospect of Charley finding out about all the people he's killed. Unfortunately, that was about the last point in the story that I really understood or sympathized with C'Rizz. Poor guy. He's not bad - he's just written that way.
Perfection had me really confused, because part of the time she's played as a submissive trophy wife, and part of the time she's running around with a shotgun and propositioning the Doctor. It sort of all makes sense at the end, when we find out that Perfection isn't really Perfection, but it makes for a lot of WTF along the way.
Speaking of WTF: that scene where Perfection and the Doctor have to half strip and pull leeches off each other. Now, I've got no objection to a half-naked 8th Doctor, and I've dabbled enough in fanfic to know that it's far from easy to contrive a solidly-plotted excuse for our favorite Time Lord to disrobe. But let's examine the situation here: The Doctor and Perfection are wading through a swamp. It's not actually clear how deep it is, but since Charley talks about getting her boots wet, and the characters seem to move fairly rapidly, let's assume that it's maybe knee deep. After their passage through this swamp, they've picked up leeches, but apparently only on their upper torsos, which don't seem to have been submerged. Perhaps the Divergent Universe has tree-dwelling leeches? Well, okay, but it also appears that Perfection only picks up leeches on her back. These are clearly PG-13 leeches, engineered to allow for the maximum amount of schoolboy sniggering and "sexual tension" without any danger of anyone actually coming into contact with anyone's pink bits.
In summary - Sexuality in Doctor Who: You're Doing It Wrong. (Though, I'll admit, the shallow part of me rather enjoyed the scene. When I could stop myself from worrying about them both dropping dead from blood poisoning from the leeches that had undoubtedly crawled up their trouser legs.)
Anyway, moving along, we get a huge infodump of about everyone's backstory, which worked better than it had a right to. I liked the explanation for the purpose of Bortresoye, and the whole cyclical nature of the Divergent Universe. The importance of the Eutermesans, the exact nature of C'Rizz's backstory, and Keep's identity as the product of the experiment from Scherzo felt a bit pasted on.
I found it rather peculiarly charming that Alan Barnes and Gary Russell maintained the decades-old Doctor Who tradition of talking about "galaxies" when they really seem to mean "solar systems".
Then, shouting, corridors, guns. And then the Doctor makes Charley and C'Rizz settle their differences before going back into "our universe". I'll admit to being conflicted about that scene. Taken on its own terms, it's a terrific little character moment, and a necessary airing of the interpersonal tensions that have developed among the three characters over the course of this story. And yet, on a meta-level, it almost feels like a repudiation of some of the character development that they tried to do over the course of the Divergent Universe stories: no more love stories, no more dark secrets lurking in companion's pasts. It's to be hand-holding and "What is it, Doctor?" from here on out!
Perhaps I'm reading too much into that scene. From what I've heard, we haven't heard the last of C'Rizz's tortured past, in any case.
Then, of course, the icing on the cake - the Kroka and Rassilon re-enacting a scene from Scherzo. Oh, Alan and Gary, you gave me a little crackfic after all!
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