jivjov fucked around with this message at 11:01 on Sep 22, 2016

• The innocuous origin. Whether television or audio, often a story kicks off with the Doctor either getting caught up in events or dragged into them deliberately. In this story, we begin with the Doctor and Charley enjoying a completely casual and relaxing vacation, and it is the Doctor's eagerness to explore a rather mundane and even silly "mystery" that he reads in a lovely tabloid that inadvertently pulls him into the edges of a plot already unfolding . He doesn't just arrive on the scene mid-action or get caught in a trap, he just sets off to investigate a minor thing on the periphery of the main story that rather naturally sees him circle his way into the main plot. It makes a nice change of pace - he sees a newspaper story about a pound coin minted in the future, tracks down the person who used it and ends up involved in a plot to end a long-running intergalactic war.... and it feels completely natural!
  
  
• The "antagonist". The bad guy of the story only makes fleeting appearances throughout the first couple of episodes, usually speaking vaguely in terms of some master plan he has, coming across as oily and cold and sinister.... and then when we finally get to meet him we learn there is far more to the character than it first appears. He never really gets completely "redeemed", he's far too morally compromised by the decisions he's made and the willingness he's had to sacrifice others for his concept of the greater good.... but there IS more to him than would first appear from his rather cliched initial appearances. There are moments where he seems almost desperately eager to follow the leads of others when they offer solutions he hasn't thought of, and for all his earlier faults and willingness to kill or let people die you get the sense that if he'd just had some other figure to give him direction (say the Doctor) he would never have gone down that track. There is a level of depth to him beyond what you might normally see, though to be fair far too often villains in Doctor Who can be really shallow so even the appearance of a level of depth makes them seem like more well-rounded characters.
  
  
• The world-building. It's a pet peeve of mine to see particular authors bring back their "pet" characters over and over again when no other writers seem to have demonstrated any interest in using them since. I'm always willing to make an exception for Eddie Robson because he's written some of my favorite Big Finish audios, and I do feel like he uses the returning characters well as part of his efforts in world-building. D.I. Patricia Menzies returns from The Condemned, a story in which she learned about alien life on Earth and those who would exploit them. In this story they use that basis to help set the foundation - Menzies is not only aware of aliens but has become a fixture in their community, she helps aliens out of sticky situations without involving the authorities, and they in turn help her out as she investigates both regular and "extraordinary" cases, acting as a network of informants and providing services the actual police can't (or won't). This also helps further the storylines of both the Doctor (she gives him the resources he needs for his own investigation) and Charley (Menzies is able to bring Charley to an alien who reveals some unsettling facts to her) and her own story soon overlaps with theirs and brings everything together. There is a sense that the story is happening in a living, breathing world peopled by characters who know, react, interact and work either with each other or within a larger network that encompasses them all.
  
  
• Furthering the Doctor/Charley storyline. After the previous story faked out Charley revealing her origins to the Doctor, I was frustrated that it was back to the regular status quo. This story explores this a little further (this story was actually written as an extra, the Charley storyline was actually intended to have reached its end by this point) from Charley's perspective, as it lays out some unpalatable truths for her about the dangers of continuing to travel with an earlier version of somebody she isn't meant to meet until much later in his life. This also leads into Charley doing some very peculiar things that are meant to make both the Doctor and the listener start to question just exactly what Charley is up to, and whether she's as moral as we might think. Whether this will go anywhere I don't know, but Charley's plan to "fix" everything certainly raises some eyebrows, as the Doctor points out that he is positive she knew far better.
  
  
• The Doctor's choice of final game. Everything boils down to a game of chance at the High-Risks table where reality itself can be altered, and the Doctor gambles EVERYTHING on a game of..... well, it's a fantastic choice of game
  

• The Raincloud Man. The titular character is very interesting, has a lot of potential to explore and.... is unceremoniously killed off at one point in the story and everybody just kind of moves on without more than a fleeting backward glance.
  
  
• Sidelining the consequences/Casual Death. In addition to the above, while a lot of good work is done in terms of world-building and providing characters with depth, there is an unfortunately tendency for a lot of destruction and death to be glossed over or otherwise ignored. One supporting character who has a lot of important things to say is killed off-screen and, after a brief subplot of Charley being suspected of the murder, is basically forgotten about. An alien race attacks with spaceships, lasers and other highly visible pieces of advanced technology but it is all swept under the rug without even a rudimentary explanation of HOW. To make matters worse, the action is quickly shifted to Rio where things become a lot more public before finally being resolved, and the only comment made about all the destruction is,"Well I'm glad I'm not the one who has to explain this" before everybody just moves on. There is a sense (unintentional for sure) that because it has happened in Rio it's less important/doesn't really matter, whereas the far less impactful events in Manchester were somehow more relevant. Whether Big Finish was taking their cues from the TV show at the time where public and acknowledged alien attacks were the norm or whether Robson just didn't bother to concern himself with the consequences on the world of the story he wrote isn't as important as the fact that it stands out like dog's balls - you can have aliens show up publicly and blow a lot of poo poo up before disappearing and NOT give an explanation for why they did it, but 9 times out of 10 it's going to sit poorly with the listener. Or maybe that's just me.