Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 10:27 on Oct 26, 2016

• River Song as leading character. Alex Kingston's River Song is not exactly what you'd call a companion, but she's never quite been the lead character in any of her prior appearances on Doctor Who. This story would succeed or fail on her ability to carry the story as the lead, and she does an excellent job of it. Wisely held back during the establishing elements of the story, River is only spoken of by other characters with zero knowledge of her deeper backstory. She's taken an academic role in the early 20th Century, locked away in her office and rather smugly looked down upon by the other staff as a bookworm with no field experience. This early misunderstanding of who and what River is actually serves as a microcosm of the greater story and perhaps a meta-commentary of the real world - people continually underestimate River, make assumptions about her, think they have her figured out etc.... and she ALWAYS surprises them or reveals depths they didn't know were there. River is uninterested in an offer to be the first to enter a newly discovered (and untouched) tomb until she learns that a young woman has disappeared inside and immediately sets off to investigate the mystery. River's concern for victims (particularly female victims) comes up a couple times in the story and is a good humanizing element that helps sand off the edges of her often criticized smugness/superiority. But whether she is investigating, reacting, figuring things out, or best of all raining down vengeance on her enemies, Kingston just embraces the role wholeheartedly. Only one other actor has ever played River Song for any length of time and she sadly lacked the natural charisma and learned experience to pull off the fine balancing act between infuriatingly smug and confident self-assurance. Kingston gets it though, she makes River Song work, and in this the first Song story NOT written by Moffat, she proves once again that she completely owns this character and can more than shoulder the weight of being the lead actor.
  
  
• Paul McGann as special guest. Teased throughout the story, McGann doesn't show up till the last story but from the moment he arrives he's a show-stealer. Bringing him on so late is a good idea because the scene is set, we're familiar with the new characters, their schemes and scams and plans, and so we don't have to waste any time getting to grips with them and can just enjoy the way the Doctor interacts with them. He's excellent of course, McGann has been arguably the second biggest beneficiary of Big Finish's production of licensed audios (the biggest being Colin Baker, of course) and by now he's more than figured out his character and how to play him. He steps onto the scene bemused at first and quickly judgmental, and even quicker finds himself in over his head and left hanging to solve in a few minutes a problem that has stymied geniuses with near unlimited resources. He needs help to get himself out, but not in a way that makes him look foolish and incompetent - River's assistance is based on her experiences and experimentation across the previous three stories, and once he's up to speed he very quickly pulls off some amazing stuff that impresses her - especially considering how relatively young and inexperienced he is to her. The chemistry between the two (even though they never meet) is fantastic, amazing considering they've never worked together before AND he's a Doctor who exists several regenerations before their "first" meeting. Best of all though is River's pained and furious condemnation of one of the other supporting characters when she realizes what Doctor she is dealing with. Her admonition that this particular Doctor is naive and innocent isn't meant as a condemnation, but rather a desperate hope to preserve and protect that. This is the Doctor who saw the Time War begin and refused to let it change him as a person. It battered his heart but he never gave up, and River's fury that this sweet version of the Doctor has been thrust into this entirely NOT innocent situation feels earned and worthy. Plus they don't give him amnesia to get around not being able to meet!
  
  
• The Time War creeping in on the edges. The Time War was time-locked, all the events still happened but were now contained/separated from the rest of the universe that they almost destroyed. It was considered a massive thing when Dalek Sec was able to punch through the Time Lock to rescue Davros from the jaws of the Nightmare Child, and that drove Sec completely loving mad. Nothing "before" or "after" this multi-dimensional/temporal clusterfuck could enter it, Gallifrey was gone forever, it was a completely separate thing. But ever since The Day of the Doctor revealed that the Doctor actually found a third way and saved Gallifrey, things have begun to slightly "leak", helped probably by the fact the locked-away Gallifrey found the scars of the Cracks in Time/Space from season 5 and selectively reopened them in order to return to the universe in The Time of the Doctor. What this means is that River - an explicitly post-Time War character - finds herself dragged into the periphery of the Time War, by war profiteers "contemporary" to that reality-altering war who have no idea of the implications of their desire to get involved. Capable of extremely sophisticated technical feats purely by dint of their vast commercial resources, it's like children playing in a car (or that old sci-fi standby, the "Toys of the Gods"), they have no idea how dangerous what they are doing actually is, and are arrogantly, smugly convinced that they're in complete control. They would never have been able to invite/communicate with River if the Time Lock was still complete, but there is enough leeway now to allow things like this to happen, and even just on the periphery we get a sense of just how hosed up being involved would have been. Even the Doctor is shocked, the Seed Ships that are forever in the background of the story are the devices of a long-dead race from the dawn of time that now never went extinct because of some unforeseen consequence of the Time War, and their return to the present sees them desiring to wipe out what they now see as a defunct timeline - they now exist, so how can the reality where they did NOT exist.... exist!?! So they set about to correct that by killing EVERYTHING, figuring that either the Time Lords or the Daleks will be impressed enough to recruit them into the war and give them a place in whatever post-war landscape there is. This is the kind of story I thought was probably the best way to tackle a subject as nutso as the Time War, show things on the periphery, suggest the enormity of what is going on but explore more intimate stories about specific characters and how they deal with things. That is a major strength of this story, it's a Time War story where the Time War is brought up and serves the narrative without dominating it. Getting to see River moving around the edges of that big black hole of a concept that RTD used to such great effect to mark the cut-off between revival and classic series worked really well for me.
  
  
• The individual/the whole. Each individual story stands alone as its own thing, while also serving the greater narrative across all four AND important character development and themes that get called back to/built upon. The Boundless Sea on the surface is a creepy story about a mummy/vampire that sucks the water from its victims, infecting them in the process. But it is also a story about how women are used, treated as property, have their agency removed etc by those who are either well-intentioned or sneeringly mysognistic - the parallels to River's own youth are clear (and spelled out rather plainly) but that in turn allows River to speak from a level of authority that a character like the Doctor wouldn't have, helping separate her somewhat from this just being a Doctor Who story with a find/replace of "River" replacing "Doctor". I Went To A Marvelous Party allows for a bit of a murder/mystery which River promptly ignores to investigate the issues that actually matter to her, both on the individual and universal level - her casual revelation that she solved the mystery within a few moments and just didn't tell anybody because it gave her the freedom to explore around a bit is a marvelous moment. Signs is familiar in that it treads ground seen in plenty of sci-fi (And Doctor Who stories in the past), including Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy's Project: Lazarus, but does it very competently. It serves to prove the stubborn and anarchistic streak of River can't be controlled/managed no matter how convinced the other person is of the strength of their own position. The Rulers of the Universe allows River to unleash that oft-repeated/little-seen "psychopath" trait of hers, as she reveals the -worthy extent of her revenge against the so-called Rulers before regaining her composure and doing an excellent remote double-act with the 8th Doctor. When she lays out exactly how she took her revenge, it works better than anything Moffat has written so far to show how clever/dangerous she can be. I don't mean that as a knock on Moffat, I mean it as a compliment to Matt Fitton - I will be very interested to see how he handles the first Tenth Doctor Adventures story.
  

• River as Doctor-lite. Unfortunately, while efforts are made to make this a uniquely River-story, large sections do feel very much like they could have simply been written with any number of Doctors in mind. Yes she brings a unique perspective to the role, and there are points where she gives impassioned speeches (such as her discovery that the 8th Doctor is present in the situation) based very much on a perspective/experience the Doctor has not had.... but at the heart of it all we have a story that feels for the first 50-75% like a generic if solid Doctor Who audio. Given this is a first go at the character as her own lead, and that previously she'd only been written by Moffat, there is some leeway to be given. But if future stories don't shake this off and go for more of the slightly hosed-up but compelling elements present in The Rulers of the Universe it will be a missed opportunity. That said, at least they didn't just grab some old Bernice Summerfield scripts and change her name to River.
  
  
• The mundane "Rulers of the Universe". Given the Time War, the Doctor, River herself, and all the baggage (good and bad) that comes with all that, the "Rulers" of the Universe are really rather pathetic. That's kind of the point, but there is no real sense of how or why they'd managed to get into the position of power they'd supposedly attained and it is difficult to take them at all seriously. These are very much rich socialites who use their vast resources to amass the technology and expertise to do what they want with no idea how absolutely any of it actually works. Individual characters are interesting if slimy and loathsome people, but they are very much delving deeply into squalid and inconsequential politicking while simultaneously supposedly operating a massive, galaxies spanning economic empire. Having them attempt to then ingratiate themselves with the Time Lords (and if not them, the Daleks ) is akin to a rich kid who plays little league declaring he wants to get picked for the top NFL team. There is a kind of bait & switch in that very late in the game the "real" Rulers of the Universe show up and are far more dangerous and deadly, but while frequently referenced they don't show up till the story is almost over and there really isn't time to get to know them or to really care about what they're doing or be concerned about their plots. When an ultimate universe-ending threat shows up at the 95% mark of a story, you know it is highly unlikely that they're not going to be almost immediately defeated.
  
  
• Minor continuity fluffs. It's just a few little things, but there are minor fluffs like the writers not remembering that River isn't supposed to have her Sonic Screwdriver yet. Technically speaking you could argue that maybe this takes place sometime between The Husbands of River Song and Silence in the Library, except they explicitly have her use her Sonic Trough earlier in the story and then have her use the Sonic Screwdriver later. The trough is very much a device River uses to compensate for not having the Sonic Screwdriver, so it's like they just accidentally wrote Screwdriver instead through muscle memory (or the actor said it automatically instead of reading what was written). An editor or director should have picked that up.
  

Jerusalem fucked around with this message at 11:00 on Feb 9, 2016

• The reunion. At the end of the previous season, the Doctor had his Reichenbach Falls moment as he and Morbius went over a chasm to their deaths. Of course NOBODY thought the Doctor was dead, but what was important was that the character of Lucie Miller did. Captured by the Head Hunter and fed a load of bullshit, she is dumped into the ocean of the water world of Orbis and has a beautifully handled reunion with the 8th Doctor. Chasing after the Doctor's new quasi-companion, she finds the mans she thought she was dead, the two gasp out in shock and surprise, the emotions well.... and then the Doctor enthusiastically takes her stolen leggings to use in his efforts to restart an old engine, having no idea who she is or any recollection of her name whatsoever! Lucie's spluttering indignation at this is perfectly handled, as is the Doctor's very pleasant confusion as to why she is so furious at him. The episode doesn't spend any time having her wallow in self-pity, instead she gets furious and starts hitting him, and the dynamic between the two is quickly reestablished like it was in season one, only this time with something to back it up. Lucie and the Doctor have been forced together by external forces, they have great chemistry, but sparks always fly when they're together and they end up squabbling - the Doctor all passive pleasantness and confusion, unknowingly winding her up even further because his apparent indifference is completely inappropriate. It would be easy to make Lucie catty and overattached, but the Doctor brings it on himself with the way he acts, even if he doesn't intend to offend (or can't really be bothered if he does) and Lucie is often justified to react the way she does.... only then she starts overreacting.
  
  
• The 600 years. All jokes about the Doctor being "only" 900 years old at the start of the revival, the 600 years absence of the Doctor is used to good effect in this story. It makes sense in the context of the horrors he has seen while fighting Morbius, the weariness and desire to just go away somewhere and live a quiet, unassuming life for awhile. The 600 years also proves a good gap between himself and Lucie, it has only been a few months for her but he, of course, looks exactly the same so while she can intellectually accept the reasons for his changes it is difficult to reconcile them emotionally and psychologically. The Doctor doesn't come across as callous, but after hundreds of years her face/name has probably blended in with all his other prior companions - still important and valued, but relegated to the background of his mind while he focuses on the here and now. Putting that gulf between them gives them something to cross, a key to conflict within the story while also making a return to the status quo feel earned and welcomed rather than just more of the same from season 2.
  
  
• Lucie's predicament. Lucie has every reason to want to reunite with the Doctor, but little reason to work for or even with the Headhunter beyond getting what SHE wants. So the Headhunter's solution is both cruel and sensible, and completely fitting within her character, while also introducing a neat sci-fi gimmick. The end of season 2 saw the Headhunter show up on Lucie's doorstop and straight up shoot her.... with "time" bullets. The weapon shoots bullets that can then be temporally adjusted - Lucie can be shot for hours, the bullets incredibly slowly working their way towards internal organs.... or she can be "unshot", the bullets entirely removed from her flesh which heals up behind them as they're removed. The key is that the Headhunter controls the bullets, and so Lucie is forced to do her bidding, because her life is almost literally in her hands. This gives Lucie the impetus to work towards the Headhunter's goals, as well as the device to "save" the Doctor at the end of the story.
  

• The supporting characters. Whether they're the "jellyfish" that the Doctor has taken to living with as their "Old Doctor", the invading sex-changing alien oysters mixing politics with their dinner, the Headhunter smugly smugging her way smugly through her smug plan, or the Doctor's "quasi-companion" and her meek dad.... none of the supporting characters are particularly compelling or interesting. They basically get in the way of the Doctor/Lucie dynamic, with the only character who has any kind of development being Selta, played by the talented Laura Solon. She shifts from companion to jealous rival to unintended traitor, but the process feels too rushed, there is never really a chance to enjoy any of these roles. Meanwhile the others range from dull to annoying, with Andrew Sachs' Crassostrea coming across like a bargain-basement Sil from Vengeance on Varos/Mindwarp, with the bubbly voice proving a distraction from whatever performance they coaxed from the veteran actor. It doesn't help that the story never really settles on if it wants to be serious or pure comedy, and as a result we get a mixture of both that don't sit well together.
  
  
• The contrived setup for the season arc. It's a matter of preference of course, but it is rare that I enjoy a story that ends with the villain gloating to themselves about how they actually tricked the hero and totally fooled them and now everything is going according to their plan and they're just so smart and clever . This story is no exception, the "revelation" at the end that the Headhunter allowed for the chaos the Doctor was going to cause and used it to trick him into thinking the super-weapon was destroyed and now he's unknowingly doing what she wants him to do just made me roll my eyes. It's sad because her earlier cover story was so much more interesting - the absence of the Time Lords and the Doctor's exile means nobody is putting out fires around the universe anymore, and that meant the Headhunter and others were having to pick up the slack in the interest of keeping the universe from being destroyed/falling into a chaos that didn't suit their interests/bottomline. The Headhunter as a pragmatic "hero" who was doing the right thing for the wrong reasons (what's the use of being rich and powerful if the universe has been ripped apart or some elder-god abomination has turned everybody into mindless slaves) was far more interesting than just a continuation of the immoral villain who casually manipulates Time Lords she has mostly been. Hopefully the eventual climax of this season arc will be interesting, the 8DAs were very much interested in emulating the revival tv series so a season arc was inevitable.
  
  
• The surprising death count. It's all surprisingly nihilistic, nobody gets saved and everybody dies. Whether through their own cruel design, or as hapless victims, the Doctor's efforts are ultimately futile as the good aliens are either gobbled up in a feeding frenzy or burned alive when the superweapon goes off. The bad guys lose complete control of the situation, go nuts in a feeding frenzy and then get burned alive as well. Everybody dies, nobody gets the planet, the planet itself gets destroyed, and.... that's that. It's over. The Doctor is upset but gets over it VERY quickly, even cracking some jokes as the story ends. That in fact makes him come across as far more callous than his initial failure to recall Lucie Miller did. After all, it was 600 years since he last saw her, it is barely six minutes after Orbis is destroyed that he seems to have already moved smoothly on.
  

• Quasi-Companion Continuity. In Orbis, the Doctor was reunited with Lucie Miller but it wasn't quite the heartwarming reunion she'd had in mind. The Doctor had a new quasi-companion, a character fulfilling the role meant to be occupied by Lucie. At the end of that story, the quasi-companion was gone and the Doctor and Lucie had been uncomfortably, tentatively put back together as a team. Rather than just ignoring this, this story begins with the two on a better footing but still with some distance between them. This is demonstrated by the fact the Doctor takes on another quasi-companion, traveling with Hazel Bright from the World Ecology Bureau after she summoned him back to earth via use of UNIT's Space-Time Telegraph. Though the Doctor and Lucie are working together more closely, they're separated physically which helps indicate there is still an emotional gulf between them. As the story progresses, the Doctor (who is the one providing the roadblock) comes to realize the depth of his friendship with Lucie beyond the intellectual, with Hazel Bright proving - just like Selta in Orbis - to be ultimately a flawed character who is not as "worthy" as Lucie.
  
  
• The callbacks. There are no bones about it, this is an unashamed callback to the classic 4th Doctor television story The Seeds of Doom. It doesn't just borrow the threat of the Krynoids, but intentionally apes a number of the elements of that story. The rich, deranged but charismatic leader who cares more about plants than people; the isolated estate where everything goes wrong; the devoted sidekick who freaks out when things get weird and tries to make a run for it with fatal consequences; the underling who gets infected etc. These could easily be negatives to the story, but in this case they work because they operate both as callbacks as well as providing the framework for a story that is similar but not identical. This is very deliberate, the idea is to evoke Seeds of Doom without just repeating it, and the differences thus stand out all the stronger as a result. The changes made to the Krynoids are effective both from a body horror standpoint as well as upping the stakes and making Marlowe's disturbing fascistic fantasies distressingly possible.
  
  
• Survival/Sacrifice. Early in the story, the Doctor and Hazel Bright speak with a victim of Krynoid infection, and after learning his story he begs them to kill him. The Doctor refuses, of course, and this leads to an interesting philosophical debate about whether it would be moral (or at least justifiable) to sacrifice somebody for their own good. This gets stretched out by the likes of Marlowe who argue that not only would it be moral, but that even those who DON'T want to die should be killed for the greater good of the entire planet and even the human race. Of course he believes he is the one who should be allowed to make that decision, that he has the right to decide who lives and dies, that HE can construct a more perfect society. The story doesn't beat around the bush, Marlowe is accused of being exactly the fascist he is, and part of what makes him so dangerous is that he's able to twist out otherwise valid arguments to absurd extremes. By the end of the story, though the Doctor utterly rejects Marlowe's ideas, he not only doesn't question another Krynoid infected victim's desire to die, but is willing to be the instrument of her destruction. Given that at the time this story was produced, Big Finish still had it in mind that the 8th Doctor would be the one to "push the button" in the Time War, this fits in well with the characterization of the Doctor as a man increasingly being pushed off the sidelines and accepting he must sacrifice people for the ultimate greater good. Of course in the end the 8th Doctor would NOT break, but would die still refusing to accept a nihilistic view of the universe, but it was nice to see Big Finish playing around with development towards the general idea of an event they thought they'd never be allowed to actually directly address.
  

• Marlowe's background. Harrison Chase was a millionaire environmentalist, believable as a figure with enormous resources but content to live in mostly isolation exploring his anti-social interests. Marlowe is the leader of a worldwide organization dedicated to radical environmental activism. He needs to be a charismatic, intelligent and believable cult-leader type figure. For the most part he plays the part pretty well.... except for some bizarre reason the decision was made to make his background an ex-rockstar member of a popular group. Why? This has zero bearing of any type on the story, his character, the setting etc. The only reason I can think is because he is played by Nigel Planer (best known as Neil from The Young Ones) in reference to his membership in spoof rock band Bad News. Unfortunately this decision basically colored my perception of the character whenever he was around, because I kept thinking,"Wait, some ex-rockstar is running an 80,000 member strong group of radical activists from his country mansion/laboratory?"
  
  
• The confusing near-future setting. Seeds of Doom was set in that odd "maybe the 70s or the 80s?" timeframe familiar to viewers from the Pertwee UNIT years. This story is set some unspecified amount of time later, enough time that Sir Colin Thackery has passed away, but still apparently very much on basically the same technological standing as the early 2000s. But it's also set during a period when the planet is reeling from a number of ecological disasters that have left tens of millions refugees desperate to find homes.... but everything else is kinda just running as normal. The story suffers from trying to have its cake and eat it too, the society is both completely familiar to listeners as their own while also being completely foreign. This isn't helped by the otherwise excellent Seeds being very much an oddity that didn't really fit into the established Doctor Who universe in the first place - the World Ecology Bureau standing in place of UNIT for example. Is this an alternate universe? Once that the 8th Doctor has happily returned to? But then why and how did they have access to UNIT's Space-Time telegraph? It's all a little confusing because it's planet earth, it's vaguely contemporary, but it's also incredibly different from our own world.
  
  
• The accents. It's a petty thing, but Big Finish's voice actors frequently have less than impressive accents - sometimes they're pretty hilarious, sometimes they're offensive, sometimes they're just annoying to listen to. There are two very broad accents featured in this story, neither of whom are meant to be taken comedically but whose voices are so out of place with everything else that they took me completely out of the story. It's nice to give the story an international flavor, but if you don't have an actor who can provide both a reasonable accent AND act with it appropriately, I wish they'd just let everybody use their normal accents and assume that the TARDIS is just translating everything on our behalf.
  

• The setting. So much of Doctor Who is set either on some fantastic alien world (a quarry) or modern day London (Cardiff on TV, Berkshire for Audio), and most historicals end up being set in England as well. So it's fun to see the Doctor land not only in the past, but in a completely different country. Sure it's Europe, but the Black Forest of Germany is a neat setting ripe with potential for good, dark stories and it's nice to have something a little different. The setting is used to set the mood well - the fearful and superstitious villagers, the mysterious nobles, the incompetent and malicious officials getting a little too big for their britches etc. This is a horror/detective story, and 19th Century rural Germany is a pretty good location for that type of thing.
  
  
• The backstory. Forgetting the actual plot itself, there's a neat backstory used as background that in many ways tells a more compelling story than what we get served up as the main. Brutal deaths once plagued the countryside, with the Baron vowing to do his duty to track down and kill the monstrous "Beast of Orlok" attacking the people under HIS protection. One night twenty years ago, the Baron claims to have encountered the Beast and killed it, suffering severe injuries himself in the process. Leaving his own estates to live a reclusive life, the Baron is hauled back in the "present" day by a suspicious plenipotentiary who finds the whole thing just a bit too convenient.... until the Beast makes a sudden reappearance and kills all but the Baron, sparing his life for reasons unknown. All this happens in roughly the first few minutes of the audio and is set-up for a pretty drat interesting concept. Sadly the execution isn't quite there, with the story moving on a pretty different tangent. But even then, there are the odd reference to events from 20 years ago, all which (perhaps unfortunately) overshadow the main plot and feel like they're be more interesting to have pursued.
  
  
• The Doctor/Lucie chemistry. After a couple of stories awkwardly finding their groove again (character wise, the actors get along famously I'm sure), by this point the Doctor and Lucie seem to have settled back into the groove of the strong Doctor/Companion dynamic established through seasons 1 & 2 of The 8th Doctor Adventures. Whether it's their good-natured argument about Lucie wanting to learn to drive the TARDIS (which gets a call-back by the end of the story), her heroics and the Doctor's appreciation of them, or just the general air of ease they seem to have around each other, the bond feels firmly back in place. This makes even the most basic scenes featuring the two work, because it feels like listening to two genuine friends shooting the poo poo regardless of what insanity is actually going on around them. In season 1, Lucie came across as a bit forced in how quickly she supposedly became chummy with the Doctor. After more than two seasons together though the camaraderie feels natural, and having gone through two episodes of perhaps forced distance between the two, the return to the status quo is a breath of fresh air.
  

• The editing. This is the big one for me, in general everything flows smoothly except for one section in the first part that is so terribly put together that I actually ended up stopping the player and going back to make sure I hadn't accidentally set things to shuffle. I hadn't, so I made sure there wasn't a file missing. There wasn't, so I actually went and checked the original download to see if maybe I'd extracted a corrupt file and was missing part of the story. I wasn't. What happens in the story technically makes sense because you can piece together what has happened off-screen, but it's done in such a clumsy and strange way that it feels completely unnatural. The Doctor and Lucie have convinced a bumbling official that they are not only officials too but outrank him, and make plans to investigate the attack on the Baron. The Doctor sends Lucie and a helpful student named Hans to retrieve the TARDIS. Suddenly there is a cut to another scene with a mysterious figure and his "wolf" finding what is obviously (but never stated to be) the TARDIS. Suddenly we cut to another scene where the bumbling official has brought a piece of evidence to an inn to leave with the Doctor. The innkeeper, Hans' mother, shares some brusque words with him, then after sending him off declares to her daughter that the Doctor's "cabinet" has clearly gone missing. The only thing is.... she hasn't met the Doctor, she hasn't met Lucie yet either, and Hans hasn't been to visit because they were going to the TARDIS first before going to visit her! Except Hans and Lucie ARE there, not at all surprised to hear the TARDIS is missing, and then Hans' mother insists he stick around while she goes to meet the Doctor. And when they do meet, the two haven't actually met before! The obvious intent based on dialogue and scene-order is that we're meant to figure out that Lucie and Hans went into the forest but found the TARDIS missing, then went to the inn where Hans introduced Lucie to his mother and sister and explained a little of what was going on with the Doctor's investigation. But none of this stuff happens in the audio, it has to be pieced together by its absence, confusing everything. Unless somehow I did get a corrupted download, I can only assume either they didn't have the time to record these scenes or that it all made sense to them in the script. Maybe it even makes sense to other listeners, but to me it was a very confusing section of the audio that threw off the flow of everything else.
  
  
• Sci-fi over historical. In the "What's Good" section I mentioned how much I enjoyed the backstory. Unfortunately that takes a backseat, as the historical (if suggested supernatural) nature of the story quickly becomes a sci-fi piece. This problem has plagued the TV series too, it seems no such thing as a straight historical can exist any more, there always has to be some sci-fi element or alien monster (arguably The Crimson Horror technically doesn't do this, but even then it is the exception). The interesting setting of the Black Forest in Germany, the mysterious Beast, the injured Baron simultaneously suspected of being behind the Beast as well as being its vanquisher etc.... all that stuff gets mostly ignored for a rather unremarkable sci-fi piece about bio-engineered super-soldiers, some war-like race of aliens I don't think have ever been mentioned before or since, and inter-galactic law/criminals. Don't get me wrong, a story like that can (and has been) exciting to listen to, but for me this time it felt like it was getting in the way of a more interesting idea. There's a section where the Doctor finds himself in a secret part of the Baron's estates, where the very Sci-Fi antagonist casually offers an explanation for what is to be found there. That reference is more compelling/interesting to me than the main plot, but it is quickly glossed over till a little later when Hans' mother fills in a little more of the backstory... again a more interesting story that is there only as background detail for the less exciting main story.
  
  
• The rushed ending. With the antagonist defeated, new allies made, and the Doctor and Lucie's bond restored it looks like everything is on its way to being wrapped up. Then suddenly a hanging plot-thread rears its ugly head again and in remarkable short order wipes out a couple of key characters, leading to a very rushed conclusion that does - to its credit - at least callback to the Doctor and Lucie's earlier conversation about the danger of her not knowing how to pilot the TARDIS. But even with that concluded, it leaves everything rather messy because now there isn't much that the characters left behind can do with the new information they've been given. Everything gets played with a light air, including Lucie accidentally creating a Black Forest Gateau about a century too early, but the ramifications of what has been revealed/what has happened would be pretty spectacular - but none of that gets bothered with, everything just seems to be kind of swept under the rug as the Doctor and Lucie leave... albeit in a way that is fun for the listener to hear them enjoying each other's company so comfortably again.