Jacqueline Rayner

Review: Doom’s Day – Dying Hours

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Review by Cavan Gilbey

 

The Doom’s Day event is a weird one. The last time we have a multimedia event like this was Time Lord Victorious, a story which didn’t do much to separate itself a lot of the Time War media which had come out around the event. But some of the stories stood out as being pretty good on their own, namely those two Master starring Short Trips and Genetics of the Daleks which worked because of how standalone they were. Dying Hours feels like it really needs the prior hours of the story to fully appreciate what was going one, especially in the final story. The problem is most people will do what I do and listen to this in isolation because these multimedia events always have a high buy in price. It’s a lot easier to just buy this one boxset than all the linking comics, DWM strips, novels and BBC Audio releases. So I want you to keep that in mind, I haven’t heard anything else from Doom’s Day. It might shock you to hear that this boxset is actually quite good.

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Review: The Sixth Doctor Adventures – Purity Unbound

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Review by Jacob Licklider

The general thoughts going through the Big Finish side of the Doctor Who fandom when it was announced Ruth Madeley would be included as a new character in the 60th Anniversary Specials, is that Hebe Harrison would be written out of the audio series.  This has happened before with audio companions’ arcs being altered due to what was going on on television, C’rizz being the foremost example.  The expectation going into Purity Unbound was that Hebe would have to leave, but surprisingly that doesn’t happen in the final story, there are still more adventures to tel with this TARDIS Team and honestly the set is all the better for it.  The four box set story arc has been something in my eyes with its ups and downs, the second installment being the rockiest and the wait between sets not often helping matters.  Purity Unbound is the high point of the arc, mainly because the writers have found their way to a consistent theme and conclusion to this saga, using each story as a way to explore the aberrations to the timeline (and further aberrations) in different and interesting ways.  Jacqueline Rayner and Robert Valentine are joined by Mark Wright in scripting this final installment, all three writers keying in on the character journeys in particular, especially when concluding this story.  It should be noted that this is a story arc about a dictator heavily enforcing a eugenics program based on disability which is most explicit in this set so this review may be discussing themes that could be triggering for some.  For context, I am coming to this review from the perspective of someone who is physically disabled. Continue reading →

Review: The Sixth Doctor Adventures – Purity Unleashed

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Review by Jacob Licklider

Water Worlds and Purity Undreamed comprised the start of a brand new story arc for the Sixth Doctor and Mel, ushering in the new era of box sets for the characters under the helm of producer Jacqueline Rayner and script editor Robert Valentine.  Purity Undreamed ended with the “reveal” of the story arc’s villain through slightly messy means, more importantly new companion Hebe Harrison being written out of time as if she has never existed and the implication of a rewritten future timeline where a eugenics regime has deleted any sense of disability.  This implication is dark and executed at least a little messily, simplifying disability quite a bit to physical disabilities.  The third set, Purity Unleashed, creates an interesting setup, it’s the Doctor and Mel searching for the infraction in history that led to Hebe’s disappearance and the further development of Patricia McBride, played by Imogen Stubbs, as Purity.  While the three episodes in this set only work in the confines of this being the third set in this story arc, the timing of this set actually helps lessen some of the issues I had in particular with the previous set.  Purity Undreamed was a set that as the title states is the character of Purity becoming real and not just the biases, conscious and subconscious, of Patricia McBride, yet it ends without much of a sense of the character’s villainy.  Purity Unleashed is quick to rectify that in the two appearances of the character in the back to stories included, making it quite the shame that this wasn’t released soon after Purity Undreamed, the nine month wait not so much keeping tension as just questioning what exactly was going on.

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Review: The Sixth Doctor Adventures – Purity Undreamed

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Review by Jacob Licklider

*** Warning: Spoilers Ahead ****

 

Let’s cut to the chase, Purity Undreamed is a set with a very weird starting point as an audio drama. Following on from Water Worlds and continuing on the development of Hebe Harrison it sets out to introduce several side characters who are attempting to recur, a new villain for the series, and end by setting up next year’s box sets for the Sixth Doctor and Mel (or at least that’s the assumption since they have not been formally announced yet to feature Mel). It’s a three-hour box set that is almost entirely setup from three different writers: Paul Magrs, Jonathan Morris, and Robert Valentine. Valentine is also serving as script editor with producer Jacqueline Rayner, both contributing as guides for the overarching story arcs. The biggest issue with Purity Undreamed comes from something that happens in the third story, setting up the villain which will be spoiled in this review, if you want non-spoiler thoughts then listen to this if you enjoyed Water Worlds as it maintains a lot of what went really well with that set although is a bit inconsistent. The behind the scenes for the second story, Reverse Engineering, reveals that Jonathan Morris had less time to complete the story, implying that another story may have fallen through. Because of this there is a disconnect between how the character of Patricia McBride, played by Imogen Stubbs, is characterised. This is not an issue of action, but of the character’s beliefs as the third story, Robert Valentine’s Chronomancer is a character piece meant to reveal that Patricia McBride is a woman harbouring bigotry going so far as to advocating for eugenics so the future is “better” and without disability. Continue reading →

Review: The Sixth Doctor Adventures – Water Worlds

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Review by Jacob Licklider

Disability in Doctor Who has never been it’s strong suit. Perhaps the most prominent disabled character has been Davros, a genocidal maniac who created the Daleks, aka space Nazis whose purpose is exterminating all other life. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s there was a streak of characters with physical disfigurements as a mark of villainy, though by 1989 there was some small instances of complexity with disabled characters in Battlefield and The Curse of Fenric while the New Series has been mostly neutral in disability representation with some exceptions (Under the Lake/Before the Flood comes to mind for deaf representation). Oddly enough the 1960s were more progressive than much of the 1970s and 1980s with serials like Galaxy Four where the monstrous Rills being the good guys and The Dalek Invasion of Earth including a good scientist in a wheelchair who dies at about the halfway point of that story. So, here we are in 2022, and Big Finish Productions are once again making a push ahead of television series in terms of representation by introducing the first disabled Doctor Who companion in Dr. Hebe Harrison in The Sixth Doctor Adventures: Water Worlds, a marine biologist who uses a wheelchair. Like their push with trans representation in Rebecca Root’s Tania Bell, Hebe is played by disabled actress Ruth Madeley and producer Jacqueline Rayner worked closely with Madeley to ensure all three scripts from this set reflected disability representation well.

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Review: The Lone Centurion (Vol. 1)

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Review by Jacob Licklider

With David Tennant joining Big Finish in 2016, and the recent return of Christopher Eccleston in a series of four box sets, the New Series representation at Big Finish increased; yet Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor has thus far been relegated to Short Trips and The Eleventh Doctor Chronicles due to only Alex Kingston’s participation in Big Finish. However, an announcement of a two volume spin-off following the Auton Rory Williams while he guards the Pandorica in a now deleted universe brings Arthur Darvill back to the worlds of Doctor Who in a release that nobody was quite expecting. Rory Williams is one of those characters which you really don’t know what to expect, often taking a back seat in episodes and only given companion status by the start of Darvill’s second series in the role. Rory is essentially comic relief and on the surface relegated to supporting roles, so The Lone Centurion is something which doesn’t actually have anything to go on in terms of what it can accomplish, complicated by the fact that as an Auton Rory is more difficult to kill as this takes place in between The Pandorica Opens and The Big Bang. The premise is intriguing: the Pandorica has gone missing meaning that Amy has gone missing, and Rory is attempting to find it, shenanigans ensue. Continue reading →

Review: Doctor Who – The Sixth Doctor and Peri (Volume One)

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Review by Jacob Licklider

So, the final trilogy of the main range in 2014 was a Sixth Doctor and Peri trilogy set after The Trial of a Time Lord. Named (mainly by myself and my mutual) as the Salty Peri trilogy as the relationship between Peri and the Doctor was established to be rocky at best. They’re still friends, but the abandonment issues and the interference from the Time Lords changed the dynamic drastically. Sadly, after the trilogy the next stories to feature Peri would be firmly placed before The Trial of a Time Lord, but this month saw the release of The Sixth Doctor and Peri: Volume One, a box set follow up to the 2014 trilogy with four hour-long stories produced for the 20th anniversary of Doctor Who at Big Finish. These four stories are from five writers who obviously have a love for this TARDIS team, all of whom have lovingly recreated the atmosphere of that trilogy through unique tales. Continue reading →

Review: Doctor Who – Time Apart

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Review by Michael Goleniewski

The Fifth Doctor is on his own. After the events of “Conversion” and seeing yet another friend fall victim to one of his greatest foes, the Doctor has left his companions behind on an alien world and is traveling alone to give himself some time to think and recuperate. “Time Apart” as a release picks up more or less right where that story left off and is an anthology of adventures for the Doctor in Earth’s history set in the vein of releases such as “Breaking Bubbles” or “Circular Time”. Continue reading →

Arthur Darvill returns to the Doctor Who universe

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Friend of the Eleventh Doctor, husband of Amy Pond, and guardian of the Pandorica, Arthur Darvill returns as Rory in his own full-cast audio series from Big Finish Productions.

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Review: Bernice Summerfield – The Glass Prison

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Review by Jacob Licklider

The Bernice Summerfield Range is Big Finish’s flagship, running with releases since the company’s founding in 1998 with audios and novels being the two staples for the character, succeeding Virgin Publishing’s series of Benny novels.  With publishing audios and novels side by side, early story arcs crossed over and continued; often alternating between novel and audio, especially with the first five Benny novels and second series of Benny audios creating a difficult continuity when the books went out of print.  They infamously go to high prices to get editions of these books, but this problem has been uplifted in the past year as Big Finish Productions have produced audiobook readings of these books, all read by Benny herself, Lisa Bowerman. The final book in this sequence is Bernice Summerfield and the Glass Prison written by Jacqueline Rayner; which could easily be described as completing the character arc that the VNAs and the previous four Big Finish books had begun.  The audiobook production, like all of the previous Benny audiobooks, are the barebones readings with no music and no sound effects putting much of the weight on the reader’s shoulders.  Luckily, with Lisa Bowerman (who plays Benny) the listener is in safe hands. Bowerman takes the numerous characters in her stride, including those who appear in audios giving her best impression of actors like Stephen Fewell, Harry Myers, Steven Wickam, and Miles Richardson.  There is a real habitation of each character as Bowerman makes enough of a distinction between characters, so the listener knows who is speaking and has her own voice for the narration.  Continue reading →