Dark Eyes and Team-Ups

[quipxotic]

I had a great time listening to "Dark Eyes 2" and writing a whole bunch of drabbles for it this week. The set has some weaknesses, but overall all four stories are solid, enjoyable in their own ways, and offer a lot of variety in both theme and setting. I had forgotten how much Liv has changed since these audios (which are her second, third, and fourth appearances) and what great chemistry she and Molly had together. It's a shame Ruth Bradley's other acting projects essentially meant Molly was written out of Dark Eyes 3 and 4; I would have liked to have had many more Molly and Liv stories. I wonder if this is the first and only time all of the TARDIS crew have had some kind of medical training (with Molly being a World War I era nurse and Liv being a MedTech)? Eight's meeting with Alex Macqueen's Master in "Eyes of the Master" is delicious, of course, and "Time's Horizon" is one of the best Eminence stories Big Finish has created. Plus, I really like the Eighth Doctor's arc. He starts out nearly as light and Tiggerish as during the early Charley Pollard stories and ends up...well, not that.

I also wrote some drabbles for "Torchwood: Green Life" featuring John Barrowman's Captain Jack Harkness and Katy Manning's Josephine Jones. Jo and Jack make a great odd couple team and it's an all-around good story that can be enjoyed whether or not you've seen the Third Doctor serial "The Green Death."

This weekend I'll hopefully have a chance to write some drabbles for the "Third Doctor Adventures vol. 5." Both stories in the set are enjoyable and Jon Culshaw's Brigadier and Daisy Ashford's Liz Shaw are fantastic. I know there's a lot of debate in Doctor Who fandom about recasting the roles of actors who have died. Personally, I don't have a problem with it if it's done with care and respect, which has certainly been the case for this volume and the Second Doctor stories where Elliot Chapman plays Ben Jackson. On the other hand, I don't like what Big Finish has done with the recasting for the first First Doctor crew because Carole Ann Ford and William Russell are still alive and performing.

Anyway, back to the Third Doctor set, one of the few negatives for me has been hearing how anti the Jo Grant/Mike Yates ship Katy Manning is (which comes up in the behind the scenes interviews for vol. 5 and recently in her social media posts about the set). She's obviously entitled to have opinions about the character she's played since 1971, it's just I don't have a lot of ships and this is one I like. It won't stop me from shipping it, but it does make me sad.

I'm also going to try to get back into writing Hill House Eight this weekend, which I'm going to have to change to Hill House Five. I just had too many problems making Liv and Helen work in that setting and I'm hoping that I'll have better luck with Tegan and Nyssa. And while Five isn't Eight, there are similarities, which will hopefully allow me to keep some of the aspects that made me want to write the story in the first place.

On the audiobook side of things, I finished Persuasian last weekend. It was fantastic, but then it is my favorite of Austen's books.

Comments

[sanguinity]

Why is Persuasion your favorite of Austen's books? What do you love about it?

[quipxotic]

Because I really identify with Anne Elliot - someone who, when she was young, was quiet, shy, lacked confidence in her own opinions, and allowed herself to be swayed into choices that were wrong for her by older, more vocal friends and family. Putting aside the love story, which is fine but not the main draw for me, it's really satisfying to see someone like that discover their own opinions, grow confidence in their abilities, and eventually gain recognition for their good qualities from people they care about. That last chapter isn't one of Austen's best, but given that she wrote it at the end of her life that's understandable.

What's your favorite of Austen's books?

[sanguinity]

I like that view of Persuasion!

I don't think I'm familiar enough with her oeuvre to say. I'm more familiar with the film adaptations than the novels, and my order of familiarity probably isn't surprising: Pride and Prejudice, then Persuasion, then Sense and Sensibility and Emma; I'm completely unfamiliar with the other two. I could accurately say that my affection follows my familiarity, but that's less having a favorite and more knowing some of the novels better than others.

[quipxotic]

I really liked the version of Northanger Abbey PBS did in the 2000s. It's a book I've never read so I had no expectations for it, but it's good. It's almost the total opposite of Persuasion, in that the protagonist (played by Felicity Jones, aka Jyn Erso) is very young and obsessed with Gothic fiction, which is part of what complicates her life.