quipxotic | Entries tagged with eighth doctor

I've only had intermittent access to the internet for roughly a week and a half. Before that I was deep in drabble-writing-land, but I'm back now. Prepare yourself for bullet point updates!

Reading

I listened to Big Finish's The Martian Invasion of Earth featuring Richard Armitage and Lucy Briggs-Owen and it was truly frightening. I can see why it won Best Audio Drama for 2018. Armitage plays a fictionalized version of H.G. Wells in an alternate 1890s where the only thing that's changed is that aliens invade Earth. Definitely one that's worth picking up if it ever goes on sale.

I bought the novelization of the Second Doctor serial "The Mind Robber" primarily because it was read by the fabulous Derek Jacobi. The TV version is one of the more surreal 1960s Doctor Who stories and isn't one of my favorites, but I was pleasantly surprised by the book version. Not only does Jacobi shine, but the story is so much better in book form where the special effects all take place in your head. Author Peter Ling also beefed up the rather weak plot and made it into an engaging story.

I listened to the War Doctor novel Engines of War by George Mann. In general, it was quite good and I enjoyed the character of Cinder. The War Doctor has always been a tricky prospect: how do you write a version of the Doctor who does things the Doctor wouldn't and yet is still the Doctor? The general solution (and something that Big Finish does a lot the War Doctor audios) is to make him a toothless, shouty Doctor who keeps telling people how bad he is without...actually...doing anything bad...ever. The book gives him some teeth, at least early on; you can believe this is someone who has done and seen horrible things. By the middle he's back to being very Doctorish, but there's an in-story explanation for that, so it didn't bother me as much. Your mileage may vary. I wrote oodles of drabbles for it, if you're interested.

Which segues me into...

Writing

I've finally broken through my brain block on the "Hill House Eight" chapter I've been working on for what feels like forever. I should a have a draft of that ready sometime this weekend.

I've written a lot of Time War stuff recently. In addition to the War Doctor drabbles, I've finished writing for the Eighth Doctor Time War vol. 1.

I'm about done writing for the Second Doctor Companion Chronicles vol. 1, I just need to finish up writing for "The Integral." The other stories include "The Mouthless Dead" and "The Story of Extinction," which both have new drabbles, and "The Edge," which I wrote for years ago.

Current Music: "Audience of One" - Cold War Kids

I've added a lot of drabbles to AO3 over the last two weeks. Time for a round-up.

The Further Adventures of Lucie Miller/Eighth Doctor Drabbles

I really enjoyed this box set, but as I've mentioned before, it contains a few spoilers for Lucie's third season. Below I'll link to my drabbles for each story and give a short review of the audio.

"The Dalek Trap" by Nicholas Briggs - The weakest and weirdest audio in the set. I didn't care for it on first listen because it's intentionally confusing, but it improved on second listen once I understood how it fit into the overarching story. There's interesting ideas here, some good character moments, and a few funny Daleks. As a Doctor-lite story, it also allows Lucie to shine as she tries to come up with a plan to save the day on a planet that eventually makes people forget who they are.

"The Revolution Game" by Alice Cavender - A Lucie Miller story written by a Lucie Miller fan! Alice Cavender also wrote the Short Trip "The Curse of the Fugue" which, while not my favorite Lucie Short Trip, is still a good one. "The Revolution Game" is a bonkers mix of sci-fi settings, roller derby, old movies call-backs, and environmental debates; and, while I liked it on first listen, I loved it the second time around.

"The House on the Edge of Chaos" by Eddie Robson - Unlike the other audios, this one didn't improve on a second listen, in fact I liked it less. The story is Upstairs, Downstairs meets Rebecca on an alien planet. The ideas are interesting and the transposing of typical haunted house tropes into a sci-fi world is well done, but it just felt a bit flat in the end. That said, listening to Lucie being welcomed into an upstairs world that has no use for the Doctor is fun.

"Island of the Fendahl" by Alan Barnes - This story is a companion to the Fourth Doctor TV serial "Image of the Fendahl" and it has all the witchy/horror spookiness that made its predecessor so memorable, but with a much better plot. It also ties up the box set's story-line in a satisfying way and has several fantastic support characters who I wouldn't mind showing up in further stories, although that seems unlikely to happen. Long story short, I love this one (love it, love it, love it). I wish I could say more, but I won't for fear of spoilers.

Fourth Doctor Drabbles

"Image of the Fendahl" - Nick Briggs mentions in the behind the scenes segment for "The Further Adventures of Lucie Miller" that this serial wasn't one of his favorites, but it had really interesting ideas. For what it's worth, I agree. It's the supernatural imagery and convoluted mythology that makes this story memorable to so many fans. The story itself is pretty nonsensical, but it has a very Hammer Horror vibe so, if that's your thing (as it is mine), you still may enjoy it.

Ninth Doctor Drabbles

"Battle Scars" by Selim Ulug - This Short Trip is set not long after Nine's regeneration and before he meets Rose. It's another story that deals with the after effects of the Time War and, while it's not the best story of that type Big Finish has done, it's still well worth a listen.

Current Music: "Imagination" - Foster the People

A few random things that I'm thinking about today...

Listened to a few more Desert Island Discs podcasts on Friday that have really stuck with me:

Nitin Sawhney - It's always interesting to listen to musicians talk about music and I really enjoyed the variety of cultures/musical styles represented in his list.

Hugh Bonneville - The interview was delightful but I'm especially happy to know Annie Lennox sings Christmas music.

Professor Monica McWilliams - This might be the most impactful interview I've heard so far on this podcast. McWilliams talks about the Irish Troubles and her experiences co-founding the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition and taking part in the Good Friday Peace Agreement.

Dame Judi Dench - This interview was also delightful. I can't say much more for fear of spoilers, but be sure to stay to the very end if you listen to it.

Today I'm working on more Hill House Five, but yesterday I wrote some ficlets for the Eighth Doctor based on a different Tishani Doshi poem.

Lucie Miller audios are on sale at Big Finish to celebrate the release of "The Further Adventures of Lucie Miller." Although the new box set is set after Lucie's first series, it's full of spoilers for the end of her run as the Doctor's companion, so proceed with caution. That said, all four stories in the new box set are good with my favorites being the final two, "The House on the Edge of Chaos" and "Island of the Fendahl."

Current Music: "Another Place" - Bastille

After a lot of planning and outlining, I'm actually at work at "Hill House Five." It's just really slow going and feels doubly so since I've written all of it before with a different TARDIS team in my now abandoned "Hill House Eight." I'd hoped to be able to use more of what I'd written previously than I think I'll be able to, which is a bummer. Want an example of why? Under the break I'm going to post the beginning of the second chapter of both versions. The second chapter because I haven't written the first, a "present day" intro featuring the Twelfth Doctor, Bill, and Nardole, yet. None of it's scintillating, it's all just setting up the setting and the situation, but for a few chapters that are all having to do the same work the changes are interesting, at least to me.

And just one more warning, all of this is really rough, so I'm sure it has all sorts of errors and issues. I guess what I'm saying is reader beware.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: "The Red Room" (Haunting of Hill House) - The Newton Brothers

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.

Current Mood: sad
Current Music: "Before I Let Go" - Beyoncé

After working on them some last week and in between football matches today, I've finally finished the drabbles for Scratchman. They're spread between the Fourth and Thirteenth Doctor drabbles and hopefully do a decent job of encapsulating some of the batshit scenarios in that book.

Big Finish has a sale on Master audios going on for the next few days. I won't describe them in detail (I tend to do that all the time over on Tumblr and it gets old to talk about the same audios over and over), but I'll mention a few briefly. Click on the link above if you want the sale link and password because I'm going to be linking to the regular story pages below.

There are several really good Short Trips in the sale. "I Am the Master" was both written and read by Geoffrey Beevers (aka "the crispy Master") and is told completely from the Master's point of view. Even if you know nothing about this version of the Master, it's well worth picking up for its both hilarious and horrifying look at why the Master does what he does. Two of my favorite Fifth Doctor Short Trips, "The Toy" and "The Gardens of the Dead," are included. "The Gardens of the Dead" focuses on Turlough soon after he's joined the TARDIS crew and his conflicting desires (to survive the deal he made with the Black Guardian by killing the Doctor, and to embrace this opportunity to find a place where he's accepted). "The Toy" is a stand-alone adventure that also digs into Nyssa and the Doctor's pasts on the home planets they've both lost. "The Switching" is a Third Doctor era body-swap story and it's a lot of fun.

If you haven't picked up the cross-Doctor trilogy of "And You Will Obey Me" (Fifth Doctor), "Vampire of the Mind" (Sixth Doctor), and "The Two Masters" (Seventh Doctor), you really should. It's one of the best main Doctor Who range trilogies Big Finish has ever done and features both the Beevers Master and Alex Macqueen's version of the Master. I'm also very fond of the Fourth Doctor & Leela stories "Requiem for the Rocket Men" and "Death Match" which introduce a potential love interest for Leela named Marshall.

Dark Eyes volumes 2-4 are included in the sale. Vol. 2, which introduces Liv to the Eighth Doctor, is one of my favorites of that storyline. Vol. 3 is the weakest of the bunch, despite featuring an amazing audio where the Macqueen Master and the Eighth Doctor have to work together to escape a self-destructing spaceship. Vol. 4 is a bit of a mixed bag, but it has "A Life in the Day" which is among my favorite John Dorney stories.

"Smoke and Mirrors," the Fifth Doctor story in the "Destiny of the Doctor" series is included, as are the War Master box sets, and box sets from the UNIT, Gallifrey, River Song, and Missy ranges. "Dust Breeding" is in there too; it's an odd Seventh Doctor and Ace story that I feel differently about every time I listen to it, but it's certainly worth the $.99 they're asking for.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: "Monsters" - Los Coast

I've only listened to it once, but "Ravenous 3" may just be the best audio box set I've ever heard from Big Finish. With most box sets, there's one dud and three good stories. All four stories are fantastic this time around (mild spoilers below):

The first story, "Deeptime Frontier," is legitimately terrifying. I was sitting at my desk at work in the broad daylight and I was honestly scared. That's never happened to me before and I've listened to all of the "The Omega Factor" audios.

"Companion Piece" is just as delightful and funny as I hoped it would be and is far more suspenseful than I expected.

"L.E.G.E.N.D" I'm going to have to spend more time with, but I definitely enjoyed it. The Eleven joining the Eighth Doctor's TARDIS team is so much fun.

"The Odds Against" has so many twists that I had no idea what was going on until the end. Plus, having the Nine's previous incarnations arguing with the Eleven's previous incarnations is something I never knew I wanted.

I'm sure I'll write more about it as I have time (work is kicking my ass this week), but so far I love it.

Current Mood: geeky
Current Music: "Dernière danse" - Indila

There are a lot of interesting sounding audios coming out this month, so I'm going to squee at you a bit about them.

Doctor Who: Ravenous 3 - This one comes out Monday (MONDAY!!!!) and its the audio I'm most excited abut. It's a continuation of the current Eighth Doctor/Liv/Helen storyline and features three villains: the deliciously evil the Eleven, an earlier version of the same Time Lord (called the Nine), and the Ravenous. The Eleven and all of his (or her) previous and future incarnations have regenerative dissonance, meaning all of their previous selves exist in their head simultaneously with their current self. It's an interesting take on regeneration and the ways it could go wrong. We're still learning about the Ravenous, but what we know so far is that they are monsters from Time Lord fairy tales who eat temporal energy and whose preferred diet includes Time Lords. As a result, most Time Lords (the Eleven and the Eighth Doctor included) have a nearly uncontrollable fear of the Ravenous. Fairy tales are very much the theme for this storyline; the previous volume included a two-part story featuring the Krampus and this one has an intergalactic version of the Brothers Grimm. On top of all that, there's an episode where Liv and Helen team up with future and past Eighth Doctor companions Charley Pollard, Bliss, and River Song.

UNIT: Incursions - The big draw for this one is River Song, but there's also evidently multiple versions of Kate Stewart, a dinosaur, and a return to one of UNIT's dirty little secrets, Abbey Marston.

Torchwood: The Green Life - I don't generally listen to Big Finish's Torchwood audios (I was never a fan of the series when it was on the air), but this one has Captain Jack teaming up with Jo Jones (previously Jo Grant, one of the Third Doctor's companions). Jo on the TV series isn't one of my favorite companions, but I love Big Finish's version of Jo. They've just fleshed out her character so much more and Katy Manning, who plays her, is fantastic.

Doctor Who - Short Trips: Year of the Drex Olympics - The Second Doctor learns Venusian aikido from a group of nuns! (Or so they've teased in other stories. We'll see if that's really what this one is about.)

Doctor Who: The Monsters of Gokroth - This is the first of a trio of stories featuring the Seventh Doctor and a relatively minor character from one of his TV serials, Mags from "The Greatest Show in the Galaxy." I watched that story for the first time recently and wasn't impressed. That said, Mags was an interesting character. I'm cautiously optimistic that these stories will do for her what the previous Fifth Doctor stories did for Kamelion.

Things that I have so far resisted the siren song of:

Dark Shadows: Bloodline - I grew up a HUGE Dark Shadows fan, which is probably the most on-brand thing ever for me. I mean, come on - vampires, werewolves, ghosts, witches, curses, time travel, creepy houses on windswept cliffs overlooking the ocean, and low production values all wrapped up in a vaguely nonsensical, campy soap opera. I've listened to a few of Big Finish's Dark Shadows audios and they're a mixed bag as far as quality. However, the series that preceded this one, Bloodlust, was very enjoyable. This series picks up not too long after that one, with the Collins family's resident dumpster fire of a descendant, David Collins, marrying his childhood sweetheart, Amy Jennings. All the Collinsport regulars will be there, including the supernatural ones, and I'm sure the whole thing will go off the rails in no time. :-)

Gallifrey: Time War 2 - This one was released last month but I'm including it here so I can talk about it. On the pro side of the ledger, I enjoyed the previous set in this series. I also have a Time War drabble collection I'd love to add to and in this set they're bringing back Rassilon, who I love to hate. There's also a story by Una McCormack, who is one of my favorite Doctor Who writers. On the con side, I'm not a big Gallifrey fan. Most of the characters I really cared about (Ace, Leela, Brax, and the War Master) exited in the previous set of audios in dramatic, if not permanent, fashion. The only regulars left are Romana and Narvin and I don't feel overly compelled to find out what happens to either of them.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: "Blood" - Mindchatter

I made pot roast and roasted vegetables tonight. It was delicious and all I could think of was: I could cook like this every night if I didn't have to work. (Honestly, I wouldn't - I don't love cooking enough for that, but I could like it better if I had more free time in the evenings.) Anyone looking for a platonic kept woman? I'm a terrible cook and I'm grumpy in the mornings, but I come with an almost endless amount of tea and mix tapes, and a certain degree of Doctor Who knowledge.

I've started the drabbles for the last story in Ravenous 2, "Seizure" by Guy Adams. I've got maybe five to write, so they'll probably be done by the end of the night. This audio was my favorite when I first listened to this second set, which shouldn't have been a surprise since I love a haunted house story and this is a really good one. It's also an audio drama that stands up to repeated listening, if you're looking for one of those.

Anyway, yet another story from the backlog completed.

I also have my quote for the Poetry Fic Challenge and I absolutely love it. It's so right in my wheelhouse that either the mod knows my tastes or it's a very (VERY) lucky match. I even have an idea of what I want to write, although I have significant doubts about whether I'll be able to pull it off. I'll start plotting that tomorrow and see how it goes.

Current Mood: content
Current Music: "Restless Heart" - Yasmin Williams

The drabbles for John Dorney's Christmas special two-parter, "Better Watch Out" and "Fairytale of Salzburg," are online. I really didn't like these audios very much when they came out in October, which is odd because John Dorney is my favorite Big Finish writer. I must have just not been in the mood for them then because, after listening to them multiple times in the last few days, they are a delicious, fluffy, demon and imp filled delight. Liv has some great lines, as always; the Doctor seems determined to make every Sound of Music and Christmas movie reference possible; and Helen gets to be amazing and finally step out from both Liv and the Eighth Doctor's shadows.

It's a very good time. I heartily recommend both audios.

Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: "2Young" - Stop Light Observations

Just a heads-up, two stories I'd begun writing drabbles for but left unfinished for a while - the Eighth Doctor audio "Escape from Kaldor" and the Thirteenth Doctor TV episode "It Takes You Away" - are now completed.

Current Mood: rushed
Current Music: "Working for the Weekend" - Loverboy