Lost in Ainsworth: A Review of The Doomwood Curse
WHO DAILY: lj user="neadods"> reviews a href="http://neadods.livejournal.com/736391.html">Big Finish's The Doomwood Curse
Jacqueline Rayner has been a favorite New Who writer since Winner Takes All, and she has returned to the Doctor Who monthly series with her fourth Sixth Doctor story, The Doomwood Curse.
Rayner has a fondness for Six, having written 100, The Marion Conspiracy, and the cracktastic Doctor Who and the Pirates for him. Doomwood isn't quite as crackalicious as Pirates - but it's pretty darn close.
Adventure 105, The Condemned, gave Six his fourth companion, Charley, previously companion to Eight. They're a particularly good fit together; Charley can't help slipping up and mentioning things she shouldn't know, while Six is the only incarnation who would bluster right over every lapse. ("The TARDIS isn't usually this accurate," she muses at the beginning, covering rapidly with "...I mean, it seems." Six's defensive bombastic rejoinder is "The TARDIS is 100% reliable!")
Charley had taken a copy of Ainsworth's 1834 potboiler Rookwood into the bath for some light reading, but when she did so, she triggered an automatic overdue library notice from Alexandria 4. Very overdue. 300 years overdue.
The Doctor tried to immediately fix the issue, yanking Charley out of the bathroom ("I still have shampoo in my hair!" "You had been in the bath for four hours by the time the robot showed up; I think I can be forgiven for assuming you were clean by that point!") and trying to slingshot back to a point a few hours after the book was first checked out.
However, when they get to Alexandria 4, the only checking out is being done by the Grel, squidlike collectors of facts. The problem is they're in the fiction section - and they don't have a good grasp of fiction:
"I have found a fact! It was the best of times! Additional fact. It was the worst of times."
"Bad fact! These cannot both be facts!"
In an attempt to save the fiction section, Charley ends up doing a lot of damage Ravenwood. To save themselves from Alexandria's particularly Mikado-style punishments for book mishandling, the Doctor then decides to take them back to get another copy from Ainsworth.
But the 100% reliable TARDIS doesn't take them to where they can *get* the book... it seems to have landed them *inside* the book...
In the extras, India Fisher says she enjoys getting not only to continue to play Charley, but to play her as "not doe-eyed." Doomwood gives her a particular chance to stretch with three different characters - four if you count her uncredited Grel voice. Colin gets two (and a Grel). With the opportunity to shake things up a little and get a giggle, this is the sort of audio that is probably going to be listed as a favorite by the actors.
It will doubtless make several listener favorite lists as well. It's a very broad, panto-based story to fit in with the villains (the Grel were invented by Paul Cornell for the Bernice Summerfield panto-based book/audio Oh No It Isn't! Therefore the plot is paper thin, but the gleeful OTT gothic silliness is going to make up for a lot.
Colin and India click so wonderfully it's no wonder that Big Finish turned their partnership from a one-off to an extended stay. (Colin is quite chuffed about this, chortling in the extras about his stable of companion "fillies.") I'm an Evelyn fan, but I must admit that I love this team almost as much; in many ways, Charley's foreknowledge lets her take the mickey out of Six as much as Evelyn's middle-aged perspective.
The Doomwood Curse is fabulous fun. Think of it as Northanger Abbey... with a TARDIS.
Jacqueline Rayner has been a favorite New Who writer since Winner Takes All, and she has returned to the Doctor Who monthly series with her fourth Sixth Doctor story, The Doomwood Curse.
Rayner has a fondness for Six, having written 100, The Marion Conspiracy, and the cracktastic Doctor Who and the Pirates for him. Doomwood isn't quite as crackalicious as Pirates - but it's pretty darn close.
Adventure 105, The Condemned, gave Six his fourth companion, Charley, previously companion to Eight. They're a particularly good fit together; Charley can't help slipping up and mentioning things she shouldn't know, while Six is the only incarnation who would bluster right over every lapse. ("The TARDIS isn't usually this accurate," she muses at the beginning, covering rapidly with "...I mean, it seems." Six's defensive bombastic rejoinder is "The TARDIS is 100% reliable!")
Charley had taken a copy of Ainsworth's 1834 potboiler Rookwood into the bath for some light reading, but when she did so, she triggered an automatic overdue library notice from Alexandria 4. Very overdue. 300 years overdue.
The Doctor tried to immediately fix the issue, yanking Charley out of the bathroom ("I still have shampoo in my hair!" "You had been in the bath for four hours by the time the robot showed up; I think I can be forgiven for assuming you were clean by that point!") and trying to slingshot back to a point a few hours after the book was first checked out.
However, when they get to Alexandria 4, the only checking out is being done by the Grel, squidlike collectors of facts. The problem is they're in the fiction section - and they don't have a good grasp of fiction:
"I have found a fact! It was the best of times! Additional fact. It was the worst of times."
"Bad fact! These cannot both be facts!"
In an attempt to save the fiction section, Charley ends up doing a lot of damage Ravenwood. To save themselves from Alexandria's particularly Mikado-style punishments for book mishandling, the Doctor then decides to take them back to get another copy from Ainsworth.
But the 100% reliable TARDIS doesn't take them to where they can *get* the book... it seems to have landed them *inside* the book...
In the extras, India Fisher says she enjoys getting not only to continue to play Charley, but to play her as "not doe-eyed." Doomwood gives her a particular chance to stretch with three different characters - four if you count her uncredited Grel voice. Colin gets two (and a Grel). With the opportunity to shake things up a little and get a giggle, this is the sort of audio that is probably going to be listed as a favorite by the actors.
It will doubtless make several listener favorite lists as well. It's a very broad, panto-based story to fit in with the villains (the Grel were invented by Paul Cornell for the Bernice Summerfield panto-based book/audio Oh No It Isn't! Therefore the plot is paper thin, but the gleeful OTT gothic silliness is going to make up for a lot.
Colin and India click so wonderfully it's no wonder that Big Finish turned their partnership from a one-off to an extended stay. (Colin is quite chuffed about this, chortling in the extras about his stable of companion "fillies.") I'm an Evelyn fan, but I must admit that I love this team almost as much; in many ways, Charley's foreknowledge lets her take the mickey out of Six as much as Evelyn's middle-aged perspective.
The Doomwood Curse is fabulous fun. Think of it as Northanger Abbey... with a TARDIS.