Audios, Reviewed
In recent weeks, there were a couple of sales at reduced price at Big Finish I was interested in, and thus I ended up listening to some Torchwood audios featuring Gwen Cooper and/or husband Rhys, and something created during the 2020 lockdown - "The Tenth Doctor and River Song", three adventures set shortly after the fourth season (for the Doctor) and at a time River is already Professor rather than Doctor Song (for her). These were my first Big Finish audios for years, and now I must keep away from the website, since I enjoyed them so much and would spend way too much money there (there isn't always a reduced rate for the ones I'm most interestedin).
The Torwchood audios I scooped felt tailored just for me, because I was always out of tune with the majority of TW fandom in various regards. 1) I had and have no interest in Ianto, or the Jack/Ianto relationship, 2) I loved Children of Earth and thus 3) while of course I'm interested in the s1-2 era when Owen and Tosh are alive, or in the between s2 and pre CoE era when the team consists of Jack, Ianto and Gwen, I do want stories which are set past CoE - or for that matter past Miracle Day, and take into account what happened. Oh, and 4) I adore the Gwen/Rhys relationship. The stories I bought were set at different points in the TW timeline, with Dissected (post s2, pre CoE, starring Martha and Gwen in a tale that provides Martha with some background and reason for her change of state from where The Stolen Earth leaves her as compared to her cameo appearance in the Tenth Doctor's last outing) the earliest, and Forgotten Lives (four years post Miracle Day, Gwen and Rhys are called to a Residential Home where an old man neither has seen before insists on being Jack Harkness, and things go weirder fromt here) the latest. (The others were: Made you look (Gwen has to investigate people's disappearances at a lonely seaside town), Visiting Hours (Rhys visits his mother in hospital when realsiing something is seriously wrong) and We always get out alive (Gwen and Rhys on their way back from something can't seem to arrive, and after a while figure out they're not alone in the car; the story is also a rapid fire dialogue only tour de force for the actors having to convey both the text and subtext of what's going on). It was lovely listening to Eve Myles' and Kai Owen's Welsh accents again, and as for the stories, they struck me as having a very Torchwoodian mixture of suspense, daftness and in the midst of bizarro szenarios very real emotions. (For example: In Forgotten Lives, the way Gwen becomes convinced that the old guy in front of her is actually Jack's mind trapped in a different body is a comedy scene - Jack kisses not just her but also Rhys in overjoyed relief at seeing them, and the Rhys kiss is what sells it to Gwen - , but when later the bodysnatch gimmick of the episode is used in a way that has the mind of her little daughter, Anwen, end up in the body of an old woman, it's pure horror.)
The three stories that make up "The Tenth Doctor and River Song" are: :Expiry Dating (written by James Goss) Precious Annhilation (by Lizzie Hopeley) Ghosts (by Jonathan Morris). I was curious how the writers would cope with the in-built storytelling restraint that when the Elventh Doctor encounters River in "Time of the Angels", he's not as stand-offish as Ten was in the Library episodes (where he has no idea who she is) but still doesn't really know her very well, only truly getting to know her from that point onwards. I need not have worried: they make the best of it. Expiry Dating is a hilarious tale which uses the comic timing of Alex Kingston and David Tennant to great effect in a way the Library episodes for in-story reasons could not, and also: it's basically letters fiction! As the premise is that when River, via psychic paper as at the start of the Library episodes, tells the Doctor to meet her at a certain point in time, the Doctor (with River's fate in that episode fresh in mind and determined not to get close in the first place) refuses and writes back instead, and from there we get an increasigly madcap and funny exchange of messages. I must say at one point I wondered "but why doesn't she just ask one of the other versions of the Doctor to do x for her?", but then the story took care of that plot point why revealing River's true goal and I went "of course!". Precious Annihilation is a historical adventure where the Doctor and River have to focus on the mystery du jour, but he does get to know her a little better (still not as much as he will), while the basic premise in Ghosts, which you can figure out if you've watched at least two prominent movies in the last two decades dealing with ghosts, ensures the main events there don't impact Eleven's continuity. Ghosts is also, going by the "Behind the Scenes" special, the most consciously written as "Moffatian" story, though I have to say, while all three writers profess great admiration for the Moff, at least two of them have clearly issues with River's eventual fate. Jonathan Morris describes it as y: "A very Stephen Moffat kind of hell - having to spend eternity with your collegues from work", and botoh "Precious Annhilation" and "Ghosts" feature a character (a different one) whom the Doctor wants to save in a similar way to what he did with River (or River's memory) at the end of the Library two parter, both characters refuse that option for themselves, and River sides with them. From a writing pov, I also found it interesting which episode they said they rewatched to get into the Doctor's and River's voices from that particular point of their respective tiimelines - for River, it was the obvious - the Library episodes and "Time of the Angels", but for the Tenth Doctor, it was Midnight.
Listening to these three stories made me glad, not for the first time, that Big Finish now has the license to use New Who characters, and thus can do combinations on audio we couldn't watch, or couldn't watch this way. Did I mention Alex Kingston and David Tennant have terrific timing together? And the verbal sparring is fantastic, too.
The Torwchood audios I scooped felt tailored just for me, because I was always out of tune with the majority of TW fandom in various regards. 1) I had and have no interest in Ianto, or the Jack/Ianto relationship, 2) I loved Children of Earth and thus 3) while of course I'm interested in the s1-2 era when Owen and Tosh are alive, or in the between s2 and pre CoE era when the team consists of Jack, Ianto and Gwen, I do want stories which are set past CoE - or for that matter past Miracle Day, and take into account what happened. Oh, and 4) I adore the Gwen/Rhys relationship. The stories I bought were set at different points in the TW timeline, with Dissected (post s2, pre CoE, starring Martha and Gwen in a tale that provides Martha with some background and reason for her change of state from where The Stolen Earth leaves her as compared to her cameo appearance in the Tenth Doctor's last outing) the earliest, and Forgotten Lives (four years post Miracle Day, Gwen and Rhys are called to a Residential Home where an old man neither has seen before insists on being Jack Harkness, and things go weirder fromt here) the latest. (The others were: Made you look (Gwen has to investigate people's disappearances at a lonely seaside town), Visiting Hours (Rhys visits his mother in hospital when realsiing something is seriously wrong) and We always get out alive (Gwen and Rhys on their way back from something can't seem to arrive, and after a while figure out they're not alone in the car; the story is also a rapid fire dialogue only tour de force for the actors having to convey both the text and subtext of what's going on). It was lovely listening to Eve Myles' and Kai Owen's Welsh accents again, and as for the stories, they struck me as having a very Torchwoodian mixture of suspense, daftness and in the midst of bizarro szenarios very real emotions. (For example: In Forgotten Lives, the way Gwen becomes convinced that the old guy in front of her is actually Jack's mind trapped in a different body is a comedy scene - Jack kisses not just her but also Rhys in overjoyed relief at seeing them, and the Rhys kiss is what sells it to Gwen - , but when later the bodysnatch gimmick of the episode is used in a way that has the mind of her little daughter, Anwen, end up in the body of an old woman, it's pure horror.)
The three stories that make up "The Tenth Doctor and River Song" are: :Expiry Dating (written by James Goss) Precious Annhilation (by Lizzie Hopeley) Ghosts (by Jonathan Morris). I was curious how the writers would cope with the in-built storytelling restraint that when the Elventh Doctor encounters River in "Time of the Angels", he's not as stand-offish as Ten was in the Library episodes (where he has no idea who she is) but still doesn't really know her very well, only truly getting to know her from that point onwards. I need not have worried: they make the best of it. Expiry Dating is a hilarious tale which uses the comic timing of Alex Kingston and David Tennant to great effect in a way the Library episodes for in-story reasons could not, and also: it's basically letters fiction! As the premise is that when River, via psychic paper as at the start of the Library episodes, tells the Doctor to meet her at a certain point in time, the Doctor (with River's fate in that episode fresh in mind and determined not to get close in the first place) refuses and writes back instead, and from there we get an increasigly madcap and funny exchange of messages. I must say at one point I wondered "but why doesn't she just ask one of the other versions of the Doctor to do x for her?", but then the story took care of that plot point why revealing River's true goal and I went "of course!". Precious Annihilation is a historical adventure where the Doctor and River have to focus on the mystery du jour, but he does get to know her a little better (still not as much as he will), while the basic premise in Ghosts, which you can figure out if you've watched at least two prominent movies in the last two decades dealing with ghosts, ensures the main events there don't impact Eleven's continuity. Ghosts is also, going by the "Behind the Scenes" special, the most consciously written as "Moffatian" story, though I have to say, while all three writers profess great admiration for the Moff, at least two of them have clearly issues with River's eventual fate. Jonathan Morris describes it as y: "A very Stephen Moffat kind of hell - having to spend eternity with your collegues from work", and botoh "Precious Annhilation" and "Ghosts" feature a character (a different one) whom the Doctor wants to save in a similar way to what he did with River (or River's memory) at the end of the Library two parter, both characters refuse that option for themselves, and River sides with them. From a writing pov, I also found it interesting which episode they said they rewatched to get into the Doctor's and River's voices from that particular point of their respective tiimelines - for River, it was the obvious - the Library episodes and "Time of the Angels", but for the Tenth Doctor, it was Midnight.
Listening to these three stories made me glad, not for the first time, that Big Finish now has the license to use New Who characters, and thus can do combinations on audio we couldn't watch, or couldn't watch this way. Did I mention Alex Kingston and David Tennant have terrific timing together? And the verbal sparring is fantastic, too.