Going Through Doctor Who (Spoilers all Eps aired on BBC/BBCA)

[rushy]

Couple of things, for the most part - the Big Finish offerings are Audio Dramas, not Audio Books. Which makes them substantially more interesting.

They are also canon, this has been declared openly by Nicholas Briggs and as you say, alluded to in Night of the Doctor. I certainly wouldn't call any of them filler - many of them are excellent and have outclassed some TV episodes. I'm looking specifically at Terror Firma, one of the best Dalek stories of all time in my opinion.

I would, however, recommend avoiding 'The Four Doctors' as your initial foray into the audio drama world. It's not the best, and is - alas, slightly disjointed. Maybe you should check out The Light At the End instead? The 50th Anniversary special.... far better, and also multi-doctor.

I would whole heartedly recommend any of the Big Finish Audios, but if you want Paul McGann, either start with Storm Warning for the Charley Pollard saga or Blood of the Daleks for the Lucie Miller saga....

You may also like An Earthly Child, which reunites the Doctor with Susan for the first time since The Five Doctors and introduces the Doctor's grandson...

They all sound pretty interesting to me. I think I'll start with the Light At The End(Ian, multi-Doctor, Master, Susan... what more could I want?) and move on from there.
However, where can I get audio dramas and who's Nicholas Briggs?

[Flyboy]

They all sound pretty interesting to me. I think I'll start with the Light At The End(Ian, multi-Doctor, Master, Susan... what more could I want?) and move on from there.
However, where can I get audio dramas and who's Nicholas Briggs?

Nicholas Briggs is the voice of the daleks and one of the senior guys behind the production and development of the audio dramas. The audio dramas are quite easily available from amazon, but the best place (imo) is www.bigfinish.com you can see all the available ranges, spin off ranges, etc etc and you can either buy on CD or get just a download for cheaper. Also, the first 70 odd of the Main Range stories are about £5.00 each. Which is a bargain. The first one 'Sirens of Time' is a bit naff, but after that they're mostly gold! I'd also recommend some of the spin offs, I absolutely adore the UNIT stories and the Dalek Empire saga is brilliant!

[rushy]

Thanks!
Look forward to listening to them! Lol.
Just realised how handy audio stories are. I could listen to them in the bus(I take six-hour bus trips twice per month).
Anyway, I'm about to enter the world of animated recons. I bet they're better than the slide show I had to put up with in Marco Polo.

[Flyboy]

Thanks!
Look forward to listening to them! Lol.
Just realised how handy audio stories are. I could listen to them in the bus(I take six-hour bus trips twice per month).
Anyway, I'm about to enter the world of animated recons. I bet they're better than the slide show I had to put up with in Marco Polo.

Indeed! At the moment I seem to be doing a lot of flying between countries, and the audio dramas are perfect for that. They're also great for the numerous drives I find myself having to do!

[rushy]

Firstly, I'd like to announce that The Reign Of Terror review is in limbo for the moment, as I'm unable to find the animated version and knowing that it exists, I can't bear to watch the recon so... yeah. I'm not going to skip it either though.

Here we are to celebrate my first non-televised adventure in the world of Doctor Who with the first novel since 2005 to focus on a classic Doctor.
I am of course speaking of The Wheel Of Ice, written by Stephen Baxter.
In many ways this story reminded me of Arthur Clarke's novel 2001: A Space Odyssey with its detailed descriptions of the Saturnyan(is that the right word?) system with all its moons and rings plus all the complicated, realistic technology and storytelling.

The star of the novel is the Second Doctor(originally played by Patrick Troughton). The character here is mixed for me, mainly because we see little of his personality. He's more or less a generic Doctor, if such a thing can exist. However, he did have one killer line in which he responded to an insult of Zoe's(towards the villain). "Now that Zoe, is unscientific, unkind and quite funny."
And of course he played his recorder at the end. I did grow to like him, even if he's a little confused.

Jamie McCrimmon isn't Ian, but he's a damn likable companion. Love his loyalty to Scotland, his determination to stand by the rebel kids and just the fact that the Doctor's traveling with someone from the far past. His reactions to all these future concepts are pretty funny. Also, the scene where he had to defuse the Z-Bomb was awesome. Go go Jamie! Can't wait to properly meet you.

Zoe Heriot was... bland. I'm sorry, but she's a walking computer who didn't advance the story in any way. It all could've happened without her being there and her only plot arc was becoming more human. To that end, she spent the whole climax babysitting. Not a fan.

The story itself had the TARDIS detect a time anomaly("Temporal Displacement Zone") in the 22nd century Saturnyan system. There, the characters are taken to the Wheel Of Ice, a cobbled-together space station which is mining bernalium from a moon called Mnemosyne. But there's something else down on that moon... the Doctor and his companions have to go up against the most stubborn bureaucrats, alien invasions, ticking bombs, labyrinths, timey-wimey devices, alien planets. All mashed together by well-written, fantastic characters(A Scottish spider robot!) and Doctor Who references(none directly connecting to NewWho though).

My favourite character of the book was a cross between MMAC(the aforementioned Scot AI) and Florian Hart simply because she's a caricature of greedy, vengeful monopolists(and people that I happen to know) on steroids. She made me hate her, which is a rare accomplishment for a villain.

Overall, it's more of a hard sci-fi story that the Doctor and co. just happen to be in rather than a Doctor Who story itself and that isn't a bad thing. Stuff happens here that is still too expensive to put on screen. It was like a super-duper episode that just went on and on and on and never turned boring(maybe except the beginning bits, but still). I highly recommend it to both fans of lighthearted Doctor Who and fans of hardcore 2001: A Space Odyssey.
It's not big on character development, but a great romp of a story.

[rushy]

Being an avid Doctor Who fan, I figured: "hey, there's got to be at least ONE awesome game out there, right?" so I looked around and while there are games, there are shockingly few. There's one really old game called Dalek Attack which features either the Second, Fourth or Seventh Doctor in a plot about Davros taking over the Earth. However, it's very hard to play with ridiculous controls and way too fast action. The animation and intro were kinda good though.

There's also a bunch of Matt Smith-era games I can't review because my computer can't handle them, but then there's one particular 1997 game that hooked my attention.
This game is known as Destiny Of The Doctors and somewhat worthy of that title.

The premise is excellent: The Master(played surprisingly well by Anthony Ainley) has taken control of a planet which is enveloped in psychic energy and has used that power to twist reality and capture the first seven incarnations of the Doctor(First and Second are voiced by imitators, Pertwee's dialogue is stock and the rest return) in an area similar to the Death Zone.

And here is where it gets crappy: you play as the Blob. Yes, the Blob. Moving around is annoying, fighting is difficult and the countdown clock doesn't help. It tries to serve as both the life bar and as a... well, clock but it just doesn't have the right feel.

The game starts out okay enough. You're inside the Doctor's TARDIS and can access a database filled with DW info to satisfy any classic fan. The second thing you can do is travel to any of the seven time-periods the Doctors are trapped in. But then you have to leave. As you go, you meet up with a random enemy like the Cybermen, the Daleks or the Quarks(insert Ferengi joke) that try to kill you. Your weapons include water pistols and fire extinguishers and oil squirters. Yay.

Your mission is to get outside to the Master who will give you a task that you must perform in order to get access to a game box/labyrinth previously owned by the Celestial Toymaker(facepalm) which will allow you to rescue whatever Doctor you're trying to save.

That's the game, right there.

Pros:
1)Excellent cutscenes with Anthony Ainley who put in a magnificient effort for his final time as the Master. My fav bit was when he gave his opinions on each of the incarnations.
2) The TARDIS console room and all its attributes.
3) Great quotes and references to past stories.
4) Well animated enemies.
5) Brilliant concept and no Rani to spoil it.
6) Perfect atmosphere.

Cons:
1) Hard to control anything.
2) Ridiculous weapons.
3) Nonsensical and short instructions.
4) Lack of map(I spent what felt like hours going in circles).
5) Playing as the Blob.
6) No guidance whatsoever.
7) Mine-cart sequence(with trains, but not much different).
8) No DW intro, the game starts straight away.
9) Really crappy graphics(1997 I know, but at least I was distracted by gameplay in Dark Forces 2).
10) No subtitles(sometimes it's hard to hear what they're saying and that, coupled with short and unrepeated instructions is a game over.)
11) Inability to save game(the feature exists, I just can't get it to work for me).

Overall, it's a big update on Dimensions in Time, but not the best execution. I managed to save the First Doctor without even knowing about it til the Master told me, but didn't get any further. I suggest you check it out though if you're a fan of classic Who, it's a cooler finale than what I've heard of Survival. I'll definitely try it again sometime.

[rushy]

I've also decided that if I won't find the animated version tomorrow I'll watch the recon, just so I can get a move on. Alas.

[rushy]

The Reign Of Terror is a huge step-up from The Sensorites in the sense that something actually happens during this story.
The Doctor and co end up in pre-revolutionary France, a few days before Robespierre is taken down and are caught up in the events, as usual.

Unfortunately, I've never been a fan of France in general, so the story just wasn't meant for me. It started out kinda good, moved towards mediocre in the middle(seriously, how many times did they flip-flop between the prison and... elsewhere?), but the last episode was really brilliant work. The capture of Robespierre(I was genuinely horrified when they shot him in the jaw. You know, for kids!) and the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte was epic for a 1960s BBC production.

The Doctor was really good in this story. Historicals seem to have a good effect on Hartnell, since he doesn't have to spout technobabble and can indulge in his drama(and comedy) talent. I must admit, the costume did kinda distract me, but other than that, he was great.

Ian was his usual heroic self(I just loved the cliffhanger where he looked out of the bars, it felt very cinematic). Nothing really to add here that hasn't been said before.

Susan went really, really awful in episodes 2 and 3. What's all this fuss about a bunch of rats? You're the granddaughter of the friggin Doctor! Act like one!! She vanished later on only to reappear in the finale, obviously because the writers don't really care about this person(no wonder she left in The Dalek Invasion Of Earth).

Barbara I really liked this episode, because she asked many moral questions like how we should judge people. If only they weren't trying to shoot us...

In the end of the story, Ian wonders about whether or not they could've altered the sequence of events by sending Bonaparte a letter of what's to come, but Susan says that would simply fail by default because it's history. So does that mean that 60s Doctor Who is following the Lost rulebook on history? "Whatever happened, happened." and "The universe has a way of course-correcting things."

Oh Steven Moffat... speaking of the Moff, I'm giving you a little spoiler from my upcoming Series 7 review: Watching NuWho has become a job, rather than a hobby for me.

Well, that concludes Season 1 of Doctor Who. Twenty-five more to go. Ready or not, here I come!

EDIT: Why do I say "really" so much? It's really annoying to read LOL.

[cosmichobo]

I started a campaign to convince the BBC to port Destiny of the Doctors to Mac... It failed.

[rushy]

I started a campaign to convince the BBC to port Destiny of the Doctors to Mac... It failed.

Well, it's not a very popular game. I'm saddened, but not surprised.

[Travelfun1017]

Rushy, question for you, when you started to watch the Classic Doctor Who episodes, where did you start?

[Travelfun1017]

Rushy, did you finish season 7 yet?

[rushy]

The first Classic Who I saw was the Five Doctors.
And no, I haven't finished Series 7 yet. If I had, the review would be up. I make them right after I see the last episode of the series/serial.

[Travelfun1017]

Oh ok. How did you get to see the Five Doctors?

[rushy]

I was interested in the classic Doctors so it seemed the best option to see them all at once.