sff: Big Finish Audio 'Light at the End'

[lyssie]

Because who doesn't want an audio drama featuring five of the classic Doctors?

(and it was out a month early. don'tjudgeme,Icanstopanytime)

Lots of Doctors! Lots of Companions! Twisty plot! Obviously, this will be amazing and wonderful and....

dull.

Like. Really incredibly dull. I honestly don't know how it could have been less interesting.

I wanted to like it. I wanted to like it so bad. It has random audio cameos from One, Two, Three and various companions! That was brilliant! But still...

Not enough.

What I really wanted was something where Doctors and companions interacted all over the place, and that wasn't what it was. Instead it was a pretty dull, obvious, pointlessly-plotted piece that just made me go "Really. REALLY. YOU HAD ALL OF THEM IN THE STUDIO AND THIS WAS WHAT YOU MADE."

I admit, it would be pretty fucking hard to top Zagreus (best thing in the entire world), and so my expectations and the bar were pretty high. BUT FOR FUCK'S SAKE.

There is, like, one two-minute segment when the Companions (all relegated to "OMG DOCTOR, WHAT NOW????" status and then disappeared) actually got to interact. I wanted half the thing to BE Companions interacting. I wanted Charley and Peri to list all the annoyances of their Doctors. I wanted Lucie and Ace to bond over Nitro Nine. I wanted Leela and Erimem to fight crime together. I wanted Evelyn and Hex to talk about his mother. I wanted Jo to pick locks to rescue Polly!

I just. There was so much potential, and it was all blown on a run-of-the-mill, dull "the Master tries to murder the Doctor, oh, snap. He fails and an Earthman's family doesn't get murdered." plot.

There were good bits. There were sound bits and 'found' audio of the past companions who are no longer around. There was random amusement and snark. There was Leela and Charley being all "wtf" about regeneration. There was Four insulting Seven's taste in console room decor.

But it wasn't damned near enough.

The Fiftieth Anniversary special by the Moff is going to have to try really hard to be this dull. Maybe it will be a Soap Opera about Rose and her family and her boyfriend? That might work.

Comments

[aralias.livejournal.com]

so - i saw your post, and i thought: should i click on it? because if i do i will be spoilered, but also - i was not all that excited about nick briggs writing this. and... then anyway - i clicked on it, and i thought 'well, i'm glad i know!'

what a shame :( but... i'm not surprised. glad leela and charley had a good bit, though.

and i'm impressed the found footage was good - since it was awful in (the otherwise awesome) zagreus.

[lyssie.livejournal.com]

It would have been so much better if it had been three times as long. sigh.

Most of the found footage was just fragments of conversations from older episodes, so they were able to clean it up a bit better, I think.

[trinalin.livejournal.com]

Awww, shame you didn't enjoy it as much as you'd hoped. I didn't find it dull and thought it was much better than I was expecting. (I wasn't all that impressed with Zagreus and only ever relisten to it to hear Sylv's bits. Heh.) I thought the three playing Docs 1-3 did a nice job and were able to bring those characters back. (I'd heard Russell's Doc1 and Hines' Doc2 before, but the dude doing Doc3 was new for me.) In my book, it's the best multi-Doc story that Big Finish has done (though Twilight: Lazarus is a favorite, in part because it twists the usual multi-Doc meetup).

(Hmm, I really should update my Doctor Who user pic - no Smith, no Capaldi on it yet.)

[lyssie.livejournal.com]

I am glad that you liked it. I think I would have liked it more had I been expecting something different.