Month: June 2014

EP1299: Pursuit: Pursuit of the Lonely Heart

Ben Wright

Inspector Peter Black investigates a two year old unsolved murder of a woman where her husband is the prime suspect.

Original Air Date: July 31, 1951

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Audio Drama Review: Charlotte Pollad Box Set

Charlotte Pollard Box Set
As we continue to honor Big Finish’s 15th Anniversary of doing Doctor Who Audio plays, we’ll take a look now at their latest Doctor Who Spinoff series, Charlotte Pollard.

Charley Pollard (India Fisher) was introduced as Eighth Doctor Paul McGann’s companion in 2001 and continued in that role until 2007. She is most aptly described as an Edwardian Adventuress, originally from the 1930s. In 2007, she departed from the Eighth Doctor, falsely believing him to have died. She then ended up travelling with the Sixth Doctor, a previous regeneration which caused untold paradoxes. She ended up leaving the Sixth Doctor in 2009’s Blue Forgotten Planet, and began travelling with the Viyrans, a race dedicated to ridding the universe of a series of viruses released in an explosion.

The Charlotte Pollard Box Set features four adventures of about an hour as Charley breaks free of the Viyrans and begins her own adventures.

1) The Lamentation Cipher

This story picks up with Charley continuing her work for the Viyrans who have been repeatedly using her services for a time and then putting her into Chryogenic sleep until needed in. Charley is not happy with this life though she believes the Viyrans intents are altruistic. However, when a mysterious Viyran who is different from the semi-automotons of that race offers her a chance to escape she takes it and eventually makes it.

This is a necessary chapter as it does a great job establishing where Charley is at and Robert Buckham Jr. (James Joyce) and others who would be play a key role in the story. It also does the necessary work of introducing people to the character who hadn’t followed the Doctor Who stories Charley appeared in.

2) The Shadow at the Edge of the World:

Charley escapes from the Viyrans via the Forever and Ever Perlexity and finds herself in the 1930s wandering with a group of women who are the last survivors of an expedition. The story has plenty of suspense and atmosphere and is a great all female performance. (With the exception of monster voices done by Producer Nick Briggs.)

3) The Fall of the House of Pollard

This story focuses on Charley’s family and at last she returns home only to find how much her disappearance has affected them. At times, the pacing is a little slow as it takes quite for Charley to interact with her parents. The way Charley actually gets home is oddly contrived and doesn’t make much sense, the cruel treatment of the character of Michael Dee seems gratuitous, and the ending is disappointing. Still, the scenes with Charley and her family are moving with Terrance Hardiman and Anneke Wills turning in solid performances as Lord and Lady Pollard. This one works primarily as a character piece that probes issues rarely raised in the classic Doctor Who series about what happens to the families of those who travel in time and space.

4) The Viyran Solution

Charley is back with the Viyrans and learns that the virus hunting cyborgs have come up with a solution to eliminating all viruses but it’s one that is so insane that the entire Universe depends on her discovering it and thwarting it. Meanwhile, Robert Buckham Sr. has other plans to use the Viyrans for his own profit.

The story concludes in a way that could mark, a “the end” moment for Charley or could leave the door open for future installments.

This also comes with a bonus “making of” CD with more than an hour of interviews with writers and cast members on each episode.

The series has some high points. Throughout, everyone performs well. Though Charley is a bit more cynical than her run with the Doctor, she still a likable character who delivers some great lines, particularly in Episode 4. The story concepts are interesting particularly in Episode 2, which gives a good idea of what Charley would be like in an adventure where the Viyrans were not playing such a huge role as pursuers.

The downside as I see it is that Charley’s actual role in these drams is a bit too passive. Charley doesn’t come up with clever plans or even take initiative for the most part. For example, her escape from the Viyrans in the first episode wasn’t really her idea. While she makes a couple key decision in Episodes 2 and 4, the first box set of Charlotte Pollard is much more about things happening to Charley rather than her doing anything or making anything happen. That’s fine if you’re the sidekick. Not so much if you’re the main character.

However, I hope there is a second series of adventures. Charley’s definitely a fun character with a very unique voice. The stories are well-written and intelligent, and the folks at Big Finish are consummate professionals whose use of sound effects makes the story come to life with fantastic sound effects.

Overall, I give Series One a rating of 7/10.

The Charlotte Pollard Box Set  is available from Big Finish Productions.

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EP1298: Police Headquarters: Retired and No Learnin’

A former police officer is now a security guard and has to locate a rich woman’s necklace in “Retired.”

Two beat cops are assigned to investigate a cut and dried suicide (or so it appears) in “No Learnin'”

Original Air Date: 1932 (Episodes 28 and 29)

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Yours Truly Johnny Dollar :The Blooming Blossom Matter (EP1297)

Bob Bailey
Johnny investigates the disappearance of an insured only to find him murdered after receiving a tip from a fan.

Original Air Date: January 20, 1957

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EP1296: Nick Carter: The Man Who Lived Too Long

Lon Clark

Nick investigates the murder of a man who stands to make a fortune on a new invention.

Original Air Date: July 1, 1945

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EP1295: Philip Marlowe: Where There’s a Will

Gerald Mohr
Marlowe is hired to help four people find jewels left to them by a woman who hated them.

Original Air Date: October 17, 1948

 

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EP1294: Pat Novak for Hire: Dixie Gillian

Jack Webb

Pat Novak is hired to frighten a man named Dixie Gillian, but when an empty gun goes off, he finds himself facing a murder charge.

Original Air Date: April 16, 1949

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EP1293: Pursuit: Pursuit and the Man Who Confessed

Ted De Corsia
Inspector Black tries to check the validity of a man who confessed to murdering a woman whose body can’t be found.

Original Air Date: April 11, 1950

 

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Big Finish Celebrates Fifteen Years of Doctor Who Audio Dramas

In July, Big Finish Productions celebrates  fifteen years producing licensed Doctor Who audio dramas.  In celebration of this milestone, we’ll take a look at the history of Big Finish’s work this week and next week we’ll review one of their latest releases as we take a look at some of the most successful contemporary audio drama being produced.

From 1963-1989, BBC aired Doctor Who which chronicled the adventures of the Doctor, a time travelling alien known as a Time Lord. Every few years, the Doctor would “regenerate” and take on a different face and a somewhat different personality than he had previously. This element introduced when the first actor to play the doctor, William Hartnell was ailing. This served to allow the recasting of the role and since then had served to allow both the lead and the direction of the series to change while still remaining Doctor Who. 

There were seven doctors in those twenty-six years, the most popular of which was Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor which ran for seven years. Baker’s multi-colored scarf became iconically associated with the show. Still eight seasons, after he’d left the show left the air with a whimper in the final Seventh Doctor story, “Survivor.”

After that, Doctor Who went off the air for most of the next sixteen years. 1996 saw a joint U.S./British effort to revive Doctor Who with a made for TV movie that aired over Fox and starred Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor. When the TV was made,  McGann hoped to star in a brand new Doctor Who Television series, but that failed to materialize.

The series would finally return to television in 2005 and become an international sensation.

However, during the intervening years, that didn’t meant Doctor Who wasn’t being made…it just wasn’t being made on Television.

Doctor Who and Radio

Doctor Who and the Pescatons
During Doctor Who’s television run, audio dramas didn’t play a huge part in the series. The fourth Doctor recorded two audio dramas in 1970s, one of which was a 20 minute educational piece on geography, as well as a 45 minute commercial release Doctor Who and the Pescatons which was kind of a hybrid of audiobook and radio drama.  In 1985, during an eighteen month hiatus for the TV show, the Sixth Doctor played by Colin Baker starred in a radio serial Slipback.

In 1993, Doctor Who returned to BBC radio with an intriguing idea. The Doctor present was not the last doctor to appear on television, but the Third Doctor played by Jon Pertwee who’d left the series nearly twenty years before. The story Paradise of Death was set in the midst of the eleventh season of Doctor Who.

Paradise of Death

The program was a success and fans demanded more. Pertwee made a second program in 1994 but there were snags in getting the program to air as the BBC was wrangling with potential suitors to purchase rights to the series according to Pertwee and the story, The Ghosts of N-Space didn’t end up airing until January of 1996, a few months before Pertwee died.

The demand for Doctor Who audio continued through the series’ dedicated fan base. Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Allred who had played the Seventh Doctor and his companion Ace starred in a series of audio dramas called The Professor and Ace which while avoiding flagrant copyright violation, was obviously an attempt to tell a Doctor Who story without the Doctor’s time machine The TARDIS  or other tropes of the series. 

In addition, many fans made unauthorized productions of Doctor Who. One of these being the Audio Visual tapes in the mid-1980s and early 1990s. Many of those involved in these efforts helped to start Big Finish Productions in 1996, a company focused on producing audio dramas.

Big Finish’s first release were audio dramas featuring Bernice Summerfield, a character who had first appeared in Virgin’s New Adventures Doctor Who novels but was licensed seperately from the Doctor Who series. Some novels that had featured the Doctor were rewritten to feature the Summerfield alone.

However, Big Finish would quickly move on to bigger things. They negotiated non-exclusive rights to produce new Doctor Who audio dramas secured the involvement of Peter Davison, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy who had played the fifth through seventh doctors on the TV series. The format of the new Doctor Who Adventures would be much like the Pertwee BBC dramas except there would be one new Doctor Who Adventure per month beginning with the Sirens of Time, an adventure which would feature all three Doctors in it. From there on out, each month Big Finish put out a new Doctor Who full cast audio drama featuring one of the three doctors.

Sirens of Time

Big Finish added Paul McGann’s Eight Doctor to its lineup in January 2001, thus allowing him the chance to realize the hope of being able to play the Doctor in a series of dramas rather than just the single telefilm.

Big Finish continued to expand its line of programs, adding several Doctor Who spinoffs including a series about Doctor Who enemies the Daleks and Cybermen as well as one about 1970s Doctor Who companion Sarah Jane Smith, one about U.N.I.T., a military organization from the series, as well as a series of alternate dimension looks at the Doctor.

The revival of Doctor Who on television didn’t end Big Finish’s run on Doctor. In fact, one of the Big Finish Audio plays actually became the basis for one of the revived Series’ most acclaimed episodes, “Dalek.” However, Big Finish was only allowed to use stories featuring the first eight doctors and scripts for radio dramas were scrutinized by the production team for the television series in Cardiff to be sure that nothing would in the radio drama would conflict with the television series.

These limits haven’t really hurt Big Finish as they’ve continued to expand their Doctor Who spinoffs including the very popular Jago and Lightfoot series, while also obtaining licenses for new audiobooks and audio dramas based on programs such as the gothic horror classic Dark Shadows, Stargate: SG1, and the British Sci Fi classic, Blake’s 7.

On the Doctor Who front, after nearly three decades of refusing to reprise his most famous role as the third doctor, Tom Baker joined Big Finish in performing a series of new adventures, joined by his former compatriots. In 2013, as Doctor Who celebrated its fiftieth anniversary Big Finish put on its own fiftieth anniversary special featuring the fourth through eighth doctors, Light at the End, which some fans consider to be superior to the internationally broadcast television special featuring the two latest Doctors.

Light at the End
In advance of the fiftieth anniversary television special, McGann’s Eighth Doctor finally has his regeneration scene and recognized all of his companions from the audiobooks which many interpreted as making all (or most) of the audio dramas canonical within the Doctor Who universe.

When Big Finish began doing Doctor Who fifteen years ago, it was taking advantage of huge demand from fans who demanded more of a series they loved, and having the cooperation of original actors certainly helped.

However, the audio dramas proved to be winners all around.  Big Finish Productions was able to make a wide variety of stories including large tales with relatively small casts. Actors enjoyed a family atmosphere as well as the unique opportunity radio opportunity afforded to play a wide variety of characters. And many fans discovered the benefits of radio drama. One of the chief challenges of the Classic Doctor Who series was that its special effects budget were often quite limited, but the power of audio is that you can have as big of an effect as you want when you’re playing the theater of the mind.

Thus, Big Finish’s Doctor Who work has survived and thrived for fifteen years. Well done and good luck on many more.

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EP1292: Police Headquarters: Chained and Who’s Who?

A police officer investigates the mysterious disappearance of a cat.

The police get a stereo warning to ensure they prosecute the man responsible for their sister’s death from a pair of identical twin brothes.

Episodes 26 and 27

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Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Desalles Matter (EP1291)

Bob Bailey

Johnny investigates a suspicious death of a rich man and the even more suspicious support of an old friend going along with a dubious suicide theory.

Original Air Date: January 13, 1957

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EP1290: Nick Carter: The Haunted Rocking Chair

Lon Clark Nick is called in when death is feared when a rocking chair that rumored to be haunted begins to rock on its own. Original Air Date: May 27, 1945

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EP1289: Philip Marlowe: The Panama Hat

Gerald Mohr
A woman hires Marlowe to investigate  anonymous threats against her husband by a man in a Panama hat.

Original Air Date: October 10, 1948

 

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EP1288: Pat Novak: Shirt Mix Up at the Laundry

Jack Webb

When Pat Novak gets the wrong bundle at the laundry, he tries to switch with the man who was given his shirts. Novak is knocked out and wakes up next to a dead body. Par for the course, Hellman suspects him of murder.
Original Air Date: April 9, 1949

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EP1287: Pursuit: The Pursuit on Lundy Island

Ted De Corsia
While on vacation, Inspector Black is called to investigate a murder on a boat.

Original Air Date: February 7, 1950

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