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Big Finish audio Doctor Who: Dalek Empire
May. 25th, 2014 12:16 pmToday I listened to the four Doctor Who monthly adventures that say they're also Dalek Empire stories. It's a lot of grating voices and mucking about with time travel and paradox. 7 The Genocide Machine is a 7 & Ace story, 11 The Apocalypse Element is 6, Evelyn, and Romana II, 15 The Mutant Phase is 5 and Nyssa, and 32 The Time of the Daleks is 8 and Charley.
I think what I mostly learned is it's not actually helpful to listen them all in a row. With the 8th Doctor adventures listening them all in a row is pretty much intended, they change mood and tone so they don't get samey, and they build up to a big end of season event. Most of these Dalek ones seem to reckon they are the big end of season event. The whole universe is at stake, all of space and time endangered, the Daleks are the worst things in the universe except when they unleash something even more worse than that, blah blah yada yada. It's the same thing as when they try and do any significant amount of plot in Dalek voice, you just tune out despite your best efforts because blah blah EX TER MIN ATE we get it blah blah.
I liked The Genocide Machine, because something interesting was going on, plus Daleks. Daleks did not have to be in themselves interesting. But then they in fact were interesting, because one of them did something different for entirely in character reasons, which is always a good trick. That moment where you can imagine things turning out different for them this time, shot down by their stubborn inability to recognise different can in fact be good, equals involving story.
The Apocalypse Element had some nice tense bits, but there was a lot of Time Lord politics and a plot element added apparently mostly to make the TV movie make more sense, which, well, hiding to nothing there. Even if it pretty much made sense, it wasn't the sort of character focused story that I like better. Evelyn was weird and Romana was not exactly herself, or at least not her best self after the story threw 20 years at her apparently to get the Doctor worried, and it was just a bit disappointing. I quite like the idea of all the time travelling races getting together for a chat, but then that wasn't what happened on account of Daleks. Now I want the other story.
The Mutant Phase spent a lot of time telling Nyssa (and us) that he can't explain on account of Time Lord, and ended with a "but that doesn't make sense" and "paradoxes don't", which is rather vastly unsatisfying.
And then there was The Time of the Daleks, which according to my LibraryThing ratings I really like, but at the end of this particular listen was kind of blah. More Daleks, more time paradoxes, more blah.
Plus I haven't listened to Charley for ages, and jumping in at this point in her rather epically convoluted story only vaguely made sense.
Plus being told repeatedly that the made up science shouldn't ought to work kind of doesn't help with the suspension of disbelief.
And again, I'd quite like to see the story minus Daleks. Shakespeare goes missing from time, with knock on consequences for British national character? Interesting! ... Daleks stomp all over history, not so much interesting, on account of they do the same thing every single time they go anywhere.
So that particular sequence didn't do the whole listening experience any favours at all, and I'll try and remember not to repeat it.
It also highlights how weird it is trying to make any kind of chronology from episode numbering, given that the stories go 7 6 5 8, and 5 at one point meets the Daleks before they've ever met him or started believing in time travel, and how can that even work when 4 alerted them to time travel at their creation? So stories later in the Big Finish numbering build on stories earlier in the numbering, but happen to the Doctor earlier in his life. Which I suppose Time Lords must just get used to, but it's still weird. If you try listening things in the order they happen to the Doctor then they get in tangles. This set pretty much make sense as the order they happened to the Daleks, except for the way they're also temporal paradoxes involving Daleks, so there's no making a time line when it's gone all loopy. It mostly feels like it's pointing at the time line and going look, it makes no sense, isn't that clever?
So I know I have on other occasions quite liked at least half of these, but today I'm thinking I should have listened them further apart. And possibly with having more sleep and breaks between episodes.
(While listening today I also sorted paperwork, did a bit of tidying up, ate a couple meals, and played a lot of levels of a computer game that doesn't suffer from having the sound turned off. It's sort of annoying cause I'm playing it on Legendary setting, as difficult as it gets, and not having to pay much attention to it to win levels. But it still makes me vaguely travel sick. So spending more on more complex games that might, like the Doctor Who games, make me extremely ill inside of ten minutes, does not seem like a great investment.)
(more interesting things to do with my days, I need them)
I think what I mostly learned is it's not actually helpful to listen them all in a row. With the 8th Doctor adventures listening them all in a row is pretty much intended, they change mood and tone so they don't get samey, and they build up to a big end of season event. Most of these Dalek ones seem to reckon they are the big end of season event. The whole universe is at stake, all of space and time endangered, the Daleks are the worst things in the universe except when they unleash something even more worse than that, blah blah yada yada. It's the same thing as when they try and do any significant amount of plot in Dalek voice, you just tune out despite your best efforts because blah blah EX TER MIN ATE we get it blah blah.
I liked The Genocide Machine, because something interesting was going on, plus Daleks. Daleks did not have to be in themselves interesting. But then they in fact were interesting, because one of them did something different for entirely in character reasons, which is always a good trick. That moment where you can imagine things turning out different for them this time, shot down by their stubborn inability to recognise different can in fact be good, equals involving story.
The Apocalypse Element had some nice tense bits, but there was a lot of Time Lord politics and a plot element added apparently mostly to make the TV movie make more sense, which, well, hiding to nothing there. Even if it pretty much made sense, it wasn't the sort of character focused story that I like better. Evelyn was weird and Romana was not exactly herself, or at least not her best self after the story threw 20 years at her apparently to get the Doctor worried, and it was just a bit disappointing. I quite like the idea of all the time travelling races getting together for a chat, but then that wasn't what happened on account of Daleks. Now I want the other story.
The Mutant Phase spent a lot of time telling Nyssa (and us) that he can't explain on account of Time Lord, and ended with a "but that doesn't make sense" and "paradoxes don't", which is rather vastly unsatisfying.
And then there was The Time of the Daleks, which according to my LibraryThing ratings I really like, but at the end of this particular listen was kind of blah. More Daleks, more time paradoxes, more blah.
Plus I haven't listened to Charley for ages, and jumping in at this point in her rather epically convoluted story only vaguely made sense.
Plus being told repeatedly that the made up science shouldn't ought to work kind of doesn't help with the suspension of disbelief.
And again, I'd quite like to see the story minus Daleks. Shakespeare goes missing from time, with knock on consequences for British national character? Interesting! ... Daleks stomp all over history, not so much interesting, on account of they do the same thing every single time they go anywhere.
So that particular sequence didn't do the whole listening experience any favours at all, and I'll try and remember not to repeat it.
It also highlights how weird it is trying to make any kind of chronology from episode numbering, given that the stories go 7 6 5 8, and 5 at one point meets the Daleks before they've ever met him or started believing in time travel, and how can that even work when 4 alerted them to time travel at their creation? So stories later in the Big Finish numbering build on stories earlier in the numbering, but happen to the Doctor earlier in his life. Which I suppose Time Lords must just get used to, but it's still weird. If you try listening things in the order they happen to the Doctor then they get in tangles. This set pretty much make sense as the order they happened to the Daleks, except for the way they're also temporal paradoxes involving Daleks, so there's no making a time line when it's gone all loopy. It mostly feels like it's pointing at the time line and going look, it makes no sense, isn't that clever?
So I know I have on other occasions quite liked at least half of these, but today I'm thinking I should have listened them further apart. And possibly with having more sleep and breaks between episodes.
(While listening today I also sorted paperwork, did a bit of tidying up, ate a couple meals, and played a lot of levels of a computer game that doesn't suffer from having the sound turned off. It's sort of annoying cause I'm playing it on Legendary setting, as difficult as it gets, and not having to pay much attention to it to win levels. But it still makes me vaguely travel sick. So spending more on more complex games that might, like the Doctor Who games, make me extremely ill inside of ten minutes, does not seem like a great investment.)
(more interesting things to do with my days, I need them)