Plum Pudding Reviews

  The Fourth Doctor Adventures Series 9 Volume 1 I'm very quickly falling in love with these sets of two two hour long stories, and am all the sadder to see that Big Finish will soon be forgoing them in order to focus on three story boxsets, which I'm not quite sure is the right move. Especially when we have sets such as this as evidence that the classic who 4 part format is nigh perfection for the classic doctors. It would be difficult to serve a team like the Fourth Doctor, Romana, Adric and K9 in a one hour format, or even the First Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan for that matter. You can only see this all the more with how the modern day series struggles with large TARDIS teams. And while Stranded benefits from a large ensemble piece, half of set one didn't include Andy, and set two had a revolving door cast. Not only is the four part format made for Doctor Who, I tend to find the four disc format is made for Big Finish, and I'm disappointed about that. But that'...

  Praise Him

  Doctor Who Stranded 2  A long time ago, I applauded Stranded 1 for it's bold and impressive new direction, something that fervently appealed to me after the bombast of Doom Coalition and Ravenous. Character pieces set entirely in Modern day London. It seemed to me almost a waste, for the end of that set to immediately restore the TARDIS - although legally speaking, it still can't travel in space...it does seem to me like the issue of being Stranded feels pretty much resolved. The Doctor has always been a huge fan of humanity, and bouncing about the ages...London is not a prison to him anymore. So stepping into Stranded 2, I was cautious of how the series would continue, after the majority of set one had been positively steeped in set up, and one of the main, if not the most important plot thread was resolved. I was surprised to discover that in fact, that despite the awkward change of setting...Stranded 2 felt like a lot more of the same.  Dead Time by Matt Fitton Now t...

  Welcome, Blobby. Are you suffering comfortably? Then I'll begin. Once upon a time... No. Once upon several times, before the Blob Lords, before everything we know, there was an explorer. Her name was Blobby Blobby, from a little-regarded, sparsely populated planet called Blobby. Blobby Blobby was the first of Blobby's indigenous race, the blobs, to develop space travel. Dangerous, unsophisticated space travel. She took risks to explore the worlds and galaxies beyond her home. And it was on one of these distant, deserted worlds on the far edge of another galaxy she found something... impossible. A gateway. A boundary into another unknown dimension or universe. Blobby Blobby glimpsed the infinite through that gateway. And beneath the monument, she found... a child. Abandoned. Alone. Thrown through, seemingly, from the other unknown realm. Blobby Blobby had a choice to make. Abandon or save the child? She chose to rescue the foundling and adopt this refugee from another realm as...

  Torchwood Parody Among Us  7.14 Long Shot Starring Tracy Ann Oberman, Tom Price and Paul Clayton with D'Arcy Carden Featuring Scarlett Johansson and Ben Mendelsohn * * * Work.  It was something Yvonne used to look forward to. She liked the idea of leadership. The values of control. Torchwood was perfect for her.  And then she lost it. Which was embarrassing. Perhaps more than embarrassing. It made her positively livid after all.  Yvonne had to make a conscious effort that day for each step across the pavement on her walk to work. She had previously never really worried about paying rent or anything of the kind. It was beneath someone who was at the top of the food chain. She had always appreciated being grossly overpaid. Money helped with things. Well, it couldn't buy happiness, but it could buy power. And she was without any of that.  Which is why for the first time in a long while, when a gunshot rang out and a fragment of a bullet landed nearby on the ...

 Blobby blobby blobby blob blobby blobby blob blob blobby blob blobby blob blob 

  I mean that says it all really

NCJDDAS: Fifty/Fifty - Part Two Starring Brenda Blethyn and Dame Judi Dench  Featuring Ted Danson, Stevie Nicks, Linda Hamilton, Alison Pill, Martin Freeman, Sean Carlsen and Sir Ian McKellen Chapter Eleven "Well," began Millie, and she fell into the dirt. "Ah, shit!" She groaned. "Body's not used to being solid! Owch! Ow, Ow, Ow!"  Tolos looked on, confused. "Are you a god?" He asked. "How have you come from nowhere?"  "Well, Tolos, my buddy, pal, old friend, it just so happens that it has to do with you." Millie said, smiling, and getting up from the dirt. "You see, I have a job from the Doctor."  "Which Doctor?" Tolos hissed, gripping the spearhead in his back pocket.  Millie's eyes glowed slightly, as if it was an irritation to ask. "Aw, gee, I wonder. The one that's gonna murder you, or the one that wants everyone not to be murdered by the other one. Wow, that's a question to ponde...

  The Ninth Doctor Adventures: Ravagers Ravagers is such a weird choice to start the Ninth Doctor Adventures with because in terms of plot, this really feels like an Eleventh Doctor story. It’s convoluted and “timey wimey” and quite possibly disorienting for newcomers. In fact, no, it seems definitely disorienting for newcomers. You think a River Song flow chart was required? Nahh, A Ninth Doctor Ravagers flowchart is required, man. As an audio fanatic, it was quite confusing, and well, perhaps indicative of NuWho Three-Parters, because like most of them, it borders on the shit. And one would expect, me, as not really the worlds hugest Ninth Doctor fan, that I’d hate it, right? Nope! I love it. Really do, I mean, it’s not perfect (first releases for Doctors never are: Sirens of Time, Destination: Nerva and Only the Monstrous are all trash, and Technophobia is just okay) But on the whole, I felt it was a consistent set and the quality never really went up or down much in either dire...

 Serpent In The Silver Mask by David Llewellyn  I'm a sucker for a sci-fi murder mystery. My two favorite stories of all time are Chimes of Midnight and Save Our Souls, both unique twists on the sci-fi murder mystery format, and another favorite of mine is Vesuvius Rising, a peak example of how to do the job well. Serpent is an incredibly charming script, certainly, but it is missing the central thing I feel that would make it rise up against similar stories in the Doctor Who murder mystery genre- because when this genre is not done well, all I feel is a strong feeling of "this has been done before." and Serpent is really strong Fifth Doctor material, it knows how to play it's cards. It has a few interesting ideas to twist onto this, a family of clones (all played by the same actor in an absolute tour de force of a performance, holy cow) a murder mystery time travel plot, The murderer specifically going out of their way to be as similar to the Doctor as possible - all...

  Terror of The Master by Trevor Baxendale and Read By John Culshaw Terror of The Master is a weird one. A classical Third Doctor story that really draws you in at the same time also feeling to me like it had serious pacing issues and would have worked much better on the page. It's certainly very odd, that's for sure. For the most part, I'd say the pacing in Terror of The Master is almost good - all the scenes are important, it doesn't feel like it's plodding for time, but the very fact that it's narrated means that no matter how distinguishable the characters are from eachother by voice, every line ends with "he said, she said," and whatnot. Perhaps I am spoiled by the Early Adventures just not doing that, and this is an audiobook and not a hybrid like those, but Culshaw is just so good, you really geniunely do forget (unless it's Daisy, he really can't pretend to be a woman well) that it's not an early adventure audio, and I really think ...