Dark Eyes Two

 

Dark Eyes Two

Dark Eyes One was ostensibly an experiment, and as such it wrapped itself up pretty much in entirety. If you gave the first Dark Eyes set to someone and didn't tell them there was a second, third or fourth set, they might not even guess. As such, there's the question of how do you follow on from that, and Dark Eyes Two spends a lot of it's time trying to figure out what it is. It has four stories, and unlike Dark Eyes One, none of them are fragments, all of these episodes are complete stories and feel as such, whereas not only did Dark Eyes have a breakneck pace, it was also sort of a single story. No more of that here - but oddly, the story structure is perhaps the worst part of Dark Eyes Two. While all of the individual stories rock in some way, the connection between them showing up when you're getting into one story that would be better without it is frustrating. 

The Traitor by Nicholas Briggs

The Traitor is a bit of a divisive piece in the fandom - when I mentioned it to my friends I came across a lot of "ews," and "RIPs" and, "you're listening to that? oh no." Bit odd I really fucking loved it then. Yeah, I'm not sure what it is, but I really love the Traitor, which really reminds me of some of the best Dalek stories like Dalek Occupation of Winter or Nick Briggs' book The Dalek Generation - without feeling like it's derivative of those same stories. These days I am more inclined to dislike a Dalek story than like it - gone is the utter love that I had for the creatures when starting the program. But yet, The Traitor just really works for me, even though it is also nigh irrelevant to the set as a whole. Well, yes, it introduces Liv Chenka to the audience, (Despite assuming you've done Robophobia, come on) but you really don't understand how the Doctor fits into it and where it takes place chronologically. As a result, the Traitor in terms of story structure for a set - is a mess. Whereas in terms of it's own story, it's fricking brilliant. I of course do have to mention Liv Chenka some more, as Nicola Walker really does relish the material here. By far the set's best performer (as usual) her monologues which set the stage at the start of the episode are just stunning. I've always loved Liv, but Dark Eyes is going to make me love her more. Couple all of this with a knockout of an ending - and well, I love the Traitor to bits, even if it's irrelevant. 10/10 

The White Room by Alan Barnes

Alan Barnes' only episode for Dark Eyes sees him haphazardly throw another arc at the screen, knowing damn well it will never show up again. The Viyrans appear in this episode, and well, as someone who has done absolutely zero Viyran content before this episode, at the very least they aren't inorganic villains. The White Room's only crime really is it's positioning in the set. It's an "okay yes Molly is back now" story, and that's it's only purpose, minus the David Walker stuff for the payoff later. Which is doubly confusing when it has absolutely nothing to do with the Traitor or it's cliffhanger ending. As it is, The White Room is really good, because the Viyrans are really good and Molly is really good, but it's also comparatively just another filler episode in a series, and while filler episodes can be good, they're still gonna be filler. And also I would prefer not to be drenched in more Main Range continuity, even if it's mostly explained. At the very least I absolutely adore The "Cream" pun in the title: 7.5/10

Time's Horizon by Matt Fitton

I used to dread Matt Fitton stories, and in a way, I still do. Being one of the most prolific and overworked writers for Big Finish in general puts a lot of weight on him, and as such he usually puts out stuff that is much lower than his best work, which you can get some gorgeous glimpses of in The Eighth Piece/The Doomsday Chronometer or Quicksilver, or The Destination Wars. Yet as the man goes on in his work we get more and more stories like Whisper or Escape From Kaldor or Whodunnit, stories that all could have really done with another draft. Imagine my surprise and joy to find that Time's Horizon is early Matt Fitton, and it's really rather brilliant. The atmosphere of it is reminiscent of Utopia, but combined with some really great spaceship under siege stuff, and this lovely exploratory feeling to it that you get from the best Star Trek. Also a lot of really well realized Dread. We're introducing our third Main Range connection in as many stories, and let me tell you, The Eminence are the least well explained out of all of them. We don't know what an Infinite Warrior is, or how the Doctor has an Eminence thing in his mind, or whatever! All we know is what David Sibley's great performance tells us, and it tells us to shit our pants, because the Eminence are ridiculously effective villains. Seriously, the gravelly horrifying voice David Sibley as gives them so much more gravity than their B-Movie idea deserves. We rarely love evil space gas as villains, but god it works here. Combining all of this with Liv and Molly's first story together, and us seeing their great chemistry, Time's Horizon would be pretty much flawless if it didn't go just a bit generic in the last few minutes and also didn't raise a lot of questions about this set's story structure which still continues to make me go "what the heck," and honestly whenever the connections to the other stories in this set come up I legitimately begin to groan (which is the opposite reaction I should be having but really, you made this mess with the Traitor Nick Briggs, come back and clean it up): 9/10

Eyes of The Master by Matt Fitton

On Paper, Eyes of the Master is among the most genius stories Big Finish have ever made, and it starts as such, and then it goes pffffffffffffffftttttt and dies horribly in a pile of dead salmon and assorted walnuts before being lowered into a dumpster fire. (No, I don't know where my metaphors come from.) But seriously, the Eyes of The Master is so smart on like every level and also completely fricking dumb. It has a really really good horror hook of the Master posing as an optometrist and legitimately fucking replacing people's eyes during surgeries they're not aware of. This is...this is brilliant. This is so damn good. And Alex Macqueen kills it. He's so good at understated menace and quiet creepiness while also not really having to work hard to make it seem like he's completely insane. If anything, these bits are so incredibly good, like amazingly, astonishingly good, like seriously, some of the best in big finish's gargantuan catalog, that it hurts MORE when the story goes: "HAHAHA FORGET ALL THAT, HERE'S ARC STUFF, THE EMINENCE ARE BACK! N O    MORE    SMALL SCALE HORROR ONLY     DUMB  B I G   EXPLOSION" and all of my hopes and dreams die in hell. Of course the rest of the story is so good I have to give Eyes of the Master a good score. But I don't want to, because it really, really, pissed me off. There's nothing more annoying than being really into an amazing audio that kind of really needs to be small, quiet and insidious, and then being fucked over by Nick Briggs' setting up a stupid continuity fire in episode one (which was also really good, but also most of Eye of the Master's problems are that story and Time's Horizon's fault.) It's just so disappointing, and honestly, that's worse than a story that was bad the whole time, but well, on average the story is amazing far more than it is bad, so here we go, I guess: 7.5/10

So you see what I mean? Dark Eyes Two has four pretty brilliant stories, but they're bogged down by the connecting tissue because the series has not decided whether it wants to tell random standalone stories or do what the first boxset did and tell a single interconnected one. And you can't do both. You really cannot do both. I know this, because holy hell they tried, but you can't do both at the same time. You cannot do a four-parter and four individual stories at the same time, because you have four episodes, and honestly that shouldn't be that hard to understand! But whatever. Whatever. On the whole, Dark Eyes Two is still really fricking good, and probably a step up from set one, but really it needs to be careful about where it's going, and really decide on that or set three will be an absolute abomination.