Plum Pudding Reviews

  The Witch From The Well by Rick Briggs The Witch From The Well reaches Mach Eight very early on, and I feel like I never really caught up. There's a reason I've delayed on the Mary Shelley reviews, and well, it's been me relistening to this one, over and over, trying to get the Plot down. Three relistens, and I sort of figured it wasn't worth the effort to get beyond the broad strokes. Anyway, There have been quite a few stories like The Witch From The Well over the years. It's not ambitious, really, even if it opens up with such a volley of information you'll be struggling to keep track even at the end of Part Two - hell, if you really want to go pedantic, it bears a lot of similarities to the later Phillip Hinchcliffe play The Devil's Armada (which is better) and The Witchfinders. (which, I'm sad to say, is also better.) I feel a story like this should open up slow, atmospheric and methodical, and it loses a lot from the very, very, NuWho pacing it s...

  The Silver Turk by Marc Platt The Silver Turk - the other Mondasian Cyberman story by Marc Platt has a reputation of being fucking perfect in Big Finish circles, and I'm here to dose out the extra hot take and very contrarian take .... .....that yeah, it's pretty damn good.  The Silver Turk is of course, mostly brilliant because it utilizes a very good and intriguing companion who never really got her dues (Mary Shelley) in a story that could only really be done to it's best with her. This is the Mary Shelley story, showing her and all of her layers, this amazing, very real woman who had a real love for the demented and strange, carried a knife, and made out with Percy Shelley in Graveyards. Mary Shelley next to the Byron-esque Eight could have been in fact, his definitive companion, if she was not stifled to only an anthology episode and a trilogy. It's disheartening to hear Mary say that her trips have only just begun at the end of this one when in fact, we know tha...

  The Fourth Wall by John Dorney The Fourth Wall is yet another main range script that is objectively good in any way that you'd care to look at it, but loses the final punch for me. Of course, I mean, if you consider the actual components, rather than a story like Shield of the Jotunn that just goes through the measures for example, it actually has something it wants to say that is rather subversive for the general ideas of Doctor Who as a genre. It's unique, and rather experimental - Sometimes to it's own detriment. It reminds me most of Jubilee, yet another methodical thinking piece that takes a somewhat silly concept at points and really forces you to think about it and consider - what makes a Dalek any different from a human, or, in this stories case, about the horrible lives of the fictional characters we create. It has a lot of thought put into it, and that makes me really think it's excellent...for what it is trying to do, rather than what it is. The end result ...

  (PARODY AMONG US): 7.15 Arrival Starring Natalia Cordova Buckley, Ian Alexander, D'Arcy Carden, Jason Hughes and Paul Clayton With Tom Price, Scarlett Johansson, Ben Mendelsohn, Lisa Kudrow, Uma Thurman and Cher Disclaimer: It's been two months since the last episode and this is just as continuity filled as before. I'm sorry for your inevitable suffering * * * Colchester stood imposingly by the original Torchwood Computer.  "The Torchwood hub above the city is compromised. It's being used as a staging area for the Committee's invasion. It's good we made it down here, but there's very little down here we can use for offense." Colchester said to the group. "I'll be taking command, but-" Colchester trailed off, trying to be his usual steely self. "I - would appreciate any support that the team could give." "Torchwood is still operational." Stacy stated. "Especially without Cherry, Richardson, or..."  They ...

  Jago and Litefoot Series Seven I've always loved the Jago and Litefoot series to death, even If I haven't reviewed them actively on my blog until now. But alas! There was a goodie bag sale. And so I shall be reviewing the middle section of Jago and Litefoot - Series Seven to Eleven (and I will get to reviewing the prior series eventually for I have a good deal to say about them.) But out of the Series I have done so far, Series Seven may be my favorite at the moment. I've always loved the way Jago and Litefoot managed the perfect fusion of atmosphere, character and plot throughout their series, and really, if you picked up literally any of their sets you'd be hard-pressed to find something disappointing. They're the ultimate comfort spinoff... they exude both a friendly and lighthearted atmosphere while excellently exploring the murky depths of the era. Despite a familiar environment of Victorian London, the series has a scale of variety to it, and while you could...

 

  The Time Lady Who Knew Too Much Imprisoned alongside Parker by the presumably false Romana, the Doctor considers the correct course of action. The Spiral Politic are much more than a political faction, they're temporally displaced Gallifreyans. From alternative timelines that never came to be in our own - another sharp fragment of glass from the struggles of the Time War...and if they have their way they'll take over the entirety of Gallifreyan Civilization. The choice is clear. The Doctor has to break out. But dare she take Parker, the new friend she has quickly grown so invested in, with her? According to the Matrix, Parker will one day be the most powerful threat to the universe as we know it, but the Doctor isn't so sure if that's true. But Bad Things happen to the Doctor's friends... will taking Parker alongside her refute this harsh destiny, or set things in motion so it happens in the first place?

  Spiral Politic: Falling out of the Divergent Universe, the Doctor is at her lowest point yet - having actually killed Tecteun. Already regretful, The Doctor returns herself to Gallifrey to be tried by President Romana. There a political faction humorously named the "Spiral Politic" after the Time Vortex themself has taken control. Have the Time Lords once again crossed a line? The Doctor is starting to think so. But Romana has a strangely youthful face and is far more concerned with a young woman named Parker - who this strangely Vengeful Romana insists will be one day responsible for the death of all life on Earth...

  Vengeance In the ruins of Caerdroia, the Doctor's final hour in the Divergent Universe awaits...She and her past faces summoned by the wrath of the time war have a final battle ahead of them. And who else awaits but the oldest and most wicked person the Doctor has known. The manipulator, the architect of all of their woes. Tecteun, The Third And Vilest Founder of Gallifrey. Behind it all. Behind the emergence of Zagreus, the newfound energy source of the Daleks, and the reason the Master has been so intent on staying by the Doctor's side. All to reach Tecteun. The Timeline fissures gape open, and the Four Doctors are on the move - and against all odds, Tecteun is remarkably easy to stop.  It is now that the Doctor is going to make a choice. It's an important one. How far does someone have to go until they're irredeemable? Tecteun's life is in the Doctor's hands... A collage of all the Divergence Covers below:

  DISCLAIMER: It's the Divergent Universe. It had to happen okay Blood of The Kromon The Doctor, in mourning, raw and unstable, finds herself in the wastes of the Turemesian people. The Divergent Universe is a universe without our kind of time in it - the Doctor knows this. The Doctor usually disregards this. It isn't important, it never comes into play. Because everything still happens in the correct sequence of events. Which is why it's incredibly concerning when the Doctor comes across a companion she had forgotten about, yet another old face she failed to save long ago. She moved on from C'rizz's death very quickly. Even she remembers that. But he hasn't met her yet. And he's about to meet the Kromon... 

  Well. There isn't a good place to put this in, as I've never done anything like this, but I guess I'm reviewing all of the Sara Kingdom companion audios I've done in preparation to get back into Dalek Universe. At the moment, there are three, and I can't see the need to bother making three pages for them, as my thoughts on them are rather interlinked, like a boxset. The Experiment begins... Home Truths by Simon Guerrier I initially questioned writing this review, as I've never covered Companion Chronicles on this website before. Early Adventures, yes. But never Companion Chronicles. And that's because I hadn't found any I had done so far to be worth reviewing. There were 4 of them on Spotify - Mother Russia of them the best, and I had heard The Scorchies, but that barely qualified as a chronicle - it was just a two-hander audio without any narration whatsoever. So for some reason it didn't qualify to me as a proper chronicle, even though It very mu...

 Dark Eyes Four Dark Eyes Four is such an odd beast - it's back to the random separate stories of set two, and while these stories are all good, it can't recover from what it has done in the past. Dark Eyes One, Two, and even to a degree Three, are all good sets, but when put next to eachother, the lack of consistent vision, the insistence on an overarching plot to the detriment of it's surrounding stories and behind the scenes troubles lead even some of the most stellar attempts at recovery to feel lacking. I'm not sure how to describe some of these stories - both Life in the Day and Monster of Montmartre are exactly what I would want from the series - yet their surrounding elements lead me to look at much of the Dark Eyes experience as a whole with distain. Reviewing Dark Eyes might be my Waterloo, my Final Problem. I have no clue how to summarize my feelings on the damn thing. Dark Eyes inexplicably drifts from very thin plot to very intense plot in such a manner I a...

  The Undiscovered Country For In That Sleep Of Death, What Dreams May Come, When We Are Shuffled Off This Mortal Coil... Must Give Us Pause.  The Editor is dead. She knows that. But yet her consciousness still wakes in a strange realm. Her body constantly in a state of flux. Paige is with her. The Doctor and The Kro'ka are the Reapers. They say it's all over.  They're beyond. They're at the end. 

  He's back, baby

  Time tears the no-time apart. The Divergent Universe is at it's breaking point as the Daleks unveil their temporal weapons, and their cruellest tricks. The Human Race has been subjugated. The Time Lords have been killed. Every blind chance the Doctor has had for victory is null and void. Hit by a large scale temporal bomb, the Doctor struggles to survive as her timeline is split apart, piece by piece, incarnation by incarnation. The Doctors must juggle all their enemies, but for the first time, three of them won't be enough. They aren't going to win. The Daleks are everywhere, and they are the most dangerous breed ever born. The Doctor is certain of it. There are no options.  No hope.  Only survival.

  The Planet of Witches by Alan Barnes "There's A World Without, and A World Within! Which World are We Living In?"  These melodramatic and ultimately completely irrelevant words open up The Planet of Witches, which I'm say is really a damp squib in an ultimately excellent range at the moment. The Planet of Witches has very few appealing elements - it is the third story in a row to have a death fake-out, and barely puts any effort into doing so, it wants desperately to tie up the whole E-Space thing and is incredibly annoyed with the fact that it can't because Warrior's Gate already did that, so it kind of sulks a bit, it's characters are stiffer than the literal wood some of them are made of, and it is ultimately disinterested in it's own central concept. The Planet of Witches should be a spooky tale - you assume so by the title, and that the Doctor will be going up against something rather mysterious and strange, and yet the Planet of Witches is exce...

   Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sits in an old friend's head, Zagreus sees you in your bed, And eats you when you're sleeping. 

NCBBDAS: Dates and Numbers Starring Brenda Blethyn and Linda Hamilton Chapter One The TARDIS. The Doctor standing outside Sarah Connor's bedroom door.  "Sarah, we really need to do something about your gun habit." The Doctor called, sternly. Arms crossed.  The Door opened. Sarah Connor, carrying 23 Guns put her hand on her hip sarcastically. One of the guns nearly went off. "I don't have a problem about guns." She insisted, hardly noticing.  "Sarah, you know how the TARDIS develops it's internal architecture based on it's current occupants like and dislikes?" The Doctor asked.  Sarah Connor nodded, not knowing where this was going.  "Your room is made ENTIRELY OUT OF GUNS." The Doctor said.  "And it's fucking awesome," said Sarah Connor, taking a cigarette out of her pocket, and adjusting her sunglasses - which despite the relative moody lighting of the TARDIS corridors, was a constant fixture.  "Oh come on, pop...