Jago and Litefoot Series Eight

 

Jago and Litefoot Series Eight

Jago and Litefoot Series Eight is the Eighth main installment in the Jago and Litefoot Series (wow, how could you have guessed) and it's certainly a far cry from many of the other sets - being mostly a series of four individual stories with only a loose connection between the final two, instead of the usual four episode arcs that the series is so good at. And the result? Well, it's more Jago and Litefoot, isn't it? The victorian atmosphere and comfortable characters are as astonishing as usual. This particular set has some really high highs, and some low lows (or as low as this series can get, which is still, admittedly, quite decent) and I feel there's little I can say to the stories as a whole: after all, they're all quite different. 

Encore of The Scorchies by James Goss

Encore of The Scorchies is a sequel to the companion chronicle The Scorchies, and basically the result of James Goss realizing his joke in Night of 1000 Stars about Ellie saying "let's do it all singing and dancing, but without the singing or the dancing," was a cop-out. And damn right too, if they were holding onto this much musical talent. Encore is a riot through and through, one of the most enjoyable and hysterical audios I've heard, and the original wasn't bad in that aspect either. Encore is a step above that one though - while that story only had two songs (the sublime "Jo is Making A Thing" and the "Killing the Doctor song") Encore is a full musical - albeit a short one, coming in at sixty minutes. Hell, I wouldn't have been opposed to this thing being two hours. The writing is just so incredibly sharp, it makes an already classic 10/10 audio look pathetic by comparison. It's really funny, it's really good, it's really a fun audio world to be in! It's hard to commentate on it's so good, there's nothing to critique or criticize, and whilst I could repeat the jokes that work, and the songs that bounce around my head even as I write this, I find that it wouldn't add much to my ultimate point. It's just so unbelievably phenomenal there aren't words. The absolute high point of the series, accept no substitutes, praise be the James Goss, all hail Lisa Bowerman! 10+/10

The Backwards Men by Andy Lane

A very ordinary episode for Jago and Litefoot, this is as average as the series can get - and it's still really quite something. There's only one problem with the Backwards Men whatsoever, and it's that it is a plot that has been repeated before, and this particular plot is of a diminishing return. I'm certain you recall Litefoot and Saunders - one of the series' finest hours, where we see Litefoot fall in with a new partner to the detriment of his relationship with Jago. Litefoot and Saunders is a damn near perfect episode, and The Backwards Men tries to do much a similar thing with Litefoot falling in with an alien partner - one that lives inside his own head. It's an interesting conceit, to see Litefoot be truly intellectually challenged by another figure in this series for the first time, and this drawing him away. But The Backwards Men, while quite good, doesn't do enough in this angle to satisfy. Nonetheless, there's plenty of good dynamic to be had here, and the cast is on rare form, all three regulars giving some excellent performances. It's a good episode to be sure, but this series is at it's best for me when it does something wild like Night of 1000 Stars, Encore, Theatre of Dreams or Man at the End of the Garden, stories that really push what the series can do. The Backwards Men is enjoyable as HELL, it's just not up to the highest of this series' standards. 7.5/10 

Jago and Litefoot and Patsy by Simon Barnard and Paul Morris

One of my favorite writing duos takes up the reigns on this once again fairly normal Jago and Litefoot audio with the twist of adding a new main character (although she was briefly in the previous set), Patsy. Patsy is legitimately the "Ghoul" character from Talons of Weng-Chiang, now named after that character's sadly now dead actress. Speaking purely from an out of universe perspective, It's a really nice tribute. Thanks, Big Finish. You guys have hearts in the right place. As for the actual tale, it's funny and joyous, the result of adding a fabulous wild-card into an already brilliant roster - this series is always at it's best when they start to apply new semi-regulars. Jago, Litefoot and Ellie are so established a trio that adding characters like Leela, Patsy, The Doctor or even Strax, only enrich them. It's just an all-around excellent episode. Reviewing comedy is difficult, (as I may have indirectly mentioned before with Encore) as you don't want to repeat the jokes, but I found pretty much all of them hit dead-on. But Jago and Litefoot and Patsy isn't just a comedy story, even though it's comedy heart beats the loudest, it's just got just enough of the macabre and grisly to fit the new main character to the T. The scene in the morgue where Patsy vividly goes through the descriptions of throat slitting made me grasp my neck and flinch! And not only that, the villain is a rare highlight - an actual intimidating presence that fits Patsy's world all too well. Jago and Litefoot are such "gentlemen" it's always fun to explore this Victorian underbelly. At times, it can be genuinely horrific. And that's what this episode is...horrifically good. 9/10

Higson and Quick by Justin Richards

Higson and Quick, largely a decent enough story, made a few choices that really pissed me off. There's very little to discuss in the story itself, besides these few moments, but I'll quickly go through the highlights before I get into the muck. Patsy is great. The moment in the cell where Litefoot reveals himself and you think he's tricking her, but he's actually telling the truth leads to a terrifyingly good moment. I'm glad that in the possession of Jago and Litefoot, they made the correct choice of not changing their personalities, it makes the possession all the more harrowing. Now for the two elephants in the room. I'll start with the lighter one. Higson and Quick is an episode that supposedly stars Ellie and Quick as the main characters. One of these characters gets a decent amount of focus (Ellie) but isn't as important as Jago and Litefoot, as her name's not in the title. One of these characters has been neglected completely since set one, and half the time I forget Quick exists. Focusing on these two characters is a good story idea, since they are technically, the two minor recurring leads. It's a smart idea for an episode. I wanted to see them bounce off eachother, and I wanted to see them develop, and I wanted to learn something (anything) about Quick. But ultimately "their" story focuses quite little on them, and the possessed Jago and Litefoot take up most of the screentime. Ellie manages to defeat Jago and Litefoot through some decent trickery, and Quick is completely irrelevant. It's a disconcerting theme. But that's fine. Right now we have a decent episode, if not a good episode, with flaws. ...And then.... 

Okay, I'm sorry. I'm going to have to discuss dark themes here, due to the episode's content. Namely Suicide, so, trigger warning for that. I wouldn't want to upset you, though I will say that I am extremely angry about it, and there's gonna be a lot of ranting. There's a moment in the denoument of the story where Jago, a character that we have known throughout the series to be emotional, a character that deals quite heavily with his feelings, is so distraught at the loss of another life due to his possessed villainy, that he raises a gun to his head. Litefoot tries to talk him down. 

This is fucking heartwrenching, mind you. 

Jago pulls the trigger. The gun goes off. Not five seconds from us processing one of the most heavy moments EVER in a Big Finish audio, suddenly (which mind you, I still don't understand) somehow Jago didn't know the gun was loaded despite discussing to Litefoot about ending his life, and despite aiming the gun to his head, it goes off, and somehow misses. This is followed by a sudden violent left turn where Litefoot is like "oh, wow! let's go on vacation!" and happy jolly music plays, and ? what? whatttt?/? No, no, you don't FUCKING GLOSS OVER THEMES OF SUICIDE AARRRGHHGHGHGGHHHHHHH

This is the sharpest bit of tonal whiplash I have ever experienced. It legitimately makes me livid. The sheer insensitivity of it is beyond anything this side of a Torchwood episode desperately trying to provoke a reaction! Except when Torchwood deals with suicide, they do it with actual fucking respect? (If you doubt me, see More Than This, Day in the Death, Out of Time, etc. There are actual examples of really good and effecting, well directed, good uses of these themes in audio. Big Finish has actually done some of them.) How am I supposed to review this audio when I have been fucking run over with a freight train?

The rest of the audio is fine? I still? How am I supposed to process that? I feel like I should be more than the characters! Litefoot's response to his friend nearly commiting suicide is to jollily suggest a steamboat cruise, "oh corks, this sure will be a fun adventure," and, wow, I just absolutely cannot deal with how irresponsible the whole scene is. It's so odd, the scene is but two minutes long, and yet it's very inclusion pervades my opinion of the whole audio. 

I'd give it a score out of ten, it's just? how? how can I do that? 

What the hell did they just do?

This is a good set. This is very nearly an incredible set. The other three stories in this set are all quite good to the best in the series. This story is very nearly passable itself. But moments like these? What am I supposed to think of that? It's like in the very last few minutes of a decent unremarkable movie, let's say Black Widow, Scarlett Johansson looks directly in the camera and calls for the murder of minorities before the end credits play with happy superhero music.

That's pretty much the experience I just had. 

I'm tired.