The Rapture

 


The Rapture by Joseph Lidster

Inviting confusion at every turn, the Rapture is in particular one of the oddest tales that Big Finish put out under the Doctor Who license, which is by no means a small feat from the company that put out Zagreus. Even by appearance of the cover, you can tell it's off the chain. It's blisteringly experimental and mad and honestly by most degrees actually rather dumb - but I am overjoyed that it exists, because it's very existence is a sign of bravery by the company. Big Finish was quick to realize that putting out a Doctor Who play each month was going to be quite a task for their small team, and knew very early on that they needed to figure out what worked by being bold and adventurous in their Doctor Who - doing bonkers things that most of the insane people who wrote the wilderness novels would balk at. This endeavor led to dozens and dozens of classics, often made by a direct shoeing off of the Doctor Who mold - the return of the pure historical (Marian Conspiracy or Fires of Vulcan, etc.) experimentation in kinds of stories - (Live 34, Doctor Who and The Pirates), story structure (Natural History of Fear, Creatures of Beauty, Flip-Flop), stories that could only be done on audio (Again Natural History of Fear, Scherzo, Whispers of Terror, Omega) Multi-Doctor stories gone mad (Project: Lazarus, Zagreus) or just letting Rob Shearman off the leash (All of his stories). For every Big Finish play giving us some stereotypical classic monster run-arounds, there were two more pushing the boundary of what Doctor Who was by having Ace being traumatized by actual fucking Nazis or Davros talking about his childhood where he ate corpses. A lot of brilliance came out of this, brilliance that can only be accomplished through experimentation.

Which is why I'm glad they took a few stories to figure out what didn't work and then never did it again because holy cow 

The Rapture doesn't work. It's trying to be sleazy, it's trying to be a drug trip without real explanation, it's trying to do something, and whatever it is, I sure as hell don't get it, don't even understand it enough for me to analyze on what makes it fall apart exactly. It's an insane literally-drug-fuelled plotline tied together with some family drama concerning Ace. It is almost good for the first episode and then completely loses me by episode two, and I legitimately could not summarize a single moment in it after that absolutely ridiculously mind-boggling episode two cliffhanger. It's Impossible to summarize, the Rapture. But we can agree on a few things: One- I'm glad it exists so they figured out not to do stuff like this. Two - It has a hell of a great soundtrack. 

No Rating


Comments

  1. Gemjax MajoranSeptember 25, 2021 at 7:15 PM

    A Strange tale that to this day has me asking...what was this even about though

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cobwebs

Image
  Cobwebs by Jonathan Morris Now stop me if you've heard this one before...  The Doctor and Companions arrive in Location X where they discover evidence that something bad is going to happen in the future (i.e. their deaths, the TARDIS not working, etc) and have to fudge the rules of time so they live. It's a Doctor Who stalwart, I should think, I can't count how many stories I've done with it, but the Fires of Vulcan and the entirety of Matt Smith series 6 come readily to mind - and quite frankly, Cobwebs is no exception. It's a complicated time puzzle of a story that will never really surprise you (I figured out the twist a solid hour before it happened.) The story's chief selling point is that for the first time ever since like Mawdwyn Undead and Terminus for two seconds, Tegan, Nyssa, and Turlough are in the TARDIS together. It's other chief selling point is Tegan is in it - this was her second Big Finish audio ever, and she had previously said she would
Read more

Torchwood: Aliens Among Us 2

Image
  Love Rat by Christopher Cooper Trust Big Finish to remake Day One, and not only make it good, but also make it somewhat heartbreaking. Of course, Day One is a terrible and horny bit of TV, and Love Rat is also sort of that way, but it makes up for it (in my book) by dealing with the aftereffects of what this kind of story would actually do to the team. Jack's actions in this episode, although prompted by the parasite, aren't even out of character, and the way he seduces Tyler and Ng and the fallout of that is dealt with in a surprisingly mature and emotional manner. Unlike Day One, which strives to be mature, Love Rat is actually mature, and the Gwen and Ng arc is actually a gutpunch to hear, especially the final few scenes with Rhys, as throughout this series, Ng has taken over Gwen's life and utterly ruined it. It's amazing what Eve Myles can do with just a few words, the emotion she can convey that this isn't what she wants, how horrified she is at not being in
Read more

NCJDDAS: Dark Page

Image
NCJDDAS: Dark Page Cover by Arbrax  This episode of the NOW CANON Judi Dench Doctor adventures was Inspired by Robert Shearman listing a brilliant idea for a short story that wouldn’t work in Doctor Who. I say utter Rubbish. I’m taking that story and writing it in Who. Fight me. It also helps that I haven’t read the story he wrote that I’m utilizing, making this even more of a simple writing prompt thing. Featuring The Twenty Second Doctor, Elizabeth Olsen, as created by Arbrax Chapter One In the town of Broughstershire, at 5:27 AM, the postman came by every house in the neighborhood and gave every single person a letter.  The letter was different for each person. For instance, Mr. Layton got a letter that said May 5, 2027, and below that, in slightly aggressive font, Gangrene. Mrs Curbishley got a letter that said June 18, 2053, Car Crash, and Little Timmy got a letter that said October 9th, 2081, Natural Causes. Of course, these are merely examples, those people don't exist, But
Read more

(MAIN RANGE): Dinnertime Part One

Image
MAIN RANGE: Dinnertime Part One This Story Stars Judi Dench as The Twenty Sixth Doctor and David Tennant as The Tenth Featuring Danny Devito as Danny Devito and John Simm as The Master This Story Takes Place Between A Storm Is A Comin and The Countryfile Conundrum Chapter One "It is said that in the final days of planet earth, everyone had bad dreams. To the west...of the...north... of this world...everyone did...gather? What even is that sentence- um, Sorry, Ah, here we are. IN THE CELEBRATION, of a Pagan rite to banish the cold and the Dark. Each and everyone of those people had nightmares of the pretty mild (for the human race) terror to come (I mean, I think the Dalek invasion was way worse). Everyone except Fred. There's nothing special about Fred, he's not really important to the story, but all the same, he had a dream about shopping, and it was rather average. Okay, so, to sum up. Everyone had bad dreams on Earth, except Fred. They all forgot...Except for one."
Read more

Ninth Doctor Adventures: Ravagers

Image
  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 directio
Read more