Plum Pudding Reviews

  The Paternoster Gang Heritage One  The Paternoster Gang, in terms of opportunities for Big Finish in the new series, are quite frankly, obvious. Jago and Litefoot has since come to a conclusion and the Victorian era of Big Finish still needs to be explored. But there is a hesitancy about Heritage One, that of a spinoff desperately trying to carve out it's own identity. It has three excellent leads that have all transferred immensely well to audio, but Jago and Litefoot's loss leaves a hole in Big Finish's discography. Clearly it's trying to fill that gap, but I'm uncertain as to whether it can do it well without appearing as a secondhand redux. In terms of differences, Our leads are more technologically minded, but I'm fairly certain that almost serves as a disadvantage to atmosphere. And The Paternoster Gang does not immediately feel concerned with atmosphere, but rather wishes to be a boisterous outing. Not quite a mindless action series like UNIT, but a fun...

  Ozma commissioned this. I'm trying my best not to hate her.  Minions of the Daleks: The Doctor and New Companion Priscilla return to the one place in the universe, London, to discover a series of diabolical creatures - yellow pill-based beings based upon programmable matter from a parallel universe, molded to seek out the most evil being they possibly can find. As The Doctor grapples with the moral implications of them actually being interested in her, suddenly they are distracted by a far more inticing evil leader - these portals to other times and places throughout the generations have been created by a rogue Dalek...looking for a force to conquer the world! 

 Kingdom of Lies by Robert Khan and Tom Salinsky The complete opposite of the prior Season 19 trilogy, Kingdom of Lies is actually really really brilliant. It's not got much in terms of alien-runaround, instead opting towards a farcical murder mystery where no one dies, everyone's a hologram, no one likes any one, and hysterically complicated political shenanigans take place, with some really inspired guest characters that are just genuinely funny. When the story does actually unveil it's so called monster, it's so late in the game (the Part Three Cliffhanger) that you're already enrapt in the story's world and it's quality writing that a villainous figure turning up doesn't make one roll their eyes. The story is incredible across the board, with a truly inspired concept. You know those sitcom episodes where two roommates get mad at each other and draw a line across their bedroom? Well, a king and queen have decided to draw a line across their planet as ...

  Alien Heart/Dalek Soul I've long had a love for the solo Five/Nyssa adventures, since their early triumphs - Circular Time, Winter for the Adept, need I even mention Spare Parts... and although I have been enjoying the recent Fifth Doctor trilogies immensely, they do tend to do the television thing and skew the appearances of Nyssa completely as soon as Tegan or Adric is present. On paper, these "double releases" are one of the best ideas ever commissioned by later Big Finish, and it's downright cruel how rare they are in the grand scheme of things, because whilst the Main Range affords great freedom, perhaps it does so slightly too much. Stories like Zaltys or Absolute Power remind me regularly that the Main Range is a fickle thing, and while it can reward you immensely, in the hands of the wrong writers it can be miserably dull. Alien Heart/Dalek Soul is funny, because it hits both demographics perfectly.  Alien Heart by Stephen Cole Alien Heart is the dull one. W...

 Zaltys by Matthew J Eliot "Everything that comes in threes is perfect."  "Yes, but, well, counting you, there's four of us. That's one too many, isn't it?"  - The Fifth Doctor and Adric It's telling that the story closes with that line, especially since Zaltys is utter, utter, shit. This trilogy, while it's not been awful (Hell, the Star Men was pretty damn good) is genuinely shocking to me, especially after the run from The Secret History to The Peterloo Massacre was so strong. I don't think Adric is a bad character at Big Finish, quite the opposite, he's rather enjoyable, but I've started to notice these stories struggle with their balancing act. This story is the ever diabolical main range stinker, and these stories, when bad, are by rule of thumb, often much worse than one hour stories, simply because of the run-time. I've complained about boring Main Range releases before (Shield of the Jotunn and A Life Of Crime are the mos...

  Torchwood One Before The Fall Going into Torchwood One, I was aware that it is serialized storytelling, a three part story, and as such, I knew that in some other shows serialized episodes can blend together. That wasn't the case with Torchwood One ultimately, but as a result I made the choice of reviewing each episode immediately after I listened to it when it was fresh in the mind. A lot of the criticisms I have for episodes (fuck it, most ) are resolved in this very own set. So, you're essentially watching past Plum review these episodes as they've experienced them, thinking that all the episodes were going to blend into a blob and there was no other way. Well. there was. and so this review is a testament to experimenting I will probably never do again because this was kind of disastrous and most of the problems I mentioned turned out to be irrelevant and I bet there are other problems in these stories that are more worth mentioning that I didn't notice because I w...

  Note: I am one of the two people on the planet that doesn't really care for the Lucie Eighth Doctor Adventures. This does not mean that I'm being like. Mean for the sake of being mean. I really like and respect the people involved in these productions. These are just my opinions on the ultimate products. The Skull of Sobek by Marc Platt I was aware of this one's reputation before setting in, and I even liked a few scant things but I honestly can't say that this is worth your time in any way, it's rather shit, and I did not like it. It's hard to explain what makes it so undeniably shit, but it's just really genuinely grating in a way I hadn't felt this series had reached since series one's lowest points. Without a doubt the worst 8DA yet, and one of the very few Big Finish stories with the inestimable honor of me just deciding to straight up not finish it. I know I'm supposed to be a reviewer here, but I'm human too, damn it, and I just wasn...

  Dead Man's Switch by David Llewellyn Dead Man's Switch on paper, is quite effective, understanding that the best horror must be ambiguous to be truly frightening, but in that it forgets to give us enough information to precisely get what the hell is going on. Dead Man's Switch revolves around the tales of Zoe, Rowena and Piers, three passenger's on an inexplicable train, which is essentially a framing device. Bilis Manger all asks them of the last thing remembered, and they tell each other the story of how they each died. If you can't tell already, Bilis is always going to be the best part about any story he's in, and that is maintained here, as Murray Melvin gives a delightfully sinister performance as usual, leaning into the camp whilst being still as petrifying as before. He's such a find for Big Finish, and the Bilis stories I've heard thus far are wonderfully unique in the already standout and experimental Torchwood range. It's telling that fo...

  Dalek Universe 3  It's rare that I'm as positive as I am about a series as I am about Dalek Universe. It's essentially the Tenth Doctor's fourth full season as the Doctor - hell, if you count up it along with the specials - 5 episodes plus these 9 add up to a Christmas Special and then a season of 13 episodes like the other RTD seasons. Which could be coincidental, but I think it helps to prove my point. Without actually resurrecting Russell T Davies as head writer (Television is going to handle that) they've really created something organic here. But the other reason I love Dalek Universe is it's so unabashedly Big Finish - they jump back to before the time war to give us a cavalcade of Daleks, Mechonoids, Movellans, Varga Plants, The Monk, Davros, The Kingdom Family, River Song and all in all adding up to the Tenth Doctor dealing with the ultimate Terry Nation series, it's almost a tribute to him at his best even when the Daleks aren't around. (River...

  The Contingency Club by Phil Mulryne When Fifth Doctor stories blaze to life, they truly succeed beyond any other, but when they falter, this somewhat nondescript of Doctors can begin to struggle. Five more than any other Doctor utterly and completely depends on an excellent script to really get up there, and while it has effective moments - mostly due to the excellent performances of Janet Fielding and guests Lorelei King as The Red Queen and Olly McCauley as Edward, the Contingency Club is very much a classic runaround. It's scene setting is unique and intelligent, the idea of a Victorian Gentleman's Club being up to illicit dealings is nigh perfect in terms of setting to a Doctor Who story, and the atmosphere it could invoke would be absolutely brilliant and set the story up to high standards early on, but immediately the Contingency Club has little interest in it's non de plume, opening the story with an uncomfortably long and irritating bout of arguments in the TARDI...

 The Star Men by Andrew Smith There's a star man, waiting in the sky, he'd like to come and meet us, but he thinks he'd blow our minds...  Andrew Smith is an interesting author at Big Finish - he's the man who wrote Full Circle back in the 80s and the fact that he's still writing for Doctor Who now - and has somehow gotten even better - is incredible. He's usually given the "nostalgia" pieces, a lot of his stories try and evoke the era that they come from, sometimes to the detriment of the story, but usually not. I've heard a fair deal of him, especially with the Fourth Doctor Adventures -  in that and Dalek Universe he really organically fleshes out Ann/Anya, and understands her well. He's just generally a good author. Even so, I think the Star Men is really rather special, because it taps so elegantly into the childlike wonder of Doctor Who itself: The program often talks about us humans looking up at the stars, and The Star Men is a story ma...

  Torchwood: Something Out There A Tale From the Worlds of Torchwood  Starring Clare Rushbrook  * * * Science Officer's Log, Supplemental. Ida Scott reporting.  God.  I'm afraid.  I hope someone will eventually find this. Or somewhat more optimistically, someone will listen to this after I bring it and all of the other log recordings back alive, in perfect condition, and happily drop them on the desk of my superintendent. "Study these," I'd say, and walk off smugly.  But no. Someone's going to definitely find this in a pile of Wreckage.  I wonder what I was thinking? Well, Ida. You've survived a dead planet orbiting a black hole  that happens to contain the powers of Satan, and you've reported back to tell the tale. Why don't we just go back in space again on another dangerous mission? That personally to me seems to be the smart thing to do! I'm - I'm shaking. You'll forgive me if I stumble over my words, but I have to get this down. So...

  The Peterloo Massacre by Paul Magrs Visceral, Traumatic and very very real, The Peterloo Massacre is definitive proof in the pure historical as a format that can be as affecting, intelligently written and atmospheric as a original sci-fi tale. The Peterloo Massacre is a story that is real, and it's raw, and bloody. The Peterloo Massacre happened, and The Peterloo Massacre doesn't skirt around the horrors of it to make it more palatable for a happy Doctor Who tale. The story is a story of real people, and the story makes sure to tell that - while Paul Magrs paints a picture of a historical institution of evil, he also tells a three dimensional portrait. It would be easy to make Hurley a psychopathic cliched hollywood villain to pin it all on, but even he is portrayed far more in depth than that, and it makes all of the brutalities even stronger. This level of realism in storytelling, this level of maturity in storytelling is rare, even for Big Finish. The story feels geniunely...

  Jago and Litefoot Series Eleven To put the Beevers Master in Jago and Litefoot is an inspired idea, and one that comes so easily that I'm surprised they weren't already doing it by series four. But comes series Eleven, and the Master is here at last, in all of his Hinchcliffian gothic brilliance, and - yeah, he's pretty much just in story four of the set. Jago and Litefoot series Eleven is where the series is most comfortable, not trying to really push any boundaries for the most part, and this can work for and against it's favor. Luckily the writers for the series are quite assured in the Jago and Litefoot universe, a place that is as much a character as our heroes, the victorian gothic setting that pervades the series, and the series just has such a confidence at this point that it can be hard to dock it. At this point, they'd already done more than forty hours of Jago and Litefoot, and the characters of our heroes were more fine-tuned than plenty of televised c...

Page will be updated as the episodes continue to release. The Halloween Apocalypse by Chris Chibnall Reviewing the Halloween Apocalypse seems absolutely monumental in terms of a task, and I'd probably feel like I had a better chance of reviewing it if I had any clue what the hell it was doing. I'd say it was like reviewing part one of a particularly crazy serial like the Happiness Patrol or an episode of a modern serial like Killing Eve, Loki, or maybe even Children of Earth. The difference is that those aren't shows that haphazardly bounce about and are trying to tell a very focused narrative, Flux in constrast, is huge, and is also clearly going to go back and frick around with their own timeline of events. It's including an absurd amount of characters that are clearly designed to recur throughout the series. It actually feels like The Halloween Apocalypse sets out to be confusing and monumental, in the hope that people don't recognize any flaws it may have til th...