Plum Pudding Reviews

The Paternoster Gang Heritage Two Okay, so here's the problem with these anthology sets. I like typing up these things at the start about things that tie into all the stories in the set and my opinions on those aspects, my perspective going in, etc. But with three monster of the week episodes, I really can't do that. I don't have stuff to say here in this slot. It's just, really not anything I can elaborate on. These are three stories. They have nothing to do with each other. I could go on about how that's a problem in of itself, and this series really could do with recurring characters, to make it feel, like, well, a series, and not just when the show up on TV in those Paternoster Gang TV episodes that are just Doctor Who but sometimes the Doctor has less lines or is not there. But honestly? I think I slag off this set enough in the reviews itself, so I think that we can get to it.   Dining with Death by Dan Starkey  Dan Starkey usually pulls in an excellent script...

  The Ninth Doctor Adventures: Lost Warriors Writing a blurb about Lost Warriors as a whole is rather ridiculous. Whereas Respond to All Calls had the, shall we say, tenuous, theme of three different distress calls, Lost Warriors has frick all. As far as I can tell, there's pretty much nothing connecting these three stories minus them all being, technically historicals, although all of them take such a different perspective on "historical," I'm not sure that works either. So nothing. No, whereas set one had the Ninth Doctor in a cohesive whole story as a hook, and set two had the Ninth Doctor in three random stories with a very basic connective theme as a hook, set three has the Ninth Doctor in three random stories and the Cybermen are in one of them haha that's the like, connective tissue! Nothing! But that doesn't matter. I mean, technically speaking I really do think they should have stuck with "Volume Two" and "Volume Three" because tha...

  Ghost Walk by James Goss "This is how the world ends. On a Rainy Day." On the one hand, Ghost Walk is a triumph for the Main Range, and one of the best audios in all of it. A banger in a series of bangers. On the other hand, it's so damn confusing. Difficult to wrap your head around, it's a timey wimey voyage that while I do feel probably syncs up satisfactorily, as the writing, to be plain, is extraordinary throughout, and I trust that James Goss knows what the hell he's writing... well. There's probably a really satisfactory explanation in it for some of the astray plot threads, as most of them are dealt with so deflty, although to be frank, on first impression, I'm unable to find them. It's a story that drastically departs from the traditional style of Doctor Who over four parts, using each part in an exceedingly atypical manner, so as a result, some minor confusion is inevitable. I love what it's doing overall, in all of it's individual b...

  The Wreck of the Titan by Barnaby Edwards The thing about Wreck of the Titan is one, It's probably really good if not for the fact that I was spoiled and two, It loses steam very fricking quickly. A bit annoying in that the initial mystery is so interesting - I adore Parts One and Two - but when the "weird shit is happening" aspect goes away a bit in Part Three and Four, which can be, well, disappointing, especially given the initial concept of the Titanic ebbing away into the Titan, is really engrossing. I like weird stuff in Doctor Who, and that's good. The trouble is that you can’t just keep going with the weird shit, the plot has to happen eventually, and this is doubly problematic  when the Nautilus enters the narrative, the truth becomes a little too easy to guess. The Nautilus is just too famous. I didn’t really know the spoilers for this one that well, I had only heard them a long time ago, but a story like this will make you remember them fairly quickly. in...

  NCBBDAS: Revisionist History Starring Brenda Blethyn and Linda Hamilton Christmas Special  Chapter One Time didn’t make sense to Sarah Connor. It was a fickle thing, she thought as she stepped out of the TARDIS into the Victorian Snow. The Snow drifted gently down the rooftops, the grey sky obscuring the picturesque fairytale London and setting a pall upon the city. The sky was greyer and the houses were browner and redder and covered in holly - it was clearly Christmas.  The Doctor stepped outside, a rotund ball of many layers of clothing - many wooly coats competing for dominance, and for some idiotic reason, all unbuttoned. She grinned. The cold air bit her tongue. "Oh, come on. It's not Christmas." Sarah Connor said, getting out of the TARDIS (in her usual modern military gear, not even attempting to avoid attention of the Victorian Londoners.) "Seriously, Doctor. Let's get back into the TARDIS. Last I checked, it was August." "I have a time machi...

  Night's Black Agents by Marty Ross Despite not possessing the pure gold that is Colin Baker - I had never known how wrong it would feel to have a Sixth Doctor story without the man himself, his voice is so magnificent - Night's Black Agents is a definite step up from City of Spires in every aspect that I would care to list - a dignified production that is not overambitious in it's storytelling (it could only really be  a companion chronicle) and ultimately probably irrelevant in terms to the Jamie and Six arc, but yet it doesn't feel superfluous, it feels like a natural extension, and one that fits quite well. Frazier is an excellent narrator, and although, as mentioned, his Colin Baker does not compel as well as his Troughton, he still can carry the story quite well. I'm not an enormous Jamie fan, as the stories that I've done with him, while good, have sort of had him doing generic Ian or Steven shit (probably, as said, due to my inexperience with the Trough...

 NCBBDAS: Oh Flux - The Pretentious Episode Part Three of Six * * *  "Not many options," The Doctor thought. Because last weeks cliffhanger was good, this meant that she was going to have a lot of difficulty getting out of this one. Especially since she had a second to do it. No, really, a second.  Not anything more than that. I mean, it's one second until Evil Dan "Ha-Ho" s his way into graphically murdering Danieru and Sarah. And putting them on a plynth? With the Merri? What are the Merri? What are the Mouri even? What is any of this  Is there literally any conceivable way that you can get out of this cliffhanger? No? Okay, I guess the Doctor can bullet-time now. She usually can't, but for no explainable reason, the Doctor can now run at faster the speed of light - faster than the amount of time it will take for Evil Dan to snap his fingers. Last week he did snap his fingers too, we heard it, but no, we're just gonna act like that didn't happen. ...

   Torchwood Darker Days: The Hard Call * * * 2008 "Alright. So you're going to love this." He said, grin like a madman. Or at least like one's impression of a madman. The Prime Minister rolled his eyes. Madmen weren't so obvious. He would know.  "The new plan, Mister Prime Minister - isn't that funny, that rhymes, doesn't it? Mister Prime Minister - have you ever tried saying Mister Prime Minister five times fast?" The Prime Minister, in fact, had not.  "Come on. Say it with me."  Should he placate him? He decided to, for now. Because it was funny. Just a little funny. Not funny ha-ha, he wasn't going to roll over laughing, but it was funny enough, so he said it with him. Just to make him happy. Politics was about making people just happy enough like that. And stabbing people in the back too, but that was beside the point.  The Prime Minister was subtly annoyed. Not least because he wasn’t a very popular Prime Minister. A little s...