Third Doctor Adventures Volume Four

 

The Third Doctor Adventures Volume Four

The Third Doctor Adventures was a series I barely touched at all bar the single hour of Three available in The Legacy of Time. And the reason for that is ...nope. There's no reason. I just didn't. So I've tried a grand total of one boxset - there was a Big Finish Stream for Rise of the New Humans, and so I had to do Tyrants of Logic. I'm not immensely sold on the series, even though I really like it. I just can't see myself getting one of these sets over a Main Range release starring a legitimate Doctor. But as a recast, Tim Treloar does quite well - many I know criticize his voice for not always being on the money, and that can be true, but what makes me prefer him to an impressionist like John Culshaw in the role of Three is that he's not doing an impression, he is acting first, trying his best to emote and make the material work. Treloar's Three is in no way exact - (I've heard he's gotten better since, but it can be distracting in this volume) but he's given his own style to the role that I appreciate. I may have said I can't see myself getting many more of these as opposed to a Doctor I'm more in love with like Six, but in my book, Treloar serves fairly well, and all in all, he's valid as heck. If different. There's my little diatribe on Treloar, I had to do one because this is the first volume I'm doing here. And knowing what kind of Third Doctor you're in for is an important aspect of the review. You know what the other important aspect of the review is? The review, so I'll get on with myself. 

The Rise of The New Humans by Guy Adams

I'm not sure what it is about Rise of The New Humans that makes me fail to connect to it completely, as all of the individual aspects are fine enough, and there are highlights that I actually do enjoy but on the whole something falls flat. It's a bit of a generic UNIT story, and well, I was actually expecting that, thank you very much, but you can only do so much action on audio, and not all of it works. The runaround stuff is present like pretty much every other four-parter ever, but the reason you're doing this is no doubt the character stuff between the Doctor and the villain who you know is in it but is still the part 1 cliffhanger haha, yep, it's Rufus Hound's the Monk, and this may be my favorite Monk appearance with him as the role. He's not being blatantly murdered by Missy 24/7 like he often is in her series (girl power!) and he's not completely irrelevant like he is in Doom Coalition, so by process of elimination, this is probably his best one, as it's his most "Monk" story. That's not to say it's amazing. Hell, he and our regulars are sadly pretty much the only good parts in it - while he has some clever Guy Adams dialogue, like you might expect, it's just not enough to stretch out over the length of two hours. There's just not enough plot - while I'm used by now the part one cliffhanger revealing the villain (it is classic who after all) I feel there needs to be more going on in Part One for this to work. There's just not enough here. In any of the parts, really, and that can feel disappointing, but it's true. Come for Rufus Hound, and stay for Rufus Hound, because he is the best Monk this side of Gemma Whelan, and he always nails it, really, really elevating this material, and Jo is as iconic as you might expect. But an honest review this must be, and I really can't see much to put this above a 5/10 even if that does feel slightly mean. I really really enjoyed The Monk in this one, so It is a struggle for me to figure it out, but I just can't convince myself to give any other score. 

The Tyrants of Logic by Marc Platt

Hey. Yeah. You know the guy who wrote Spare Parts and The Silver Turk? 

Well. 

He's done it again. 

The entire point of the Cybermen is their focus on Conversion. A steadily expanding army, that wants to make you like them. That's the hook for the Cybermen. This is why I've especially not cared for them in runarounds. The Cybermen is a villain antithetical to a mere action setpiece, you really need to think about them, the horror of what they are, construct the story around that, to make it work. The Tyrants of Logic thankfully really does focus on this. There's a lone town on a wasteland of a planet - a Ghost Town western experience, where the characters are already introduced with electronic implants. They're alone, and they're secluded when their supply ship drops them a certain mysterious crate - and from then on, the Cybermen ruthlessly try to get it. Part of why I like this one is similar to Silver Turk or Spare, it's the Cybermen at their most weak and insidious, but it's very different from those stories because the Cybermen are on the attack at all times. They're slowly converting guest characters one at a time, and getting more powerful. They're emotionless and ruthless, and they have new ways to convert people. Because that's exactly what Cybermen would always be making. The aspect of how close some of these humans are to the Cybermen is fascinating - they're constantly fighting the Cybermen, calling them freaks of nature, how much they love their humanity, and yet they're hypocrites, one of them so in love with cybernetics that he's turned his entire body into a speaker system to play music. One of them wants to be paid in new implants when they're offered money for a job. This world-building is exquisite. The atmosphere, the creepiness of the whole thing, it's excellently done, and most of all the thing that makes me adore this one is how completely and totally taken out the Doctor gets by the Cybermen. I love this especially, because especially in the Third Doctor era, you could think that Three could do anything, he wrestles aliens three times his size! He's a genius! Expert Sword-Fighter and Karate Expert! He's designed his own hover-car! and for pretty much the entirety of Tyrants of Logic, Jo is the only one who can stop the Cybermen. While Three is present throughout, it is entirely Jo's play and one of Katy Manning's best performances. Few companions really could carry the material this much - the material is expertly tied to Manning's strengths as not the intellectual but the emotional equal of the Doctor. It is really telling to me how brilliant Manning is in Big Finish - stories like Sacrifice of Jo Grant, Masterful, the Scorchies, all of these stories, if not about Jo exclusively, give her massive roles, and Manning always rises to the challenge. I love almost everything about this story - it even ties in thematically with Rise of the New Humans, tying the boxset in a nice bow. I'm starting to think that Marc Platt should totally write more Cybermen stories... other writers mess them up all the time, but Platt is three for three now, and all three deliver the same themes in new and brilliant ways. Bring on the Fourth: 9/10