Plum Pudding Reviews

  The Black Knight by Lizbeth Myles I'll begin this review by saying this is the only time in it I will bring up Absent Friends at all. It is gone, and this is what we're getting, this is the replacement, and quite frankly, it's probably better. It may be sad that we won't be getting a Torchwood Tennant performance, but I'm sick of hearing people beg for it and I will not mourn. Achem. Statement over. That being said, The Black Knight is actually really really great. Like, properly. It's got a lot of good stuff in it. It's got a lot of my favorite kind of stuff in it. It's quite similar to some of the Torchwood stories that I've actually written myself, not that I'm going to plug them, which would be weird. But my point is that it's got a fabulous hook, and it's the first time Torchwood has properly touched space exploration, and the fear of the unknown that can be derived from it. The Black Knight says a lot in terms of character, atmosp...

 The Great Sontaran War by James Goss This may just be the first James Goss stinker. Not just the first James Goss Torchwood stinker, but I think, actually the first one in general. That goes to show how triumphant a writer he is, so I will preface this review by saying that I surely wouldn't want him to take anything I have to say about this to heart, as he's bloody brilliant. I do doubt that he'd ever encounter my tiny little website though, so, well, go figure. May as well be honest. This is half an hour of an idea. Perhaps twenty minutes. There is only so much Sontaran comedy shenanigans one can endure before it does indeed become grating. There's some good material here, thematically about Kreg and his views on warriors, humanity and it's weakness, the moral excesses of capitalism, and of course, Cats. Like I said, good material. Good short story material, good short trips material. However, it all goes on for 75 minutes. The gags become too long, too frequent...

  "Why, Norton Sodomy Folgate!" "Lizbeth Fellatio Hayhoe!" Madam I'm by James Goss Madam I'm is a jolt that the Torchwood Monthly Range very much deserved - it's essentially just a 60 minute Torchwood Soho episode where Lizbeth and Norton have to deal with a threat with their memories. Quite obviously, the threat is Adam. We know what Adam does, we know what his deal is, the creepy sod, and so the story doesn't need to waste any time in explaining him, and segments the story into an almost dreamlike state as a result, the story being confusing in the right way, as you understand what's going on, but you're not sure why any of it is really occurring or what Adam is aiming to do with the Soho duo. Norton and Lizbeth are really what makes this probably unoriginal audio very very good. They're a team with excellent chemistry, and they're written in such a way that they're excellent for either newcomers to their characters or Soho stal...

  Curios by James Goss Curios is the third Bilis Manger audio so far and yet it still almost fails to innovate with the character compared to what’s been done before. Rosie Baler plays Jill Anderson, our  protagonist of the story, a woman who is sent down to an mineshaft following WW2 to survey an archive of items sent there to protect them from the Nazis. She meets a caretaker of the collection, a certain Bilis Manger. The majority of the audio from there is a sort of twisted retread of Deadbeat Escape - Bilis Manger is trapped in this sort of location and our protagonist is the key to whether or not he will escape. (Inevitably, he does. It’s hard to have tension like that in a prequel.) Jill is the highlight of the story, a bold and intelligent woman who is also believably flawed. She’s practical, smart, and also like many a classic Doctor Who companion, scared out of her fricking wits. Rosie Baker balances this portrayal well, not making her too much of a worried nervous br...

  The Five People You Kill In Middlesbrough by Yvonne Hartman The Five People You Kill In Middlesbrough is completely right, but also perhaps a little hypocritical. Written (reportably) by Tim Foley, James Goss and Tracy Ann Oberman, using Yvonne’s own name as an author’s signature, it’s a fucking  scathing attack  on the modern political world, especially that of Britain during the response to the Coronavirus. It’s also searingly obvious from the start that that is exactly what it’s about and it almost doesn’t even bother to try beating around the bush and saying it’s not that. It sort of invites it - especially with the lines at the beginning about staying in your homes. It’s the most politically charged audio I’ve ever reviewed, and it certainly wears its opinions on its sleeve. It attacks both the corrupt and the spineless variety of politicians, the anti-Semitic, the shitty Internet personalities and news organizations that pedal their views and the greedy people on ...

  Part One: Rhiannon Gallifrey both does and doesn’t exist. It’s like Schrodinger’s Cat, except instead of knowing when it’s observed or whatever it sort of just doesn’t exist sometimes whenever it feels like it. It’s gotten lost in all the continuity over the years. It’s hard to keep track of whether it’s blown up or not, it does tend to happen on the regular. People keep bringing it back too, so it’s sort of gotten like a little tug of war game, and so the planet itself just doesn’t exist whenever it remembers it’s supposed to not exist, and vice versa. This is very problematic for those who live on Gallifrey, but being Time Lords, they’ve invented a fix-it. The technology, a new phase coil, allows them to exist in nonexistence itself. It's rather like normal life, except everything is shadowy and sometimes you hear the voices of the damned. This isn't about that. This is about the people outside Gallifrey.  The Renegades are all you ever hear about, regrettably. Gallifrey h...