Plum Pudding Reviews

  The Fourth Doctor Adventures Solo I see opinion on these sets circle around each year. The Fourth Doctor Adventures can seemingly never do anything right - at least for a vocal minority that I hear every single time one of the eleventy-seven boxsets comes out. I think that's worth noting, because there's one aspect of Solo that utterly, utterly fascinates me. It was pre-recorded, and then left to sit there for a gargantuanly long time - as has every single series that follows it. But the main thing is that Solo was genuinely recorded in a pre-COVID world. This product that came out in 2022 was finished and in the bin back in 2017. New Frontiers, the set that's coming out this year, was recorded in 2018. And you can't tell! These productions, thanks to the extra time in the bin, might have seemed either duller or more polished than other Big Finish productions, for all sorts of extenuating circumstances, and yet it's something you genuinely wouldn't know unless...

  Doctor Who: Kaleidoscope   As my first thorough journey into the Third Doctor Adventures, I think that I could have done a whole lot worse than Kaleidoscope, the six-part boxset that stars absolutely none of the original Doctor Who cast yet still feels more authentic than some that do.  Kaleidoscope is a weird story, and it’s one that’s a little hard to summarize thanks to its sort of strange layout and twists and turns, and absolutely ridiculous part five, which might be one of the most bold and wacky things Big Finish have done in recent memory. Kaleidoscope is one of those stories that despite being authentic to an era for the most part, sort of decides to go a little wild at times and do things you might not expect. This is one of the most fun things about the set in general.  The set opens with the arrival of Kaleidoscope, a possible alien being who gives foreboding warnings on late night talk shows, hosted by Sarah Jane Smith’s hitherto unheard of rival, Jenn...

  Doctor Who: Peladon Peladon is so weird. It's one of those random Big Finish releases you get once in a while that appears completely fucking baffling to the average modern consumer who looks at it for five seconds on twitter and then never buys it. Advertising a set featuring the return of King Peladon was never going to be a quick and easy sell, and River Song, the modern version of the Eighth Doctor, and a certain cameo character's inclusion make it a little strange to try and sell to the Classic Who crowd, because the entire set is exceedingly modern in it's sensibility. I mean, a planet that appeared twice in all of Classic Who, in two random Pertwee stories, only one of which is really held in very much esteem. Peladon, at least initially, appears as if it is dumb fanservice bullshit. The sort of thing that Titan Comics often goes under attack for, like when they had the Eighth and Eleventh Doctors meet up with Rose Tyler, or that time Harry Sullivan, The Ninth Doc...

  The Sandman Act I The Sandman on audio is a bit of an oddity, because I got the sense at various times that it was more of a companion to the comic series than it's own fully forged entity in it's own right. The series is slightly slavish to the original script of the comic, the 11 hour audio experience covering the first twenty out of seventy five issues. The fascinating part is that this can sometimes result in some of the most gorgeous audio drama that I've ever reviewed on this website, simply because the source material is so strong (after all, The Sandman was always a comic that was quite "word-y,") And yet sometimes can result in surprisingly lacking episodes that fail to capture the original issues. The Sandman on audio is an example of the variability of adaptation, and I think that's one of the most interesting things - so little is being done to adapt these stories from the visual medium into the verbal. The Sandman, large percentages of the story...

  The War Doctor Begins: Warbringer I certainly wasn't a fan of Only the Monstrous, and while I was willing to try again with Forged in Fire, while that was a step in the right direction, I wasn't very attached to it either. When listing the individual aspects of Warbringer on paper, it's also something I was unlikely to enjoy - a three hour long Dalek story starring The War Doctor?? I was skeptical. Three hour long stories rarely work for me in general, and even in my favorite ranges - the Fourth Doctor Adventures, Torchwood - they can indeed just as easily falter as triumph. Warbringer is a joyful surprise, and from the very beginning however, it proved to me it knew what it was doing, and that The War Doctor range was finally starting to show a quite interesting direction indeed.  Consequences by Timothy X Atack I really like Consequences as an opener. It gives the War Doctor range it's first audience identification figure in the form of Case, and then explores and d...