The Eleventh Doctor Chronicles: Geronimo!

 

The Eleventh Doctor Chronicles: Geronimo!

Yes, I've finally got off my ass and have done the goddamn Valarie audios. Yes they are entirely worth it and what everyone else has told you about them 

I'll be here all day

Before we begin please allow me to note that I will be using she/her pronouns for Valerie, but as Safiyya Ingar is non-binary, they will be referred to with they/them pronouns, which is different from Valerie's character but look this is probably the best way to do it I don't want to misgender either the fictional character or more importantly the actual living person anyway

Geronimo! is the first time Big Finish has actually tried to make a series of NuWho, properly. Oh, you could argue that it could technically be The Ninth Doctor Adventures series one, or Dalek Universe, but you're kidding yourself if so. The Ninth Doctor Adventures is largely episodic, and Dalek Universe is exceedingly Big Finish-coded. For my money, Geronimo! and the Valarie arc that surrounds it is the first time that Big Finish have really properly tried to recreate a series of NuWho in the exact vein that they try and recreate classical audios with say, Tom Baker. Geronimo! is meant to feel like something Steven Moffat wrote. Which is amazing, considering most everyone would falter in trying to imitate one of the best Who writer's whose ever done it, but they've got the style to a tee. 

Geronimo! signals a creative renaissance for the company -- I see a lot of influence taken from the direction of Torchwood's The Story Continues range, in style if not in tone. The various Story Continues sets showed how Big Finish can work with arcs in an serialized structure emulating a television series. But Geronimo! is (at first glance) even more impressive than even that, successfully emulating not an originally sloppy but brilliant television series and improving on it, honing in on what makes it work, but emulating a whole series of Doctor Who at the top of it's goddamn game. It's easy to write a story that emulates a Doctor Who story, plenty of writers do it consistently and delightfully -- but there's a difference between doing a one-off in the style of Steven Moffat and doing fourteen whole episodes plus a short trip. 

So yeah 

it's good

The Inheritance by Alfie Shaw

The Inheritance does the incredibly incredibly incredibly incredibly incredibly incredibly difficult thing of being an introduction story for a companion that works very well as a pilot/introductory story for Doctor Who as well as being a brilliant banger in it's own right. Most of the time, you only get one or the other -- complicated and brilliant sci-fi plot or intimate character introduction. Look at The Church on Ruby Road, hot off the presses. It's not trying to do anything complex and Moffatian with the alien plotline, it's not full to the brim of ludicrously imaginative sci-fi ideas, instead it's an intimate character introduction with the addition of a Goblin musical number to make it fun television. Look at The Pilot, where the plot about the alien puddle doesn't really matter and it's mostly an intimate character introduction. This is a very normal thing to do, tried and tested, proven. 

The Inheritance didn't seem to get that note, and wrote a classic 10/10 bastard of a sci-fi story and ALSO threw in the intimate character introduction. The Inheritance is Steven Moffat does the Sunmakers, but it's also sweet and small and domestic in the way NuWho does so well despite it being crazy outer space hours. 

Dudman is exactly everything you've heard and more. I was worried that his performance would be mere impressionism because he sounds so very close to Smith, but like Noonan, Treloar and Carley before him, he has imbued the role with emotion before anything else. He's not just trying to sound like Matt Smith, he's not playing a party trick, he's being genuinely excellent. 

And Valarie!! Whew!! Safiyya Ingar is such a find, I knew it when I first heard them in Torchwood's lovely The Black Knight, but The Inheritance asks much more out of them than any companion introduction story I can think of. Valarie's time as a companion has hardly begun, and she has to show more rage, sadness and delight than some companions do in their entire runtime. I am deliberately skirting around words to avoid spoiling the tale's emotional climax, but it genuinely shocked me how far the story was willing to go, even gutsier than the usual for Big Finish. 

The Inheritance is an exercise in practically everything else's incompetence by comparison, and I am seated. Whenever Big Finish deigns to imitate the Moffat era it's usually delightful (Friend of the Family, Stranded, Masterful) because it plays very neatly to their strengths of high-concept fiction. But this isn't just some imitation without merit or any other goal beside "vibe", it has something to say -- a companion piece, I think, largely, to Oxygen. You may think that the set peaking so quickly and strongly may be a sign of doom for what follows but you are incorrect because this isn't even the best one

The House of Masks by Georgia Cook

This is quite thoroughly "quite good," with the story never missing an emotional beat or opportunity that it presents itself with, but never still quite rising to the level of the installments it's sandwiched by. To be fair, following on from the Inheritance is perhaps the hardest job conceivable, and I suppose the closest equivalent of The House of Masks I could think of would be something like The Beast Below.  It's also the set's "historical" slot even though it is absolutely not a historical and never really approaches that territory, even as a pseudo historical. 

It is quite good, or good enough very consistently, however it is also better than most other stories that are just good enough. Despite relatively serving as early series filler like Beast Below, Curse of the Black Spot or Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, it's anything but, because the story does the marvelous thing of taking a full ten minutes at the end of the adventure to wrap up what has happened and what needs to be said. 

The plot ends roughly near the forty five minute mark, and the last ten minutes -- aside from the cliffhanger, which does take about ninety seconds, solely focus on The Doctor and Valarie talking to each other openly about their feelings and what each of them need to know about each other. It's immensely refreshing and strong character work that helps to make The House of Masks much better than a simple filler outing. While none of it is anything you haven't heard before -- The Doctor mourning the Time War initially feels almost copy pasted from Gridlock -- it is effectively done and unpacked quite well. 

I think The House of Masks being an Eleventh Doctor story that takes place in Venice is odd, and borders on the fan-brain side of things, (why have a vampire in venice sequel) but it ISN'T that and I do love that it shows him beginning slightly to move on from the loss of the Ponds -- even the things about this that I actually don't like have some merit to them. So. As said. Quite good, or good enough. Whichever you prefer.

The End by Rochana Patel

The End is the set's highest triumph, a delightful time puzzle, the sort of strange and fun thing that I tend to go insane over. Because it's mainly a fun time mystery and the most enjoyment you can get out of a story like this is when you know next to nothing about it, I will be super vague. 

The End is a tense story built around desperation, and it's unusual structure allows itself to experiment. But despite it being experimental, incredibly fast paced, and the situation being very desperate and dangerous, it also allows itself to know when to slow down and to focus on the relationship between the characters. It's the most character intensive story of the set, and the other two stories were quite character intensive. 

The End is absolutely the best thing the set achieves -- and if you have a love for stuff like The Girl Who Waited or Listen, it'll probably be particularly to your taste. 

Anyway yeah it's an excellent set