STORY PLACEMENT THIS STORY TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE BIG FINISH AUDIO DRAMAS "TERROR FIRMA" AND "OTHER LIVES."
PRODUCTION CODE 8X
WRITTEN BY WILL SHINDLER
DIRECTED BY NIGEL FAIRS
RECOMMENDED PURCHASE BIG FINISH CD#75 (ISBN 1-84435-160-2) RELEASED IN OCTOBER 2005.
BLURB Millennia ago, thepeople of the planetCaludaar pledgednever to set foot ontheir sister planetEndarra. But whatsecrets does IT hold?There are laws THATeven the Doctor won'tbreak...
And while C'rizzlearns that sometragedies can't beaverted, Charleymust decide who theenemy actually is.
For death walks onEndarra, and thistime she won't bedenied... |
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Scaredy Cat OCTOBER 2005 (4 EPISODES)
Scaredy Cat marks a turning point in the audio adventures of the eighth Doctor, providing us with Paul McGann’s first traditional Who story in at least three years. Even this August’s Terror Firma - the first story set back within the confines of ‘our’ universe - had to resolve a cliffhanger and, stunning though it was, was steeped in tortuous continuity. Will Shindler’s story, on the other hand, takes us back to what the classic television series was all about - interesting and scary science-fiction that can be enjoyed by adults and children alike. No Divergence. No romances. Just the Doctor, the TARDIS, and his two best friends.
I have to admit though, I feel a little bit cheated that three seventeen minute episodes and one twenty-two minute episode wound up constituting a two-disc release. If the story could not be padded, then fair enough – I’m all for shorter, pacier stories – but as it is less than eighty minutes all told, why not make it a three-parter and treat us to a one-off episode? As things stand, half our money is just paying for empty space!
Such cynical observations aside, Scaredy Cat comes as a real breath of fresh air for this TARDIS crew. Paul McGann’s Doctor is once again full of the zeal and the adrenaline that carried him through his first two Big Finish seasons, and this is one of C’rizz’s finest outings to date. Only Charley seems to suffer - again - at Will Shindler’s pen. It isn’t that she’s not given enough to do by the script this time; it’s more that she is misrepresented, written as a flapping assistant rather than a bossy Edwardian adventuress.
However, Shindler’s plot is fairly interesting, and thanks to the condensed running time it rattles along a fair old pace. The concept of the planet and the child becoming one is a fascinating idea, though for me even this took a back seat to the engrossing Doctor / C’rizz dynamic. There is a definite tension between them in this play – at one point C’rizz directly disobeys the Doctor’s instructions and meddles in the past, and not long afterwards the killer in C’rizz ends up pointing a weapon at his friend. Conrad Westmaas’ portrayal is completely devastating; so much so, in fact, that at times you can almost touch all of the conflicts housed within his mutable persona. Big Finish are most definitely onto a winner with this feller.
Overall then, this audio drama is a huge improvement on Shindler’s lacklustre effort last year, The Twilight Kingdom, which I felt was the worst story of the whole Divergence arc by a mile. Scaredy Cat clearly benefits from its shorter running time and from being the first ‘traditional’ McGann audio in years, but it’s still far from being perfect, reminding us that Big Finish have a long way to go if they are to match the quality of the eighth Doctor adventures that we were so spoiled by back in 2002.
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Copyright © E.G. Wolverson 2006
E.G. Wolverson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. |
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