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neadodsBig Finish #28 - Doctor Who: Invaders From Mars is a fantastic stand-alone Eighth Doctor adventure. If you are trying to make up your mind if you want to listen to the Big Finish audios, or if you want a taste of Paul McGann without investing in my oft-recommended Storm Front/Neverland/Zagreus trilogy, this is the one to get.
Written by Mark Gatiss, who also wrote Big Finish's Phantasmagoria before moving on to writing the New Who episodes "Unquiet Dead" and "Idiot's Lantern," Invaders from Mars is a delightfully twisted romp. The Doctor has promised Charley a stop in Sinagpore in the early 30s; his usual piloting skills have landed him in New York City on October 31, 1938. They soon stumble over the body of a private investigator, and when mistaken for the dead man, the Doctor can't resist playing out his Dashiell Hammett fantasies. This promptly dumps him in a mess of a missing nuclear scientist, Nazi spies, New York mobsters who've kidnapped Charley, a dangerous dame named Glory Bee, and aliens from outer space.
Because even while Orson Wells panics the country with the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast, something really has landed and a lot closer than Grovers Corners...
The "American" accents are as bad as I've learned to expect from Big Finish, but they aren't that painful this time around because most of them are speaking the broken Brooklyn of the Hollywood gangster; it's possible to simply pretend that you're listening to a production of Guys and Dolls, since we don't sound like that either. (I did wonder for the entire first episode why a mob enforcer was allowing people to call him "Alice," though, until an Englishman cleared it up by calling him Mr. Ellis. We do distinguish between the two. Even in Brooklyn.) And there's one guy who has the sounds right, if you don't mind his accent changing states in the middle of the occasional sentence. (This was disconcerting but it didn't throw me too badly, at least once he got back out of Connecticut.)
However, the wordplay is so delicious that you'll be too busy laughing to sneer. I won't spoil all the jokes, but there are three Doctor quotes that really sum up the tone: "People are killed for a reason even in New York," the Doctor earnestly reassures Charley. Later he explains his grooming routine to Glory Bee: "Every now and then I treat myself to a complete makeover." And finally (and points to Paul McGann for rattling this off at speed) there's the utterly Doctorish, "You know what young carniverous mammalian monsters are like! Always getting into scrapes!"
This was a hoot and a half from beginning to end, and I highly recommend it to McGann fans and audio fans.
Written by Mark Gatiss, who also wrote Big Finish's Phantasmagoria before moving on to writing the New Who episodes "Unquiet Dead" and "Idiot's Lantern," Invaders from Mars is a delightfully twisted romp. The Doctor has promised Charley a stop in Sinagpore in the early 30s; his usual piloting skills have landed him in New York City on October 31, 1938. They soon stumble over the body of a private investigator, and when mistaken for the dead man, the Doctor can't resist playing out his Dashiell Hammett fantasies. This promptly dumps him in a mess of a missing nuclear scientist, Nazi spies, New York mobsters who've kidnapped Charley, a dangerous dame named Glory Bee, and aliens from outer space.
Because even while Orson Wells panics the country with the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast, something really has landed and a lot closer than Grovers Corners...
The "American" accents are as bad as I've learned to expect from Big Finish, but they aren't that painful this time around because most of them are speaking the broken Brooklyn of the Hollywood gangster; it's possible to simply pretend that you're listening to a production of Guys and Dolls, since we don't sound like that either. (I did wonder for the entire first episode why a mob enforcer was allowing people to call him "Alice," though, until an Englishman cleared it up by calling him Mr. Ellis. We do distinguish between the two. Even in Brooklyn.) And there's one guy who has the sounds right, if you don't mind his accent changing states in the middle of the occasional sentence. (This was disconcerting but it didn't throw me too badly, at least once he got back out of Connecticut.)
However, the wordplay is so delicious that you'll be too busy laughing to sneer. I won't spoil all the jokes, but there are three Doctor quotes that really sum up the tone: "People are killed for a reason even in New York," the Doctor earnestly reassures Charley. Later he explains his grooming routine to Glory Bee: "Every now and then I treat myself to a complete makeover." And finally (and points to Paul McGann for rattling this off at speed) there's the utterly Doctorish, "You know what young carniverous mammalian monsters are like! Always getting into scrapes!"
This was a hoot and a half from beginning to end, and I highly recommend it to McGann fans and audio fans.
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Date: 2006-06-25 12:39 am (UTC)No other comments because I skimmed the post to remain unspoiled.
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Date: 2006-06-25 01:53 am (UTC)