Hogan Reviews

At the end of my review for Part One I said “I guess and we’ll see if any of this actually pays off in a meaningful way or not…” and now I’ve listened to Part Two, guess what? Not! Yes, somehow Part Two is just as much of a muddled mess as the first half despite what I thought would be getting the Doctor-lite set up episodes out the way leading to a bigger role for the man whose last adventure it actually was turned out to not be the case, instead we just got another six episodes of loads of companions and old foes, a lot which nobody remembers all, running around with little direction until a final episode that tries to tie it all together but fails, instead giving us a pretty nasty and crappy way to send off the Seventh Doctor, possibly even worse that his undignified end from the TV movie… Yikes. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Where to even start with this thing? I guess with what they started with, which isn’t a continuation of the cliffhanger from the end of Part One, instead we’re back with Mel (Bonnie Langford) and the Quantum Possibility Engine, which soon starts talking with the voice of the Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) I guess because he really wouldn’t feature much in this release otherwise. In order to power it she must create paradoxes, which it feeds on, so it sends her back in time where she not only stops Benny (Lisa Bowerman) from dying but accidentally kills her past self, making her current self existing a major paradox, thus powering up the machine. The planet then starts falling apart but they’re rescued by Chris (Travis Oliver) and Roz (Yasmin Bannerman) who are in on the good Ace’s plan. Then we get to the bad Ace (all Aces obviously played by Sophie Aldred) trying to convince Cassie (NAME) to pick one of her mother Sally (Amy Pemberton) or father Hex (Philip Olivier) to kill, but it all comes to naught and soon the evil Ace gets a mindful of pain thanks to her anti-memory… thingy breaking down.

Meanwhile the good Ace, along with her band of misfits comprised of Kane (Edward Peel), Mother Finsey (Richenda Carey) and Garundel (Stuart Miligan) are “trapped” in the Dark Universe after the events of the previous half but this was actually the plan all along as the group soon encounters that Universe’s version of the Doctor (who happens to also be in his Seventh body), someone key in Ace’s plans. They also meet a Dark Citizen (Lin Sagovsky) and Ace reveals that they’re actually all Time Lords that in this universe gained ultimate power and thus corrupted the entire universe due to changing things with no rules to stop them. Garundel is killed here, so thank goodness for that as his comical hook stopped being funny before it started, and Ace, The Mother and Kane all escape back to the regular Universe with the Dark Universe’s Doctor thanks to The Master (Geoffrey Beevers), whose betrayal of them and joining The Doctor (the normal universe one) was just a roose for this very moment. I will say that around this point The Master and The Doctor sat at a table waxed lyrical about the nature of evil and their history together and it was great, the true… one highlight of the entire twelve parts…

Chris, Roz, Mel and Benny make it to Earth along with the QPE and save Sally from the Sontarans (voiced by Dan Starkey), one of which is a Sontaran from “Operation Starlight”, a forgotten story that was part of the horrible Will Arrowsmith Klein stories… talk about pointless continuity! Anyway, some of them make it to where Ace, Hex and Cassie are and Evil Ace ends up mortally wounded, but to everyone’s surprise she begins to regenerate, as this alternate Ace actually attended the Time Lord academy and graduated, getting a set of regenerations as a reward…

I don’t know what else to say at this point, just like the first six episodes, these six are just a muddled mess of really weak or comically uninteresting continuity links and inane chatter leading to a unsatisfying finale. How this didn’t get pulled up on its excess and for being a fine example of bad fan fiction I’ll never know.

The Continuity:

The fact they can’t use the actual TV Movie Seventh Doctor images any more hurts this cover more than all the random people splattered all over it. That’s at least out of Big Finish’s hands, to be fair…

Ignoring “The Last Day – Part One” for obvious reasons, it’s the same ones as that story because it’s the same story! So TV story “Dragonfire”, audio stories “The Quantum Possibility Engine” and “Dark Universe” plus familiarity with the whole amazing Ace/Hex run, plus some other stories for the lesser villains like “Black and White” for Gurandal and Third Doctor audio “The Transcendence of Ephros” for Mother Finsey. For this half you can also throw in Chris and Roz “New Adventures” continuity, including lots of references to Roz’s final story “So Vile a Sin”, which hasn’t been adapted into Audio yet, so that’ll confuse some listeners, and of course that forgotten “classic” “Starlight Robbery” if you really want continuity for a specific Sontaran…

Overall Thoughts:

“The Last Day – Part Two” is pretty bad. It’s five more episodes of running around with little direction and with too many characters that leads to a dud final episode with a really downbeat and crappy finale. Some of the performances were fine, Lisa Bowerman as Benny and Philip Olivier as  Hex were great as usual, for example, but it doesn’t save this mess. I gave Part One a 2 in hopes the second half would save it, but I’m sorry I’ve going to have to give this, and therefore the whole 12 part story, a rare 1. It’s just bad from every angle. What a shame…

Evil Ace runs for it mid-regeneration and ends up regenerating into a copy of Cassie’s body, for some reason, only to make it to the roof where Mel and Benny are waiting with the Quantum Possibility Engine, which then feeds off of the paradox of evil Ace and erases her from existence. I should say by this point the confused and mentally muddled Dark Universe Doctor has somehow slowly gained all of “our” Doctor’s memories and is now essentially a slightly less corrupt version of the Seventh Doctor. There also lots of chatter about no matter what timeline the good Ace tried to create Roz always ended up dead in it, like her final book. This leads to Roz sacrificing herself to save the universe, so… hooray. I mean, it restores the old timeline so she goes back to dying on a battlefield for little reason instead, but whatever.

Mother Finsey gets her revenge by sending the Master, who got himself a new body (to justify the Gordon Tipple stand-in for the opening scene of the TV Movie) to Skaro to set up his execution to satisfy the apparent ceasefire between the Time Lords and the Daleks, and soon the remaining characters arrive to square off with the apparent evil Doctor. He claims not to be evil of course, just that he had to make a deal with the Dark Citizens to stop the Eleven from controlling them, and he used them here and there at first, then slowly but surely absolute power corrupted him absolutely, but he sees it as doing good still. It’s an interesting concept for a “What If?” version of The Doctor, but given this is supposed to be the actual canon Doctor it’s a bit… much. The Dark Universe Doctor marches the Dark Citizens back to their universe thanks to having the memories of his evil counterpart meaning they followed his orders and Kane uses his freezing powers to freeze the mirror that connects the worlds shut. The timeline reverts but Ace and the Doctor remain aware still, leaving Ace to give The Doctor a rollocking for going all evil and being so manipulative to her all the time and the Doctor shrugs it off, doesn’t think he’s done anything bad as Ace ushers him into the TARDIS, somehow knowing that the call to collect The Master’s ashes he’s about to receive will lead to his death, which she is happy about… Wow.

So a few things. Firstly this means the good Ace is supposed to be the older Ace from Dark Universe (the audio story) but once again Sophie Aldred has been doing her young Ace voice, so hooray for more confusing Ace stuff. Mainly though this means our Doctor once ruled the universe with an iron fist and watched as millions died or became enslaved and was okay with it if it meant more people were happy, or that the ends justified the means. I just don’t see it, it’s an immature and base understanding of the Seventh Doctor’s darker, manipulative side without looking into it properly. He would’ve found a way to seal the Dark Citizens up himself, possibly at the cost of someone or some people, and then continued on his way, not used them to dominate the universe. Plus he caused all that suffering and what’s his punishment? He dies and regenerates into a nice guy? I mean he was going to do that one day anyway… Plus I really don’t like this idea that Ace sees the Doctor as a manipulative and abusive partner who she’s happy to see die. Kind of takes the magic out of all their adventures, thank goodness “The Power of the Doctor” kind of retconned that a bit.

*Sigh!* Sorry, rant over. It’s just I really liked the portrayal of the Seventh Doctor’s last days in other audios, basically alone and sad because his own scheming and God-challenging has left him with no companions or allies, leading into the more forwardly friendly Eighth Doctor. This just buggers that all up and turns him into a straight up villain!