The “Wicked!” boxset’s second and third story sadly aren’t much better than the first one, which given the interesting premise of the boxset is a bit of a downer. Each story looks at the young Ace from a different perspective, which is a good thing to do with the box’s premise, but they don’t offer any interesting plot on top of it which makes them just dull stories that happen to feature a young Ace in them. Oh well, let’s take a look!
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“Backwards and in Heels” is the first story in the “Wicked!” boxset that takes place directly after Ace’s debut TV story “Dragonfire”, which is weird that it’s taken this long to get around to it when you think how long they’ve been doing Seventh Doctor audios… Anyway, the story being the first in the set means this is Ace’s first ever adventure and for that we get a very odd and not particularly exciting story. Let’s take a look…
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I kind of feel odd repeating the sentence “another return to the Lost Stories range” at this point, it seems it’s just constantly back just with a very reduced schedule. At least this time we have an actual legitimately “lost story” as this was pitched for Season 26 and at least partially written for Season 27, even cited to be Sylvester McCoy’s regeneration story (though that obviously doesn’t happen here…) Why it wasn’t included in the “Season 27” set of Lost Stories ages ago I don’t know, but is it any better than those mostly poor stories? Well…
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The not-particularly-good run of Seventh Doctor-Naomi-Harry stories come to their conclusion with “Past Forward”, a rather odd set in that it’s two stories but one story takes place in the middle of another one but impacts the second half of the first story greatly. Keeping up? Good! So really its one long story which is why I’ve not split the set up. John Dorney’s “With the Angels” is a cracker too, the one that makes up the first and third of the set, with the exception of one too many fourth-wall-breaking references to a popular YouTube show during its second half. Anyway, let’s take a look at how Naomi and Harry leave, and how a new companion starts…
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The latest Classic Doctors, New Monsters set has once again created a two-parter but split the parts across two different eras of the Doctor, in this case the Second and Seventh, so in order to cover the story as a whole I’m linking them together with the Seventh Doctor template, but Part 1 is still all Troughton, so to speak. The Krillitane are an interesting concept in that that keep adapting themselves all the time, stealing things from other species in packs, so no Krillitane grouping is ever the same, visually or power-set-wise, so it’s nice to see them appear here (even if the visual on the cover has them looking exactly the same as their TV appearance, but I can forgive that as it’s kind of the point of the set…) Let’s take a look!
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“The Doctor and Carnacki” is a three-story anthology release featuring the Seventh Doctor meeting Thomas Carnacki at three points in his life, an interesting concept… if you’re familiar with Carnacki. Sadly I wasn’t, and in looking him up I was surprised to find that he is actually a fictional character from the early 1900s but unlike say, Sherlock Holmes who is fictional within the Who-niverse Carnacki here is just a regular character. I mean, whatever, makes no difference to me (literally!) but it was an interesting choice. Sadly though my complete lack of knowledge or enthusiasm for Carnacki kind of cuts the whole possible excitement of this boxset in half and so I just get a trio of Seventh Doctor stories with no catch, but did I get a GOOD trio of Seventh Doctor stories? Well…
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Another Doctor Who blu-ray set dropped, so it’s time for another review! Season 25-wise the story that I haven’t watched in the longest time was The Happiness Patrol, a weird bit of political commentary that’s caught between the super-child-friendly Season 24 mood and the more-serious (for Doctor Who) storytelling of Season 26. It… doesn’t entirely work, but there are some really good scenes in it though, especially the ending, so let’s take a look!
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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?
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We cap off the Classic Doctors, New Monsters: Broken Memories boxset with this two-parter that oddly starts with the Eighth Doctor and then concludes with the Seventh, but then when they key monster’s power is to remove themselves from people’s memories whenever they look away it’s not hard to grasp how they’d use the idea! Sadly the story suffers from some extremely cartoony voices that rob a lot of scenes of any drama, but at least they use the “Silents” really well, even including some of the convoluted lore to boot. Let’s take a look!
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While only half done I think “The Last Day” might be a classic case of “careful what you wish for” because I complained that the Sixth Doctor’s audio-exclusive final adventure before his regeneration was rather flat and uneventful but here the Seventh Doctor’s audio-exclusive final adventure is so over-stuffed with characters, continuity and episodes that it’s so far pretty poor, I have to say. I mean I know I’m technically judging half a story but boy if this half is the set up I don’t have a lot of faith in the second half having a good pay-off given just how many characters and storyline strings are going on… Let’s take a look anyway!
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Hogan Reviews 