Times that Big Finish really made me love the audio medium

I’ve been thinking lately about how much I love Big Finish. I can thank Big Finish for really catapulting me into Old Who. Cause I listened to the One Doctor and had no clue what the hell was going on, but I knew I liked it. I knew I wanted to know who the hell these people were any why they were so fantastic. So I listened to Seasons of Fear which did nothing to relieve my confusion. It did inspire me to get more dedicated in my Who viewing though. And my wiki reading.

But there are a couple of audios that made me sit up and go wow. There are audios that made me realize just how fantastic the audio medium can be. These are those audios. They may not be my favorites (although some of them are) but they all made quite good use of the fact that they only way I was interacting with the story was with my ears.

In release order:

03: Whispers of Terror

I wasn’t sure whether or not to include Whispers of Terror or not. It’s a pretty forgettable story. Overall it’s not that great. What it did though was have the enemy be sound. The Doctor (Six) and Peri end up in the Museum of Aural Antiquities. A museum of sound. The enemy is the ultimate earwig and they have to stop it. Like I said not a very good story, but a really interesting enemy. This was made all the more effective because I was listening to it.

35: …ish

…ish is once again with the Sixth Doctor and Peri. It’s a celebration of language. They arrive at a conference for lexicographers and find the Doctor’s old friend dead. While discovering the murder there is a pure joy in the use of language. The murder is a word. The Ish. They defeat it with words. Like Whispers of Terror this one probably could have been done just as well on tv, a bit less well in a book, but was quite good as an audio. I’d highly recommend it to anyone looking for something to get them into the Sixth Doctor. I just find the use of language as it was in …ish to be particularly suited to the audio medium.

39: Bang-bang-a-boom!

Bang-bang-a-boom! gets included because it a) takes place on Deep Space 8 (yes that is a bit of a parody of both Babylon 5 and Deep Space 9) which is hosting the Intergalactic Song Contest. As a result parts of the story are told via the announcer for the contest during his segments and other parts are told with personal log entries from the Chief Medical Officer. Both of which are purely audio mediums as the announcer is doing his job via radio. Which is just a cleaver use of the audio medium to convey a story. Also it is damn funny and has the Seventh Doctor and Mel being awesome.

52: Scherzo

Sherzo has the Eighth Doctor and Charley in almost complete sensory deprivation. The only sense they have available to them through most of the audio is their hearing. Big Finish did a fantastic job of conveying that through the story. This is the first audio that Big Finish did that just would not work as a tv episode. It just wouldn’t. Book form could work, but do to the nature of the story it would never work on tv. They have no sight and part of the brilliance of the audio is that you can go along with them on that part of the journey.

54: The Natural History of Fear

The Natural History of Fear is pure audio joy. The most I will say about this (to avoid spoiling it) is that it simply would not work in any other medium. Not one bit. So go buy it. Find a download because for some reason Big Finish isn’t offering a download. Just listen to it.

74: Live 34

Live 34 is the Seventh Doctor, Ace, and Hex. It’s the next step up from Bang-bang-a-boom! in that the story is told entirely from a radio show, Live 34. Everything that happens is being broadcast from the show. The entire story is told there. It’s brilliant and fantastic and one of the best uses of the audio medium. It’s the story of a revolution as it’s happening from the perspective of a radio announcer. Brilliance.

94.5: Urgent Calls

Urgent Calls is one part story that comes with ID. It’s the Sixth Doctor making a series of phone calls. It’s way better then the premise sounds. Honest. But it’s a story told through a series of phone calls and how awesome is that? It’s pretty awesome.

And those are the Big Finish stories that I think made the best use of the audio medium. They range from clever use of enemies to pure perfection on the use of the audio medium. I just thought I’d share. Please feel free to share your favorite uses of the audio medium.

Oh and I kept this with the main Doctor Who line, but if you wanna discuss something else feel free.

Scherzo and why I love it, in 1673 words.

I’ve been saying for ages that I was going to sit down and write all the reasons I love Scherzo. It’s on my top ten list of Doctor Who stories. I adore this story. I would like to preface this with several things:

1. I’m a bit batshit about Charley. I know and acknowledge this so hopefully I don’t let the crazy out too bad.

2. Well I like Charley/Eight I’m not batshit about it. If given the choice between two stories, one Eight/Charley and one something else I really like (Peri/Erimem, Six/Evelyn, Ace/Hex, etc) based only on the pairing and told I could only read one I would probably choose the other one.

3. If given the choice between a Charley story and someone else I would choose the Charley story.

4. I think Scherzo is the third part of a trilogy started with Neverland and then going to Zagreus.

I think these are important things to consider before discussing Scherzo.

I think the first thing to mention when talking about Scherzo is the fact that Charley stowed away on the TARDIS to go with Eight. He didn’t want her to go with him into the Divergent Universe, something he had to do. He wanted Charley to stay safe in our universe and had asked Romana to look after her. Now the question is why did she stow away?

I think there are several factors involved. The most obvious being that Neverland and Zegreus had both Charley and Eight telling each other that they loved the other. And in the romantic in-love sense not the friendship sense. So we have that. Scherzo is in one sense the cumulation of the Eight/Charley relationship. They do just about everything you can ask for in a relationship in this audio and after Scherzo they go into a weird just friends place. I think this is because the Big Finish writers wrote themselves into a corner here and couldn’t find a way out so they just pretended that it hadn’t happened. Which makes for some weird dynamic later, but for the purpose of Scherzo there is a brilliance in the Eight/Charley relationship.

The next thing to consider about Charley choosing to go with Eight is that she has no one else in the universe. Literally. By the end of Neverland Charley understands, as much as anyone who’s not a Time Lord can, the importance of the Web of Time as well as how fragile it is. This means that she knows she can never go back to her time. She can never see her family again. Not without putting the Web of Time in danger and Charley knows that she can’t do that. She had a very eloquent and passionate speech about just that in Neverland.

Charley is an adventurer. Unlike a lot of people that the Doctor picks up Charley was already on the search for adventure when she runs across the Doctor. She’s on a journey as Charlotte Pollard, Edwardian Adventuress. She loves the danger and the excitement and the discovery of new things. If she could have lived without meeting the Doctor and had done so she would have been traveling Earth in search of adventure. It’s what she was wanted to do.

At the end of Zagreus Charley is sitting with Leela discussing going with the Doctor to the Divergent Universe and she tells Leela, “The choosing is easy. It’s the leaving that’s hard.” I think this means that choosing to leave was easy, she loves him and he needs someone at that point in time. The leaving is hard because it’s leaving behind everything she knows. But she’s already done that, she can never go home again. And going to another universe is about the biggest adventure you can have. So Charley leaves.

Now the beginning of Scherzo. They have entered the Div!Universe and the Doctor is still unaware that Charley is there. He has gone a bit insane at this point. He never quite regains his sanity throughout the Div!arch, but it’s at it’s most pronounced here. He’s ready to give up and die and it’s Charley who saves him. She’s the one that drags him out of the TARDIS before they can die and they enter into their first world of a new universe. And then Eight does one of the best things ever.

He yells at Charley. He screams at her. For a period of time he refuses to believe that she’s really Charley (see: insanity). Because Charley wouldn’t have betrayed him like that. Everything he did in Neverland and Zagreus was to keep Charley safe and she wouldn’t have betrayed him like that. He is pissed at her. And they have a huge fight over it. Charley argues that she had the right to choose to come with him, she loves him and he loves her and he needed her. And she’s young and still a bit naive so those are good enough reasons to her. Eight is still vastly annoyed with her and he stays annoyed with her until the end of Scherzo. I love that there was this consequence for her actions. She wasn’t patted on the head and greated with a smile. She was yelled at and forced to justify her actions. I love it.

Then there is the setting. A featureless (as far as we can tell) landscape with a light so bright it blinds them. So throughout this they are forced to hold hands with each other to keep from getting lost. It’s almost complete sensory deprivation. All they have is sound. Accept for those occasions where the light dims and feeling returns and they get to eat. So they walk along this landscape (later revealed to be a circular tube in a laboratory) holding hands and eventually sussing out their relationship. Such as it is.

There is also a noise creature in this strange new world. It’s important later.

Eventually Eight accepts Charley’s reasons for coming with him, he’s not happy about them but he accepts them. They spend a lot of time in this place. They don’t know how long as they lose all track of time. At one point in time Charley becomes complacent in this new life they have. She talks about how it’s not so bad. It could be worse and really all things considered it’s not bad. Eight then has a lovely little piece of dialog about how she can never forget that they are in a prison. Her mind is tricking her into thinking the way she is and she should never not be angry that they are stuck there. Later Eight has a moment of false hope, thinking he’s found a way out, and it’s Charley that pulls him back and makes him face reality. It’s brilliant. They save each other. Neither one could have survived without the other one there. And I love that. I really do.

Now back to Mister Sound Creature. He is in a weird way their child. He came into existence because of them and they fed him and kinda cared for him in a weird way. Only now he needs to kill them in order to live. So in order to fight Mister Sound Creature Eight and Charley merge into one person. Literally. It’s kinda creepy, but it works. Now MSC has to convince Charley and the Doctor to agree to die for him. Charley says no. Eight says yes. There is convulted troll logic used here.

So what does Charley do? She bursts in and tells Eight that because he can’t say no she’s going to do it for him. So she saves him once again. So the finale battle to fight their weird child thing is won because of Charley. I like any story where the Companion saves the Doctor and the day. One where the Companion does so while merged together with him to destroy their weird child thing? Wins.

And then we have the Doctor asking Charley to stay merged with him. To stay locked together forever. And Charley again says no. She’s the one that tells him they can’t do that. She’s the one that backs away. Again win.

So by the end of Scherzo we have what could be seen as an entire relationship between Charley and Eight. They make up, again admit to loving each other, have a child and then break up. I love that aspect of this story. As I said the writers had backed themselves into a corner with the Eight/Charley story. They didn’t want to(couldn’t?) go forward and they’d gone too far to go back. So the writers essentially did what could be seen as a relationship in all it’s forms in one story. So as far as the Eight/Charley arc goes it was the best conclusion we were ever going to see for it.

Then we have Charley saving Eight. I love that. I love that she saves him as much as he saves her.

Eight being bloody well pissed at Charley for sneaking aboard the TARDIS. Yay for consequences!

Charley being Charley and following her heart and her sense of adventure.

Really there is nothing about Scherzo that I don’t like. Hopefully I conveyed that well in this little essay.