Monday, June 28, 2021

A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 0.6.1 The Sleeping Blood (The Sleeping Blood Part One, The Companion Chronicles: The First Doctor Volume One, Big Finish, 2015)

...and here we are all the way back to the time before 'The Unearthly Child'--before the Doctor and Susan ended up on Totters Lane, even!--in a dramatized reading from the first Hartnell-themed Companion Chronicles adventure.

When an injury the Doctor received from an alien plant becomes seriously infected, Susan has to venture forth in search of medicine.  She finds herself in what seems to be an abandoned hospital on a colony world that uses nanotechnology to monitor wellness.  Unfortunately, that reliance on nanotech has left the populace open to terrorist acts from a mysterious hacker, as evidenced by the soldier she comes across that is simply...shut down.

The story, by Martin Day, of 'The Sleeping Blood' is at turns compelling and sound.  It surprises me that the various writers working with Big Finish haven't exploited the time before 'The Unearthly Child' more. However, I found this first part lacking.  Day spends so much time in expository mode where he explains the technology, the culture and the world--he even takes a few lines to explain how this planet was named--that the plot doesn't seem to start until the last few minutes of the episode.  And because it takes so long for the story to get underway, I get no sense of the stakes or the characters--when one is killed by the hacker shutting down the nanotech in her body, I felt nothing.  There had to be a better way to either better disseminate the backstory or put everything in one place.

I'm not sure where this story is going, but the feeling I got was that this segment of the play spent a little under a half an hour to get to the point where the story actually begins.  In these two parters, I should feel in the middle of the second act by the time I get to the cliffhanger...but I feel like we're in the earliest part of the first act.  I'm still interested in what develops...I just worry I am about to be disappointed by this serial overall.

Wednesday, June 16, 2021

A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 62. The Centre (The Web Planet Conclusion)

In wrapping up this too-long serial, we finally get to meet the Animus, and it's...a spaghetti-monster perched over a high-intensity flashlight.

Much like the Optera, the Animus' obvious artifice--you can see the dome that gives the mass of felt ribbons its shape--takes away from the story, and no amount of bright lights flashing in our cast's faces can hide how shabby our ultimate villain looks.  Even with the amount of time focusing on getting Ian to the Animus to put paid to its machinations and Hartnell and O'Brien squirming about as if 'possessed,' I can't take this seriously as a Big Bad.  Thankfully, this thingie is put out of business pretty quickly....

...or it would be a thankful thing if we didn't get such an extended 'saying goodbye' sequence where it seems more attention is spent on the various alien races than on our heroes.  Look, I understand the design staff worked hard on coming up with all these costumes meant to represent non-humanoid lifeforms and they want us to appreciate all that work, but the impact is decidedly lessened due to the length of our exposure to it.

This serial as a whole should have been shorter, and there are scenes that could've been cut whole to aid with its plodding pace.  Spending extra time watching the Optera frolicking under the smeary moon does not help any.  I wonder if there is an alternate universe where this serial, rather than the next one (The Crusade), that's missing literally half its episodes.

I respect what was intended.  I just am glad it's finally over.


THE REVENGE OF MARTIN: BLAZING BATTLE TALES

Atlas Seaboard comics lasted less than a year. No comic published under the suspiciously familiar red band trade dress of the company last m...