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The Mists of
Time
JULY 2009
(3 EPISODES)
As an exclusive downloadable freebie, The
Mists of Time
is a first for both Big Finish Productions and Doctor Who Magazine.
All readers of DWM have to do to access this full-length
Companion Chronicle is to input the code found in their August 2009
issue and hey presto – they can download three free episodes in mp3
format. And as DWM freebies go, The Mists of Time is
certainly a munificent offering. Clocking in at just over eighty minutes
(once you’ve excised the superfluous trailers and adverts, that is), it
outstretches even last year’s hour-long Cuddlesome.
Jonathan Morris’ story is a fairly typical Companion Chronicle, for
the most part. Katy Manning’s Jo Grant is the companion narrating the tale
and, as is the custom for the range, we also have a guest star (Andrew
Whipp) to lend the proceedings a little bit of aural diversity and to
cloak what is essentially a talking book as audio drama.
Now
although at the time of writing I’ve only listened to the first two
seasons of The Companion Chronicles, already I’ve discovered that
these stories live and die by the quality of the narration, and thankfully
Manning (now as familiar to many Big Finish listeners as Iris Wildthyme as
she is as Jo Grant) has the necessary range to make her reading of the
story’s various characters engaging enough to hold the listener’s interest
throughout. Even her throaty Jon Pertwee impression is memorable, though
he does sound like he’s had a dose of helium.
At times, however, Morris seems to forget who he’s writing for, as Jo’s
narration sounds suspiciously like the writer’s own luscious prose – I
certainly don’t recall Jo ever using adjectives like ‘telescopic’ before
(even in the context of trying to describe the legs of a gigantic
armour-plated beetle), or being gifted enough with words to be able to
conjure up a vivid picture of a ruinous alien vista. Were this Liz Shaw or
Zoe Herriot narrating the tale, then perhaps I could forgive the writer’s
indulgence… but dizzy Jo?
Nonetheless, this release is really set apart from those that I’ve heard
to date as Whipp’s character, Calder, is allowed to take over the
narration from Jo in certain places; filling in the blanks for her, as it
were. This allows Morris to split the narrative in the traditional
Doctor Who sense, with Jo’s thread of the plot taking one route and
the Doctor’s and Calder’s another, lending the whole story a much more
dynamic and less manufactured feel than most Companion Chronicles.
For me though, the start of the story borders on the prosaic – it’s almost
as if Big Finish wanted to clearly show off the nuts and bolts of their
Companion Chronicles format (“Tell it as though you were telling me a
story, and I was one of the characters...”) at the expense of the drama.
As a result, when compared to some of the inspired framing devices used in
other Companion Chronicles, The Mists of Time initially
comes across as being unimaginative. This feeling is only exacerbated by a
workmanlike first episode, which begins with the Doctor and Jo ghost
hunting (again!) on the planet Zyton 8 and ends with Jo hanging from a
cliff face (“meta-textual”, as Rob Shearman might say).
As the story progresses, however, The Mists of Time improves
massively, Morris even taking the time to expand upon the ancient Time
Lords’ already-rich mythology. Here we learn that the ‘former’ inhabitants
of Zyton 8, a race called the Memosians, were erased from the timeline by
the Time Lords in the last of their ancient Time Wars, and it was the Time
Lords’ collective guilt over this atrocity that set them on their path of
non-interference. Furthermore, the final twist in the tale is very
satisfying indeed – not entirely unexpected, I have to say, but very
satisfying nonetheless - and Manning plays it so very well. A truly
sobering end.
And
so on balance, if The Mists of Time was intended to whet my
appetite for or rekindle my interest in The Companion Chronicles
range, then it succeeded commendably. Despite the contrivances and
limitations of the format, these stories have one overriding advantage
that is best summarised by Big Finish’s own marketing maxim: Classic
Doctors, brand new adventures. The death of BBC Books’ past Doctor
Adventures, coupled with the recent loss of Big Finish’s own Short
Trips range, means that fans are now hungrier than ever for stories
featuring the non-Big Finish Doctors - well the first three anyway, now
that BBC Audio have snaffled the fourth! - and, though twelve releases per
year is over-egging the pudding in my view (or, at least, my wallet’s
view), The Companion Chronicles are the only current means
of sating this hunger.
As an advertisement for Big Finish’s download service, however, The
Mists of Time leaves a lot to be desired. When you purchase a download
through the Big Finish website, you are instantly able to download a zip
file containing the story purchased. This zip file contains the story and
any extras in mp3 format, helpfully divided up into tracks (exactly as
they would appear on the CD release, usually) and complete with tags and
even an embedded image of the corresponding CD’s cover illustration.
The Mists of Time, however, is just one long mp3 file completely
devoid of any such accoutrements. If I hadn’t used the Big Finish download
service before, then I’d have assumed that The Mists of Time
download was par for the course, which of course it most certainly is not.
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