Would have posted about this yesterday - but I only bought it today.
DWM has had a very slight redesign.
I don't like it.
We were promised a bumper issue, with more pages, but it seems these are mostly taken up with adverts.
Despite the imminent broadcast of a new series, there is an awful lot of the usual free publicity which DWM offers Big Finish. Once upon a time you were legally obliged to print "Advertising Feature" at the top of these.
Because of the nature of Series 9, the new series previews consist of only two stories. Naturally, the accompanying pieces aren't able to tell us anything remotely useful.
I got the distinct impression that some of the content is some stuff they have had hanging around for a while and just didn't know quite where to put it. Had the magazine been better thought out we might have got the whole of The War Games in The Fact of Fiction slot, instead of just the first six episodes.
Even the free poster has prompted an annoyance. One side is obviously the "Complete History" artwork for the first two episodes of Series 9, but the reverse has Gridlock and The Daemons side by side as a poster. I would like one on my wall, but not the other. Do I have to cut it in two?
Yet again, the reviews are pointless. Apparently every single Big Finish release must be bought. If you want proper reviews of BF audios, read SFX or Starburst, where the critic actually states their mind rather than what is patently a party line.
There is a review of the pre-regeneration audio that BF have produced to give the seemingly eternally irritable Colin Baker a final fling. Except they are going to keep on producing more 6th Doctor stories from earlier time-lines.
Colin - your finale should be just that...
One sentence says it is a fitting ending - "Dear reader, it is." The next lists a catalogue of what is wrong with the ending to this audio. But the bottom line is always "you really must buy it anyway".
If you delve back into the archives of this blog, you will find the day when I celebrated the occasion that a BF audio actually got a bad review (it was one of the "Gallifrey" series). But the reviewer recommended, of course, that you buy it anyway...
One of the articles relating to BF is that they have got some bloke who no-one has ever heard of to mimic Jon Pertwee, and an equally obscure actor to do Ben Jackson. (Am assuming they're both someone Nick Briggs did Doncaster or Hartlepool Rep with).
Sorry, but the Third Doctor was Jon Pertwee and no one else is acceptable. Same goes for Hartnell as First Doctor, and Troughton as Second.
(BF were behind the recreation of the missing episode of Planet of Giants on the DVD release - when they used a sound-alike for Hartnell. Sounded nothing like him at all).
The big thing about BF was that it was original cast members recreating their roles. You start getting sound-alikes in and you diminish that original intention - unless, of course your own original intention is just to milk the franchise for as much dosh as you can get before the BBC finally give the licence to someone else.
Do I regard BF as canon? Of course I don't! The one thing that determines me on this is that they not only had a load of Davison / Peri stories, but they shoehorned a whole new extra companion in as well. The whole dramatic point of the Fifth Doctor's "death" is that he is saving someone who he hardly knows. It's one of the things that makes this story brilliant. For someone to come along after and shoehorn some fanw**kery between Planet of Fire and Caves is just a downright insult in my opinion.
My disregard for BF is based on actually listening to the things, by the way. God forbid I would actually pay good money for them, but I have heard 4th, 5th, 7th and 8th Doctors on Radio 4X (or Radio 7 as it was once called).
The Tom Baker ones in particular I thought terrible. He sounded absolutely nothing like he did on TV at the time they are supposed to be set (both vocally and the language he used), the plots were woeful, and one story had Roman soldiers talking about visiting the Colosseum about 20 years before it was built. Utter rubbish.
There is a news piece that DWM are holding their own little convention in Slough next year. (Come friendly bombs...).
It'll cost you £25. Guess who has a big presence? Big Finish.
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