"Big Finish" Dr Who Radio Shows

[garote]

In the 90's, science fiction got hijacked by action-adventure films, and people searching for a good compelling story had to abandon the theatre and go back to the literary world. (Sure there were exceptions, but not very many.) Turns out we didn't have to retreat all the way, because good science fiction plotting survived in radio-show form. I've only listened to a handful of these shows so far, but check out these scenarios:

• The Doctor arrives in a mansion where each room has a different time-span looping inside it. In three of the rooms, murders have taken place. A young scullery maid is murdered in the basement, a maid is murdered in the living room, and a cook is murdered in the kitchen. The Doctor can gather clues by conversing with whoever happens to be in each room, but at midnight all the rooms reset, and the time-spans loop again. Before he can figure out who the murderer is, he realizes something even weirder: The three murdered women are actually the same woman, being murdered at different points in her life.
• A stranger shows up, claiming to be a long-time rival of the Doctor. The Doctor has no idea who he is. The stranger harasses and taunts him, declaring that he has murdered the Doctor at a later date, but killed him so quickly that he didn't have time to gloat over his victory ... so he's journeyed back in time to taunt the Doctor about it now. He vanishes, in the Doctor's own Tardis, leaving the Doctor to his "fate". The Doctor locates the vehicle the stranger arrived in, and it's the same Tardis, but from a later date. Things get really nutty from there, and a chase backwards in time ensues.
• The Doctor arrives at a university to visit an old friend, but finds her dead in her study, in an apparent locked-room murder scenario. As he commiserates with her friends, something strange begins happening to the people in the university: They all start speaking in nonsense, eventually degenerating to one monotonous syllable. With loss of language comes loss of thought process, and they start wandering around like zombies. While chaos erupts, the Doctor examines the project his deceased friend was working on: A thinking supercomputer in the shape of a book, designed to categorize and define all known words in all known languages. The book appears to be plagued the same way the students are, but is able to resist. By conversing with the book, and exploring the university (while driving off zombies) the Doctor uncovers the source of the strange condition ...

I tell you: with stuff like this, who needs television? Capacious hard-drive music players have taken this stuff to a new level. Go for a walk on the beach or weed the garden, and get your sci-fi fix at the same time! Awww yeah!

Comments

[ex-clevergir259.livejournal.com]

Sounds intriguing! Do you have a link to them?

[garote]

( looks around shifty-eyed )

Me? Redistribute newsgroups copyrighted material? Why, I have no idea what you're alt.binaries.dr-who talking about!

[rudetuesday.livejournal.com]

YES! YES!

Dr. Who works very well as audio theatre. You've probably heard them, but the radio production of the Star Wars Series (the first ones) with Brock Peters as Darth Vader is amazing, if not.

[garote]

Brock Peters, aye? hrmmm! (does some rummaging)

[maggiedacatt.livejournal.com]

Fascinating and creepy! Reminds me of the old Twilight Zone.

[garote]

Now that you mention it, the two have very strong similarities ... though the recurring character of the Doctor does tend to narrow the plot possibilities somewhat.

[maggiedacatt.livejournal.com]

Twilight Zone meets Columbo.

[garote]

ROFL