Introdu
Hello and welcome to a podcast of Spurious Morality.
This week we are venturing to the Unbound universe.
We're going to have a look at Doctor Who Unbound, a range that Big Finish has kind of had on
and off for about 20 years now.
There aren't a lot of releases here.
It's spun off into other things, but we're looking at those earlier releases.
We're looking at the sort of initial run and then two follow ups that came along.
So we're going to do some in this episode and then we're going to do some in a future
episode.
By the time we're done, we will have covered all of those original Unbounds.
So we're going to look at two sort of alternative doctors today, two Unbound doctors.
One of them is Geoffrey Beldham and one of them is David Warner.
And to look at these doctors, I've got a few of these podcasters with me.
I've got Gareth.
Hello Gareth.
Hello there.
I've got Jimmy.
Hi.
And I've got Mark.
Hello.
And yeah, we've got some really good stories to get through today.
We're going to do the two Geoffrey Beldham ones first.
So we've got Old Mortality and A Storm of Angels because Jimmy's joined us just for
those.
You're a big, big fan of this doctor, aren't you?
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, I love the original Heartland Doctor, of course.
And so a different spin on him was always going to be something that was going to appeal
to me.
And it's very well cast.
He's very much the first doctor, but not our first doctor.
And I really do like how that works so incredibly well.
Yeah, and especially considering he was originally considered for the role back when the show
actually started and then considered again for the five doctors.
And I mean, I wouldn't want to lose Hartland's performance, of course, but I would have loved
to have seen him in the five doctors.
He would have been brilliant based on these audios.
I can absolutely see why he was a contender for that.
Yeah.
So before we before we dive in, I'm going to go around each one of you and ask what
your favourite Unbound story is.
This is from the that first run and kind of the two follow ups that we're also looking
at today.
So Gareth, do you want to go first?
What's your favourite Doctor Who Unbound release?
Of the four we're doing today, definitely Old Mortality, I would say.
Yeah, I mean, we'll get into it, but I've always kind of felt like it's a sort of a
sats anniversary special, like no particular anniversary.
It just really feels like a sort of celebration of Doctor Who kind of thing.
Like it's really just about the general tenets of it.
And I always come away from it, especially the last couple of minutes, just feeling quite
good about the whole show, really.
Yeah, I think it's quite special in a lot of ways.
We'll get into it.
But yeah, that's that's the one I think.
It's definitely a good one.
Jimmy, I imagine you're going to have a similar answer.
Well actually, I know a lot of people prefer of the two veiled and one's Old Mortality,
but I actually personally love A Storm of Angels.
I mean, Old Mortality is brilliant, but A Storm of Angels just just narrowly pips it
for me.
I think it does some really sort of wonderful stuff with Susan that I can see why would
push it across the line.
Yeah, I get that.
What about you, Mark?
Yeah, I'm also like Gareth, it's Old Mortality for me, not just of the four we're talking
about today, but out of all the unbounds, I think it's having shoulders above the rest.
I just think it's it's one of the best things Big Finish ever did.
Never mind the unbounds.
I think it's just one of their finest stars.
Just to piggyback off that for a sec, I definitely agree.
I tend to use this as an example of I kind of find Mark Platt a little bit hit and miss
sometimes because I find that sometimes his ideas, I can't really get on board with them.
Like sometimes he'll have he's always got loads of ideas, but sometimes I can't quite
get to the middle of them and sort of figure out what the story is.
And this for me is and not to say like, you know, Storm of Angels isn't good.
But this for me is always kind of my example in Big Finish of like, well, sometimes I find
it, you know, just perfectly works.
So yeah, just banga.
Yeah, I agree that it's certainly the best thing I've ever heard written by him.
And yeah, he just he just plays a blind over this one.
So I look forward to talking about it a bit more.
You see, I'm coming straight in with a different answer now.
Mine's always been Sympathy for the Devil.
I think it's an absolutely wonderful story and it's a little bit continuity reliant,
certainly not as continuity reliant as other Unbound releases, but that is for another
day.
But I quite like what it does with, you know, the Brigadier and the idea of the Doctor being
exiled to the wrong time and sort of plays into events of the Mind of Evil have occurred,
but without the Doctor there.
And we get an absolutely fantastic master out of it.
And I do love the David Warner Doctor.
This is his sort of origin story is absolutely wonderful.
And I really, really like the fact that it just holds such a wonderful, doomy atmosphere
all the way through.
It just feels like it's building to the disaster that it eventually does build to.
It's very well done.
But again, we'll discuss it more later.
Let's go straight to Old Mortality then, which we've already said a little bit on, but let's
expand.
You go first, Gareth.
Okay, so the What If here is probably because that's kind of an underappreciated thing of
these releases.
You can enjoy them just as stories, but they also aim to have like a What If jumping off
thing.
So for this one, it's What If the Doctor Never Left Gallifrey?
And I think it does a very interesting job of not just sort of having that as the premise,
but interrogating it in the story.
So it goes, all right, what would he do if he didn't leave Gallifrey?
And why wouldn't he?
Like what would have happened to him to kind of prevent that?
Because I think we can take it as read that it's in his nature to go, so he shouldn't
want to stay.
So yeah, he becomes this author, which I think is a kind of wonderfully sort of not immediately
obvious thing that the Doctor would do with his time.
But at the same time, because Doctor Who is such an institution of storytelling, that kind
of feels in a meta way, like perfect.
But of course, he's, you know, if he's not having adventures, he'd want to be kind of
vicariously having them.
And the story of why he hasn't left Gallifrey becomes this kind of heavy Gallifrey and law
thing, which obviously leans into Mark Platt's, perhaps less readily accessible adventure,
Lungbarrow.
But on that subject, I would say I heard this long before I read Lungbarrow, and I don't
think there's any required reading in this.
I think it's very much, it kind of takes the kind of weird, fustery atmosphere of that
particular book and just brings that to life quite well.
You don't need anything.
You know, the Doctor's got this strange robot butler called Badger.
That's an absurd enough idea to just kind of play with straight away.
You don't need to go, well, we set that up in the book.
Yeah, and Susan is on the periphery as well.
She's the president of Gallifrey now.
I think that's correct.
I've not heard this for about a month now.
But yeah, they've got this whole relationship kind of a little bit strained, and you get
to see sort of what their relationship would be if he'd not left, what would happen with
her.
So yeah, I just think it's a very interesting example of kind of sort of dropping the stone
in the pond and kind of following the ripples and going, you know, the what if, how far
can you go with it?
Yeah, it immediately sort of jumps on that idea of what if he was still on Gallifrey.
It's not the take I'd have come up with, I have to admit.
I'd have had the Doctor sort of not hiding away and being a bit of a hermit and a writer.
I'd have had him getting stuck in and being iconoclastic and basically being the Doctor
that we see when he does visit Gallifrey.
But yeah, it's a really sort of unique and wonderful, interesting take.
Jimmy, what are your thoughts on it?
Yeah, I think this story just does such a good job of everything it sets out to.
I mean, the premise of the Doctor being stuck on Gallifrey and having wanted to leave but
never got to do it and seeing this alternate spit on him is just, it's just amazing the
way he still wants to explore the universe and so he's doing it through creativity and
imagination rather than through actual travel.
And the whole time, you know, he's actually celebrated and beloved and they want him at
presentations and he's, but the badger is stopping it from happening and seeing Susan
come in and shake his life up and turn it back around is just, it's such a good dynamic
they have.
I mean, I love the original first Doctor and Susan, of course, but this different take
on it where Susan's a bit older and wiser and she's about to become the President and
meeting the grandfather who she hasn't seen in possibly centuries and they still just
hit it right off and he's instantly loving to have her back there and the joy in his
face when he hears that she's got her own grandchildren and he's a great, great grandfather.
The performance they both give is brilliant and of course for Susan, it's the first, I
think it was before the Companion Chronicles that this came out, it was her first return
to the role and she just picks up this similar but different character perfectly and Baildon
is incredible.
I mean, I know it's unbound and so he's not supposed to be the first Doctor but like,
if it's an alternate part of the first Doctor's life, then logically he hasn't regenerated
so it's the same character and whether he was intending to or not, he just, not perfectly
but he does a spectacular job of being the Hartnell style performance.
I mean, there's the characterisation differences but the performance is just so pure Hartnell
it makes me wish Big Finish had come around to or accepted the idea of recasting sooner
because I would have loved to hear him as the canon version of the first Doctor.
But yeah, it's such a brilliant story and there's lots of little coincidences listening
to it all these years later that are funny like I noticed two things that if the audio
was released today, you'd be like, oh, that's a good callback but it was actually accidental
like the way he's, one of his celebrated novels is an adventure in space and time and of course
that became the title of the drama about the creation of the show and even when he's talking
about the lines about different possibilities and so many different paths, he even gets
a line about suppose I've taken a different path, suppose I turn left this morning instead
of right and it's just like, you'd think that was heavy handed if it was coming out today
but like it was actual accidental foreshadowing and I just love it.
But yeah, also the story within a story of Hannibal's army marching on Rome and it's
such a good sort of historical thing but they switch it up and you've got Suress, the elephant
who can talk and oh, we'll try this path but then we'll redo it and take the other path
and it just, yeah, it's interesting to hear the story interact with him like he's supposed
to be a writer and it's like you often hear about people who write being like, oh, the
doctor wouldn't do it, they changed it on me and it actually happens literally in this
case and it's just such a brilliant ending to the story when Suress and Hannibal and
his army storm the Panopticon and then you get to the bit about Susan trying to get the
doctor to turn off the machine and even after all this time, he's just worried that she's
his imagination and she's not real and if he turns off the machine, she'll be gone which
is excellent foreshadowing for of course the storm of angels and so yeah, I think this
story as much as I prefer storm of angels, I absolutely love old mortality, it's pretty
much flawless, I yeah, thoroughly enjoy it.
I have to admit, you're definitely sort of selling it to me, it's never been my favourite
as I said before and I really need to go back to it and give it yet another go, I've listened
to it relatively recently preparing for this. Yeah, I do think that as I've listened to
it in the past, I have taken just a little bit more from it each time, I think that that's
I must obviously need to go back and do it again. What about you Mark, talk to us about
old mortality.
Right, well gosh, I was trying to think shortly before we recorded how I could adequately
put into words what this story means to me because I listen to this thing like clockwork
every just close to the anniversary every year and I don't think I've missed a single
year because this thing has become such a pure distillation of what Doctor Who is despite
being from the unbound universe and not the prime canon timeline as it were and I think
I suddenly hit upon the realisation not long before we recorded that it's the closest that
a story has ever felt to me like the feeling of Christmas Eve. Now I know that sounds like
a bit of a strange thing to bring out at this point but it's Christmas Eve is my favourite
day of the year right, it's the part of Christmas where Christmas hasn't started to begin to
be over yet right, so in other words the possibility tree of Christmas is still completely intact
you haven't taken a single turn right left or any of the branches yet you know it's all
there ahead of you and it's this perfect little pristine moment of magic in the air between
where ordinary time temporarily stops you're at the beginning of this bubble of unreality
that we all just sit in for the last bit of the year and there's a particular flavour
of magic to Christmas Eve itself and no other part of Christmas where it's just like yeah
there's something just pristine and perfect about this and that's what all mortality feels
like to me when I listen to it. Now why is that? I think it's something to do with the
fact that if you take those moments at Doctor Who's actual you know you know TV canon or
whatever where they've tried to do sorry where they have very successfully done anniversary
stories and things of that nature where the series tries to take a look at itself it often
does a very good job but it can never entirely give you if you like from the outside in a
complete overview of what Doctor Who is it's total magic right? Old mortality can somehow
do it by being just a universe to the left you know it can look in on what we understand
as Doctor Who but it can also show you because not one branch of the possibility tree has
yet been taken and yet we see all these things we even see glimpses of you know a foggy night
on Bob Barnes common and we see you know glimpses of the TARDIS spiralling between worlds and
a meeting with Winston Churchill it's not the one we see on television and all these
different images are and Mark Platt comes up with some absolutely exquisitely expressed
poetic images you know torchlight on the canals of Venice and mystery and intrigue all of
it as yet unexplored and all of it therefore perfect nothing's been compromised yet if
that makes sense and yet the Doctor is still in this liminal state that he needs to break
free of he needs to begin to begin you know he needs to have his the Christmas that will
be Doctor Who as we know it must unfold and wrong turns and right turns and imperfections
must unfold he needs to begin to live rather than live in this liminal space and yet just
being in that just as a one-off experience with that Doctor who's so close to being William
Hartnell is such a special thing it's it's it feels like the the most successful this
is what Doctor Who is and this is what Doctor Who feels like in terms of its total magic
and it can only do it by not being like embedded in the series itself where it can't completely
comprehend itself if that makes sense I'm not sure I've expressed that very well but
hopefully you get some sense of what I mean but but just to take it down to the level
of the slightly less abstract and the more just like you know elements of the story I
think there's some brilliant things that Mark Platt does here he brings in this character
of Uncle Quences sorry Grand Uncle Quences who is this kind of like spectral figure haunting
the whole thing and he there's all sorts of wonderful stuff the Hannibal stuff at the
beginning is a lovely little sort of nod to you know here was the alternative possibility
to starting with cavemen you know which also gets referenced then later in Deadline as
well and one key component I'll just mention in case it goes out of my head before we stop
talking about this Alistair Locke's music for this thing is perfect those initial sequences
with Hannibal he has he conjures this epic feel of almost like you know like there's
old Charlton Heston cast of thousands epic movies from back in the day the biblical epics
you know or things of that nature and and yet when it comes down to the little closet
and sort of cosy but trapped existence that the doctor is living in his little sort of
tomb slash house there you know there's this very intricate music comes in when Susan first
walks into the study and she's exploring all his papers and she's going through all the
places he's he's visited in his imagination and the whole thing is wonderful but there's
this brilliant contrast between yeah this sort of and again this is part of the fundamental
magic of Doctor Who the cosiness of that little bubble and he's living in there versus tentative
kind of voyages into into the unknown into the the cold spaces of the universe as I think
Uncle Quenches retreats from you know he's he's like you know like the place for that
is an observatory I don't I don't want to be out here in in the real universe you know
whereas the doctor kind of yearns for that and he catches glimpses of that possibility
of himself spiralling between worlds and anyway there's so much stuff in it I can only you
know get to the tip of the iceberg really and I'll stop talking because I could go
on and on but it's it's a truly special thing and I can only really conjure a fraction of
how I feel about it because it's so good.
I think it's sort of fairly unique really for a story to evoke you know reactions like
this I struggle to think of anything else that we've done on this podcast that kind
of would have the same impact on on the listener and I think that that's something they probably
were consciously tapping into at the very start you know they had the opportunity to
do something big and wonderful and special and I guess they've kind of really really
hit the nail on the head with it and succeeded and I guess that you know all of the things
we've discussed sort of the the wonderful way it's layered and Bailden's Doctor being
so brilliant and Carol Anne Ford being so fantastic as this slightly alternative Susan
and it was obvious to revisit and to do a sequel and we got a sequel which is of course
Storm of Angels very very very different story but it certainly has the same heart as all
the mortality I think and that's that's important you know this this Unbound Universe it sort
of has a very very unique feel that I don't think any of the others do at all and obviously
it having a second story when many of the others didn't perhaps perhaps helps that but
yeah it's such a shame that really we only got two stories out of this this Doctor but
let's talk about Storm of Angels then and we'll we'll go straight to Gareth go ahead
okay well just just first off I just want to say that that was a very incredible observation
there from from Mark comparing it all of that about Christmas Eve I thought that was absolutely
yeah I think you've nailed it it's it's Christmassy yeah no no fantastic and I love the way that
it it's a it kind of defines Doctor Who by showing you a negative in a way you take away
Doctor Who and you go what's left and you see the imprint ah I love that um with with
Storm of Angels and I'm sure Jimmy's probably got the definitive take on this given the
the love he has for it um for me and I don't mean this to denigrate it at all the same
I would I would say uh spoiler alert is sort of true for me if Masters of War is it feels
more like a kind of treat or like a victory lap than um than like a definitive entry in
the kind of what if pantheon um because in this one we kind of continue to explore the
idea uh at the end of Old Mortality when the Doctor you know both does and does not kind
of crumble and go right that's it I'm gonna leave um and he goes off into space and um
we find his adventures with Susan continuing and he's on this Elizabethan spaceship which
is which is all very enlightenment which is great because that that coincidentally is
is probably one of my sort of top three stories from the entire 80s of Doctor Who um yeah
they're just having this incredible adventure where it seems that the Doctor is so obsessed
with possibility and he's been kind of I took away from it that he's been kind of worse
and in a way because he's been trapped and he's been forced to imagine so much that um
he's really not that bothered about history like the details staying the same he's very
much like well you know you can give things a little nudge that's okay so we do kind of
explore you know the possibility that uh the Doctor and Susan could have kind of given
things a little prod to the left or the right um and you have this adventure that's uh again
to me it feels kind of just like oh it's such a such a wonderful thing to get four more
episodes with these characters we are insanely lucky like I absolutely agree we you know
in a in a perfect universe we would have got loads because Bailden clearly is the man I
mean he is fantastic he's not doing a William Hartnell impression uh he's very much just
inhabiting the character in the way that he does um but strangely that's no problem like
at no point am I in any doubt this is the first Doctor um and you've got Carol Anne
Ford as well and she I think these these are probably you know like you were saying that
you guys were saying that this was her sort of inaugural big finish um what a landing
because the thing if you've ever heard Carol Anne Ford speak about you know her time on
Doctor Who uh I saw at a convention thingy last year um met her she's very nice um the
thing she always kind of lands on is that obviously she loves her time in the show she's
very proud of it but they kind of well they didn't really deliver she feels on like the
level of progression that Susan could have had like she kind of saw the character being
a kind of a bigger grander thing and um the show uh somewhat boxed her in I would say
you know more of the she's going to twist her ankle kind of thing um that doesn't mean
there's no value to that but maybe it's not uh it's not what Carol Anne Ford thought she
was getting into um and these two releases are very much like well okay you're not that
16 year old anymore what are you what what can you bring to this and in Old Mortality
you know she gets to be quite annoyed with him like with the doctor you know she gets
to be older she's got her own business and family she can't just drop everything and
run she's a bit miffed with him and stuff eventually they kind of make up and in this
one we actually get a full-on dichotomy of the two so we get to see a version of older
Susan who's kind of living as the younger version and we get the kind of older version truly
and they have scenes together and it's incredible to me because I kind of I mean I'm projecting
here I suppose but I kind of imagine this is very much Carol Anne Ford being given an
opportunity to kind of show off and go like I'm not just that I can I can be different
facets of this character and you know I can I can talk to this younger one in a kind of
you're not naive but you know there's there's more to you than this and I just I love the
kind of showcase of that for her but but Baalden is incredible here the thing I think I take
away from it mostly though strangely is the monsters because you've got these angels which
and Jimmy was saying you know this is Old Mortality for example is one of those things
where you go oh that one what an accidental call back to the future we've got terrifying
angels in this one which you know one or two of those might have appeared in Doctor Who
since then but they're made of gems and there's this whole there's this whole kind of theme
of the way these gems operate and they kind of climb into people's bodies into their mouths
and the sort of sound of that and the sort of sound of people kind of drowning on these
gems and pebbles is just genuinely upsetting but in a really you know effective way because
yeah you've got this kind of horrible gaudy Elizabethan situation where you've got all
these people kind of marvelling at this excess and this wealth but this excess and this wealth
is reanimated corpses filled with gemstones and it's just it's just an unforgettable kind
of image and yeah it really does set this apart from Old Mortality I don't think as
much as I refer to this as feeling like a bit of a victory lap I don't think anybody's
resting on their laurels creatively I you know they're very much going let's have a
full-on adventure for these characters but let's also you know let's do something we
haven't done before like let's really make these monsters kind of count as something
memorable and horrible yeah so it's it's surprisingly grim I think it just about holds on to that
kind of sweetness and possibility of of Old Mortality as well which kind of makes it an
interesting mix because you still have that ongoing question of like what is the doctor
going to do with his life is this the right thing he can do with it you know particularly
in reference to dilly dallying with history shall we say and Susan still has to make her
mind up which sort of continues that theme from Old Mortality to kind of a more definite
conclusion for the two of them so so yeah while I while I kind of feel like Old Mortality
for me is is more of a kind of a perfect imprint of what a story is trying to say and this
one I would say is a little more kind of typically Doctor Who because it is the doctor and companion
golf and have an adventure and battle monsters I think it's creative enough and it carries
over enough of that spirit to to feel special like you wouldn't confuse this with another
a sort of normal run-of-the-mill episode of Doctor Who so I think it's it's along with
Masters of War which which we'll get to I think it's about as close as this range comes
to feeling kind of normal but yeah you're still aware of the kind of specialness of
the unbound universe that kind of sets it apart wish we got more but I'm glad we got
to I think that it's a shame we never got more is going to be a bit of a running theme
as we visit quite a few of these stories but yeah completely agree with you pretty much
everything you've said there to be honest it's it does feel a bit like a victory lap
but I like the fact that we do get to experience one of the adventures that was kind of hinted
at at the end of all mortality I'm glad we've got that as opposed to just the the montage
at the end anyway Jimmy go on talk to us about a storm of angels well firstly I'd say that
I think it's a clever way they did it with the Susans was that it's not just a follow
up to one of the endings of old mortality it's a sort of follow up to two because you've
got these two different Susans the one who stayed with the doctor and became his companion
the one who remained on Gallifrey to become the president and so you're not just following
up on one possibility you're following up on two and that's a clever way to do it and
again it gives Susan Carol Anne Ford such a brilliant chance at getting her teeth into
the role she's she's got two very different versions of Susan she's got both of them dynamic
with the doctor and they're dynamic with each other in the scenes where they're together
and she absolutely knocks it out of the park she's brilliant as both Susans and yeah they
both both actors her and Bailden absolutely capture the first Doctor and Susan of this
alternate universe again so well like there's so many little lines and bits and pieces that
just feel so true to Hartnell and to Carol back in the day like the at the start when
the Time Lord agent comes after the doctor and he just sounds so frustrated and you could
imagine that's what Hartnell would have been like if the Time Lords assisted in the TV showing
his time and yeah he's got such a great dynamic with Susan and they even say it themselves
that this part which is like well how did you ever cope without me and he's like fortunately
for you I can't imagine and it's just so sweet like because the dynamic between the Doctor
and Susan in the actual show it's brilliant but it doesn't get fleshed out quite as much
sometimes because of the nature of 60s television whereas here you can absolutely see the love
and the care for each other so much stronger and yeah and again there's the differences
as well like the Doctor being excited about the possibility of mentioning Shakespeare because
he's another writer and the Doctor being a writer and I think that sort of ties into
why he's got such a different attitude about history he's spent you know however many centuries
writing fiction about history and you know you can do what you like in fiction you can
pull plot devices you can change things around and so when he gets into real history he's
too used to the way he's been doing it and so that's why he ends up changing things he's
like oh I can't have done much we didn't tell Leonardo much about the way technology works
oh and we only visited Mars with him once or whatever and it's just he's the denial
as well is so very Hartnell like there's the bits in TV like in The Edge of Destruction
where when they all realize something's gone wrong with their minds and he's like nothing's
happening to me I'm fine and it's the same in this story about his denial about altering
history he's like no no this is a parallel universe it's not me it's not me and yeah
the characterization it's just yeah absolutely perfect and again funny lines like the bit
when they called Hittardus a beer barrel and he's like it's a perfectly respectable barrel
it's just he really captures Hartnell even more than he did in the first story for me
and again the script the imagery is so brilliant like you've got Elizabethan spaceships that
are steam powered and they've got telephones in them that it's it's just they yeah it just
makes such an interesting setting and it gives you the interesting dynamic with the two different
Susans and I think that's again one of the things that got the best handling like especially
with them swapping places at the end and the bit where they're like and we can't tell grandfather
and then you get the doctor being like yeah I knew without actually saying it to them
and it's just yeah it's so lovely and I think also again with Susans this story has one
of my favorite lines in Big Finish about the different attitudes to changing history than
in the main canon and it's that lovely line of when your ankle deep in tears and blood
you can't let people suffer just because it's history and I absolutely love that like that's
mine that deserves to be in the actual canon show at some point like that was just brilliant
and yeah I yeah there's not much more I can say I just absolutely love this story and
it's one of my favorites not just of the Unbound but of the entire Big Finish catalog it's
just yeah amazing.
Yeah I do love the whole stuff about changing history and that different attitude and that's
kind of it's something that becomes a bit more of this doctor's identity than it does
the normal doctor the regular doctor and I really like the way that that's something
that we sort of quietly explore which wasn't the original premise but it's something that
we are we're going to play with here.
The way the angels are all about feeding on desire and they try to get the doctor to go
with them and when they ask him about his desires and his only desire is not to lose
Susan and that's great foreshadowing of how you know she's the fake Susan but it's also
just so sweet that the only thing he wants is not to lose her after he's finally found
her so yeah that was another thing I just absolutely had to mention as well as the doctor's
attitude being a bit more blunt than even Hartnell on TV when he talks to Dee about
oh you're such a brilliant scientist so wonderful to meet you shame about that astrology nonsense
like Hartnell wouldn't have been that blunt even though he'd be thinking it and so yeah
again another great difference for the character so yeah I just had to mention those because
I just realized I forgot sorry.
No no not a problem.
So yeah go ahead Mark.
So I must admit this is the one I came revisited with the greatest reluctance not because I
believe it's worse than a couple of others which we'll get to in time because it's decidedly
not but I think it is just that thing for me of all the mortality does a very particular
thing and that particular thing is it is that that undisturbed Christmas Eve moment that
I kind of talked about and I if I could use another analogy maybe a bit of a strange and
oblique one to use but the film The Neverending Story I love that film right but I was dismayed
to discover that they made sequels to it because I thought you've absolutely missed the point
of your own film there if you're making sequels to that because it ends in a way where Fantasia
is restored and the possibilities are there and you don't telescope them down you know.
Now I appreciate what Jimmy was saying that in fact although one branch of the possibility
tree is shown ultimately to have been taken and we know exactly sort of where they ended
up at least for one adventure and a few other things hinted at.
Nevertheless some stuff has begun to crystallise there into like if you like a kind of run
of the mill ongoing Doctor Who and that's I appreciate that there's a twist to that
and it's exactly what Jimmy said where it's it's simple there's a kind of a Schrodinger's
Susan thing going on still even within the fork of the road taken but it still feels
like an already slightly compromised thing to what was a perfect one off.
Now on the plus side you do get more of Bale than which is brilliant and actually was reminded
when Jimmy was talking there of the fact that they you know he was referring to the apartments
and so on of Hartnell being amped up even a little bit.
They take a little there's one particular little word that Hartnell said a couple of
times which was just I think he maybe only says it in an Unearthly Child but he is this
word insulting you know if somebody says something to him that he takes offence to he'll go insulting
but that comes up a number of times with Bale and it almost becomes a catchphrase for him
and I like that.
I think it is quite nice to just revisit the dynamic between his brilliant performance
and Carol Ann Ford's brilliant chemistry with him as the closest thing she's had to an actual
Hartnell performance since the original series but yeah I just feel overall there's some
stuff there it's like Mark Platt will never disappoint in terms of giving you really vivid
imagery almost like fever dream stuff every single time and this is no exception although
I think some of the stuff he uses there he kind of reuses in my opinion a little more
effectively in Time Reef you know the sort of the spacefaring kind of Francis Drake type
ships and all that but yeah but when Gareth was talking I was reminded there of it came
into my head actually he was saying that thing about the angels and what they do and the
people drowning in gems and so on it suddenly came back into my head I hadn't been at the
association until just there but I was recently revisiting some MR James stories and one of
them casting the runes has exactly that kind of image in it of somebody's ultimate fate
being their mouth is they're fine dead and their mouth stuffed full of pebbles on the
beach and I wonder did something of that go into Mark Platt's conscious or unconscious
influences when he wrote this thing. The more I talk about it the more I'm kind of slightly
falling a wee bit more in love with the story again than I remember doing so the first time
around but to me it's very much the inferior entry in the Bealdon sequence but in fact
I wish it wasn't a sequence that's my point really. I think really with The Unbinds I
would like it to be one of two things either a perfectly self-contained story where it's
it sits alone it says something very specific that is unbind for a reason or it does what
they ultimately did with David Warner's Doctor and turn it into an ongoing run and even intertwine
it with the primary universe. This thing where you just throw like a kind of an also ran
sequel onto the back of it ultimately feels unsatisfying to me it can still be an enjoyable
ride while you're in the moment and I listened to Masters of War recently for the first time
and find it similarly good but not but nowhere near as good as the other Warner story so
I hope you see what I'm saying it's kind of you've got to throw the lever one way or the
other I think with these unbinds but here we are in this sort of oh here's a wee second
it almost feels like we're in sort of Peter Cushing second film territory where it's like
oh okay we're doing more of this are we but it's not the real thing but it's but neither
is it doing something interesting with not being our universe's doctor so or interesting
enough I don't think it warranted the return but I can see why Big Finish were tempted
to go there again because because building was so good and Mark Black can write really
well for him so yeah sorry if that all sounded a bit more negative than than than that might
have been hoped for I feel bad saying all that to me because but I know you you know
you hold your opinion your own opinion strongly so it's not like I'm going to sway that but
yeah that's my take on it I'm less enamored of it I think than than the rest of yous.
I think that it's I do understand what you're saying you know I understand that all mortality
is just this wonderful wrapped up standalone thing and I think that if they'd have tried
to do it again it wouldn't have worked for me this only works because it's a it's a different
kind of story with a different kind of premise and it's simply taking the characters elsewhere
I think that if we were doing a direct sequel I think if we were you know directly following
on or doing something even thematically similar to old mortality I think that it would let
itself down I think that yeah it works because it just it reaches out to do something different
and that's that's just my take on it well I think we'd better let Jimmy go now he's
stayed up late to record this one because really wanted to cover those stories so a
big big thank you for joining us Jimmy.
Thanks for having me and I look forward to hearing your stuff on David Warner's Doctor
because I do love his too I just didn't have the time to re-listen and do it justice so
eager to hear your thoughts thanks and bye.
Bye Jimmy we shall we shall soldier on and we'll discuss the two David Warner from the
original sort of run of Unbounds as well and this is a bit of a different one because obviously
David Warner went on to be pretty much a regular big Finnish doctor you know before he sadly
passed away a few years ago and the stuff that with Bernie Summerfield is it's absolutely
wonderful we've covered it on this podcast before and no doubt we'll revisit again at
some point as well it really is just such a fantastic run but I think that these two
original Unbound stories kind of they do do their own thing they are very different and
obviously the biggest most notable thing is that we have the Brigadier as the doctor's
companion but this is an older Brigadier that never had the friendship with the doctor during
the 70s or is it 80s haha unit dating you know the third doctor's era there this is
a Brigadier who was kind of disgraced and forced out and went to live a different life
and the doctor kind of comes and plucks him out of that life and he becomes a proper companion
a travelling in the TARDIS with the doctor companion at the end of the first story and
I can see why they went straight in to do a second one so as I said Sympathy for the
Devil is probably my favourite of all of these Unbounds it could arguably be my favourite
Unbound altogether and I think that it really does offer something totally different and
unique it's a setting that we wouldn't normally have it's a very very different doctor you
know David Warner is supposed to be a version of the third doctor but very very different
from Pertweez and we see sort of a streak of recklessness there and I know that there
is you know the way the story progresses there is sort of a build up of kind of desperation
and but in the end he kind of just leaves events to go very very wrong but he's a very
good sort of slightly darker doctor and I don't think we get that slightly darker element
as much when Bernice Summerfield joins him later on I think that's something that's pretty
unique to this and perhaps Masters of War as well so yeah I think this is just a great
release like I said earlier it really really it works hard to build up this really doomy
miserable something's going to go wrong almost ticking time bomb like atmosphere and I think
it plays out really really well so Gareth I'll let you talk about Sympathy for the Devil
thank you I would say it's quite a popular pick for favourite of the Unbounds at least
from the comments I've seen but I think that makes total sense I think it straddles a good
line between kind of fresh and weird characterization which is what you want from an Unbound but
also a bit of continuity so it kind of uses continuity to to get you there and there are
good examples of this you know everybody loves turn left that's very much an example of what
if we snip the doctor out of this what happens the virgin novel Blood Heat I don't know if
IW's read that one absolutely does this that's very much what happens if the doctor isn't
around to help in that example of Silurian invasion so in this one it's it's basically
just pole vaulting the entire poetry era just taking the doctor out of that and the result
I think is just this incredibly angry story just where there are moments of just very
cathartic kind of rage in it where the brigadier gets to just break down a little bit just at
the fact that his men have tried so hard to kind of do all of this without the doctor's
help and it's it's been too much you know they've had people die there's this well they've
had more people than usual tie I should say but they had the invasion of the dinosaurs
story for example where Mike Yates took his men back in time and just they're dead they're
just gone and it's it's stuff like that kind of telling us just the absolute horror stories
of how things would have gone and which is so kind of it's an interesting juxtaposition
because when you say the words unit family doctor who wise to people the first thing
that comes to mind for me is comfort you know because it's just oh what a nice cozy bunch
of you know soldiers but in a nice way where they're all kind of very pleasant and they
just have a cup of tea and you know shout occasionally but that's as bad as it gets
and this is kind of just the the nightmare negative of that but it doesn't just extend
to unit it's also to the master who is played by the mysterious Sam Giscard I don't know
how far we go with that but um he's incredible and there's a great scene where he gets to
just rip shreds off the doctor just because he's just raging at him because he's he's
pretty much taking his place like he's ended up being stuck here for all of this time for
kind of unrelated reasons um and he's just so angry because he knows that what kind of
person the doctor is and from his perspective the doctor basically phoned it in and didn't
help um so that's all incredible it's great to see the brigadier kind of put into this
position where he's older he's wiser and again it's a little bit of a Susan thing where you
know we we sort of don't really see the brigadier out of the context of his original conception
but um in this one he gets to be you know kind of weary and he just wants to live and
he's trying to cope with all of this misery that's happened to him um and the master has
that as well strangely but um one thing that i find a little bit odd about it is that um
it's it's sort of um almost trivial that things have gone this wrong so it you know correct
me if i'm wrong i mean i've heard it a bunch of times over the years and hopefully might
be wrong but i think it's the case that the time lord's just they happened to make him
david warner doctor instead of john perchley so that's one thing but they happened to land
him in um decades too late uh they just picked a date and they went there we go that's where
you're going um and that's the that's the critical choice here i believe it's just kind
of a a mix-up of scheduling of and that's enough because it's i think the implication
is just like look earth is always getting hammered by aliens and whatnot but for that
10 year period oh it really they really got it and they really needed the doctor at that
point in history so you know maybe what to take away from that is that uh you know some
time lord in the war games looked at human history and went oh my god have you seen this
stretch of like the 70s or the 80s it's just one invasion after another we need that's
where you send him and in this version of events that guy just wasn't wasn't in that
day so they just went oh let's just chuck him in 1996 um or sorry i don't remember what
year it was around like 90s the handover um so yeah you get this doctor who kind of he
feels and obviously it goes without saying but we'll say obviously david warner is just
astonishing in this i mean it's very much uh you know where where has he been like why
has he never done it um he's he's this he really feels like he's making up for lost
time uh which i think is a little bit kind of meta in context because as a character
he's not so as a character he's just turned up and he's like right okay this is all a
bit rubbish isn't it but um hey ho this is this is where i'm here so i feel like the
way the character is written and performed is a little bit like the doctor has sort of
knowingly missed out it almost follows on from old mortality in a way because in that
one he's he's prevented from starting his adventures in this one he's for some reason
been prevented from having literal adventures and and dropped off too late to take part
in them but yeah he becomes this just i think whirling dervish is the phrase he's just this
this tornado of just activity and i think that comes to define him uh through the rest
of his adventures and and you know like we were saying about wouldn't it be nice if we
got some jeffrey belden we are dementedly lucky to have got just an entire range of
of david warner and like you were saying about um how that darkness doesn't doesn't continue
um i think it's there i don't think it's there as much as it is in this one because you know
characters including the master and like how bad are things if the master is saying this
stuff but characters are saying to the doctor you know like it or not this is kind of on you
um there are stories later on where we get to see shades of that i mean the the one that jumps to
mind is planet x which is in that first uh set with bernice where i think he gets into a situation
where um he's he's sort of gassing the baddie or something he's he's putting the baddie into
this situation like a torture chair or something that they put him in it didn't work on him because
he's a time lord and he ends up in a situation where he's like well i don't have to save you
and that moments like that you kind of go oh this this guy's a bit different um and yeah i do think
you see that in this one because he's just faced with such absolute carnage that he just has to go
right well we've we've just got to do what we can this is a triage situation i can't make this
perfect so yeah i think it's it's a very exciting story there's a lot going on there's plenty of
kind of fun little continuity nods for the fanboys um you know uh literally like the mind of evil
figures quite heavily into this one and the fact that the master is in it at all i think is is
quite a big deal the master regenerates in it that's a rarity i mean i suppose that gets us out of the
the roger del gardo problem but um yeah i think it's i think it's a tremendous story uh it's just
really exciting uh it's a great kind of guilty pleasure in the sense of you get to see the mess
that would be made and uh normally that's undone so like the examples that come to mind apart from
like blood heat mentioned earlier um the movie x-men days of future past uh and probably presumably
the comic i've not read the original comic but um you get to see multiple scenarios where the good
guys are just murdered right and they they are trying to defeat these monsters and they just
can't and they fail and they fail and they fail and eventually they fix it which they don't hear
um but in that case you still get to kind of this is the worst case scenario i never get to see this
because that's what that's what the doctor's for right so it's in a in a really grim way it's kind
of a treat to sort of go how bad do things get i've always wanted to know um yeah and i think
that's where we get to with sympathy for the devil i think it's a very different sort of treat to old
mortality but no less a treat i have to admit this was only sort of partially through design
partially coincidentally this was actually the story i chose to listen to on the 60th anniversary
i was sort of at a bit of a loose end as what to do and i know some people had done marathons and
planned things and i always said i would and never did and then just on the day i thought what am i
going to listen to and had a playlist that was effectively the complete david warner doctor
lined up to go so let's start that then and obviously this is this is where that started
and it was a really good choice it was a really interesting listen in you know the context of
celebrating doctor who and i think that's because i mean you've hit the nail on the head it is kind
of the ultimate what happens when the doctor's not about story and i think it does do a better job
than turn left or other things that have explored the idea and i just think it's excellent i just
want to say that i'm i'm not turn left's biggest fan i think this one does a really good job of
showing you the survivors we hear from you know the brigadier is critical to that and i don't feel
i don't think that's turn left's job really but but yeah absolutely that's that's something that's
really strong here yeah and of course um week week before before i move on and uh let mark have his
say got to mention that david tenants in it and is brilliant as a really really thoroughly
unpleasant angry character who every single decision he makes just seems to drag the situation
into worse and worse territory it's really nice alternative sort of david tenant performance in
a doctor who production and uh i think the same character comes back in unit well this are our
universities version of the character if i remember correctly anyway mark talked to us about sympathy
for the devil yeah it's funny you mentioned um david tenant there because um because this was
before david tenant was david tenant and because i listened to it when it came out this was back
in the days when i could keep up with big finishes release schedule um i i had this image in my head
of this guy as a big like burly red headed sort of scotsman you know and now that i know it's
david tenant i i still can't get rid of that original impression of who colonel rick brimacom
wood is and how he how he looks you know so there's nothing of david tenant about him to this day
even you know what even when i re-listen to the story i know it's him i can only see this guy you
know um which shows you how how um you know what an evident impression the story made on
your first time around um i think that phrase you hit on gareth to do with cathartic rage um
um absolutely hits the nail on the head this that that's the kind of fulcrum around which this thing
turns it's like where did the where did the scocosi barry let's side of the part we hear
ago if this is our alternative part we and i guess if it's anywhere it's in the sort of um
you know zen philosophy or whatever of the of the monks of the monastery you know it's kind of
it's kind of all over there and everything else out in the world is just nasty and brutal and um
um in terms of i hadn't really thought about what what you raised there in terms of well why did the
time lord put him make him arrive late as it were when all this other stuff could have been
tackled since that was the whole point of him going there and it suddenly occurs to me well maybe
as they knew the master was marooned on earth anyway they probably unwisely thought well he can
he can sort of hold hold the line here you know um and uh he he did a you know the inevitably botched
job with that the master would because he's not bringing the doctor's kind of moral certainties
to it um and and i think that the that obviously left the master a very um you know vulnerable
position and the rage that's built up in him around all of that having to be the guy that held the
line imperfectly um or more even more imperfectly than the doctor would do the scene that i
always end up playing over and over again like i'll skip back as soon as i've heard it and listen to
it about five times over is the one where he and the doctor have that real confrontation where it
starts off with going oh you know like chairman ma spoke ever so highly of you and the doctor's
going well he's all he's on the defensive and he's going but what i knew he was a librarian and
and all this stuff it's it's brilliant and then um it gets to this point where the where where the
doctor says look i haven't been here since the 1960s and and the master goes yeah it shows
and um there's just something in that moment that just feels absolutely central to the thing and
that those moments at the end where it is all going to hell you know the doctor's sort of
fix things up to a point but then as you said johnson he's quite happy to sort of sail off
and leave a lot of stuff still kicking off including you know that whole you know the
helicopters at the harbor at midnight and all that and um and so so there's a lot of um tension left
at the end and it really does feel very high stakes you know it's really quite um scary you
know quite quite tense um i think warner's performance is is excellent i find him much more
arresting in terms of his performance in in this one than i than i later did in masters of war
which i only heard for the first time recently um but nevertheless he he never warner never
phones it in i know he loved working for big finish so he would have turned up to do the
smallest bit part or the biggest part whatever they asked him to do he would just turn up because
he loved he loved being there and we were very lucky that he did um can i just i should probably
just wrap up you know uh my little spiel here because i'm not sure i can um i think you and
you johnson and gareth between you have very uh comprehensively uh and articulately covered
many of the facets of the story that make it work um so i'm just going to say something quite
frivolous at this point and to say um and i like that they got they used a rolling stones song
title there for the the the story title sympathy for the devil but then they also managed to
squeeze a lyric into the actual dialogue which is um at one point the brigadier says what is it
you're still trying to puzzle out here and the doctor goes the nature of his game brigadier
the nature of his game and and i thought oh that's that's from the song he's got that in
so um it's johson clements isn't it the root that one anyway i think um if i haven't misremembered
but anyway i thought that was that was very well done crowbarring that in without making it seem
to oh and sorry one final thing i remember hearing that um originally there was a line in the script
that uh the brigadier in the pub working in the pub was to have said um chap a table three there
five rounds rapid and um i'm not sure whether to be disappointed or relieved that they removed that
but uh it would have been quite something to hear um so anyway that's my my take on on sympathy for
the devil so have to admit i'm glad that line never made it in i absolutely love the you know
the reference to the song the nature of his game i do think that is so brilliantly worked in but um
no we we don't need to have the brigadier save five rounds rapid at every opportunity um but yeah
it's it really is a wonderful little story and it's one that i always love revisiting and i
i don't have anything negative really to say about it it's just i think it is a completely unique
doctor who story in terms of the way it examines the impact the doctor has or doesn't have when
he's not there and the way it just handles this constant feeling of foreboding it is
i know it's a bit of a cliche to say it but it's like watching a car crash in slow motion
um and it's just so beautifully done um and let's move on then let's move on to masters of war which
is this doctor getting to meet the daleks and davros and um it's it all going wrong there as
well um this is another another sort of fun and interesting story with lots of interesting ideas
and it's doing something different again it's not just coming up with sympathy for the devil too it
is taking this doctor and this brigadier who are now at hardist team into a totally different
situation and uh i think it does a good job of you know examining daleks and davros and their
ever-changing and weird relationship um and it it sort of has the breathing space to do it
very differently and i think that what really really does work well here is the fact that
david warner's the third doctor and from what we can tell the first and second doctor happened
pretty much the same way in this universe as they did in ours so that that continuity's there
um and i think that's an interesting sandpit to play in and again actually one that i'm fairly
disappointed never really gets used in the bernice summerfield stories with this doctor
um so talk to us about masters of war gareth
um yeah well i'll just start off by saying that's that's a good point um strangely it doesn't come
up a great deal in in future releases that this doctor is canonically the doctor from before
he just had some different experiences after a certain point but hey ho that's another time
um masters of war i think is like we were saying about storm of angels or i was saying that it
feels like kind of uh it'd be nice to do another one of these so let's do that um in the nicest way
um in the nicest way i think this is kind of the apotheosis of that like i do not dislike this
story at all i have a tremendous time with this i find listening to it is like the audio equivalent
of a really lovely burger and chips right it's it's it's probably not going to be considered
sort of a highly complex uh or a completely off the wall story which within the bounds of unbound
is arguably not a problem but you know not ideal but i really feel like they kind of go right we've
got this set up now we've got the warner doctor we've got the brigadier as a companion full time
um what's the what's the thing what do you do with them what's the you get one more go at this what
do you do and to be honest i think sticking them on scarow having them fight a bunch of daleks i
i can think of worse answers than that i think that's very solid um the story we get you know
you get to have the doctor doing his kind of tornado of activity trying to catch up and i
think the brigadier even vocalizes that like oh it's like he's making up for lost time um and so
he just immediately gets stuck in in this kind of awful situation on scarow um and uh yeah he
he supports the thals and he he sees there's this situation with the daleks he makes some assumptions
and he kind of goes right well this is terrible got to fix this and um yeah he gets he gets stuck
in and the brigadier gets to use his military expertise and we get to see a slightly different
side of the daleks and i think by by kind of this point in the sort of big finish run we're seeing
um a couple of those callbacks because it was it was brought up on a previous release we were
talking about here the um one release kind of felt like it was sort of accidentally calling
forwards to to doctor who this one i feel like it's kind of accidentally calling back to other big
finishes so i feel like there are notes in here like uh the daleks being posited as we know they're
awful we we all agree they're awful they're terrible but maybe there's something worse um
that is something that is very satisfying to do you know i'm a big fan of star trek voyager i was
very excited when they came along and said here is something worse than the borg i'm here all day
for that kind of thing um but big finish kind of did that with the mutant phase
um i think they later on would do it with uh enemy of the daleks i think they kind of did it with
dalek empire i mean in that case it was literally other daleks from from another universe but it's
it's that kind of sweet spot of going we're going to find something so dreadful that it sort of puts
the daleks in context so um i'm not complaining i i really enjoy that but at the same time it's i
think i don't really know what the process was to come up with this story but it feels as though
we're kind of not having an unbound we're kind of having another go at something that we've already
had and that's where like the the sort of term victory lap really comes to mind for me um
um in the moment it's it's still tremendously satisfying to me to uh to have warner uh and the
brigadier you know the brigadier really getting to uh exercise his kind of general muscles that he's
never uh you know he never really got that far in doctor who obviously he's a brigadier um but he
gets to command whole armies and you know he gets to make you know huge strategic decisions and stuff
like that so you you have these huge space well i suppose sky battles is more appropriate but you
have these enormous battles going on so there's tons of action tons of excitement um i suppose
one note that is um not perfect is the the bad guys um the worst guys i should say uh they are
called the quatch and maybe i have an infantile sense of humor but that sounds like uh another
word you know said in a slightly silly way so every time somebody says that and you know what
i think the reason i feel that way is because david warner was in the series nebulous i don't
know if either of you has ever heard that mark gaitis is in it is an incredibly funny um kind of
loosely quatermass uh riff and it's set on this uh future earth where you've got a scientist working
in a in a kind of laundrette who has to solve tiny little weird crises anyway his nemesis is played
by david warner and in the first episode i think there's this uh evil sentient cactus and i think
it's called quimp um so yeah it's just a silly little convergence but that i couldn't help
thinking of that every time and also you've got the kind of production question of uh how do you
approach a monster that is not daleks right it's going to be worse than darlix but it's got to be
completely not darlix you can't do like cybermen where you just go here's a different robot voice
so you have this kind of reedy voice this kind of hair strange kind of uh odd you know not quite
their ethereal sound and um i totally understand why they made that choice again you've got to come
up with a not darlick um but i don't know how effective it was kind of in the moment um you
know it's it's a bit of a silly voice but i mean it's doctor who you have to kind of accept that
sometimes you've got monsters that have got you know a breadth of of voices i've not even mentioned
davros he's in this uh technically i think he's in it twice um terry mulloy i think has just you know
long since kind of seized the the davros crown you know we all we all love michael wisher but
terry mulloy is really excuse me he's really put in the hours um and in this you know you get to see
a davros who's um i would not say benevolent but trying to kind of exercise his ideas in a more
like pragmatic way um and obviously he has fallen in with the quatch so he's kind of working with
them um and he reaches kind of a an interestingly cathartic moment when
you know he realizes that they they are responsible in this universe for his you know his condition um
and yeah you know i i really enjoy his performance in this um so overall i mean it's
it's like an action movie you know it's like a really good uh good time at the movies kind of
thing i would absolutely recommend it you know i think it is a fun listen but um i think you can
kind of feel the what-if range uh hopefully not permanently but in the moment had kind of petered
out a bit because it doesn't really feel like it has an individual what-if to offer to me anyway
it's very much a what if we carried on this one and just you know did a dalek story it's a really
good one but yeah that's where i land on it it's it's a good time i'm glad we got it i'm even more
glad it led to more stuff um but yeah it's it's more fun than it is interesting i would say
yeah i think you're right i think essentially i think the what-if is what if we stuck the daleks
into the unbound range which has has mileage but um i i'd rather have seen something else and
i'd rather have seen something you know how said storm of angels works really well because it's
so different to all mortality i think actually i'd have preferred something closer here to uh
sympathy for the devil but but we can't have it all um it's it's still a good story though it's
still a good release it does it still asks questions i just i agree with you the questions
aren't quite as interesting or thought-provoking as everything else in the range uh mark what do
you think of masters of masters of war yeah well i'll try not to repeat any points already made
but i think it is you know i would echo that um feeling about it when i listened to it uh
i i only got to it do you know i actually bought masters of war on the cd when it first came out
what year was that years and years ago now right and for some reason 2008 2008 that's when i bought
it yeah and literally i've only listened to it in the last month so it could be the longest gap
between a purchase and a listen that i've ever and i think what happened was in 2008 i started
listening to it the first i don't know 10 minutes of it and it just wasn't it just wasn't doing it
for me and i thought i'll put that to one side listen to something else come back to it never
did until just now and i think it was that thing of oh so it's unbound like because to me up to
the up to that point every single unbound had been doing a thing you know a very clear and obvious
thing and that thing was interesting and contrastive and a proper what-if twist usually on the doctor
specifically you know like a doctor that believes you know the end justifies the means or whatever
it might be um whereas this thing seemed to be going okay we are just carrying on with the
brigadier and the doctor oh now we're on scar oh i see what we're doing it's as though terry nation
had turned in the 15th slide variation on this original idea okay let's see where this goes does
it become at any point any more interesting than this um i i was halfway through at this time and
beginning to lose hope that it would go anywhere interesting because it did feel very much like
just a generic retry it could almost have been written by terry nation or nicholas breaks or
somebody who who loves those tropes you know and um then it started doing some interesting things
in the second half and i thought ah now i see the point the point was to sort of set it up
very conventionally and then have a few twists towards the end where you go right okay the
daleks are not as straightforward are not they don't they're a bit more morally complex here than
they have been traditionally that's interesting there is the quatch which is this um the real bad
guys of the piece if you like you've got davros having thrown his allegiance in with a completely
different species but he's bet the wrong horse um and then the doctor becoming a sort of a um
almost forging with hit with with davros one of those like it's almost like what it's almost
like the terror of the auton scenario where he has his first encounter with his new nemesis his new
regular nemesis but they end up teaming forces on day one you know they end up joining forces to
defeat a common enemy um and davros gets that moment and a moment of self-sacrifice into the
bargain so all those things are interesting somewhat innovative and i should have trusted
eddie robson to deliver something like that in the first place rather than lose faith on him
um too early because i've always found him a very interesting writing writer and a very compelling
writer nevertheless in terms of those earlier stories having done a thing this felt like it
was doing like i kept reaching the moment they've gone oh is this the thing but that's not really
that feels like a small thing i mean that could almost happen in just ordinary an ordinary doctor
history where you can take that particular twist on the idea um so like it almost became like oh
is the brigadier's thing you know where he he chooses a place to stay because it's like okay
the moral is here's a universe here's a universe in which the brigadier found his calling somewhere
other than earth and decided just to make the best of of somewhere because you know you will
never end up in the perfect place you always have to make the best of what you know at some point
you have to choose and but but again like any of these things could have come up in in
the prime doctor who universe as it were and it's like okay well all of that's a bit less satisfying
than what we got in those other stories um did i enjoy it less so than most of the well no
it's definitely not the worst of the bunch but it's it sits firmly in the the middle or somewhere in
the bottom the bottom half of the overall imbalance for me um i didn't find warner's
performance as compelling in this one it did feel at times as though he was just reading the lines
and that's unusual for him um but and other people might disagree strongly with that and say no he's
never done that in his life but in this one i just felt there were a couple of moments where i thought
he's he's just reading the lines to get to get to lunchtime there you know um because there's nothing
of particular interest in those few initial scenes but i think as it gets into that second half it
finds its feet it does a few interesting things but those things yeah they they just abide around
the unbound um uh what do you call it categorization they they warrant a place in the other half of the
they they warrant a place in the unbound in the unbound universe of universes but um
just only just whereas the others i feel very clearly fit the mold of what the the original
brief was so um yeah it's it's a bit of a mid one for me as i believe the young people say mid um so
uh well you know entertaining enough i'll not be rushing back to it um whereas i'll go back to
sympathy any number of times and i'll go back to old mortality in any number of times but masters
of war it could be it could it could be another 15 years if spared before i go back to that one again
so yeah
i'd be tempted to pick it up again in another podcast soon just to make you listen to it again
i feel as though we've inspired you
um but yeah i i totally get what you mean it just it is a bit of a marmite story i've
but maybe no maybe it's not a marmite story marmite is you love it or you hate it whereas i think
you've you've sort of summed it up it's just it's middle ground isn't it it's people people seem to
think it's okay or not that great i've never met anybody have a really really sort of passionate
opinion about oh it's absolutely amazing it's one of the best or it's absolutely dreadful
um but it it exists i'm glad it exists it's more nicholas courtney and i will take it based on that
if absolutely nothing else at all it is more nicholas courtney a big finish of which we
definitely definitely never had enough that's true that's absolutely true yeah more nick is always
was always very welcome and um that's very sad we've lost him and look john colshaw does a very
uh good brigadier well very good young brigadier anyway i'm not sure if he necessarily always
captures the older voice but um but yeah uh you can't beat nicholas courtney being nicholas
courtney and it's um it's a shame we didn't get even more of him but um we're lucky to have had
what we did have in terms of um just one further thing just what you were saying gareth about the
voices of the quatch that really tried my patience as well and it's not so much the silliness of the
voices because as you say dr who you're going to get the odd silly voice it's um i'm conscious of
my own silly voice as i'm saying this but um it's it's silly voice combined with taking forever to
say something that can really you know that's not like it could be like neil's on a blackboard to me
sometimes in terms of listening to a story you know and um they really did considering they were
you know in a battle situation whatever the fact that they would take forever to say we are under
attack and stuff like that ironically i think that's that's also a dalek problem um i don't
think it's as much these days i think uh nick breaks arguably doesn't get enough credit for how
much kind of energy he puts into dalek voices because when when you have a couple of daleks
have conversations these days uh it's it's weirdly emotive you know they're always very charged and
furious with each other uh back in the day you know 60s to an extent the 70s particularly like
day of the daleks um the daleks can talk quite slowly and it you know sort of the worst scenes
of a dalek story i used to find was a couple of daleks need to talk to each other um and it's sort
of strangely ironic that in in trying to come up with a creature that is the anti-dalek the worst
than dalek um you end up with the same thing where and i you know i will say i do like the kind of
creepy little musical motif that happens every time they talk possibly it has to right because
you because you're faced with this voice so you're like we've got to do something because we can't
just have these two actors in two booths desperately try not to make eye contact when they're doing this
voice uh we'll have to put on a creepy voice effect but it it's yeah it's a bit like when daleks
sort of stuck in it you know stuck in a lift like how are you good weekend uh it's it's that kind of
thing i think that's part of the problem is i i stopped thinking about i stopped picturing aliens
and started picturing two really embarrassed actors just like just trying not to look at each
other through the glass and go oh god just just get to five o'clock and get this part done you know
um something of it felt like that to me you know and um normally with big finish that's not the
case um it could be just that i'm very prone to secondhand embarrassment too easily i don't know
but i had that quite strongly in places during this one
well that's that is all we have time for today um but we've we've had a really good look at these
these four stories and i'm looking forward to coming back and looking at the other
unbound you know we've still got full fathom five to discuss which is very interesting in
terms of what it does um we've got exile and heges at scars which interesting um so yeah it'll be
it'll be good to sort of revisit those um and because it was a range of ups and downs unbound
we've talked i think mostly about ups today um but there's no denying that there are sort of
there are some in there that aren't as universally beloved so it'd be interesting to have a look at
those next time but in the meanwhile i will say a big thank you and goodbye to gareth
thank you very much and a big thank you and goodbye to mark cheerio and we'll
we'll continue our journey through the unbound universe very soon goodbye now