I actually have an awful lot of time for Kevin- he's a smart man for sure- after all he supervises PhD thesis writers. I mean, he DOES smoke a pipe which lowers his grade a little, but ultimately I think he makes pointed and decent comments.

He recently dipped his toe into the Big Finish Ocean planet and then came up with this "revelation"

when you listen to later BF and then go back to the very first one, you realise essentially nothing's changed. There is no difference between this and something released last month.

Unsurprisingly our esteemed moderator agreed...

My GODS isn't that the truth...

Well yes, I guess it is the truth. But I think Kevin has not really thought his oh so witty potshot through very carefully.

You see, he compared it to watching Tom Baker in the 70's and seeing how the show evolved to the show of today and seeing the style of the show changed.

I think that is essentially a very flawed comparison.

TV is very much a visual medium relying on improving technology in computer graphics, camera technology and, of course, sound.

An audio has only one element- sound.

In the 60's we moved from mono to stereo and then we later moved into surround sound- but essentially after stereo there was nowhere left to go.

Digital sound improved things in the 80's for sure but I cannot see how a largely audio medium can change too much from 2000 to now. What been a development in the field of sound recording that ultimately changes the way we hear something??

I guess the quality of microphones has improved but would that really change the way these audios sound?

I'm not sure what Kevin would like to see...er...hear differently? How else can you record an explosion or a door opening?

There's only so many ways a person can "walk" or "run" down a corridor in an audio presentation.

What were you expecting Kevin? Enlighten me please.

I guess that Big Finish is just not for everyone. I was never able to get into them.

Still, Kevin, I have to agree with Rodney. Please expand on what you meant, please.

I guess that Big Finish is just not for everyone. I was never able to get into them.

Neither have I but do I let a little thing like THAT stop me devoting years of my life and thousands of pounds-worth of my money...

Yeah, except I have things like rent and food that my money is needed for.

I can't afford to spend said money on things I don't like.

Yikes. I knew I'd have some catching up to do (a five-day holiday here, followed by me trying to get caught up on getting my courses recorded and edited), but I didn't expect this.

Response forthcoming.

Better get busy

Boy the suspense is killing me here.......

161 days since Kevin promised a response. Snails respond quicker...

How's Ravenous going, Rodney?

(And yes, we both know that a) I am not exactly in a position to taunt you about gross-dereliction-of-duty vis-a-vis Eighth Doctor box sets, and b) there's no way THAT'S gonna stop me...)

It was boring so I stopped listening.

I do not understand this 'boring so I stopped listening' concept whereof you speak...

It would probably be better for your mental health if you did....

*Wistful sigh*

Fanatical completism has its compensations.

Ever thought is seeing a psychiatrist for this Doctor Who Completion Compulsion, Emily

What, give someone MONEY to take away my raison d'etre?

Money I could be spending on BIG FINISH?

Silly question for me to have asked.

My delay in responding is mostly matter of feeling I really should spend more time listening to more recent stories. That isn't much of an issue in terms of current series Doctors, nor the Bradley Doc1 and the Third Doctor stories, which I've heard a bit of, but I thought I should listen to later stories from the monthly line as I've mostly only heard ones that have some age of them. Otherwise, it's like comparing classic (televised) Who with the current production, which is fine, but as BF was still producing the same range, I wanted to compare apples with apples. And in the end, this still never happened, largely because the older ones are frequently discounted and the later ones aren't--not to mention the fear that as soon as I plopped down the same money for one newer story instead of three or four older ones, I'd find it discounted a month or two down the road.

I also had started writing a reply offline, which got lost when the uni upgraded my computer, which demotivated me from starting again.

Explanations that border on apologies.

As Rodney no doubt knows, the original comment was a flippant quip, but he's called me on and I'll do him the courtesy of a serious answer.

The monthly line divides the stories into four episodes (with some exceptions: the six part Game and several four-separate-shorts bundles). I believe they continued to do so for the whole run. Correct me if I'm wrong. And they do so for the First and Third Doctor series as well. Current series Doctors, however, (well, Tennant anyway) don't do this. In other words, BF sticks to a format emulating the televised era of the Doctor being portrayed--though they don't necessarily adhere to the length of the episodes.

And I wish they wouldn't. It was the right decision when BF started, keeping ties to the then-only format we knew, but I wish they'd outgrow it. Current Who has shown us that no (slash few) cliffhangers is better than three or five lame ones. I don't want the action to momentarily rise and suddenly subside just because the clock says it's time to. Too often this results in a much-needed spike being delayed with padding--an issue that, of course, the classic series had as well, but they had broadcast concerns to deal with. BF doesn't. When you buy the whole story in one package as we do, there really isn't any need for them to be split into episodes, other than a rigid adherence to tradition and the tyranny of the cliffhanger. It's not like we're buying them one episode at a time the way we consumed classic Who.

Which brings us the related problem of BF stories being length-locked. I assume there's some variation in the actual timings, unlike broadcast Who which is by necessity timed to the minute if not the second, but it sure doesn't seem like there's much. (Read: I've never really looked closely at the timings from story to story.) They should have more freedom, but, apart from the short trips, they're still pretty much locked to the same length. Who novels manage to keep a ballpark length as others in the same line, but they aren't tied to an exact page/word count. The classic series audios, though, go for the same length, barring some play in the number of episodes, which is more consistently four than the classic series ever was.

And even that's not a big deal in-and-of-itself, but honestly? They're overly long. I'd much rather the story dictate the length, not the format.

On one of these boards, I referred to BF as 'continuity porn'. I think that applies fairly equally to the whole line, probably more so as the years go on. The RTD era showed us what 'just enough continuity between the two series' looked like, but this reveals perhaps the biggest difference between the current televised series and the audio lines: while both are produced by fans, likely a permanent situation from now on, only the audios are exclusively *for* fans. Televised Who has to keep an appeal to a general audience, else it would be hard to gain new viewers, and we've seen the televised show flout this approach, culminating in the JNT-produced show running itself into the ground. (Chibnal's two season show a rather bipolar implementation of it.)

But I acknowledge that BF is damned if they do and damned if they don't. Except for the collect-them-all collectors who are in tow no matter what, they have to appeal to people like me (yes, I'm one) whose interests get piqued when they match a Doctor with a familiar monster or a friend they never encountered onscreen, or another Doctor or seven.

But BF rarely brings back any of their own characters, and when they do, they were designed to be recurring (Forge/Nimrod). The history of televised Who is peppered with aliens who were invented for one story but who became so successful that they were brought back. We all know the Daleks are the prime example, but the Cybermen aren't much different. They came back four stories later in the same season, but completely redesigned (kind of odd when you think about it).

But BF has been running for a quarter century, inches away from surpassing the length of the classic series, and that's a long time to go without stumbling on anything worth bringing back. Although some BF stories/premises were nicked for the small screen, BF has certainly never invented any monster that made the television producers say, 'Hey, why don't we use these BF-developed aliens in an episode?'

In other words, BF hasn't carved its own niche in all the years it's been running. It just piggybacks itself on the work the televised series has produced like a giant spider on Sarah Jane. I mean, that *is* its niche, but it's not its own.

If I'm wrong and they have brought back aliens not necessarily designed to be brought back, well, then I have quite a bit to renege.

(And televised Who has brought back monsters out of fan wankery too. Popular demand played no role in the return of the Marca nor the Great Intelligence.)

At no point do I want to say that BF hasn't changed at all since it began. Even Emily in a 'last day' search from the time I'm writing says, 'I wouldn't say BF's early years were any better - quite the reverse'. But to be fair, the televised series came back during this time, which naturally has had a major influence on the audio line. But other than cameos of Peter Davison falling in love with River Song, or Doc4 bumping into Doc10, the classic series Doctors get classic series settings, and current series Doctors are situated in a current series format. When they do crossover, it's a classic series Doctor appearing in a current series setting. (Seeing, er, hearing, Tenant appear in a four-episode Peter Davison story, sounding very old-series, could actually be rather interesting.) This may change, and I hope it does, with the end of the monthly line, but as the First and Third Doctor series still follow an episodic format, I'm not optimistic.

The monthly line divides the stories into four episodes (with some exceptions: the six part Game and several four-separate-shorts bundles). I believe they continued to do so for the whole run. Correct me if I'm wrong.

BF went through a phase of having some releases being three-and-one-episode stories that usually worked really well, rather confirming your view that four episodes is just too long.

I'd much rather the story dictate the length, not the format.

Yeah, YOU didn't cough up for UNIT: Extinction only to discover that the stories were, like, 37 minutes long. (Apparently no one had realised that actors rattle through UNIT audios at a faster pace. Or something.) And sure, it was the right decision to just get on with it instead of attempting some last-minute padding, but on the other hand...STILL feeling cheated. 37 minutes! And 42 minutes for Eccy's long-awaited first story!

(Chibnal's two season show a rather bipolar implementation of it.)

...??

But BF has been running for a quarter century, inches away from surpassing the length of the classic series, and that's a long time to go without stumbling on anything worth bringing back

*Wince*

I...hadn't thought of it in quite those terms.

Thank you Kevin. I appreciate your considered response and yet I have my doubts that what you eventually explained was your original intent. Were it to come from someone like Emily or Tim I could excuse the vagueness of the language but for someone whose job it is to read over 100-page thesis documents and look for every little mistake in language, I imagine that "vague" is not a polite word in your vocabulary when it comes to writing.
That being said, I'll do you the courtesy of assuming you were in fact being vague and that I misread your statement.

The point you make is both, by your own admission, a good and bad one.
Whilst it is true that the first 7 seasons of classic Who had various episode lengths, the overwhelming majority of episodes from season 8 and beyond were either 6 or 4 parters. I count the episodes from season 22 as double length episodes and I break the Trial season into their story parts- how others choose to do it is up to them.

If I may play devil's advocate here, Who fans are particularly anal about things like episode numbers and how the episodes should be presented. That's why things like omnibus editions or cgi-effects are put on as bonus features so that the Who nerds can watch them "au natural" as they went out originally. It's a point I tend to agree with- I never saw the point of mashing up all the episodes into one as it ruined the flow of the original scripts. There actually needs to be a consistency in episode numbers not just for the pedants but also for cost.
If the monthly adventures prices fluctuated because the story could only be sustained for one or two episodes instead of four then it would be a logistical nightmare for all involved.
The boxsets have a similar problem- they need to be a certain amount of time to justify the expense. You know if it's a boxset it will come in between 4 and 5 hours total. You know if it's a monthly it will be two hours. If it's a short trip it will be around 45 minutes. It's that consistency that keeps Big Finish listeners going.
To be fair to them though, they have said, for example, that they are going to experiment with 6 part first and third Doctor adventures so maybe, just maybe, they are thinking along the lines that you are.

I don't disagree with anything you say Kevin, but I can also see the other side of the equation from a business perspective. The model has worked for over twenty years- if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I'd also point out that many of their non-Who products vary quite wildly from the format depending on the story so they are certainly not averse to doing things differently.

As for original aliens being popular I think there have been characters that they have created that have made return appearances (I think of one of David Warner's evil characters from the TB audios) but honestly, I doubt they get the kind of feedback that warrants a character being written into another adventure. That being said, Evylen Smyth and Iris Wildthyme have proven to be popular.... Charlie Pollard comes to mind.....

(Chibnal's two season show a rather bipolar implementation of it.)

...??

Chibnal's first series eschewed continuity in the sense of having no returning villains. As I've said before, it was a good decision but poorly executed.

His second series, however, went to the opposite extreme, relying heavily on the series' past to tell most of its stories, and to cap it off, it then pulled the carpet out from under 50+ years of continuity. I'm not as put off as some about that, but I do feel it wasn't a change we actually needed. It's not like when the lead actor was too sick to continue and they had to invent the concept of regeneration. I'm not upset by the huge revelation he introduced but it is rather unmotivated, except maybe in a 'ha ha, I can do stuff like this now' sense.



If the monthly adventures prices fluctuated because the story could only be sustained for one or two episodes instead of four then it would be a logistical nightmare for all involved.
Yes, good point.

If the monthly adventures prices fluctuated because the story could only be sustained for one or two episodes instead of four then it would be a logistical nightmare for all involved.
For years, that was the only way I'd known them as our local station in Chicago edited them together without any indication that a new episode had begun. We saw the opening credits, the story without adverts, then the closing credits 90 minutes later (which didn't list any actor whose character was killed off before the final episode). I was a fan for a couple years before I knew they were even doing that, largely because of the lack of information available to us in pre-internet America. It wasn't until the 20th and the Peter Haining books that I really understood how they were shown in the rest of the world. It wasn't until the DVDs started coming out that I regularly saw the stories in episode format (I had a few of the official VHS tapes, only of incomplete stories.) The format of The Five Dactors was exactly how I'd seen every four-part story.

I do remember when my wife did her sabbatical in your corner of the world (Monnash University), I found it odd to tune into part 3 of The Gunfighters, my first time seeing individual episodes actually broadcast that way.

But even I wouldn't want them to release them edited together.

I still think BF could tell the same story without breaking them into episodes. But yeah, I'm probably in the minority there, and most fans want that.

---

quote:

But BF has been running for a quarter century, inches away from surpassing the length of the classic series

---

---

quote:

I'm not as put off as some about that, but I do feel it wasn't a change we actually needed.

---

I never saw the point of mashing up all the episodes into one as it ruined the flow of the original scripts

Whereas I could ABSOLUTELY understand watching a Who story as one glorious whole without stupid unnecessary interruptions like credits and reprises...right up until I actually had the misfortune of WATCHING one of these hideous patched-together abominations.

The boxsets have a similar problem- they need to be a certain amount of time to justify the expense

Big Finish have decided otherwise - they just need to have a certain number of CDs to justify the expense. If several of 'em are ludicrously short and the only hour-long one happens to consist entirely of actors lauding the Big Finish lunch experience...that's just our tough luck.

they have said, for example, that they are going to experiment with 6 part first and third Doctor adventures

Ooh, have they!

The model has worked for over twenty years- if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Given that BF have just ditched their monthly range, they obviously don't agree.

I'd also point out that many of their non-Who products vary quite wildly from the format depending on the story so they are certainly not averse to doing things differently.

You mean...Blake's 7 fans are more flexible than us when it comes to...dancing audio-running-times?

As for original aliens being popular I think there have been characters that they have created that have made return appearances (I think of one of David Warner's evil characters from the TB audios)

I suspect they always planned to have bloody Cuthbert back, not just because of his Mysterious Backstory (me on first Sands of Life listening: 'I can just SEE the big red flashing SEQUEL SEQUEL light above 'You have no idea who or what I really am' Cuthbert's head') but because BF is totally obsessed with David Warner.

(Chibnal's two season show a rather bipolar implementation of it.)

...??

Chibnal's first series eschewed continuity in the sense of having no returning villains. As I've said before, it was a good decision but poorly executed.

His second series, however, went to the opposite extreme, relying heavily on the series' past to tell most of its stories, and to cap it off, it then pulled the carpet out from under 50+ years of continuity.

Ah. Yes. See what you mean...

I'm not as put off as some about that, but I do feel it wasn't a change we actually needed.

But we NEEDED Ruth and if we have to put up with some Timeless Children nonsense in exchange for getting THAT MOMENT in Fugitive...totally worth it.

Probably totally worth it.

I found it odd to tune into part 3 of The Gunfighters, my first time seeing individual episodes actually broadcast that way.

Don't worry, tuning into any episode of The Gunfighters is ALWAYS an odd experience.

Joining the conversation two years later (I've only recently decided to check out what exactly is in this "Ask the Matrix" section!).

Full-length movie format vs. breaking stories down into episodes. I mentioned in the past on the "Web Planet" page that I find that story to be very tedious of you watch the edited together movie format. A six-episode story runs to about two and a quarter hours and there is only so much one can take with the Zarbi noises and petroleum-jelly-smeared lens effect. But as I've mentioned numerious times in this forum, my habit is to watch one episode a day, and I discovered years ago that The Web Planet is much more enjoyable when split over six days. Originaly, it was over six weeks, after all.
I've noticed this more with that story than with any other. Many of the stories, especially from the Third and Fourth Doctor eras, I too saw first in the "movie" format. When I had just become a Whovian in the late-1980s I was going to a college in Belleville, Ontario, Canada and the local cable provider gave us the U.S. stations from Rochester, New York, which was directly across Lake Ontario. They showed the movie format versions and this was my first exposure to many of the stories. Even the seven parters in Pertwee's first season were shown unbroken, although it took over two-and-a-half hours, they ran it uncut with no commercial breaks. In retrospect, it was obvious that those stories needed to be broken up. I know that many people watch them all in one go, but surely the natural breaks of the episodic format provide moments to grab a snack, expunge bodily wastes, have a conversation with your cat, and so on.

On the other hand, sometimes the repeated scenes at the beginnings of episodes force you to watch things you didn't like when you saw them at the end of the previous episode. My favorite all-time Doctor Who story, for example, is City of Death. The only weak moment, in my opinion that the story has is the overacting in Kerensky's death, and thanks to the cliffhanger repetition, we have to go though it twice!
And then there are the times when the reprisal of the previous episode's final moments adds new material or changes things. For example, at the end of part two of Planet of Giants, is the stopper for the sink place NEXT TO the sink, or left IN the sink? As it turns out, that's a rather important plot point! In the one Mark of the Rani cliffhanger, the reprise shows Stephenson running to save the Doctor, but he wasn't there at the end of episode one.
And then there is the peculiar episode five/six cliffhanger of Planet of the Spiders in which the reprise adds several minutes of new material!

So overall, I prefer the episodic format, even though, as my last couple of paragraphs indicates, there are issues with it.

I just finished Web Planet two days ago, in episode format. The version I saw in the 80s was a two-part movie format. I'll say this: it has some decent cliffhangers which were lost on me decades back.

I started to write that it had been less than two years since my last viewing, which is too soon for this particular story. However, I checked and it has been four years. That says a lot.

Brad - I've only recently decided to check out what exactly is in this "Ask the Matrix" section!

Evil! Evil since the dawn of time!

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Doctor R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

My favorite all-time Doctor Who story, for example, is City of Death. The only weak moment, in my opinion that the story has is the overacting in Kerensky's death, and thanks to the cliffhanger repetition, we have to go though it twice!

That wasn't overacting, if you read what ACTUALLY happened to him during said death-scene in the novelisation...

And then there are the times when the reprisal of the previous episode's final moments adds new material or changes things. For example, at the end of part two of Planet of Giants, is the stopper for the sink place NEXT TO the sink, or left IN the sink? As it turns out, that's a rather important plot point!

River Song probably Vortex-Manipulated in to change plughole-related history so Himself would survive.