Doctor Who- The Lost Stories

[Lissa]

But I'm still quite looking forward to the next batch - a couple of unmade 60s stories and then a look at what season 27 could've been like.

[Simon R]

I don't get how the sixties ones will work without the Doctor. Are they more like talking books or will it be a cross between that and a traditional audio depending on when Old Man Who is speaking.

[Lissa]

They're being done in the same style as the Companion Chronicles with William Russell and Carole Ann Ford doing one and Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury doing the other one.

[SiHart]

I think they'll be like the companion chronicles- the companions will handle their dialgue but the Doctor's will be reported speech or something instead.

I'd be interested in hearing Farewell Great Macedon. I liked the synopsis in DWM years ago.

Si xx

[Simon R]

I listened to and enjoyed "Paradise 5" and "Point of Entry" this week.

It's easy to picture "Paradise 5" as an all studio story and there's nothing too taxing in the storyline that would have challenged the production team apart from a serpent thing that appears at the end but they could have avoided showing that if they were clever as it's all a bit surreal at that point. Bit dissapointed by how much tinkering Big Finish did with it however. PJ Hammond only ever wrote the first episode in script form at the time and was too busy to ammend it and write the rest of it for Big Finish so Andy Lane created an entire new first episode and re-jigged the rest. Fair enough that they had to take out the Trial elements and swap Mel with Peri but changing the motivation of the villains and how they are defeated as seems to be the case from the original storyline I found online is pushing it. Then again the storyline might well have been changed once it got further into development and some of the changes are argubaly for the best.

A couple of niggles with Lane's script is Peri knowing what a Butlin's Redcoat is (maybe there's a missing story where the Doctor and her stay at a Butlins) and a horrible self indulent quote from a 21st Century pop song which rather ruins the 80s vibe.

"Point of Entry" is very "Vistiation" meets "Talons" meets "Phantasmagoria" meets "The Shakespeare Code" and might have needed a lot of toning down of horror had it got to the screen. It features lots of running about Olde Worlde London and some floaty woaty Astral Plane stuff that might have clobbered the budget alas. Again it's a shame the original writer declined to write the script as it's hard to entirely judge what these would have been like.

[Andrew Curnow]

Has anybody been listening to the "season 27" McCoy releases? Any good?

[stuartdg]

Next on my to do list...

[Lissa]

The first one is pretty bad. The second is still in its wrapper.

[SiHart]

if anyone is absolutely desperate to hear The Ulitmate Evil by Waly K Daly, you can now buy it from the RNIB, with 80 per cent of the retail price going to the RNIB and Polio Plus. http://www.rnib.org.uk/shop/Pages/Pr...ID=PR12334CD01

[Si Hunt]

And Frontios in braille!

Si.