The BF Time Warp 039: Bang-Bang-A-Boom!

[SiHart]

Dark Space 8 - an advanced monitoring station floating serenely among the stars. Its crew - a dedicated and highly-skilled group of professionals, calmy going about their vital work. Its mission - to boldy host the Intergalactic Song Contest.

With representatives from myriad worlds competing, the eyes of the universe are on the station. But dark deeds are afoot aboard Dark Space 8... and people are starting to die.

The haughty Queen Angvia, the gaseous gestalt Gholos, disposable pop idol Nicky Neumann, erratic Professor Fassbinder and the icily-efficient Dr Helena Harcourt * all are suspects. Could old political rivalries be manifesting themselves among the contestants? Is this the work of a breakaway terrorist faction? Or has someone just got it in for singer-songwriters?

With peace in the galaxy hanging by a thread, it's vital that the mystery is solved * and fast! Can Dark Space 8's unconventional new commander, with the help of his personal pilot, Mel, find the murderer in time to prevent a major intergalactic war?

Or will it be nul points for the entire universe...?

Star Trek Deeps Space Nine meets Space:1999 meets the Eurovision Song Contest... What are your thoughts on this story from 2002?

[Rob McCow]

Hah! I remember this one being absolutely wonderful - a superb blend of fun, silliness and spoofery. Such a shame that they stopped doing out-and-out comedies like this one!

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

It wasn't as good as 2001's The One Doctor but I heard it again recently and it is still a lot of fun. Some bits work better than others but the perfomances by Nickolas Grace, Graeme Garden and Rula Lenska in particular are great.

I think there was a perception that they'd being trying to cash in on The One Doctor's popularity so that's probably why December 2003 saw the rather more serious Eighth Doctor and Charley duologue Scherzo and then the following December was the "Let's get rid of this timeless universe" wrap up story The Next Life.

[Si Hunt]

It wasn't as good as 2001's The One Doctor

Unfortunately, I think that's how it's mainly remembered.

Unlike TOD it feels like it was more fun writing than actually making, as few people are going to be fans of both Star Trek and the Eurovision Song Contest that much.

Si.

[SiHart]

I liked this one at the time. It's a bit long and not quite as funny as The One Doctor, but it's still good. It was great at the time to hear the proper McCoy theme on the CD for the first time too.

The Pits of Angvia was very naughty!

[Simon R]

We re-listened to this in the car this week.

It's okay but not very funny and the comedy music whenever people discover a death is deeply irritating. Some good performances and quite a clever plot but I don't feel it exploits the Eurovision element as much as it could have done. It would have been better to have started the whole thing off with Logan commentating and introducing the various characters and set ups maybe. I think it would have been stronger as a 3 parter perhaps.

I do wish they'd get Bonnie back.

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

I do wish they'd get Bonnie back.

We may not get to hear it for a little while but Nick Briggs recently said in a podcast they are planning to work with Bonnie again soon!

[Anthony Williams]

Well, I must say that (once again), I've been very pleasantly surprised by this one! After not liking The One Doctor that much, I was expecting the following year's offering from the Roberts/Hickman team to be equally disappointing. And how wrong was I!?

The first thing that really struck me here was how great it was to finally hear the "correct" theme music for the story! I know that the Keff theme is not to everyone's tastes, but it just sounds so RIGHT when listening to a McCoy story.

Anyway, moving on from that, it's always a real pleasure to hear the Seventh Doctor and Mel team again - they do work together extremely well. On their last outing, The Fires of Vulcan, Big Finish pretty much ignored the wackiness of Season 24. Here, they absolutely embrace it. Granted, this is the Christmas story, but this is great, great fun. The joy of McCoy playing this era of his Doctor is that he seems so much more natural than he does in something along the lines of, say, The Rapture.

What's lovely here is how we get a wonderful parody of Doctor Who, Star Trek and the Eurovision Song Contest all in one story. And I don't think one needs to be a particularly big fan of all of them (except Doctor Who, of course!) to enjoy this. While I'm a Who fan and a Trek fan, I don't particularly enjoy Eurovision, but I did enjoy the Wogan-parody of Logan. Other fantastic moments are the revelation of the fantastically incompetent and under-qualified crew of Dark Space Eight. Likewise, the notion of the Seventh Doctor in a Starfleet-esque uniform had me extremely excited!

The most amusing thing here is how Mel seems to be rolling her eyes pretty much the whole way through this, but gets everything spectacularly wrong, time-and-time again. Her actions inadvertantly threaten to start a war, especially after she renders the arbiter unconscious! Of course, the plot twists and turns, and Mel assumes that the killer is just about everyone, until the true culprit is finally revealed to her. I really liked this running gag - simple, but efficient!

There are just such a lot of lovely touches here. Patricia Quinn being back in Who, playing an OTT character with her Rocky Horror character's accent, singing a really ridiculous song. She's vampy, and a real seductress. I truly love her character. Beyond that, there's the emergence of the Pakhars from the books into the Big Finish range, and the lovely little reference to the Drahvins singing "Clone Love" as their entry.

Ultimately, I really, really enjoyed this. I know it gets compared to The One Doctor a lot, and if I had to make comparisons, I enjoyed this one a lot more. This was a great little story, albeit not flawless. For me, this is a very strong 4/5, being a great story for the holiday season.

[Nyder]

I LOVE this story! And the fact that Earth’s International Anthem is “I Will Survive” was the icing on the cake