The BF Time Warp 041: Nekromanteia

[SiHart]

In the depths of space a little known district harbours a terrible secret. Long known as a place of death, it claims thousands more lives as a great corporate space-fleet goes to war. As the fleet screams out in fear and pain, an irresistible voice calls out to three travellers and a macabre mind sets a deadly trap.

The Doctor, Peri and Erimem face the terrors of Talderun and the wrath of a corporate empire as they struggle to understand the hideous secret of the domain of the dead * a district known in legend as Nekromanteia.

is it as bad as its reputation? What do you think of this audio adventure from 2003?

[Rob McCow]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

The moment Brendan has been waiting for has finally arrived...!!

[Jon Masters]

The moment Brendan has been waiting for has finally arrived...!!

Oh, don't let him go on and on about how much he loves it , FFS !

[brandynigma]

The moment Brendan has been waiting for has finally arrived...!!

Oh, don't let him go on and on about how much he loves it , FFS !

It's too late!


NSFW or listeners of a sensitive disposition.

[Dirk Gently]

Don't hold back there, Brendan. Tell us how you really feel.

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

From what I recall it remains one of the all-time worst plays Big Finish have ever produced and after listening to Brendan's podcast digest I realised that some of it clearly didn't make sense to me when I listened to it.
As sadistic as it sounds I found my copy of this on the shelf last night so might give it a relisten shortly.

[Stuart Wallis]

As sadistic as it sounds I found my copy of this on the shelf last night so might give it a relisten shortly.

Or possibly masochistic...

Nice one, Brendan!

[Anthony Williams]

Honestly, I was going to write a review of this one. But Brendan's podcast review says pretty much everything that I feel about this audio. Only one thing - I don't think that "Captain Gruff" is actually successful in raping Erimem - she puts up a fight and so he just beats her senseless instead. Qu'est-ce que le diff?

It's truly, truly wretched. 1/5.

[Anthony Williams]

Actually, I lied. Well, maybe not lied - just changed my mind over night. But, I do have more to say on this festering turd of a play.

Up until this point, we'd had a run of three very, very strong Big Finish plays, IMO. The Church and the Crown, Bang-Bang-A-Boom! and Jubilee. So the question is how the hell did this one get through script editing? Did the responsible parties just decide to take a holiday, and thus rush this one through so that they could get on a flight? "Hmmmm. Nekromanteia? Sounds interesting! Approved!" Seriously. Quality control, guys. Quality control.

One thing that really strikes me about this turgid piece of work is how it's basically a re-write of The Caves of Androzani, without any of the clever world building, incredible dialogue or stunning twists. All the characters are pretty much parallels of characters in Caves, right down to Marr (reminiscent of Morgus) being betrayed by his secretary, Tallis (a parallel of Krau Timmin). I mean, really? The biggest difference, however, is how Peri is beaten around in Caves, but actually changes because of it. At the end of this piece of nonsense, she simply gets up and gets on as normal, with her pre-Androzani cheer.

Now, the rape scene. Whether it was rape or merely attempted rape, it was horrendously badly judged. Even John Ainsworth has said, in retrospect, that that scene should have been cut. The idea of a companion being beaten black and blue during an attempted rape just goes against virtually everything Doctor Who is about. Granted, there was the attempted rape of Barbara in The Keys of Marinus, but that wasn't anywhere near as brutal as this. And to add ridiculousness to it, Erimem just gets up, and finishes the play with the same cheery disposition that she'd shown in The Eye of the Scorpion and The Church and the Crown. Really, very poor characterisation.

I honestly have absolutely nothing good to say about this one. It's so bad that it makes me want to go back and give all the other plays I've given 1/5 to (The Land of the Dead, The Mutant Phase and Minuet in Hell) an upgrade to 2/5, because this makes them all look like shining examples of Doctor Who at its best. I can only re-iterate - what were they thinking? It's clear that the writer was trying to emulate the "grittyness" of the Saward era, but this does it without any of the charm. This is truly deserving of a 1/5.

[Nyder]

Eek I just finished Nekky today. Sorry for resurrecting this thread and all the pain associated with it - but nice to hear Brendan. Yep I agree with everything said... and oh the atrocious dialogue. Did Peri really say “I have trouble tattooed on my ass”. Yes I’m afraid she did

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

I seem to recall Brendan's infamous rant found its way onto the show notes for one of last year's (or possibly 2016's) episodes of Flight Through Entirety and quite rightly too.
I stand by my six year old comment that this is the worst thing Big Finish have ever commercially released. It would never get through the complex approval system that all releases go through since the advent of the new series. Quite frankly, it's hard to know what Gary Russell and Jason Haigh-Ellery were thinking at the time. I can only assume they were just too busy to find a replacement script or insist on rewrites. I know the tendency is to view the early period of Big Finish as a golden age but the fact is this would never have been recorded during the Briggs/Richardson era.