Tag: Melanie Bush

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6th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Thicker Than Water

Doctor Who: Thicker Than WaterCurious about the Doctor’s frequent mentions of how traveling with Evelyn Smythe calmed him down, Melanie talks him into paying her a visit. Three years after the invasion of Vilag, Evelyn – who left the Doctor’s company some time ago – is now married to Rossiter, who heads up the new global government. But all is not well even in the wake of the invasion of which the Doctor and Evelyn tried to warn everyone on their earlier visit; the leftover alien technology has become a subject of intense controversy, with Evelyn heading up an effort to have it studied and exploited for the benefits it could bring. The most vocal opponent of this viewpoint is Rossiter’s daughter, Sophia, who leads a faction that wants the alien technology destroyed. But mere moments after the Doctor and Melanie appear at a ceremony marking the anniversary of the attack, it appears that some of Sophia’s opponents are more prepared to take action than others. When the first shots ring out, the Doctor and Evelyn both think it’s an attempt on Rossiter’s life, but when the Doctor rushes to help Rossiter, Evelyn and Melanie are kidnapped. The Doctor and Rossiter set out to track them down and rescue them, and find that the Doctor’s companions, past and present, aren’t the only ones who need help.

Order this CDwritten by Paul Sutton
directed by Edward Salt
music by ERS

Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Maggie Stables (Evelyn), Bonnie Langford (Melanie), Gabriel Woolf (Principal Triumvir Rossiter), Rachel Pickup (Dr. Sofia Rossiter), Patrick Romer (Dr. Andrew Szabo), Simon Watts (Dr. Sebastian Lawrence), Matt Dineen (Jenner), James Parsons (TV Interviewer), Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor)

Timeline: for the Doctor and Mel, after Catch-1782 and before Time And The Rani; for Evelyn, after Arrangements For War and before A Death In The Family

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
7th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Red

Doctor Who: RedThe Doctor follows a psychic attack on the TARDIS’ telepathic circuits to a living city called the Needle, but the moment that he and Melanie step out of the TARDIS, they realize that their problems are just beginning – they stumble onto the scene of a grisly murder. The two time travelers are separated, Melanie barely surviving being ejected from the city’s walls, and the Doctor is brought before Chief Blue and the Needle’s central computer, White Noise. White Noise’s function involves the careful control of both the Needle and its residents, via chips implanted in their brains which allow the computer to prevent violent impulses from becoming violent actions. Rescued by a resident of the undercity beneath the Needle – people whose chips have been deactivated and whose crave the exciting sensation of violence with little thought given to its consequences – Melanie finds that she’s quite a sensation, as her rescuers believe she’s capable of anything, even extreme acts of violence…and her insistence that she isn’t likely to do any such thing seems to fall on deaf ears. White Noise is rapidly losing control of the Needle’s even more docile populace, with murders continuing to occur…only now, via his chip implant, the Doctor can see, hear and feel the thoughts and actions of the killers as they go into “red condition.” But with White Noise attempting to control him, is the Doctor capable of fighting whatever evil is stalking the city at random?

Order this CDwritten by Stewart Sheargold
directed by Gary Russell
music by ERS

Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Bonnie Langford (Mel), Denise Hoey (Nuane), Sean Oliver (Chief Blue), Peter Rae (Draun), Kellie Ryan (Celia Fortunaté), Sandi Toksvig (Vi Yulquen), John Stahl (Whitenoise), Steven Wickham (Uviol)

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
6th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

The Wrong Doctors

Doctor Who: The Wrong DoctorsAfter: Prematurely introduced to Melanie during the course of his trial, the Doctor returns her to Pease Pottage. He hasn’t met her or begun his travels with her yet, and keeping her around is begging for a paradox to be created.

Before: The Doctor has parted ways with Evelyn Smythe, and resigns himself to the future that he already knows is coming: traveling with Melanie toward the end of his sixth incarnation. He sets the TARDIS on a course for Pease Pottage, and meets Mel right on schedule. But there’s one than one Mel there at the same time, and it’s not because the TARDIS has come to the right place at the wrong time. Someone else is tinkering with time, and it will take two Doctors and two Melanies to stop them.

Order this CDwritten by Matt Fitton
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Simon Robinson

Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Bonnie Langford (Mel), Tony Gardner (Stapleton Petherbridge), James Joyce (Jedediah Thurwell), Patricia Leventon (Mrs. Wilberforce), Beth Chalmers (Vaneesh), John Banks (Ksllak)

Notes: This story attempts to resolve one of Doctor Who’s longest-standing paradoxes: how the sixth Doctor, on trial, could present a future adventure with Melanie (whom he has yet to meet) as evidence, only to have a future Melanie brought to the trial by the Time Lords to testify, and then leave with her at the end of the story. Even the Target novelization of that story strongly implied that the Doctor drops Melanie off in her timeline and then goes about his business, not meeting her “properly” until later. Another chronicle of Melanie’s first meeting with the sixth Doctor – from her perspective – occurs in Gary Russell’s novel Business Unusual, which this story does not necessarily contradict.

Timeline: For the sixth Doctor and Melanie, after part 14 of Trial Of A Time Lord. For the sixth Doctor and Melanie, on the other hand, before part 9 of Trial Of A Time Lord.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
6th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

Spaceport Fear

Doctor WhoThe Doctor and Mel arrive at Spaceport Tantane, which appears at first to be abandoned. They quickly find that it’s anything but: the space station is now occupied by descendants of its original crew and passengers, now divided into tribes based on starliner seating classes. The Business and Economy tribes are locked in a barely-civilized conflict, but for the moment a common enemy has them distracted, a deadly beast lurking within the bowels of the station. Both tribes are led by the gentle guidance of Elder Bones, who claims to be over 400 years old; each tribe is oblivious to the fact that their leader is also their enemies’ leader. But of course, the new arrivals from the TARDIS provide a convenient new focus for everyone’s suspicions, and suddenly the Doctor and Mel are public enemies number one and two.

Order this CDwritten by William Gallagher
directed by Barnaby Edwards
music by Richard Fox & Lauren Yason

Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Bonnie Langford (Mel), Ronald Pickup (Elder Bones), Isabel Fay (Naysmith), Gwilym Lee (Pretty Swanson), Beth Chalmers (Galpan / Beauty Swanson), Adrian MacKinder (Rogers / Game Voice), John Banks (Wailers / Announcement / Mad Passenger)

Timeline: after The Vanity Box and before The Seeds Of War

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
6th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

The Seeds Of War

Doctor WhoThe Doctor promises to take Melanie to the grand opening of the opulent Tower of Kalsos, but while the TARDIS does bring the time travelers to the Tower, it arrives moments before the Tower’s demolition. As the last refuge of the noncorporeal entity known as the Eminence, the controller of a zombie-lark armiy of possessed victims known as the Infinite, the Tower is a strategic target of the Earth Alliance military, and the Doctor and Mel barely survive its destruction. Flown back into Earth space without the TARDIS, the time travelers witness what has become of humanity after its lengthy war with the infinite: with resources spread thin, the human civilian population is starving and barely surviving, descending into anarchy. As an alien, and one who records show has a connection to the Eminence and the Infinite, the Doctor is locked up as a suspicious entity, but he and Mel manage to escape and begin making their way to Earth aboard a civilian ship. But Earth Alliance intelligence is right about one thing: the Doctor was once possessed by the Eminence, and after coming into close proximity to it on Kalsos, he may be under its control again.

Order this CDwritten by Matt Fitton and Barnaby Edwards
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Andy Hardwick

Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Bonnie Langford (Melanie Bush), Ray Fearon (Barlow Teveler), Ony Uhiara (Sisrella Tevier), Stuart Organ (Helgert Teveler), Lucy Russell (Trellak), John Banks (Elkinar), Beth Chalmers (Announcer), David Sibley (The Eminence)

Notes: This is not the Doctor’s first brush with the Eminence, though in release order it is; the Doctor’s first encounter with the Eminence occurs in the 2014 fourth Doctor story Destroy The Infinite, and the Eminence returns later in the Doctor’s timeline in the Dark Eyes 2 box set, also released in 2014. Professor Teveler name-checks a series of scientists, including Professor Lasky. Since he’s already met Lasky before, the Doctor encourages Teveler not to put much stock in her research.- it was almost the death of him (The Trial Of A Time Lord parts 9-12).

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
6th Doctor Doctor Who The Audio Dramas

The Last Adventure: The Brink Of Death

Doctor WhoIn the blink of an eye, the familiar, curly-haired, colorfully-clothed form of the Doctor’s sixth incarnation vanishes, replaced by the gaunt face of the Valeyard. The TARDIS travels onward, and Mel notices nothing.

The Doctor finds himself trapped in the Matrix, the repository of all Time Lord knowledge, as a fading echo of his own consciousness – the fate of all Time Lords when they meet their final death. A young Time Lady, Genesta, has found him in the Matrix and is able to reinstate his corporeal form, but he has very little time until even that is erased. The Valeyard has found a way to do what he hoped to do at the Doctor’s trial: to eliminate the Doctor and his future incarnations, and take the Doctor’s place. The Doctor can prevent this from happening with the time he has left, but only at the cost of bringing about events that will cause his next regeneration.

Order this CDwritten by Nicholas Briggs
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Howard Carter

Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Bonnie Langford (Melanie Bush), Michael Jayston (The Valeyard), Liz White (Genesta), Robbie Stevens (Coordinator Storin / Nathemus 1), Susan Earnshaw (Lorelas / Nathemus 2), Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor)

Notes: Past Big Finish adventures have shown the Valeyard to have a near-obsession with rewriting the Doctor’s past, including (also in The Last Adventure box set) Stage Fright and the Doctor Who Unbound story He Jests At Scars… Though billed as the sixth Doctor’s regeneration story for Big Finish’s purposes, there had already been two regeneration stories for the sixth Doctor in print, the BBC Books novel Spiral Scratch, and the posthumously-finished charity novel Time’s Champion, co-written by the late Craig Hinton. All three tell, naturally, completely different stories, and in any case, while this plants an endpoint for the sixth Doctor in the audio world, it’s certainly not an end to Colin Baker playing the Doctor for Big Finish.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
2022-2023 Specials Doctor Who New Series Season 13 (Flux)

The Power Of The Doctor

Doctor WhoThe Doctor, Yaz, and Dan intercept a Cybermaster attack force as it launches an assault on a hyperspace train. The Cybermasters are targeting a container holding a Gallifreyan girl. During the battle, Dan barely survives a breach of his spacesuit helmet, and decides to leave the TARDIS and resume a life that, while it may be less exciting, is also far less dangerous. On Earth, former time travelers Ace and Tegan now work for UNIT, each of them chasing down different unusual events: Tegan is trying to retrace the steps of seismologists who have gone missing, while Ace is investigating a series of paintings that have been abruptly removed from public display. The Doctor receives a warning from a Dalek of an imminent attack on Earth, and, surprisingly, an offer of information to prevent that attack. But the message ends before any useful information can be conveyed, and the Doctor’s attention returns to tracking down the Gallifreyan child… and the fact that there’s suddenly an extra planet near Earth’s orbit in the year 1916 – the same year in which the Master is posing as Rasputin in Russia.

The Doctor and Yaz visit the extraneous planet, finding that the Gallifreyan child is simply a disguise employed by a Qurunx, a powerful sentient energy being chained to a Cyber-conversion planet by the Master and the Cybermen. But before the Doctor can unravel that mystery, the TARDIS is summoned to UNIT HQ in 2022, where Kate Lethbridge-Stewart needs the Doctor’s expertise on the parallel mysteries of the missing paintings and missing seismologists, which seem like a distraction from the events in 1916…until the Master’s hand is detected in the disappearances as well. The Doctor is briefly, awkwardly reunited with Ace and Tegan, but soon resumes the chase, tracking down the Master in Naples, and discovering he is responsible for killing the missing seismologists. UNIT takes the Master into custody, but this is exactly what he wants, as this allows him to bring an entire Cyber invasion force directly into UNIT HQ. The Doctor and Yaz, however, have already left again, once again following a lead from the Dalek’s message, leaving Ace and Tegan to try to help fend off the Cyberman attack. As Yaz anticipates, the Dalek message proves to be a trap. The Doctor is taken back to 1916 Russia, where the Master instigates a forced regeneration during which his consciousness is forced into the Doctor’s body, as Yaz is helpless to watch.

But the Doctor’s friends and allies, past and present, are legion. Yaz, with help from Vinder, Ace, and Graham, and with some helpful advice from a hologram of the Doctor, reverses the forced regeneration and thwarts the Daleks’ plan, and arrive just in time to see Tegan and Kate Stewart end the attempted Cyberman invasion. Even the Qurunx is freed. As the Doctor’s former companions return to their normal lives, Yaz prepares to return to hers, as the Doctor’s body, as a result of the trauma caused by the forced regeneration, is once more wearing a bit thin.

Order the DVDwritten by Chris Chibnall
directed by Jamie Magnus Stone
music by Segun Akinola

Doctor Who: The Power Of The DoctorCast: Jodie Whittaker (The Doctor), Mandip Gill (Yasmin Khan), John Bishop (Dan Lewis), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Janet Fielding (Tegan Jovanka), David Bradley (The Doctor), Colin Baker (The Doctor), Peter Davison (The Doctor), Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Jo Martin (The Doctor), David Tennant (The Doctor), Sacha Dhawan (The Master), Jemma Redgrave (Kate Stewart), Jacob Anderson (Vinder), Bradley Walsh (Graham O’Brien), Patrick O’Kane (Ashad), Joe Sims (Deputy Marshal Arnhost), Sanchia McCormack (Train Marshal Halaz), Danielle Bjelic (Curator), Anna Andresen (Alexandra), Richard Dempsey (Nicholas), Jos Slovick (Messenger), Nicholas Briggs (Dalek voices / Cybermen voices), Barnaby Edwards (Dalek), Nicholas Pegg (Dalek), Simon Carew (Cyberman), Jon Davey (Cyberman), Chester Durrant (Cyberman), Mickey Lewis (Cyberman), Felix Young (Cyberman), Richard Price (Cyberman), Andrew Cross (Cyberman), Matt Doman (Cyberman), Bonnie Langford (Melanie Bush), Katy Manning (Jo Jones), William Russell (Ian Chesterton)

Doctor Who: The Power Of The DoctorNotes: This marks the first televised appearance of Tegan and Ace since their final TV appearances, in Resurrection Of The Daleks (1984) and Survival (1989), respectively. Dialogue for both characters seems to contradict adventures chronicled in other media. Ace says the last time she saw the Master, he was “half cat” (which would seem to indicate she hasn’t seen him since Survival, contradicting the New Adventures novel First Frontier); Tegan hasn’t seen the Doctor in 38 years, contradicting the Big Finish audio story The Gathering, which reunited an older Tegan with the fifth Doctor in 2006. However, the Master’s description of Ace’s eventual falling-out with the seventh Doctor lines up well with both the 1992 New Adventures novel Love And War and the later Big Finish audio adaptation of that novel, so perhaps this is something to blame on the wibbly-wobbliness of time. Tegan and Ace aren’t the only companions making their first appearances in a very long time; Melanie was last seen in Dragonfire (1987), and Ian Chesterton was last seen in The Chase (1966), winning William Russell the official Guinness World Record for the longest time between television appearances as the same character (56 years). Jo Jones (formerly Jo Grant), on the other hand, had made a relatively recent appearance in The Sarah Jane Adventures (The Death Of The Doctor, 2011). All of these actors, however, have been reprising their roles for Big Finish audio productions for many years. The Doctor says the Master couldn’t “corral Daleks and Cybermen” (see also: Frontier In Space and The Five Doctors, respectively). The Master also tried to forcibly steal the Doctor’s body in the 1996 TV movie, though in that instance the process was interrupted. Other than being the finale for Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor and Chris Chibnall as showrunner, The Power Of The Doctor was also intended to celebrate 100 years of the British Broadcasting Corporation.

LogBook entry by Earl Green