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stephen_on_a_jet_plane's review against another edition
A timey-wimey release from big finish where episodes one and two and three and four can be listened to in either order. Reviews are picking up on the anti-immigration implications of the alien portrayal and I see it to. For that reason I don’t think the play can hit those top stars but I think the tone is so wild and farcical that no offence seems to have been intentional. I enjoyed the structure of the story but it was challenging to follow the cleverness.
faiazalam's review
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
I have never read anything so racist in my entire life, and I seriously didn't expect it to be a doccy who book 😫
nwhyte's review
requires some intellectual work from the listener. The two discs are alternate versions of the same planet's history, in each case changed into the other by the intervention of the Doctor and Mel. Really very well done.
colossal's review
1.0
This is a seventh Doctor story with Melanie Bush (Mel) as his companion and is #46 in the Big Finish main range.
For a show with a time-traveling alien as its main character, Doctor Who only rarely deals with time travel itself. This one very cleverly does so.
And that's all I'm going to say about it, because I have a huge problem with this story that I just can't overlook to deal with the cleverer elements of it.
One of the timelines in this one deals with a race of blind slug-like aliens who arrive at the colony of Punxsutawney (a nod to the central theme of reliving the day from the movie Groundhog Day) in a heavily armed warship. The aliens are physically repulsive and act as essentially the worst right-wing caricatures of immigrants that you can imagine.
So we get this:
- The aliens initially want just a moon of the planet, but quickly expand as if there are infinite aliens coming until they've used up all space on the moon and are 90% of the population of the planet
- "Hate Crimes" are whenever any human disagrees with an alien
- The alien leader is referred to as "community leader", a term more commonly used by the media for elders in immigrant communities
There's lots more and it's all equally disgusting. I'm actually more than a little distressed that the Big Finish editorial team even accepted this script with these elements.
For a show with a time-traveling alien as its main character, Doctor Who only rarely deals with time travel itself. This one very cleverly does so.
And that's all I'm going to say about it, because I have a huge problem with this story that I just can't overlook to deal with the cleverer elements of it.
One of the timelines in this one deals with a race of blind slug-like aliens who arrive at the colony of Punxsutawney (a nod to the central theme of reliving the day from the movie Groundhog Day) in a heavily armed warship. The aliens are physically repulsive and act as essentially the worst right-wing caricatures of immigrants that you can imagine.
So we get this:
- The aliens initially want just a moon of the planet, but quickly expand as if there are infinite aliens coming until they've used up all space on the moon and are 90% of the population of the planet
- "Hate Crimes" are whenever any human disagrees with an alien
- The alien leader is referred to as "community leader", a term more commonly used by the media for elders in immigrant communities
There's lots more and it's all equally disgusting. I'm actually more than a little distressed that the Big Finish editorial team even accepted this script with these elements.
kmccubbin's review
1.0
This story was clearly racist when it was written in 2003 or so and it feels all the more painfully racist now. How this didn't get stopped at the pitch stage is both frightening and beyond me, especially at this point in Big FInish's run where they seem to be finding their confidence.
Absolutely embarrassing. It's the "All Lives Matter" protest of Doctor Who and doesn't belong anywhere near the canon.
Absolutely embarrassing. It's the "All Lives Matter" protest of Doctor Who and doesn't belong anywhere near the canon.
sshabein's review
3.0
Not the most amazing story, but I enjoyed it well enough. Fitting that I listened to it around Christmas!
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