Escape Artists
Escape Pod => Science Fiction Discussion => Topic started by: Heradel on September 03, 2009, 06:47:21 PM
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http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/09/tom-baker-returns-to-doctor-who/
Though 11 actors have now played the lead role in Doctor Who, most sci-fi fans older than 30 have only one image in mind when considering The Doctor: A tall, wide-eyed man with a mop of dark, curly hair and a toothy smile that seems to pop up at the least-appropriate times. He wears a mismatched outfit, a wide-brimmed hat and a foolishly long, multicolored scarf.
That’s the fourth Doctor, who propelled the long-running British show to its highest British ratings in the 1970s and appeared in most of the BBC’s first exports of the show to U.S. PBS stations in the early 1980s.
That’s Tom Baker’s Doctor — the one who’s finally returning to the show’s universe after almost 30 years in a Who-less void.
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I listened to the first one. It wasn't terrible, but not great, either. It was mostly narration, like an audio book, interrupted by brief periods of conversation. (Although the author has stated that the idea is a gradual shift over the series, with less narration and more direct interaction.) TB read even most of his direct dialog in a narrative fashion.
Most of the dialog came across very distant, like they recorded separately and spliced the dialog together. I wouldn't be surprised if that happens a lot in this kind of project, but if so, it's usually done better so that you can't tell.
Still, it was the first of a series with TB returning to the role, and the company learning a new production format. So subsequent installments may improve.
The actual story by Paul Magrs was quite good, as anyone familiar with his work would expect.