I’ve been listening to a LOT of audio plays and podcasts lately, what with all that cleaning for birthday parties, sewing birthday presents, and drowning out my children during the last gasp of the summer holidays.

VIENNA: THE MEMORY BOX is the first story of a new spin off series from Big Finish, featuring bounty hunter and space assassin Vienna Salvatori (played by former DS9 actress Chase Masterton). My first reaction to this series, naturally, was to resent that it was greenlit and written so quickly when SOME OF US have been waiting for the Charley Pollard spin off series FOREVER, but Vienna is a fun, banterific character and I liked this first (standalone) story very much, with its planethopping, space hotels, twisty turny plottiness, and great voice performances.

This particular story revolves around a piece of technology called a ‘memory box’ which allows people to store and conceal layers of memory – an essential tool for those with criminal intent in a galaxy where the police have the ability to scan people’s minds at the scene of a crime. I was impressed with how many different ways this particular gadget was used and abused over the course of the story, making it a tidy piece of science fiction. Plus, adorable space cops. SPACE COPS, PEOPLE!

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Apparently the secret to being successful at social media is about promoting other people rather than yourself. Finally, something I’m doing right!

Joss Whedon talks about Much Ado (it’s coming!) and why taking a creative shift can be as good as a holiday!

The AWW Challenge blog has been posting a great series of genre/theme-specific wrap ups of the year’s reviews, including speculative fiction, diversity, romance and erotica, young adult and many more.

Tobias Buckell on Things I Told my Intern (about being a writer)

Tasmanian romance writer Sarah Brabazon talks about life onboard a yacht with her family.

Marianne De Pierres’ space opera series Sentients of Orion is finally being published in the US! She talks about her inspiration for the books here.

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As ever, the Hobart Show Weekend has settled on one of our two favourite weather extremes: it’s been chucking it down, and one day into a four day weekend, the children are climbing the walls. Pity me!

A cute reminder from Shakesville of what the original remit of Sesame Street was, and what it continues to do now for generations of children.

Hoyden About Town looks at the media response to the Gillard ‘sexism’ speech, and provides a little context. Funnily enough, not the kind of context we’ve been provided by the mainstream media. Annabel Crabbe, meanwhile, talks about the problematic idea that we are supposed to accept Abbott is either misogynist or stupid, and also that politicians are only just starting to realise that sexism is now considered a negative thing. It’s kind of embarrassing how long our society took to get to this point, you know.

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“SEASON 3” (2003)
Only two Doctor and Charley stories were released by Big Finish in 2003, and while they continued into 2004 fairly soon after, I thought I’d look at these two separately because they represented such a massive change to the dynamic of the characters, and because the 2004 stories introduced a new companion.

50. Zagreus
Written By: Alan Barnes & Gary Russell
Starring: Paul McGann (the Eighth Doctor), India Fisher (Charley Pollard)
Interesting Guest Star Alert: Peter Davison, Colin Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Anneke Wills, Nicholas Courtney, Elisabeth Sladen, Louise Jamieson, John Leeson, Lalla Ward, Sarah Sutton, Mark Strickson, Nicola Bryant, Bonnie Langford, Sophie Aldred, Caroline Morris, Conrad Westmaas, Maggie Stables, Lisa Bowerman, Stephen Fewell, Robert Jezek, Miles Richardson, Don Warrington.

I found myself arguing with a friend recently that Zagreus could actually be an interesting model for the 50th anniversary Whatever – it takes place entirely in the TARDIS, has a strong focus around the current Doctor and companion, but also makes a place for multiple cameos and small but meaty roles for a huge number of returning Doctor and companion actors.

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Remember this Shortpacked strip about a little girl called Lucy who loved the character Starfire in the Teen Titans cartoon, and her disgust at the ‘new reader friendly’ comic that rebooted the character in such a sexist and horrendous way?

It’s the page that got me interested in Shortpacked as a comic (I’m currently embarking on my second re-read of the 7 years of toy-selling soap shenanigans and dipping my feet into the associated comics). I am thoroughly addicted to the characters, and while the humour can dip into the tasteless & the occasionally gross, it is balanced out by some great characterisation, a madly diverse cast, and some very sharp and witty exploration of feminist issues in science fiction, comics and toy merchandising.

Lucy is all grown up now, and has just been introduced as a new character in the comic. Here’s her job interview. It makes me happy.

Nisi Shawl writes about steampunk, and her novel-in-progress. Steampunk has come under fire in recent years for its romanticisation of history particularly where it comes to colonial & other racial issues, so it’s always interesting to me to hear of different takes on the genre.

Did I mention that it’s steampunk week at Tor.com? Another great post comes from Lisa Hager, on Queer Cogs: Steampunk, Gender Identity, and Sexuality.

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The numbers show the story’s place in the Main Doctor Who range of Big Finish audio plays. Most plays in this range are approx. 2 hours long, with a full cast and four episodes.

This is the first time I have listened to these ones as a coherent ‘season’ as I went in quite the wrong order last time – not that this especially matters, as they are mostly standalone stories. But there is a growing sense of impending doom that creeps up on you through the stories, with occasional fleeting (but ominous) mentions of Gallifrey, the Time Lords, nursery rhymes about a mysterious character called Zagreus, and most of all Charley’s indeterminate status as a living person. Over the course of several stories, she is beginning to realise that the Doctor might have done something terribly wrong when he saved her life.

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Genevieve Valentine talks about the fallout that has occurred after she reported her harassment at Readercon – the positive and negative outcomes. Very important reading!

Justine Larbalestier talks about the problematic meme (in real life and fiction) of girls who hate all other girls, and women who hate women. The comments are really interesting because of how many women feel the need to defend their dislike of their own gender, and add a depth to the whole discussion because, of course, it’s more complicated than it seems on the surface.

Cheryl Morgan responds to the new Outer Alliance podcast (which I haven’t got to yet but I am keen to listen to) about changing the conversation when it comes to making conventions more diverse and welcoming.

A new review series at Tor.com – Mari Ness is looking at the Edward Eager Magic books, which I adore and am looking forward to sharing with my daughter. Starting with Half Magic, a children’s classic.

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I’m relistening to the Charley Pollard audio plays from Big Finish! Charley was the first original companion that they created to travel with the Eighth Doctor when Paul McGann agreed to reprise his role from the 1996 Doctor Who TV Movie.

Played by the bubbly and plum-voiced India Fisher, Charley is a self-styled Edwardian adventuress, a jolly hockey sticks sort of girl who disguised herself as a boy in order to work passage on a doomed airship heading for Singapore. By saving her life, the Doctor created a paradox that would unravel over several years, and threaten the entire “web of time.”

So, let’s talk about Charley. In many ways, she is the perfect Doctor Who companion. She’s up for adventure, she’s flexible and adapts well to the TARDIS lifestyle (like Jamie McCrimmon she is a historical character who takes every science fictional concept well in stride, usually with some sort of clever metaphor, teleportation being “like the wireless telegraph” and so on), she’s brave and funny and she has no compunction about using sarcasm or mockery to puncture the Doctor’s ego when he gets too big for his boots.

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Yes, I listened to most of these in the last fortnight. Because reasons.

APRIL

The Emerald Tiger (main range)

The new range of Fifth Doctor plays with Tegan, Turlough and an older post-Terminus Nyssa are the ones I associate most closely with my transition from occasional listener to serious subscriber. Which is odd because while I have enjoyed them and what they had to offer, I haven’t adored them with the fierce passions I feel for the plays featuring Seven-Ace-Hex or Eight-Charley, Eight-Lucie, Six-Charley, Six-Evelyn and Five-Peri-Erimem. Instead, I’ve viewed them more as an intellectual enjoyment, revisiting one of “my” classic periods of the show.

Not so with this latest (the third) trio of this particular TARDIS team. I adored all three plays, enjoying the characters and their interactions, and the excellent, excellent scripts. Sure, Janet Fielding is still dialling up the ocker about 3 notches too high compared to her 80′s accent, but she’s still putting in a more restrained performance than either Old Tom or Paul Darrow in the Blake’s 7s, so I’m going to give her a pass on that.

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Here we are again, my twice-yearly review of the “current” monthly releases from Big Finish that I have heard. As usual I’ve been listening to plenty of backlist titles too (I’m still not caught up on Jago and Litefoot and Bernice Summerfield, for example, as well as series like Graceless, so won’t listen to the current releases any time soon even if they are doing alluring things like casting Arthur Darvill), but given that I do listen to a lot of the current range as they are released, it’s nice to put it in some sort of chronological order.

There really are a lot of them, so I’m splitting the post into two quarters, or it would be the world’s LONGEST audio review. I may consider doing them monthly after this, which means fewer reviews as I don’t always manage to listen to everything in the month it’s released (I’ve only just been able to catch up with some plays of the last 3 months because my subscription had lapsed and I couldn’t afford to resubscribe for a while).

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