BF50: Zagreus

In which the “previously on” goes on for seven bleedin’ minutes.

Released: November 2003

Listened: May-June 2021

Disc One

Now this is more like it.

...

Seriously. Give me mental over dull any time. Okay, it’s basically meaningless, and it’s hard to work out what’s happening – to defeat Zagreus who doesn’t exist the TARDIS visualises anti-time cold war something something? But it keeps throwing stuff at you and doesn’t seem to think it’s Serious Drama rather than A Load Of Old Nonsens. Perhaps on disc three that’ll change, and they’ll be trying to convince me This Matters again, but at the moment it’s quite fun.

Also – reading reviews, the thing that seems to have annoyed a lot of people in 2003 is the single best thing about it, e.g. they’ve cast all the Doctors and companions as other people. That’s actually *interesting*, but obviously BF sold it as a multi-Doctor story because somebody, somewhere, is an idiot.

The re-use of the cast does have the unfortunate effect of showing that a) half the female companions (Ward, Wills, Bryant) have the exact same “I Graduated Drama School, You Know” voice, and b) Peter Davison is a vastly better actor than almost anyone else who was ever in 20th century Doctor Who.

The Doctor seeing a load of alternate universes feels a neat way of dealing with the continuity clashes of this era – I wonder why this used to annoy me so much? [It really did, BF’s attempts to claim its stories took place in an entirely different timeline to the books used to make me *rage*.]

For all [co-writer] Gary Russell’s professed hatred of the books, Zagreus (character) is basically Grandfather Paradox [the leader of Faction Paradox, recurring villains in the eighth Doctor books c1997-2000] and Zagreus (story) is basically Timewyrm:Revelation.

The fact the “previously on” at the start of Zagreus is 7 minutes long encapsulates everything that’s wrong with the BF approach. Overly complicated and underly edited. 

Discs 2 & 3

The second disc is still mental, but less divertingly so. The third disc is just boring. I’d still take this over something like Sword of Orion, I don’t think it deserves its reputation as the worst BF audio ever, but the novelty wore off.

Anyway. There’s something quite upsetting about the idea of vampire Colin, but it’s quite funny to give him a line about not being hungry. Even more upsetting: making McCoy’s character a dirty old man. Took me until the second half of disc two to realise that the companion actors are being paired with their Doctor, right up to giving Bryant and Langford two roles each. The bit with the theme park robots at war is actually quite funny, even if a) both Aldred and Bowerman suck in it, and b) it’s literlaly the Meltdown episode of Red Dwarf isn’t it. Oh, they do the theme tunes by Doctor too, what fabulous attention to detail.

I entirely missed the idea McCoy is meant to be Walt Disney. I did enjoy Langford as an evil fairy, though.

Another idea repeating itself and/or being stolen – the Divergence are basically the Ferutu aren’t they? [Another villanous race from the books, this time those of Lance Parkin.]

You know what I said about how BF never bothered to give another explanation for how Romana got back to n-space? They do here, it’s rubbish. They give her an alternative first meeting with Leela, too. The two of them fighting makes me want to pull my eyes out. Oh, and Rassilon is the villain, so I was wrong about that as well. I quite like Courtney playing a deranged, vengeful TARDIS, though, he’s much better than most of the companion actors.

The bit where they mock the “easy as Pi” bit of the Five Doctors annoyed me largely because this story is no Five Doctors.

The ending is... some things that happen? It does feel a bit like the writers looked at Peter Jackson’s Return of the King and thought, “Well it’s alright, but the ending’s over a bit quick”. Doesn’t help that I don’t give a shit about this Doctor or this companion.

The way the old Doctors reassert themselves through these unconnected characters who have their voices is extremely annoying, and even Davison can’t sell it.

Anyway. It’s interesting how many of the different spin off media of this era pick the same few bits of continuity as interesting – who was Rassilon really, Gallifrey’s war with the vampires, an enemy that the Time Lords erased from history, etc. It’s probably good the new regime arrived soon afterwards to give everything a bit of a kick.