Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #385019 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-31
• Format: Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 2
• Binding: Audio CD

Customer Reviews

Distinctly ungodly
Yes I agree that this Big Finish audio is a big disappointment. After Colin Baker I find Sylvester to be the best served of all the audio Doctors in terms of the quality of the stories and the performances of the actor himself. This is however a bland and generic Doctor Who story; having said that, I have listened to all 117 Big Finish monthly Doctor Who releases and there are only a handful of duds, so perhaps we can forgive Nick Briggs et al and hope that this is only a brief dip.

Valhalla
Marc Platt has written some of the best Big Finish audios for Doctor Who, usually displaying incredible wit and invention, so it's odd that 'Valhalla' is so traditional and uninspired. The story features a human colony under attack from giant termites and for all intents and purposes might as well be a 2nd Doctor 'base under seige' tale. We get a few allusions to capitalism, but these are very much an afterthought, and the genuinely interesting ideas (such as organised ticketed riots) are very few and far between. One of the more interesting aspects is the 7th Doctor travelling without any companions this time, and the first episode where he seems to have retired is by far the strongest, though this turns out to be something of a red herring. The performances are often stilted, and the expositionary dialogue ('look - a giant termite!') doesn't help.

'Valhalla' isn't a terrible story, it's just a by-the-numbers 'Doctor Who vs Monster of the Week' play, which for Marc Platt is a huge dissapointment. Not awful, just very, very average.

For a man of Marc Platt's pedigree this is abysmal!
What a crashing disappointment. Platt has authored 2 of my all-time favourite Dr Who stories: the TV 'Ghost Light' and the audio 'Spare Parts'. And now he has written one of the most generic, bland and cliched stories I've ever heard. The central idea gets lost in the first 10 minutes, the plot ambles along so predictably that I'd worked out the ending before the close of episode one and the Doctor is so badly drawn I'm amazed that Platt had worked on a Sylvester McCoy story before. The reason the Dr is even here in this out-of-the-way backwater is skirted around and the one intriguing thought that comes up is covered over as soon as it appears.

The direction is nervous throughout the entire story, as if the Director isn't actually sure what he wants and where the story is going, the vocal beats are too histrionic at some points and too muted at others and the entire thing feels like a story to fill up the quota rather than anything more engaging.

Since it appears to be a barrel-scraping exercise I gave it a barrel-scraping one star.