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Big Finish Embraces the Female Future
Jul. 22nd, 2018 09:59 pmOne of the fascinating things about listening to Big Finish Doctor Who for as long as I have (and it's been more than a decade at this point, almost as long as I've been watching the show) has been watching the influence of the new series spread across the audios. Even before they had the license and we had Donna and Winston Churchill and the Slitheen turning up, there have been changes in format and tone to adapt to Doctor Who as most people now think of it.
There are a couple of ways this has been a bad thing from my perspective - I really do prefer half-hour episodes for the audio format, so I'm frustrated that so many ranges are now structured as box sets made up of hour-long episodes. (And just the other day I queued something up and it was an hour and nine minutes, which is getting faintly ridiculous.) I also think that Big Finish has become less willing to experiment in the Doctor Who core ranges, or to tackle more adult subject matter, which I find unfortunate. It's difficult to imagine The Holy Terror or Jubilee happening now, which is a great shame.
In other ways, though, it's been an excellent thing. I love seeing classic Doctors interacting with new series elements like the Judoon and the Vashta Nerada, and it's nice to see Big Finish getting access to more and more options as time goes by. (Now the BBC just need to let them have Madame Vastra and Jenny and Strax while Jago is still available to guest star in their show the way that Strax guest starred in his.) I think my favourite thing, though, is the way they've cheerfully embraced gender-switching regenerations. The Corsair and the Master and the General got there first on screen, but a couple of other Time Lords beat the Doctor to the punch on audio.
My least favourite Doctor Who story in any medium is the Big Finish audio Exile. ('What if the Doctor regenerated into a woman?' is an interesting idea, and so is 'what if the Doctor regenerated into an incompetent drunk?' That does not mean that it's a good idea to mash the two ideas together when only one of your alternate universe Doctors is female.) So it's nice to see them redeem their treatment of newly female Time Lords. I loved it when they did this with ( a spoiler for an audio which will be ruined if I tell you which one it is, so click at your own risk I guess? ) and I like it even more now that Julia McKenzie is playing the Twelve. I've always been fond of the Eleven (or the Eight or the Nine or whatever number he's on in any given box set) but the idea of her becoming a tweedy old lady with the will to keep her previous selves mostly in line is brilliant.
I am half-expecting the Monk to show up as the Nun next time around. Hell, at this point between the show and the audios we've seen enough male characters regenerate into women that I wouldn't mind if the Rani or Cardinal Ollistra were a man the next time around. I don't think I'm quite ready for male Romana. But I would kind of love it if it happened to Susan and he still insisted on being called that. (I'm guessing most renegade Time Lords pick gender-neutral titles for a reason. It probably says something about both the Master and the Rani that they went gender-specific.)
There are a couple of ways this has been a bad thing from my perspective - I really do prefer half-hour episodes for the audio format, so I'm frustrated that so many ranges are now structured as box sets made up of hour-long episodes. (And just the other day I queued something up and it was an hour and nine minutes, which is getting faintly ridiculous.) I also think that Big Finish has become less willing to experiment in the Doctor Who core ranges, or to tackle more adult subject matter, which I find unfortunate. It's difficult to imagine The Holy Terror or Jubilee happening now, which is a great shame.
In other ways, though, it's been an excellent thing. I love seeing classic Doctors interacting with new series elements like the Judoon and the Vashta Nerada, and it's nice to see Big Finish getting access to more and more options as time goes by. (Now the BBC just need to let them have Madame Vastra and Jenny and Strax while Jago is still available to guest star in their show the way that Strax guest starred in his.) I think my favourite thing, though, is the way they've cheerfully embraced gender-switching regenerations. The Corsair and the Master and the General got there first on screen, but a couple of other Time Lords beat the Doctor to the punch on audio.
My least favourite Doctor Who story in any medium is the Big Finish audio Exile. ('What if the Doctor regenerated into a woman?' is an interesting idea, and so is 'what if the Doctor regenerated into an incompetent drunk?' That does not mean that it's a good idea to mash the two ideas together when only one of your alternate universe Doctors is female.) So it's nice to see them redeem their treatment of newly female Time Lords. I loved it when they did this with ( a spoiler for an audio which will be ruined if I tell you which one it is, so click at your own risk I guess? ) and I like it even more now that Julia McKenzie is playing the Twelve. I've always been fond of the Eleven (or the Eight or the Nine or whatever number he's on in any given box set) but the idea of her becoming a tweedy old lady with the will to keep her previous selves mostly in line is brilliant.
I am half-expecting the Monk to show up as the Nun next time around. Hell, at this point between the show and the audios we've seen enough male characters regenerate into women that I wouldn't mind if the Rani or Cardinal Ollistra were a man the next time around. I don't think I'm quite ready for male Romana. But I would kind of love it if it happened to Susan and he still insisted on being called that. (I'm guessing most renegade Time Lords pick gender-neutral titles for a reason. It probably says something about both the Master and the Rani that they went gender-specific.)