January 22

DW: Fear of the Daleks

Hey Guys,

‘Fear of the Daleks’ is an adventure from the Companion Chronicles – the second of the first season. The Companion Chronicles are reading books. Every story has a Companion that is the main part of the story. We get little of the life they are living after the Doctor and an adventure that took place in their time together. The companion the story is about is reading the story. This time it is Zoe Heroit and the second Doctor – Jamie is standing on the sideline.

Zoe Heriot

Zoe Heriot is one of the most amazing characters. She is strong in many ways and is a genius. She is way more intelligent that the Doctor and is not showing off. She never looked down on Jamie how is way slower in his thinking what also is because he cames out of a time the technic wasn’t developed that way so all that technic stuff is all new to him. But this is not about Jamie. How thinks this is a story were all characters have the same among of story is wrong here. Jamie is of course part of the story but he is really just a background character. The focus of the story is on Zoe.
My problems with the companion chronicles is that it is a reading book. I don’t think that many companions have a reading voice. Zoe is one of the better but not as gripping as of example the Brigadier. Which makes it not so easy to listen to the story but the stories in this serie are to good to not listing to them. Zoes is adventures also of an overlapping story. What makes here story even better.

They are still people out there…

That doesn’t here about the Daleks and know that they never work with someone with out turning in the end of them? It is always a surprise to me when an alien race is making a deal with the Daleks to reach their goals. But a part from that obivious dumb idea.
We have a story about two races that want to make peace. Of course not everyone is working for that goal. Zoe and the others stumble in a peace conference. Zoe and the Doctor became really fast pawns in the game of one of the people that want war to overthrow the people in charge. Everything is okay to still the hunger of power.
But he has not the guts to do it himself. He has a maschine which can controll minds and make a copy of you in a different place and take your conscious in this copy and controll it.
Why all this is actually necessary is not logic for me but i decided to just go with the story and not thinking about the complicated way to do this.
The one that he chooses to be the one for the kill is Zoe. The story is about how she tried to fight against it.

Listing or not

For me this is the weakest Zoe story i heart until now. The other i heart were Memory Cheats and Echoes of Grey which are both better. But it is still a Zoe story and this is still something good. So everyone that loves Zoe should totally listen to it.

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February 28

DW: Companion Chronicles – Memory Cheats

Hey Guys,
here we go to the second part of Zoes Story of the Companion Chronicles. It plays in Zoes present 2109 and the adventure take place in 1919 August. In the timeline of the Doctor it is placed between the stories Krotons and the seed of death.

the Company

We don’t know much about the company. Just that they are really interessting in her travelings with Doctor and that they intaned to use this knowledge but Zoe didn’t want to help them. So know she brought her in. But she doesn’t remember the Doctor anymore. The woman that question her know, believe she found the evidence for the time travel. So Zoe begann to tell the story.

What happend?

Children just disepair. They are trying to help them. They investigate the disapier. They found out that the creature was crashlanding there, because get shoot in the war. In the spaceship they found the children alive. The creature had seeing the war and everything that happend to that children. He wanted to save them. He wanted to make them safe. The Doctor agreed with the creature and told them that they never saw their parents again. That inflict a terror in the children and also in the creature. That is when everything turns bad.

I don’t want to tell here more because what Zoe did is amazing. I love it. This more about the present and Zoes Story than about the Story with the Doctor.

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February 15

DW: The Glourious Revolution

Hey Guys,
welcome to one of my audiobooks of the Doctor Whos ‘The Companion Chronicles‘. This time it is about Jamie McCrimmon and of course Zoe and the Second doctor. It is read by Frazer Hines and he did really job. The Story takes place in London 1688, and Jamie tells it to a time lord 42 years after they take his memories away.
The Glourios Revolution plays between the adventures ‘The Space Pirates’ and ‘The War Games’.

Jamies time

This events brought Jamie to the place he was when he goes with the Doctor. He was fighting for King James II, he was believing in him and here we are and Jamie can met his King, that run away. All this events are part of Jamies life before he was going in the TARDIS. This is something important to him. That is why for the first time i remember (maybe i forgotten something) Jamie and the Doctor are fighting.
Jamie wants to change history. He wants that King James fights and don’t go hiding. The Doctor is trying to prevent it from happen. But Jamie don’t understand why. They are always changing things, they are always get mixed up in the events. Why is this different.

The Glourious Revolution

I love the Story because it shows us, what person Jamie is. He shows us that is not a warrior, that he indeed understood what was going on. He believed in his King and fought for him. It makes him angry that the call it the glourious revolution because nobody died … in England…
He referrse to to big battle: the masacer of glencoe and the battle of boyne. This is the second part i love about the story all the historic events.

Time Lords

It strart the same Zoes Story started and i was really sceptical and afraid that it takes something away form the ending of the war games, but it didn’t. It was well written and the choose that Jamie take in the end broke my heart again. It is sad. Sad that he become happy. He lived his life with no regrets. He didn’t lived his life thinking about what happen if he was going with the Doctor. He became a family and got happy. But with all the memories.. with all he had and lost, he knows, so cruel it is to his family, that it will never be enough. For Jamie this life was something more… that is why he decided to forget again.

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January 10

DW: Companion Chronicles – Star Born

Hey Guys,

here we go with the new adventure of Vicki and the first Doctor in ‘the Companion Chronicles’-serie. It is the 9th adventure of the 8th season and play in London early 20th centuary. In the timeline of the Doctor it most be shortly after Rome, that would be ‘the romans’. That means Ian and Barbara are on board of the TARDIS. This is one of my favorite travel group.

A story about Vicki

It is like that. Of course it is really good that Vicki has such a big role because it is her story, but Ian, Barbara and the Doctor completely changeable. The role are so little that it also could be Dodo and Steven… or someone else. But Vicki is really well written and can totally shoulder the story on her own. The Story is a nice idea. Vicki get warned that when she will step in the TARDIS again she will die. The person that whats to save her is nobody else than herself. Vicki is an interessting character and make that story work really nicely.

Time

The only point i have is the time thing. How much time did they spend on that planet to develope that friendship? For me this friendship thing is to fast and not really believeable for me. Also Vicki seems to know the Doctor very well, what is a little special because she doesn’t know him very long. ‘The Romans’ is the second adventure together and Vicki hasn’t seen many side of the Doctor at that time, but she knows him in that story good enough to know he will do anything to save them. This is what takes a little away from the story. But this can only be me.

Fazit

The first story read by Maureen O’Brien (DW: Frostfire)was for deficult to listen to. This story his more pleasant to listen too. It is a really good story and Maureen did a really good job reading the story. It is sad that the role of the other are so little but it don’t take anything form the story. Vicki is shining in this episode and i can recommand it. It is a really good story.

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August 30

DW: Frostfire

Here we are,

i have listened to a new story of ‘the Companion Chronicles‘. It featured Vicki and is also read by her actor Maureen O’Brien. Her voice is a little different, i needed a moment to really identify it with her.

She don’t have a audio book voice. I know i heard the brig and i couldn’t stop listing. But by her it is different. It is not so easy like others. But she is making a good job.

She is visiting someone and is reading him what she had written about her adventures with the Doctor. So it is sad that this story take place after Ian and Barbara left. I am not a big fan of Steven. I liked the family Ian, Barbara, the Doctor and Vicki so much. The landed on the earth and met Jane Austin.

It goes about an egg, a phoenix egg. Vicki is afraid of this egg, because she thinks it will come for her, but the egg get stolen. Also everyone is mention that it is cold. Also the person Vicki read her story to, is also telling that she is getting cold and so. He is also laughing on really special parts of the Story.

We see that all what happend to her still makes her feel bad. Also we get that the person that he read to have something to do with the Story. I really like the structure of the Story and the idea. But the Story on it own, just don’t enthral me.

The very interessting think is what we get to know about her life. The life she choose, but if she know what it would be like, she wouldn’t have choosed it. It is just not my story.

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August 23

DW: Echoes of Grey

Here we go to listen to the next adventure of ‘the companion chronicles’.

It is featuring Zoe Heriot and the third doctor. Zoe and Jamie had one of the heartbreaking goodbyes in the Doctor Whos histery. So this story after everything is what we all want. We want them to remember.

Zoe has a photographic memory. She was one of the companions, that was more intelligent than the Doctor. So this story starts really good, because you totally can see that this is like they tell, that she has the feeling that she forgot something.

Wendy Padbury is easier to listen as Maureen O’Brien but not so faszinating like Nicholas Courtney.

Zoe is meeting someone that know her from her time with the Doctor and she wants to help Zoe remember. Of course the story is about the adventure they met the girl. They are in something like hospitel but it is empty. Every patient get healed that is what the files say. The doctor is really suspicous about it. Zoe get separate from the Doctor and she finds a room with a few creatures. The Girl that wanted to help Zoe, tells her that she felt so connected to Zoe. I find her really suspicous.

So a journalist is search for her grandmother, who was healed but never came back. When Zoe and Jamie wants to talk to him, one of this creatures suck the life out of him. Also it seems that it know that Jamie and Zoe are hiding in that room and left them alone.

The Doctor wants to see the creatures but they vanished. So they go to search one creature in the workplace. They find something of a fluid that heals/adsorbs everything. Of course the Doctor goes to confront the people behind it.

What i don’t like about the story, that Zoe is not getting what happend. The Doctor explains it to her and the others. Zoe is so intellgent she should have get it before the Doctor explains.

But the story is really good and i love what they make out of it. The creatures are made to remove damaged zelles, and when the can’t take anymore they die. This is interessting because for one the damage zelles aren’t there they take good ones. And the second part is that the made them want to die… this is real cruel. The solution of the Doctor is also cruel, but without much choice. That is the third thing i love about the Story.

The ending of Zoe and Jamie losing all the memories where heartbreaking and i never thought that the can do that again. But the end of the story is breaking my heart and fills my eyes with tears. The offered Zoe everything, her memories, her life, to be whole again and she choose to give all that up, just to prevent this people to make this creatures again. Zoe Heriot this is an ending that take her justis. That is my Zoe i love.

i will totally buy the other stories with her.

 

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June 27

DW: Old Soldiers

Hi Guys,

I was watching ‘The Web of Fear’. It is not a surprise that I love the story. I mean it has the 2nd Doctor and Jamie in it – how can you not love it. But the main reason I love it so much and that I am writing here about is the Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. It is the first Story he appears and he is such a good character. I miss the adventures with him so much. So I bought the audio book ‘Old Soldiers’ from the Companion Chronicles. It is not only a story about the Brig. It is also read by Nicholas Courtney and he bring his character to life like we know it from him.

The Consequence

Than lets talk about the Story. It plays after the Silurian ‘Invasion’ (Doctor Who and the Silurian). Where he and the third doctor had their ‘quarrel’. A friend of the Brig calls him for help and when he comes see him, his friend had a breakdown and it seems like his mind turns against him. The Brig feels the need to find out why this happened to his friend and calls the Doctor for help.
The Story take the Brig and lets him question his decisions he did as a soldier to protect the earth. He had so many thinks to handle. The people feared an invasion and they distrust the Doctor. His job is to keep this people save.
I really love how the work with this things and decisions everyone makes. But the most I love the friendship of the Brig and the Doctor, which is really good to see.

I just can can recommend it. Everyone who loves the Brig should actually listing to it because it is a good story and perfect insight of his character.

If anyone can recommend other good stories of the Companion Chronicles let me know. Big Finish has me in his fangs 😉

Category: audio drama, doctor who, Serie | 1 Comment on DW: Old Soldiers