I am Ashley Elsdon

someone who's doing some things

Tag: Audio books

I do like audio books.

Some thoughts about the 7th Doctor …

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I listened to this audiobook the other day. I can’t even remember buying it, but I have it. The 7th Doctor wasn’t a favourite of mine, and I haven’t listened to many of the audio stories. I didn’t find this one too interesting, but it did make me realise just how little I know about the world of the 7th Doctor and companions.

My interests have always been around the 4th, 5th and 8th Doctors, but with a little of the 3rd as well. I’m also warming to the 6th. However, Sylvester’s Doctor passed me by in the main. I’m not sure that’s going to change particularly, but it is a strange feeling when you work out how much you don’t know about a subject you’re very interested in.

Doctor Who: The Guardians of Prophecy

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I actually quite like the 6th Doctor stories these days, and this one is pretty good. It is sort of a sequel to The Keeper of Traken. I can see how it is sort of a sequel, but not entirely. That doesn’t make sense unless you know both stories though.

Anyway, irrespective of whether or not it is a sequel, it’s not a bad story entirely on its own merits. Actually it’s pretty good.

So, Torchwood is coming to Big Finish

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I suppose it shouldn’t be a big surprise. They’re producing excellent stories from just about everything else in the Doctor Who universe, so why not? I’m sure it’ll be brilliant and well worth a listen. However, I wasn’t always a massive Torchwood fan. It had its ups and downs. Some episodes were great, others I felt lost their way.

So I hope that Big Finish do a better and more consistent job of producing Torchwood.

Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

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I read this ages ago and it made me actually laugh out loud. So I decided that I’d quite like to read it again and perhaps even rediscover the series. I found that there’s a series of audiobooks read by Nigel Planner and I thought I’d give this one a go first. It’s excellent. I wasn’t sure if Nigel Planner’s voice would work for me or not, but actually it really did and I liked it a lot. The audiobook is unabridged too, which I always prefer.

I found that I didn’t actually remember much of the story, in fact I really just remembered a sort of essence or feel of the story, but not the plot itself.

It’s made me want to listen to the whole series now, so next will be “The Colour of Magic”. I might get that next month. Perhaps. We’ll see anyway.

Blake’s 7: Truth and Lies … Well that was a season

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I enjoyed this latest season of B7, but I’d have to say that it wasn’t the best of the lot. It was a good story arc but not the best that they’ve done in my opinion. Some of the individual stories were very good, that’s for sure but I felt the overall arc lacked something. In some ways it didn’t deliver for me.

Of course it’s very difficult to keep up a series like Blake’s 7. The quality has been pretty amazing at times. Not always, but overall the writing has been good and the performances are always to a really high standard. But the last season was just so good that it’s hard not to make comparisons.

But of course everything is apparently changing for Blake’s 7 at Big Finish, as they published this week. I don’t know what that really means, but I hope it’ll both maintain what they’ve done to date and improve it at the same time. Either way I hope there’ll be more Blake’s 7 to look forward to.

A well mannered war …

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Well that was yet another piece of genius. Gareth Roberts’ story was excellent. Amusing, well paced, and entertaining. It had a superb ending which I won’t spoil for you, and a great cast. I enjoyed every minute.

I’m just hoping that Big Finish can put out some more material like this. I’m sure it can’t be easy as the standard is so high, but I think it would be wonderful if they put out more novel adaptations. What I’ve heard so far is amazing.