December 02, 2009

Museum Peace

Museum Peace is a subscriber’s special which is about an adventure featuring Kalendorf. This is set some time after the Dalek Wars have finished and sees Lord Chancellor Kalendorf visit a museum not to have a face to face with a Dalek but for contemplation. The story was written by James Swallow and NOT Nicholas Briggs which considering Dalek Empire was Briggs’ creation was surprising.

I thought that the story was an enjoyable piece. I wasn’t aware that the Doctor was going to be in it, instead of it being the Seventh Doctor that Kalendorf encounters like he did in Return of the Daleks but the Eighth Doctor. The Doctor that we encounter in this story is a more emotionally battered character. It’s more like the Ninth/Tenth Doctors that we see on TV than what were use to. There’s also an usual use of the Daleks in this, well Dalek. The Dalek in this story is presented as a dead and inactive prop whereas over the course of the story we learn that it become active and has enough power to kill just one more person. Its typical, you wait for two enemies of the Daleks to appear and you can only get rid of one of them.

The story was a slow building one and the way that Briggs’ describes what is going on sounded like he swallowed a dictionary. I wasn’t so keen on Briggs’ Kalendorf voice. I think it was perhaps too far down the gruff voice and was a bit of a distraction at first. The ending was perhaps the most well written and most emotionally felt that I have ever witnessed. Briggs’ should be applauded for playing at such a high level.

I know that I got it for free and shouldn’t really grumble. So I’m not, this is a wonderful story and I would gladly have paid for this. I listened to this whilst stuck in a traffic jam on the M6 and this story made it the most bearable jam in history. If only it would have carried on for another 35 minutes.

As someone from the 1950’s would say “Bravo!”

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