The Time Vampires is the third story in the trilogy of Leela adventures. Starting with The Catalyst I recently re-listened to that story and found it to be enjoyable. Likewise with Empathy Games this is a story that requires a second listen. But the thing about both of those plays are that I really didn’t get them on the first listen. In fact even on the second listen I struggled to fully get them. Sadly it’s the same problem I have with the Time Vampire. Nigel Fairs is given the opportunity to conclude this trilogy which is probably the best thing to do.
The starts off with the Doctor repairing K9 and Leela encountering an old K9 in the wooden console room that was destroyed in Empathy Games. There the mystery starts. Things disappear and reappear and things bob along at a nice fair pace but when the story needs to deliver for the listener it doesn’t. The second half of the story is just pretty much the same of what was going in the first half. The last five or so minutes are spent up with the death of Leela but if the rest of the story had been as enjoyable and more importantly been as simple then I would have liked this story more.
The main problem with this story is that it’s too complicated. I personally don’t think that you have to listen to something more than once to understand it. I never really understood what a) The Time Vampire was and b)what was going on in the main plot. There is an awful lot of shifting between time zones kind of like Lost but making less sense. There’s a lot of things going on and Louise Jameson does a great job in trying to explain it and I think that plays the character of Leela just as good as she did over 30 years ago. Even John Leeson as K9 was good despite the fact of my dislike for the tin dog. The main problem with K9 on TV is that he was too smart and you could hear him coming a mile off and he could shoot people but after three goes his battery had run out. In audio we could marvel John Leeson and its nice that 33 years after he started as K9 he sill enjoys doing it. There was a line in the Extras in the end that David Richardson says “You have to work for it”. I completely disagree, you should fully understand and also enjoy it. The only time that you should have to listen to something more than once is if you want to listen to it again because you liked it so much, not because you didn’t understand something.
Despite not understanding it I still found certain parts of it to be very good. However out of the three stories to feature Leela this isn’t the best. That honour goes to The Catalyst.
The starts off with the Doctor repairing K9 and Leela encountering an old K9 in the wooden console room that was destroyed in Empathy Games. There the mystery starts. Things disappear and reappear and things bob along at a nice fair pace but when the story needs to deliver for the listener it doesn’t. The second half of the story is just pretty much the same of what was going in the first half. The last five or so minutes are spent up with the death of Leela but if the rest of the story had been as enjoyable and more importantly been as simple then I would have liked this story more.
The main problem with this story is that it’s too complicated. I personally don’t think that you have to listen to something more than once to understand it. I never really understood what a) The Time Vampire was and b)what was going on in the main plot. There is an awful lot of shifting between time zones kind of like Lost but making less sense. There’s a lot of things going on and Louise Jameson does a great job in trying to explain it and I think that plays the character of Leela just as good as she did over 30 years ago. Even John Leeson as K9 was good despite the fact of my dislike for the tin dog. The main problem with K9 on TV is that he was too smart and you could hear him coming a mile off and he could shoot people but after three goes his battery had run out. In audio we could marvel John Leeson and its nice that 33 years after he started as K9 he sill enjoys doing it. There was a line in the Extras in the end that David Richardson says “You have to work for it”. I completely disagree, you should fully understand and also enjoy it. The only time that you should have to listen to something more than once is if you want to listen to it again because you liked it so much, not because you didn’t understand something.
Despite not understanding it I still found certain parts of it to be very good. However out of the three stories to feature Leela this isn’t the best. That honour goes to The Catalyst.
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