The Tomfiles: #22 - Re-evaluating a Story: 100

Whilst waiting for the Big Finish to release the November releases. I thought that I would do something different. I would go back and listen to all the releases that I haven’t been particularly kind to over the years. See whether time has changed my opinion of a particular release or whether its still the same as before. The first story that I am going to look back at is the 100^th main range release called (oddly enough) 100. Released back in September 2007, this was Big Finish’s way of celebrating its milestone. It was the released during a year of transition as Gary Russell stepped to one side and Nicholas Briggs took charge of the range and we were treated the single episode stories but this was the first one where each of the four episodes were a stand-alone story.

When I first reviewed it back in October 2007, I said that the four stories were “disappointing” and rather foolishly said that you can’t tell a good story in 25 minutes and that you need at least 60 minutes to make a story work. Oh how truly stupid I have been. This is the review that saw me get an e-mail supposedly from Robert Shearman outlining his point of view. It was worth being this wrong just for that.

The first story was 100BC written by Jacqueline Rayner and in my 2007 review I commented how when Evelyn feigned an ailment is the first time that I disliked the character of Evelyn. I now think that it’s a shame that Evelyn and the Doctor are at odds because the dynamic of the group is so good and it’s not nice to see them fall out. After  a while Evelyn’s attitude does get a bit tiresome and I found myself rooting for the Doctor to get his point across and prove Evelyn wrong. It’s a good opening story. The second story features Mozart and I described this as a poorer story than 100BC and that’s wrong. I think that actually its marginally better because they are both good stories but it’s because this is bonkers but in a good way. I still think that Mozart’s attempted suicide is quite surprising considering that Big Finish rarely goes into this territory. The story has the sort of things that you would expect from a Shearman story and that’s the charm of it. I also can’t believe that I never made mention of the Soprano’s inspired ending to the episode where it cuts off mid-sentence. The third story was written by Joseph Lidster and my main gripe with it seemed to be that it spent too long building up the story and then rushed the end. My opinion of the episode is that it was different to the previous two episodes. In the 2007 review I seemed to have blacked out and missed the ending because the end of the episode came out of nowhere but its clear to even a blind spiel-snake that this episode has an ending and also a good one. Evil Evelyn was quite fun to listen to but I think that whilst it didn’t have same sort of feel as the previous two stories it felt more emotional and that’s not a bad thing as Lidster’s two releases from the year before (The Reaping and The Gathering) had a nice mix of emotion and science fiction. Another enjoyable release.  The final episode was my favourite part in my 2007 review and in 2013 it is still my favourite release. The tense created that the Doctor only has 100 days left is one of the things that I like, another thing is that the Doctor gets to go back and spy on himself.  By the end of the episode I thought that I was 100% correct in my opinion and it’s the only instance of the four stories that nothing changed.

Since we have had several releases like this such as The Company of Friends, Forty-Five and most recently Recorded Time and Other Stories, one thing has showed that it is possible to tell a story in 25 minutes and I was wrong and would like to apologise to Jacqueline Rayner, Robert Shearman, Joseph Lidster and Paul Cornell for being as harsh as I was to it. I think that compared to the other single four part stories that BF have produced its not the best but its still a lot of fun and an enjoyable release and was the template for future releases of this type.

Next Time: Flip Flop