The Doctor has fallen to his death. His companion, Lucie Miller, has returned to her life on Earth, grief-stricken. Then, one night, an alien visitor arrives at her front door and shoots her.
Could it be that Lucie’s days with the Doctor are not over? She will only find the answer on the planet Orbis. A planet where all forms of life are facing violent extinction.
Alan Barnes is a British writer and editor, particularly noted for work in the field of cult film and television. Barnes served as the editor of Judge Dredd Megazine from 2001 until December 2005, during which time the title saw a considerable increase in the number of new strip pages. Among other strips, Barnes originally commissioned The Simping Detective. He also wrote a handful of Judge Dredd stories involving alternate universes or featuring a young Dredd.
He worked for five years at Doctor Who Magazine and progressed from writing strips to becoming joint editor in 1998 and sole editor from 2000 until 2002. He subsequently contributed the ongoing Fact of Fiction series of articles to the magazine. Barnes has also written or co-written a number of Doctor Who audio plays for Big Finish Productions.
He has written a number of books on cult films (including James Bond, Quentin Tarantino and Sherlock Holmes) and his book The Hammer Story, co-written with Marcus Hearn, was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Non-Fiction in 1997.
Lucie Miller went full rage with the Doctor in Orbis and honestly, I do not blame her. The Doctor forgot her, stole her tights to fix a rubbish ship, and almost left her to die with the head hunter. All the while after being pushed into the ocean of Orbis and trying not to drown and having been shot with a time bullet by said headhunter.
But, she did get to slap the Doctor to the letters of her name and shoot him in her fit of rage.
The second series of Eighth Doctor Adventures ended on an almighty cliffhanger where listeners were left uncertain if the Doctor survived Morbius and Lucie gets shot by the Headhunter.
Orbis is a superb season opener, we learn that the Doctor survived and has been alive and well for some 600 years on the planet Orbis where he has befriended the indigenous race of sentient jellyfish. Lucie, shot by a temporal bullet (which can be reversed.... genius invention!) Is manipulated by the Headhunter into finding the Doctor. But she's not being straight as to why she's so determined to find him.
Orbis is having some problems of its own. It's moon is getting closer casing cataclysmic flooding that will destroy the jellyfish people, and if that's not bad enough, an evil race of space oysters want to spawn on Orbis and consume the jellyfish aliens in a feeding frenzy.
Lucie reunites with the Doctor only to find he has amnesia and no memory of their friendship....
I loved this one. It really plays to Lucie's strengths - we have her antagonism to the Headhunter and then her interplay with the amnesiac Doctor - you really feel for her here.
The aliens are strange and interesting - Andrew Sachs voices the evil hermaphrodite giant Oyster and he's great. And the jellyfish girl who seems to have a bit of a crush on the Doctor is good too.
This is a rather dark story in general - I always love stories where the Doctor doesn't win, and add to this an over arching series plot where the Headhunter is definitely up to no good and you get something really exciting. I thought this was original, and it kept my attention riveted. Great stuff.
Well, that was...something. I don't usually mind a bit of silliness, but this was supposed to resolve a large cliffhanger from the previous series. And the 8th Doctor is having memory problems? AGAIN? Please give him another character trait, Big Finish, I beg you (but given that this was released years ago, my pleas will do nothing... still, I have hope for the audiobooks I have not yet listened to).
I really great little story, especially with Lucie. Her character really shines in this. I love the Head Hunter, she's such a morally gray character. I'm glad the Doctor is back with Lucie in the TARDIS.
Il Dottore è caduto verso la sua morte. La sua compagna, Lucie Miller, è tornata alla sua vita sulla Terra, addolorata. Poi, una notte, un visitatore alieno arriva alla sua porta d'ingresso e le spara. Potrebbe essere che i giorni di Lucie con il Dottore non siano finiti? Lei potrà trovare la risposta solo sul pianeta Orbis. Un pianeta dove tutte le forme di vita stanno per affrontare un'estinzione violenta. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dopo il cliffhanger di “Vengeance of Morbius”, che ha visto per il Dottore un finale paragonabile a quello di Sherlock Holmes alle Cascate di Reichenbach, Lucie è tristemente ritornata alla sua vita precedente; ma il ritorno della Cacciatrice di Taglie, personaggio ricorrente delle due stagioni precedenti, che si presenta alla sua porta, le spara e la rapisce, le fornisce una valida speranza che il Dottore sia ancora vivo. Quest'ultimo si trova su Orbis, un pianeta la cui popolazione di meduse anfibie è minacciata da una razza di ostriche spaziali. Tuttavia non è più l'uomo di un tempo, e la reunion non sarà quella che Lucie si aspettava. L'episodio si apre apparentemente con un'enorme minaccia, ma purtroppo si capisce ben presto che non è una storyline che sarà portata avanti. Tuttavia alla fine ci sono degli sviluppi per la trama, che a quanto pare riprende la scelta della prima stagione di avere un filone narrativo di sottofondo piuttosto che basarsi su episodi privi di collegamenti come nella seconda. Ci sono dei cambiamenti anche per il rapporto tra il Dottore e Lucie, che dopo la lunga separazione dovranno ritrovare il loro affiatamento. Tra gli aspetti che mi sono piaciuti della storia c'è certamente l'ambientazione e le due razze aliene, che essendo appunto tutto tranne che umanoidi sono molto fantasiose da immaginare in audio, ma probabilmente non avrebbero funzionato altrettanto bene in video. Entrambe le specie sono caratterizzate da molti tratti particolari, ed è facile simpatizzare per i Keltans (le meduse), sia per il rapporto che sviluppano con il Dottore sia per il fatto che le loro voci non sono alterate, mentre i Molluscari sono dei villain sopra le righe ma comunque brutali, che mi ricordano dei cattivi Disney (non ho potuto fare a meno che immaginarli come la versione vendicativa delle ostriche di Alice nel Paese delle Meraviglie). Quello che mi è piaciuto meno è l'ennesima storia di amnesia per l'Ottavo (che ormai è un cliché non più solo ridicolo ma anche fastidioso), causata oltretutto non da chissà quale trauma bensì semplicemente dal passare del tempo, in un salto temporale che ricorda quello di Trenzalore. Anche se permette di vedere il Dottore in maniera molto diversa, contento di aver messo radici in un unico posto, è fin troppo out of character nel momento in cui gli viene chiesto di scegliere tra quella vita e il Tardis. Oltretutto, blocca l'impeto emotivo della reunion con Lucie, che molto dolorosamente non viene neanche riconosciuta. Personalmente, trovo che gli aspetti positivi e negativi si bilancino, e che sia un episodio interessante anche se non entusiasmante, ma essendo un inizio di stagione, soprattutto considerando il modo epico in cui si è conclusa la precedente, forse è un po' deludente.
So, we get a new "season" started for the 8th Doctor adventures. Someone had an idea: Let's have The Doctor forget Lucie so that they can start again as if new. It's not the most brilliant problem one could come up with. Somehow, then, the Sisters of Karn from the last episode managed to whisk away The Doctor from certain death to a mostly sea-based planet that no one has really heard of, and kept his TARDIS as a memorial or something like that for themselves. The Headhunter has somehow, we don't learn how, managed to wangle the TARDIS away from the Sisters, and pilot it well enough to track down Lucie at home in Blackpool and shoot her with time bullets (time-released death), so the Headhunter can use Lucie to persuade The Doctor to do something, but we are not sure what. The wrinkle is that when they arrive at Orbis, The Doctor has been there for hundreds of years, and become the protector saint of the squidlike beings who live there. He has lost much of his memory, and does not recognize Lucie at all. Time for Lucie to go emotional (when is there not a time for Lucie to go emotional?). The episode leaves so many unanswered questions, mostly regarding the causes for events, that it would be too much of a burden to enumerate them all. It does have its amusing bits.
I adore this Audio. For such a melancholy opening, (8's got amnesia again, Lucie has been grieving, Orbis' inhabitants are facing extinction in the face of invasion and climate change), it can make me laugh every time I listen. The Doctor is forced to stay in one place for 600 years, having a profound effect on his personality. It's bizarre to hear the roles reversed and have the companion being the experienced and imaginative traveller keen to set off on their next adventure; while the doctor is settled and hesitant to seek out any danger. The setting is whimsical and could only work on Audio, the side characters are memorable and performances are brilliant all round. It's a tragic little fairytale and a fascinating start to the third series.
Just, wow. Ouch. I really wish this never happened, but it did, and now we have to deal with it I guess.
Personal feelings aside, I do have to say that the massive emotional impact this story has on the Doctor is handled really well and felt throughout the entire season which is amazing. It feels like the first real shift in the 8th Doctor's character.
It also sets up a great path of strengthening the bond between the Doctor and Lucie by first really testing it.
I was underwhelmed by the end of series 2, but Orbis was a great way to bring the storyline back. It includes another instance in which the Eighth Doctor is an amnesiac, and Lucie's reactions to him not remembering her feel very real. I very much enjoyed this one. Certainly started series 3 with a bang.
This one was really good until the end where the Doctor doesn’t win and is stopped from saving Orbis. A disappointing end to a story with a fun and interesting setting that continues from the last seasons cliffhanger.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
As the kick-off for the "third season" of the 8th Doctor Adventures, this is a somewhat strange beast. I suspect it's intended to be a comedy, which seems a rather odd way to start a season off, even if there are clearly serious events going on as well.
There are undeniably funny bits in it, and I particularly liked the way that Lucie's re-uniting with the Doctor was written. The acting is also good, with Sheridan Smith once again doing a great job bringing Lucie to life. (She seems to me particularly reminiscent of Donna here, who may well have been the on-screen companion at the time this was written, although Lucie obviously dates back earlier than that). Andrew Sachs clearly also has a lot of fun hamming it up as a homicidal oyster, and the Headhunter is properly menacing for perhaps the first time.
But the ending really rather lets it down. Without giving too much away, what happens is pretty horrifying, but the story fails to do anything with that, as if a high death toll doesn't really matter if the victims don't happen to be humanoid. Maybe that wasn't the message the writer intended, but, taken as a whole, the story is uneven enough for it to be hard to tell.
But, then again, the acting is good, and there is some good writing too... it just seems to lack something in the way of consistency. All in all, 3/5 seems fair.
Season 3 of the New Eighth Doctor Adventures gets off to a heck of a start in this story. It really shakes up the Doctor and Lucie's relationship as well as taking the character of the Doctor to some interesting places. In fact, it shakes things up to such an extent that I'm a tad worried that subsequent stories won't follow through - that everything will be back to normal by the next episode.
This also sets up what looks to be an interesting plot arc involving the Headhunter.
Slightly marred by the Molluscari, who were a bit silly. I think the idea was that they'd be that much more menacing when they finally turned definitively evil. It worked...to a point.
I enjoyed this, but I'm also iffy on it. The start of this story hypes it up as a big event, with the whole 'there's only one man who can stop the universe from exploding' plot. It intrigued me, but as the story went on it was clear that this was never going to be an actual plot thread. Plus the main focus of this episode, the doctor's new life with the jellyfish is built up as something that would forever change his character, but there's no sign of it being all that changed in future stories. Feels like a waste of time, but it does come up again in future plots so I would still recommend this.
This was definitely my favourite EDA so far. I really liked the jelly fish people and the Old Doctor having lived their for 600 years and forgotten everything. The Headhunter was even better than before, she reminded me a little of an evil River Song. Lucie was back to being brilliant and hilarious again, loved the slap. The reunion was emotional and it was funny and dark and sad at the same time. The only thing that let this one down was the Trans mollusc bad guy played for laughs. Apart from that I really enjoyed this one.
While not as epic as the previous 2 parts, this "coda" does a nice job of hitting the reset button for the 8th Doctor (who apparently, is the amnesia king having had it The Movie, several of the books, Big Finish's divergent universe AND again here).
Sure, the jelly fish and the mollusks are a bit silly and nearly panto, but it makes for a nice change of pace from the heaviness of Morbius before it. But it's the tragic ending that sells this for me. The idea that the Doctor screws up...
Listened to this last night and, my goodness, I think it is my favourite 8th Doctor audio story so far! Very humorous and moving in parts. It sees the reunion of Lucie Miller and the 8th Doctor, the latter having been residing on the watery planet of Orbis for six hundred years. Thought Andrew Sachs as the gender-changing villain was a hoot and thought the unrequited crush for the Doctor by Selta, a jellyfish-like native of Orbis, was both funny and sweet.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
"Orbis has the Doctor suffering from amnesia yet again, and Andrew Sachs playing an evil invertebrate ruler for the second time in twelve months (OK, the first time he was playing Adric controlling the invertebrates). Sheridan Smith does well as Lucie, not having faced these situations before, but we the audience have and this didn't seem very new."
It started right off with some action, which was great, but it was a little confusing at first.We get a little information, but it feels like we were dropped in halfway through the story. It doesn't take long to piece together, so I wasn't lost for long. The only thing that really annoyed me was the headhunter using Lucie's full name over and over.
This was a little bit confusing for me, since I wasn't familiar with the companion that shows up. But once I got over it, I was able to enjoy the story by itself. I already found the next in the series so I can continue on.
Counts as a book from OneClickDigital for my library summer reading challenge.
Lucie Miller and the Doctor are reunited on the planet Orbis, however he has been there for a while and is not keen on the idea of leaving. A story that is interesting, funny, touching, sad and in places quite silly. A promising start to the third series of 8th Doctor adventures.
A very funny, very charming read right up until the point where a whole (sympathetic!) species first gets eaten and then destroyed and everyone, including the Doctor, shrugs it off.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.