The Diary of River Song Series 8 review: The robot season

Jan 30, 2021 12:18

River reunites with Rachel, the Synthetic from Series Two, meets K-9, and rules the Mechonoids for a time.


It’s acknowledged that the pandemic changed the plans for this DORS series at the end-of-episode aural documentary for “Slight Glimpses of Tomorrow.” (N.B.: Unlike the past seven series, there isn’t a end-of-series documentary.) Instead of recording in the Big Finish studio, allowing for a bigger cast, home recording was partially used for this series. The scripts for the first part of DORS Series Eight (this story and “A Brave New World”) feel like they could be full series in themselves. In “Slight Glimpses,” for reasons unknown River takes Rachel through a history of a planet through tracking down a star map. Rachel is upset at what she sees and tries to change the history of this planet, despite River’s protests. While “Slight Glimpses” ends in a satisfactory, if pessimistic, way, the story feels like it could’ve explored Rachel’s part of the story more before its ending. The story does set up Rachel as a River Song-like figure of her own, something that continues in the next story, “A Brave New World.”

“A Brave New World” continues a decision Rachel makes near the end of “Slight Glimpses.” It’s a decision that ends up altering Rachel and forcing River to cut a date with Eleven short to save Rachel. (Rachel is, for lack of Doctor Who terms, pretty much an android.) But Rachel, once again, has other plans. I was impressed with how this story was able to follow “A Brave New World” and still expand on “Slight Glimpses’” ending. I did get a chuckle (in a bad way) at an antagonist that appears midway through the story, though.

“A Forever Home,” an audio actually recorded in a socially-distanced Big Finish studio, finds River trapped in a cage, the unwilling “pet” to K-9 and a robot similar to K-9, FE- (what my notes in the Big Finish app tell me, but it’s pronounced like “feline”). Of course K-9 isn’t as insidious as he first appears. K-9 tries to help River and insists she wait on discovering why she’s in a cage, but of course she doesn’t wait. I wasn’t crazy about the surprise villain that appeared in the middle of the story (it’s one of the canon’s main villains). Although the story is timely and I understood what was going on, I felt this story was too silly for my taste.

I enjoyed “Queen of the Mechonoids” more...just not as much as the first two stories of this series. Here Anya Kingdom (a Big Finish companion of the Fourth Doctor) and Mark Seven (a Terry Nation character featured in written spin-offs, now being featured in Big Finish audios) investigate a distress call that leads them to River in a palace. The story then shifts towards a compelling mystery involving the Mechonoids. I was disappointed the story is also meant to be a prequel to another Big Finish audio series, though.

Overall, DORS Eight is another fun series of stories, but I personally wish it was four stories combining to make one longer story, like in DORS series past, rather than a couple of stories making one longer story, a standalone story, and a tease for another Big Finish series.
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review: the diary of river song (bf)

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