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elizabethshaw · 1 year

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need to get this all out somehow, so - thoughts and general ramblings on the new eight-liv-helen audios! under the cut for spoiler purposes:

so! general overview - this boxset was. so so good. i really enjoyed last month’s release as well, but this was on another level for me entirely and despite listening to most of it past midnight (i was busy from about 8am until 11.30 at night. tuesdays are just like that every week unfortunately) and so probably not being in the best state of... anything, really, for it, i genuinely enjoyed this set so much and am in all honesty going slightly mad not being able to talk about it to anyone irl. anyway

episode-by-episode thoughts:

here lies drax

- this was a very fun one! now i’ve listened to the full set it does feel a little out of place tonally (this was very much a comedy and the other two. weren’t), but it was definitely enjoyable and had a clever plot

- i did actually do my homework for this one and listened to “the trouble with drax” the other week in preparation! (it was the first time i’d listened to one of four’s audios, actually, which was an interesting experience.) i feel like having that context definitely helped understanding a lot of the references going on, but i do wonder if i’d gone into this cold i would’ve enjoyed it a little more because it did feel at some points like it was retreading “trouble”’s beats a bit. hmm

- i did enjoy it overall though (it was very very funny), and i did like the way it all eventually panned out with all the guest characters being drax except the one character actually credited as drax. definitely appealed to my sense of humour

- there was something so deeply funny to me about the entire funeral scene, but especially the part with eight, whose experience of it up to that point had been all the guests turning up late and one of them straight up shooting the corpse, turning to liv and helen and going “this is exactly how i want my funeral to go”. what is going on in his head <3

- also shoutout to “can you legally shoot a corpse?” i have been wanting to make an out of context clips compilation for this era for ages now and if i ever do get round to doing it that line is definitely going in there

- “i think i want to scream” helen being a mood once again. this is how i have felt for the past 5 weeks at least

the love vampires

- this is currently very closely tied with “albie’s angels” for my favourite episode of both this boxset and this era of standalone stories with the team so far. it’s SO GOOD

- while i do definitely like the more fun, adventure-based episodes, i feel like my real niche with dr who stories is ones that really dig into the characters and this is a great example of the latter category. i was optimistic for this one anyway because, from my limited experience with his big finish work, james kettle seems like a really good writer for character-based stories, but it really exceeded my expectations for it. the character work (especially for helen) was absolutely brilliant!

- CANON QUEER HELEN FINALLY!!!!!!! 🎉 🎉 🎉 🎉

- i listened to the bit where that was confirmed when i was in public and let me tell you it was an absolutely huge effort to not completely lose my shit. i’m fairly sure i was grinning like an idiot the whole way through though

- honestly this whole episode was just fantastic for helen content generally. i am biased because she’s one of my all-time favourite characters, but that 100% drove the whole thing up in my estimation

- hattie morahan’s performance in this (and the next episode) was absolutely brilliant, some of her best in dw imo

- “great. van helsing in space” i don’t particularly have anything to add here i just think this line was fun

- liv’s first love as revealed by this episode is called petko. i looked the name up and apparently it’s bulgarian, and all i’m saying is that this is definitely adding to my “kaldor and slavic languages theory” 😌

- also like. liv’s scene with her respective vampire was so sad??? like i just got this feeling of overwhelming loneliness from it, and... yeah. someone get that woman a hug

- LOTS of thoughts about the scene between eight and liv where he gets her to promise to kill him if things go wrong. it’s actually shorter than i thought it was (went back and relistened for the purposes of making this bullet point), but there is a Lot to unpack there and i think it does highlight some of the stuff that makes their dynamic so interesting. i just don’t see that same scene happening with many other doctor-companion dynamics and, well... many thoughts

- “we’ll go out together. blaze of glory.” undescribable emotions™

- cutting away from the character stuff for a brief moment to discuss a) the atmosphere. the whole vibe of this story was so well-done, including the sound design, it felt really claustrophobic and creepy in the best way, really effective. and b) i thought the becoming were neat. i just think that’s a super cool name for an alien race :)

- “i sometimes think i can be a bit too... buttoned-up... emotionally.” “no... i- i wouldn’t say that.” “why? it’s obviously true.” eight my friend you are not helping here At All <3

albie’s angels

- okay so i’ve somehow got into a mindset where every time a new audio with this tardis team comes out i am absolutely convinced that helen is going to die in it. i thought this was going to be the episode where it happens and let me tell you i am so relieved that i was wrong!!!

- (i still reckon she’s doomed by the narrative though. this is a line of thought that’s really enough for a post of its own so i won’t elaborate here, but yeah. i am still not convinced her ending is going to be a happy one)

- this episode did however utterly wreck me emotionally (affectionate)

- really enjoyed the intro scene! i just like them getting to be silly together, even if it wasn’t for long :’)

- “didn’t we do enough damage to this decade already? put it another way, didn’t it do enough damage to us?” yeah :/

- albie was absolutely lovely :’) he was so sweet and kind and had so much love to give?? he may only be in one episode but i’d die for him

- also interesting to note how genuinely similar he seemed to helen? like they obviously have fairly distinct and different personalities but there were a lot of like, small mannerisms and stuff that they shared and it just really added something to their dynamic. they actually felt like siblings, really makes me wish that dw would do sibling duos like this more often tbh

- “helen chenka” i am trying so hard to be normal about liv/helen and keep my expectations for what’ll happen with them in check and every day i am tested. what the fuck.

- actually you know what this entire episode had a LOT of liv/helen moments??? like i kinda just assumed the whole thing was dead in the water after stranded but now... i’m having a lot of thoughts. maybe that big finish tweet from august or whenever it was was right

- the snowball fight scene. i will actually be thinking about this forever.

- the revelation that albie had been a few miles away from helen at most the entire time she was still on earth but neither of them had known and got to see each other totally wrecked me ngl

- and also the fact that his arrest was so close in time to the events of helen’s first episode! before this i’d assumed it had happened when helen was still fairly young, but now thinking about how her grief for him would have been so new and raw during “the red lady”... god this is actually destroying me

- (given that “absent friends” probably takes place a maximum of about two weeks after “the red lady” as well, the implication there that helen basically loses her entire family in the space of a few months is heartbreaking)

- “what else did helen tell you?” “not much. i don’t know if she couldn’t or wouldn’t. but after that conversation...” “yes?” “that was pretty much it, she... shut down.” “that’s our helen.” “she means a lot to me, you know.” “to both of us.” this whole scene was a Lot in general, but the way that both liv and eight genuinely care about helen so much?? the way that they’re recognising and acknowledging the fact that she’s not okay and in a good place mentally and hasn’t been for a long time?? the bond this team have means so much to me istg

- this episode said the real villains are homophobia and capitalism and it was right

- i was not expecting the lesbian weeping angels at all but you know what? good for them. i hope they’re living their best lives now

- roy gill really just went and almost single-handedly gave helen one of her best arcs in the entire show and i respect him so much for that. i hope he comes back as a writer for this tardis team at some point because he just absolutely gets what they’re all about.

- the tragedy of it all combined with the ray of light in that albie and bailey got to be happy together, and that helen got to see her brother one last time... it was such a bittersweet ending and i feel like it was absolutely perfect for the story and for this arc as a whole

- song for helen broke me completely. i was sobbing at it in a dark room at 2.30 am and honestly i feel like that says everything.

so yeah. overall really really loved these three episodes!!! genuinely looking forward to where they’re going to go next with these characters, i feel like there’s some real potential for amazing stuff down the line :)

#bethan talks about dw #bethan listens to big finish #dw spoilers #feels like it's been a long time since i've actually posted any thoughts (or just. any original content oops) on here!#rest assured i have been thinking about dr who all the time though :)#(although admittedly it has been recently sharing brain space with the pleasant green universe audios bc i've been relistening)#anyway hope you're all having a good day!! sorry for rambling so much haha

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