Persuasion
|
|
Big Finish Productions Persuasion |
|
| Written by | Nicholas Briggs |  |
| Format | Compact Disc | |
| Released | 2013 |
| Starring Sylvester McCoy, Tracey Childs, Christian Edwards |
| Synopsis: The Umbrella Man is back. But when the Doctor recruits UNIT's Scientific Adviser Elizabeth Klein for an off-the-books mission to the apocalyptic final days of Hitler's Germany, he isn't expecting Klein's hapless young assistant, Will Arrowsmith, to be joining them too. The Doctor isn't the only alien creature seeking to loot a very particular secret from a Nazi base in Dusseldorf, however. Strange and sinister beings are converging on the same time/space location in search of the scientist Schalk, whose experiments are the key to a devastating power... The power of Persuasion. |
Unconvincing by Noe Geric 26/9/20
The Doctor, Klein and the new companion Will are ready for a new trilogy in the expert hands of Big Finish. With a brand-new arc that consist of three stories, the Doctor will have to find the persuasion machine while fighting Daleks, Sontarans and Gods from the dawn of time. Persuasion is the beginning of that big adventure, and of course it fails completely to persuade me to listen to that arc.
The story is a mess. The Doctor takes Klein aboard the TARDIS for no apparent reason, and they go to Germany in 1945. The first episode is quite empty: the pre-title sequence seems to go on forever, as three creatures with strange voices talk about portals and stuff like that. Then the episode itself consists of the Doctor and Klein running around a German bunker and Will being in what looks like a better version of Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS. Nothing happens, and the cliffhanger lacks any drama.
The Doctor and his friends continue their journey to Greece where they hope to find a Nazi professor of some sort who built the persuasion machine. Then the Gods from another universe, we've seen at the very beginning of the story, arrive, and the plot changes completely. The seventh Doctor has fought a lot of Gods during his era in audio/comics/novels and TV episodes, but, of all these - Fenric, Gods of Ragnarok and Morgaine - there's this bunch of creatures that get beaten in record. They appear, threaten to kill everybody in the dullest cliffhanger of the story, and the Doctor trick them easily, and they end-up traped on a planet.
The plot about the Persuasion machine comes back, but nothing is done with it. The characters are blank, and there are even some lines I had hoped I would never have to hear in Doctor Who. The score is the best thing and is sadly wasted on a less interesting story.
Klein has already been introduced in previous stories and comes back here where she is rather generic and doesn't do anything special except drink pints and be one of these SJWs Nazis. Will, the other companion, is introduced but only walks in the TARDIS for the first episode. He talks in a tape recorder and is apparently a male version of Melanie Bush. He's scared of everything, and I wouldn't be surprised if he has some guy called Jeremy Fitzoliver in his family. Will is that sort of Adam Mitchell you don't want to have around. In fact, he's every worst bit of every ''bad'' companion. I hope he'll be killed off at the end of the trilogy, it would be satisfying.
Ho and the Kletch might be the most annoying race ever created. They don't contribute to the story, and their voices are horribly irritating. They're here for no good reason too and just want to destroy everything.
The cover is impressive, but the story isn't. Two hours of talking about a Persuasion machine and the device doesn't even appears! Except for that ghost machine, there's nothing here to justify the title! There's no persuasion here, except if you call tricking two stupid Gods to trap themselves a persuasion. Stories like Scaredy Cat or Something Inside are bad, but this one has no purpose. The arc is just mentioned over and over again, and the monster of the week doesn't link to the actual story until Episode 3. Persuasion isn't persuasive; it just deserves a 2/10 for it's good sound design, nothing more.