Beginner's Guide to Doctor Who on Big Finish - Part 3: Free on Big Finish

Okay, we’ve looked at streaming platforms, we’ve looked at what’s available through BBC Sounds; now it’s time to officially check in with the Big Finish website. I waited for a bit before we got here because, where streaming was included to make use of accounts users are already using, and BBC Sounds doesn’t need one, Big Finish requires making an account to access its content. It’s free to sign up, but the actual access is a little counter-intuitive. Once the account is set up, getting to the freebies involves ‘unlocking’ them, and if you’re one of those weirdos who still use PCs and laptops to browse the Internet (which includes me, so no actual judgement there), you’ll be able to download ZIPs containing the audios. If you want a streaming option, you can download the Big Finish app, although be aware that the interface is a little antiquated. It also doesn’t allow for purchases through the app itself (similar to Amazon’s Comixology), so the best way to go is to use a web browser to unlock (and, later on, purchase) content, and then access it through the app.

Most of what’s available for free on the website are Part 1s and excerpts of larger stories and boxsets, similar to the official Soundcloud, which we won’t be covering here. Feel free to peruse them to maybe find something you’d like to check out in full later on, but for right now, this Guide is just going to focus on self-contained, complete stories. And there’s quite a few of them here.

Beginner's Guide to Doctor Who on Big Finish - Part 2: BBC Sounds

Now that we’ve sampled what’s available on services you’re already using, it’s time for a bit of exploring. This section will cover more free audios, although I’m not expecting most of you reading to already be familiar with the website where they can be found: BBC Sounds. These were all uploaded to the site as part of the show’s 60^th anniversary back in 2023, and quite a few of them are tailored towards fans of the revived era. At time of writing, they’re apparently going to do some reorganising soon for those accessing the site outside of the UK, but I’ll do my best to keep this up-to-date when that comes around. Same deal as with Part 1: I’ll give some general thoughts on each story, and provide links, although thankfully, there’s not as much need for digging around with this one.

Beginner's Guide to Doctor Who on Big Finish - Part 1: Streaming

Doctor Who is my favourite show. Hell, that’s probably not selling it enough: It is my favourite media franchise, across all forms it has taken over the past 60+ years.

At time of writing, the show has aired 884 individual episodes, encompassing 312 complete stories. But that represents just a fraction of what is available out there. There’s the numerous comic strips and series, there’s novelisations of the televised episodes that often went into much more detail and even redeemed some of the weaker stories, there’s original novelised adventures that kept the franchise alive during the wilderness years of the ‘90s… and then there’s the audio dramas, in particular the ones made by Big Finish Productions. Doctor Who on TV has just under 900 episodes. Doctor Who on Big Finish is at over two thousand and counting.

Nimona (2023) - Movie Review

Blue Sky Studios deserved better. I had given them a lot of flak for stuff like the Ice Age series and the Rio series, but their last two features not only showed drastic improvement from that standard, but showed that they had carved out their own niche in the modern animation market. Ferdinand had its growing pains, but still had some solid messaging, and Spies In Disguise only built on them further to make something even better. At long last, they found their (in my opinion) much-needed lane for today's family films with some strong pacifist messaging.

Then Disney bought out Blue Sky’s parent company 21^st Century Fox, repeatedly delayed their next feature, and then outright cancelled it along with Blue Sky Studios as a whole. The company that thinks digging up the graves of their previous successes, and that a new coat of CGI paint will cover the smell of stale corpse that is being paraded in front of audiences for profit, is a sound business strategy, but allowing a studio to continue operation and produce media that, just maybe, people might actually want to watch isn’t.

But out of the ashes of Blue Sky, this film still managed to take flight. Picked up by Annapurna Pictures, with animation by DNEG (who proved their salt as a dedicated animation studio with Ron’s Gone Wrong and Entergalactic), and Spies In Disguise directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane (who were originally slated for the helm before Blue Sky got shuttered) brought back in. That this whole production exists as a manifestation of hubris and spite against the conglomerate that tried to stop it from being made, quite frankly, has already earned my respect. But hoo boy, did it not stop earning it from there.

Poor Things (2023) - Movie Review

Yorgos Lanthimos is a mad genius of filmmaking. Having managed to make a rather unexpected emergence into the mainstream off of The Favourite, which took his usually osmium-thick storytelling style and made it accessible to a larger audience, his latest feature is as much a departure from that as The Favourite was from The Killing Of A Sacred Deer. DP Robbie Ryan is still offering a peephole-view into a world that is wildly different from what we charitably consider to be ‘reality’, and writer Tony McNamara is still finding new and deliciously colourful ways to describe the most vulgar shit, but what Lanthimos has brought them together for this time around is something truly special.

Wonka (2023) - Movie Review

Even for a year where filmmakers have been trying extra hard to swing for the fences, this is arguably one of the biggest ones. And honestly, if it were made by literally anyone else, any and all conversation surrounding it would be dominated by the age-old question of “Why is this a thing?”. Ignoring the previous attempt to revivify Roald Dahl’s classic story with Tim Burton’s Charlie And The Chocolate Factory (and whatever the hell that Tom & Jerry movie was supposed to do), the 1971 film is such an ingrained nostalgic classic that it’s basically untouchable. A film announcing itself as the origin story for pop culture’s most famous chocolatier, on its face, feels like a doomed idea.

But as I wrote above, it would be if it were made by anyone else. In this case, it’s the director and writers behind the Paddington movies, two little confections that defied all preconceptions on first release and have garnered (arguably) a similar untouchable status in modern cinema. They are such pure creations, full of wonder and whimsy and yet perfectly palatable, that they represent an ideal when it comes to making family films that… well, hits at my heart of hearts. That it is possible to tap into that same sense of delight that the best kinds of children’s films bestow on their audience, but as an adult, and without any of the cultural framing that one is ‘too old’ to enjoy things anymore.

The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar And Three More (2023) - Movie Review

Not content with merely releasing one film this year that explains just about every structural and thematic quirk in all of his other films with Asteroid City, Wes Anderson also put out a series of four short films on Netflix, adapted from short stories written by Roald Dahl: The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar, The Swan, The Rat Catcher, and Poison. And y’know what? I could review each of these individually and call that two days of my month-long blogathon done, but fuck it; let’s review all four of the buggers in one go.

Scarygirl (2023) - Movie Review

Coming off of the decent if inconsistent Tales From Sanctuary City trilogy, director Ricard Cussó’s latest is a major switch-up, both textually and visually. Textually, it’s adapted from an IP that has been doing the rounds semi-regularly for the past two decades, becoming toys, a comic book, a Flash game and even an Xbox Live Arcade download before making it to the big screen.

Visually, however, is where things get really interesting. While Australia has been experiencing something of a boom within the animation industry over the last several years, thanks in no small part to studios like Animal Logic and Flying Bark, this still manages to look like nothing else I’ve seen this country produce thus far. Not even the Sanctuary City movies come anywhere close to this.

Barbie (2023) - Movie Review

After the dramatised kinda-sorta autobiography of Lady Bird, and the classic literary adaptation of Little Women, writer/director Greta Gerwig’s latest feature is… a curveball. A curveball I have had several months to adjust to (and we’re talking before all the actual marketing material and ‘Barbenheimer’ was a thing) but a curveball nonetheless. But that’s just in terms of this film existing in the first place; the actual film itself is something else entirely.

Suzume (2023) - Movie Review

From the director of Your Name, the only body-swap romance film I can think of that’s actually worth watching, the latest from animator Makoto Shinkai makes that film’s high concept look downright pedestrian. I mean, most films look normal compared to the story of a Japanese schoolgirl who falls in love with a chair cursed by a cat-god, but my point still stands.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023) - Movie Review

After their last film in Game Night, with its story all about role-playing games and how revealing they can be for the personalities of those playing them, writer/directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley are now going after the biggest name when it comes to RPGs: Dungeons & Dragons. The extent to which these guys have advanced since the days of Horrible Bosses and Vacation only grows more staggering with each passing release (even if our last check-in with the duo, Vacation Friends, was not that great), and since I’ve actually gotten into a bit of dice-rolling recently, I was doubly excited to see what they had cooked up (all while trying not to let D&D owner Wizards Of The Coast themselves become cooked over the Open Game License fiasco that would’ve caused trouble for a lot of content creators and fans alike).

Now, my own experience with D&D is rather limited; I only have a handful of actual game sessions to my name, and quite a few character sheets and backstories that likely won’t get used, but never say never (the story must be told of Hughal Dughal, the Dwarven pro-wrestler monk). But between those sessions, the nights spent brainstorming backstories, my general interest in video game RPGs like the Elder Scrolls series, and from watching liveplays of groups like Critical Role, I’d like to think I have a good enough idea of what makes this specific IP, and indeed tabletop RPGs in general, appealing. And it looks like Goldstein and Daley have nailed it.

The Amazing Maurice (2023) - Movie Review

With how badly director Toby Genkel’s previous animated ventures have turned out, being responsible for the gargantuan irritants of the Nestrians in the Two By Two films, the prospect of him helming an adaptation of Terry bloody Pratchett is… concerning, to say the least. Doubly so because this will be the first theatrical adaptation of Pratchett’s Discworld canon, being relegated to TV miniseries up to this point. However, knowing that the writing and storytelling was ultimately the biggest problem with Two By Two, and this is built on a foundation not reliant on toy sales to justify its existence, maybe this will work out for a change.

Roald Dahl's Matilda The Musical (2022) - Movie Review

Matilda, both the Roald Dahl book and the Danny Devito-directed film version, were foundational texts for me as a kid. One of my first real exposures to autism-coding in storytelling, Matilda was something of a hero of mine growing up. A child brilliant beyond her years, struggling to grow against apathetic parents and a cruel headmistress, at the center of a story all about the evil that is letting children down. Add to that the iconic depictions offered by the film, between Mara Wilson as the ultimate ND avatar in Matilda and Pam Ferris as the stuff of nightmares in Miss Trunchbull, and you’ve got a story that has a sizeable place in my heart. I figured a musical version of that same story would be decent, but only decent. Not something that could wrestle control away from both of those foundations to become… well, my new favourite version of the story.

Hocus Pocus 2 (2022) - Movie Review

There’s nothing inherently wrong with a film being made with a very specific audience in mind. In this case, it’s for fans of the 1993 cult classic Hocus Pocus, one of the odder parts of Disney’s storied history. I only got around to watching it fairly recently (on insistence from my significant other), and while I don’t entirely get the hype for it, it’s still quite fun. Looking at it through a modern lens, it’s quite easy to see why the Sanderson sisters would become so iconic, since they are the perfect intersection between Drag theatricality, Gothic subversiveness, and just plain hammy performances. I mean, yeah, the amount of time the narrative fixates on the virginity of teenagers is… a bit much, but it has its place in pop culture. A place that Disney has now seen fit to add on to with a decades-removed sequel.

Turning Red (2022) - Movie Review

There are quite a few things that are considered good sport to make fun of. Boy bands like One Direction, twee romance novels like Twilight, any number of chick flicks. And not only has it been openly acceptable to mock such things, their audiences are regularly caught in the cross-hairs. Not many people tend to take a step back and considering why it’s okay to mock the things that young girls and woman are interested in; it’s just… part of ‘the culture’.

And before this sounds like I’m getting all holier-than-thou, I did my fair share of this shit too. ‘Boy bands are gay’, ‘chick flicks are stupid’, ‘what kind of damaged freak could possibly enjoy Twilight?’; teenaged me was way more judgemental than the me that decided to make a career out of judging media. I can’t say that I don’t hold onto at least some of those opinions today, but the notion that it’s perfectly cool to mock people just because they find joy in something? Yeah, that’s unbelievably not okay.

Pinocchio (2022) - Movie Review

While Snow White And The Seven Dwarves may have been where Disney’s animated film history started, along with their canon of Disney Princesses, their 1940 film version of Pinocchio is arguably where Disney as an artistic aesthetic began. The iconic soundtrack, to the point where When You Wish Upon A Star has essentially become the official anthem for Disney, the elegant use of metaphor in its depiction of a child self-actualising, the timeless animation, that horrifying donkey transformation scene (which likely gave birth to an entire generation of Cronenberg fans); it’s a well-deserved classic.

And it is also the latest film to get pulped and sifted in the modern Disney remake machine, and between the icy reception it’s garnered already and me losing all hope in these things being good anymore after Aladdin and The Lion King, I was fully expecting to hate this. Guess I’ve found my big dissenting opinion for the year, because I actually quite liked this.

Slumberland (2022) - Movie Review

I’ve really come to appreciate the films of director Francis Lawrence. Sure, his work on the Hunger Games sequels represents the best of the 3^rd wave of YA adaptations (not to mention what might be my favourite scene in any movie with the Hanging Tree sequence in Mockingjay Part 1), but there’s also I Am Legend and Constantine as well. Legend has an understanding of the effect of social isolation that has properly stuck with me since watching it, and while Constantine is one of the best examples of the Vertigo comics aesthetic on film, even if it’s not necessarily the best example of Hellblazer specifically. And now, he appears to be aiming for something more family-friendly than he’s used to, with a reimagining of Little Nemo In Slumberland. And I gotta say, it’s pretty good.

The School For Good And Evil (2022) - Movie Review

Y’know, I’m starting to think that Paul Feig is just a hack. After his take on Ghostbusters failed to please (and honestly, whatever defences I had for it just grow fainter in my memory in the years since I watched it), he seems to be trying to do anything except for the raunchy comedy that he showed skill at with Bridesmaids, The Heat, and even Spy. A Simple Favor had him put on his best French affectation, and yeah, it was pretty good, but that was mainly from the borrowed aesthetics rather than anything identifiably him. Then there was his attempt at a British rom-com with Last Christmas, which is still one of the most laughable misfires I’ve ever covered on here for how it mangled the songs of George Michael. And now, he’s trying to make a high fantasy school setting, some proper 1^st wave YA material, and… yikes.

New Gods: Yang Jian (2022) - Movie Review

Time to take a trip back into Light Chaser Animation’s universe of steampunk mysticism with a new New Gods feature. And this one actually made it into cinemas over here, instead of going straight to Netflix, and with the kind of visual aesthetics Light Chaser are chasing after here, that is one hell of a good move on their part.

Blaze (2022) - Movie Review

(cw: rape, childhood trauma)

The story of this film is deceptively simple, and truth be told, not a lot technically ‘happens’ over the course of 100-or-so minutes. On her way home from school, 13-year-old Blaze (Julia Savage) witnesses Hannah (Yael Stone) being raped and killed in an alleyway by Jake (Josh Lawson). In the midst of the trauma seeing such an event triggered in her, and retreating into her own mind as a result, she has been asked to testify in court as a witness to the assault.

It’s a rather straight-forward dramatic premise that could easily fit into a short film, which both director/writer Del Kathryn Barton and co-writer Huna Amweero have more experience with over anything feature-length. However, in the process of making it into a feature-length production, Barton has managed to create something that looks entirely unlike any other Australian film I have ever encountered, nor any coming-of-age story from here or anywhere else.