The Paternoster Gang: Heritage 2

The Paternoster Gang #2

by Dan Starkey (Author/Narrator), Guy Adams, Gemma Arrowsmith

Victorian London harbours many secrets: alien visitors, strange phenomena and unearthly powers.

But a trio of investigators stands ready to delve into such mysteries – the Great Detective, Madame Vastra, her resourceful spouse, Jenny Flint, and their loyal valet, Strax.

If an impossible puzzle needs solving, or a grave injustice needs righting, help can be found on Paternoster Row.

But even heroes can never escape their past…

2.1 Dining with Death by Dan Starkey

When negotiations between two warring alien races are sabotaged, Madame Vastra offers Paternoster Row as neutral ground upon which to continue their diplomacy – and to celebrate the treaty with a feast.

While Strax frets about hosting two species with very different dietary needs, Jenny investigates the dissenters who want to halt the peace process.

But a deadly plot is brewing, and the diners may not survive the cheese course...

2.2 The Screaming Ceiling by Guy Adams

In one of the earliest cases of his illustrious career, Thomas Carnacki heads to the Highlands to embark upon the terrifying investigation of Castle Kraighten.

On arrival, he finds that another party of sleuths has been engaged – surely these amateurs of Paternoster Row have nothing to teach the great Ghost Finder?

But this is no ordinary haunting. A room in the castle has a mouth in its ceiling. And it screams...

2.3 Spring-Heeled Jack by Gemma Arrowsmith

People are being stolen from the streets by a monster. By all accounts, it has burning eyes, breathes blue flames, and can leap the height of a building at a bound.

While Vastra and Jenny fend off an over-eager member of the gutter press, Strax dives into dangerous waters.

Is this Spring-Heeled Jack of legend, returned to terrorise the capital? Or are there more sinister forces at work?

Genres: Doctor Who, Audiobook, Science Fiction

Audiobook

First published October 16, 2019

Reviews

[April Mccaffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enjoyable boxset. Great fun, and always love hearing more from Strax and Madame Vastra.

[Taksya · Rating 4 out of 5]

2.1 Dining with Death by Dan Starkey
Ritroviamo il nostro sontaran preferito non solo impegnato in un fine gioco diplomatico, ma anche dietro le quinte come autore.
Storia leggera e prevedibile, ma bene orchestrata ed equilibrata nei ruoli.
2.2 The Screaming Ceiling by Guy Adams
Casa infestata, un cacciatore di fantasmi (Carnacki, the Ghost Finder, all'inizio della sua carriera) e la Paternoster gang... cosa potrebbe andare storto?
2.3 Spring-Heeled Jack by Gemma Arrowsmith
Solito mostro misterioso, che abbiamo incontrato più volte nell'universo del Dottore, ma mai sotto le stesse spoglie.
Come sempre, nulla è quello che sembra.

Il trio è sempre fedele a se stesso. Rispetto al primo box set (The Paternoster Gang: Heritage 1) ci sono meno riferimenti alla relazione tra Vastra e Jenny e la trama ne guadagna. Strax è sempre il solito, ma non smette di divertire.
Le tre storie sono abbastanza prevedibili e ricordano qualcosa di già visto/letto/sentito, ma non è un problema. L'ambientazione e il cast non fanno pesare troppo la sensazione di già visto.

[Marcel Driel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun but also quite forgettable. They’re definitely very funny, though, so while you won’t miss a thing if you skip this box, you will have a good time if you don’t. But I did like the first boxset a bit more.

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Vastra and Jenny. I think Vastra is probably the best woman character that Moffat wrote. She's intelligent, strong, capable, and never really does or say anything icky. And she's queer. Jenny varies depending on whose writing her and Strax can be good comic relief, or useful, And occasionaly useful comic relief.

I do like it when actors write stories about their characters and the first one of these was entertaining from Dan Starkey. He gave Jenny a lot to do, running around and doing the actual investigating while Vastra held the talks.

The second story was the weakest of the bunch. Trying to shoehorn in a very late Edwardian character into a Victorian setting was odd. Especially as doing so made him young and extra annoying. Also for no reason at all the story was entirely straight washed! I'm not sure what the point of including the most famous queer married couple in Doctor who history is if you don't even have any terms of endearment and avoid mentioning they are married. There were a few good Strax lines but I felt Guy Adams rather missed the point a bit with this one.

The third story was by far my favourite. It took an interesting new take on the Spring Heeled Jack story. While still keeping elements of the original. There were more women characters who did things and had agency. There was a whole new side to Jenny, and lovely to see her squabbling a bit with Vastra instead of just being the submissive. And yet still maintained the romance.

I remember we all wanted their own spin off and some people didn't think you could find stories for them. I think this proves otherwise.

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.1 Dining with Death - Off to a good start. This story was just outrageous, absurd and entertaining- everything I expect from the Paternoster Gang (4/5).

2.2 The Screaming Ceiling - Just as outrageous and absurd, but a bit more predictable and perhaps forced. Not bad, but certainly not as good as the first story in this collection (3/5). This story also features an appearance of the titular character from Carnacki the Ghost-Finder.

2.3 Spring-Heeled Jack - Was it inevitable that we’d get a Paternoster Gang vs Spring-Heeled Jack? Probably. Not exactly everything I’d hope it might have been, honestly it felt like an episode of Doctor Who. That’s certainly not a bad thing, but I do like these spin-offs when they are really substantially different than a Doctor Who episode (3/5).

Not quite as wonderful as the first set, The Paternoster Gang: Heritage 1, but still enormously entertaining.

[Jamie Revell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite why this is called “Heritage 2” I’m not at all sure. That makes it sound as if it’s a sequel to the previous release Heritage 1, with the two being part of some longer-term plot arc. But it isn’t: it’s a set of three hour-long stories unconnected with each other and with what went before, at least one of which has nothing at all to do with the concept of “heritage”. The mystery of the title aside, though, it’s a fun collection, with an often whimsical tone, with the science fiction elements largely overshadowing the Victorian ones – which may be a plus or a minus, depending on your tastes and expectations.

Dining with Death – The first story sees Madame Vastra hosting a peace conference between two warring, but minor, interstellar powers while someone – or something – tries to sabotage events. There’s a good mixture of humour and action, with one of the alien races providing as much of the former as Strax does. Jenny gets some scenes on her own that show off her capabilities as an investigator, although what some of it has to do with the larger plot isn’t entirely clear and there are also some good scenes showing Strax actually working as a butler. If it has a weakness, it’s that it tends to show the characters as one-note, responding to events in their usual style but nothing more than that. There is a connection with the past of one of them, but it’s largely incidental. Nonetheless, it is fun and all the main characters have something to do. 4.5 stars.

The Screaming Ceiling –The second story takes the unusual step of being told from the perspective of a guest character. He’s an inexperienced ghost-hunter called in to investigate a haunting in Scotland that the Paternoster Gang are already looking into. Seeing them through his eyes neatly avoids any issues with limited characterisation, especially since he’s an unreliable narrator who doesn’t quite get what’s happening in some of the scenes (Jenny, for example, is straight in this, since he has no reason to assume otherwise). It’s more serious than the first story, with something creepy behind the apparent hauntings, but there is still plenty of humour provided both by Strax and the narrator and it’s an effective twist on the format that plays on some of the listener’s expectations. 4 stars.

Spring-Heeled Jack – This time we’re on the trail of a being that looks remarkably like the Spring-Heeled Jack of legend and is abducting random people from the streets of London. As in the previous story, an additional character is added into the mix, in this case a sensationalist newspaper reporter also on the trail of the abductor. While she is an important element of the story, it does highlight the lack of any ongoing theme here – six stories in and there are no recurring characters other than the leads. As a standalone story, though, it works reasonably well, even if the eventual solution seems a bit hard to swallow given what we’ve seen up to that point. As usual, Strax provides the humour (here, more from his failure to understand Earth culture and biology rather than a desire to blow everything up) and Jenny gets some good characterisation, standing up for the downtrodden when even Vastra is reluctant to. 4 stars.

[Felecia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yet another stellar outing for The Paternoster Gang. Dan Starkey wrote the first story, Dining With Death, and it is delightful. The Gang facilitates diplomacy between two alien species. The Screaming Room depicts a ghostfinding expedition in a Scottish manor. The narrator, a young Carmack, is wonderful and pitiful all at the same time. In Spring Heeled Jack, our beloved gang investigates a spate of disappearances linked the legendary figure, but is there more afoot?

I love these characters and delight in every moment with them!

[Alex Southwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was able to devour the 4 titles in this series pretty quickly, I loved it that much. I know audio series aren't for everyone but I absolutely adore Big Finish. Makes my little doctor who nerd heart happy!

If there is any BF spin-off series I can recommend, it would be this one simply because it is different than the rest of them. Loved Diary of River Song (she's a queen!) but this one made me laugh time and time again. 5/5 stars for sure

[Steven Shinder · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just wasn’t really as tune into this one. Not really sure why.

[Ellen Schoener · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Paternosters are shaping up as their own little range, neither copying too much from Jago and Litefoot for example, nor relying too much on their main series roots.
I also like how the comedy and the drama balance each other nicely most of the time (however, sometimes it slides awkwardly towards slapstick and that is not my thing at all).
It is a nice humourous range and very enjoyable to listen to.

[Debra Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

The gang continues to solve supernatural and alien cases.