Doctor Who: Circular Time

Big Finish: Monthly Range #91

by Paul Cornell, Mike Maddox, Peter Davison (Narrator)

Summer to winter, the seasons turn.

In the springtime of a distant future, the Doctor and Nyssa become embroiled in Time Lord politics on an alien world. During the stifling heat of a summer past they suffer the vengeful wrath of Isaac Newton. In the recent past, Nyssa spends a romantic golden autumn in an English village while the Doctor plays cricket. And finally, many years after their travels together have ended, the two friends meet again in the strangest of circumstances.

Four seasons. Four stories.

Now close the door behind you, you're letting the cold in...

Genres: Doctor Who, Audiobook, Science Fiction, Time Travel, Anthologies, Short Stories

Audio CD

First published January 20, 2007

About the author

Paul Cornell is a British writer of science fiction and fantasy prose, comics and television. He's been Hugo Award-nominated for all three media, and has won the BSFA Award for his short fiction, and the Eagle Award for his comics. He's the writer of Saucer Country for Vertigo, Demon Knights for DC, and has written for the Doctor Who TV series. His new urban fantasy novel is London Falling, out from Tor on December 6th.

via Wikipedia @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Cor...

Reviews

[Polly Batchelor · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I do not like fools, forgers…or Catholics! Which are you?"

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part 1: Spring ~ Well, this looks like it could be a fun trip. (4/5)

Part 2: Summer ~ Sir Isaac Newton by David Warner? Brilliant! (4/5)

Part 3: Autumn ~ WOW! This one was powerful, poignant and brought tears to my eyes. (5/5)

Part 4: Winter ~ As this chapter started, I wasn’t expecting to like it all that much, but at the narrative progressed, I found myself increasingly interested and engaged. (4/5)

Interesting that the placement of this story occurs during the closing moment of the 5th Doctor’s incarnation. So even though Nyssa is present, she not actually there and Peri is nearby. (4/5)

[Nicholas Whyte]

In Circular Time, Paul Cornell and Mike Maddox take the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa through four separate half-hour adventures. While I couldn't declare this to be the best ever Big Finish release, it is certainly among the very good ones. The first of the four, "Spring", is the weakest, a story of renegade time-lords and bird people that gets a bit confused. But then we are into "Summer", a confrontation with Sir Isaac Newton in the Tower of London due to the Doctor pulling out the wrong coins, which is rather fun. The best of the four is "Autumn", which is a rather pastoral account of Nyssa's romance while the Doctor enjoys playing cricket. And that then feeds into the last of the four, "Winter", set long after the Doctor and Nyssa have parted company, but with Nyssa having these very strange dreams...

[Scott Haworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

My only complaint is that most of these stories could have been expanded into 45 minute episodes for the modern series. Being so short, some were a bit anticlimactic. But they were good while they lasted. The final two stories definitely worked best.

[Seb Hasi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Circular Time is a really clever and experimental bit of storytelling, a release that isn’t wrought with drama but instead lots of emotion and charming sentimentality. Instead of telling one linear story, this release is four stories linked thematically in its associations between the seasons and emotion; something that means you get four disparate yet interesting stories in one two hour release! Sadly I wasn’t blown away by the release as a whole but really did appreciate some of the really beautiful moments that it creates. Spring (or episode 1) is easily the weakest of the set, a generic tale of the Doctor trying to get a time lord to go back home. There’s bird people knocking about too because for some reason quirky things are almost mandatory. Cardinal Zero is played by the marvellous Hugh Fraser here and is easily the best bit of the story given his chemistry with Davison; making the arguments and rather b*tchy moments feel engaging and fun. The problem is that the story does nothing between points A and B, and given it’s not hard to work out how it ends, you’d hope they’d throw some curveballs in there. Nyssa also feels so unnecessary here and clearly is there for no reason than other to prompt the Doctor’s exposition, so somehow a very plain story also manages to feel as if way too much is going on. Summer (or episode 2) is special for featuring the late, great, David Warner as a comical Isaac Newton. The story really revolves around him to highlight how any detail of a time traveller’s life can affect the timeline. This one features the most comedy of the four episodes and a lot of the jokes are actually quite funny. It manages to include so much information about the historical period & figure, the aspect that made this story feel really authentic to Season 19 (in which Circular Time is set). There are moments of drama and action but it is mostly a series of conversations that do keep you interested, but much like the first story; the lack of any real stakes or suspense make the story nothing more than a charming but forgettable thirty minutes.

Autumn (or episode 3) is a very weird entry in the anthology and confusing if you’re the kind of person who takes continuity seriously. From the perspective of getting to see the 5th Doctor do nothing but play cricket for a whole story, it is just so charming and silly, especially given you can really tell that Davison is relishing it. The love story with Nyssa works on paper but trying to make me care about this guy we get 25 minutes or so to get to know, doesn’t work as well as intentioned. There are some incredibly sweet and heartwarming moments as he courts Nyssa, but with the goodbye inevitable it’s impossible to magically adore the character. The story really feels authentic in 5/Nyssa being on holiday and the actual lack of suspense and dramatic moments really amplify the mundane nature of the setting. It also casts all the light onto the dialogue and emotional moments, from the Doctor getting on the wrong side of Cricket thugs to Nyssa’s saddening goodbye. The character development for Nyssa was definitely overdue (by about 25 years or so) but it felt so sudden as if the listener is supposed to know all these randomly picked things about her. Instead of coming off as a complex yet emotional alien she just comes across prickly and still quite bland, so it really was her side of the romance that let down its believability. Winter (or episode 4) is the closer of the anthology and is absolutely absurd. The Doctor is married and has two children, Nyssa is lost in a blizzard and everything just descends into metaphysical nonsense mere moments in. This story is textbook Paul Cornell and he does make the abstract very entertaining, but I personally didn’t feel like this moment of the 5th Doctor’s life needed a whole complicated story. There’s a menacing background presence throughout which is probably what made this the most memorable of the four, with there feeling like there are actual stakes and drama to the narrative. There being a ‘rug-pull’ moment every minute or so was a bit much to be honest, and I do feel that some of the tension and shock is dampened by how quickly the story moves on from one twist to the next. For a story that takes place in the mind it does its best but it really feels like it doesn’t have enough time for the ideas to breathe, yet it feels like it really couldn’t justify being any longer. The true highlight of this episode as well as the whole release is the beautiful conversation between the Doctor and Nyssa at the end, written with such intelligence and authenticity that it is hard not to shed a tear. There’s a completely ludicrous twist during that is either intentionally or unintentionally a laugh out loud moment, so Winter does feel like it has a nice balance of comedy, drama, and emotion.

[Eli Seibert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spring- 4.5 stars
Summer- 4 stars
Fall and Winter- 5 stars
These stories were phenomenal. Nyssa is such an underrated companion, and her and 5 are honestly one of my favorite tardis teams to listen to. They just work so well off each other. And having stories not dealing with the usual battle against evil, but dealing with ideas such as the possibility of domesticity (which really are alien in the world of the doctor)...
I just loved all of it.

[Vitor Frazão · Rating 3 out of 5]

Três história. Uma parece ser pouco mais que uma introdução. Outra é simples mas mostra uma aventuras mais... quotidiana e caseira das habituais. A última é uma estranha trip-regenerativa do Doctor.

[C S · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exploration of and meditation upon the complex relationship between the Doctor and Nyssa and the very nature of time's linearity itself.

[Nigel Webb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Autumn, the 3rd story in this set, is the best doctor who big finish audio story ever released. it is a truly beautiful thing. I cried at the end.

[Steven Shinder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great use of The Doctor and Nyssa. We even get The Doctor seemingly wanting to have a domestic life, and he and Nyssa trying to figure out what's actually going on there.

[Tabitha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some stories were better than others, but overall as a group weren't terribly strong

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Four unrelated stories, all featuring Peter Davison as the 5th Doctor and Sarah Sutton as Nyssa. None of them grabbed me.

[Jamie Revell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an anthology of four 30-minute stories featuring the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa, united by the loose theme of the seasons.

Spring: A fairly straightforward jaunt on an alien world, albeit one that would require more CGI and prosthetics than is likely on TV. Quite a good story, and one well suited to the 5th Doc, but one that would likely have dragged if spread out further. (4/5)

Summer: For my money, the weakest of the four, this is a straight historical featuring an ageing and cantankerous Isaac Newton. The summer theme is really just limited to the fact that it happens to be hot, and the prison guards are rather over-played for laughs. It works, but that's about it. (3/5)

Autumn: Another change of pace, as we get a rare glimpse into what the Doctor and his companions do between adventures. As a result, this is a pure character piece, with no villains or monsters, and the Doctor and Nyssa have essentially separate stories within it. It's probably exactly the right length, but it works beautifully, with pathos and a true warmth for the characters. (5/5)

Winter: An older Nyssa encounters the Doctor again some time after she left him, but to say more would be to give away too much of the plot. As with "Autumn", both Nyssa and the Doctor have a strong part to play, and the story builds on their emotional bond, as well as expanding on the events of a particular TV story in a way that feels entirely natural. (5/5)

I wanted to give the overall CD a rating of 5/5 because, with the best two stories at the end, that's the way you feel after listening to it. (No offence to Mike Maddox, but you can tell which two stories were written by Paul "Father's Day" Cornell). However, taken as a whole, I've given an average of 4.25, so four stars it is...

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit of a mixed bag. Circular Time is four short pieces instead of the usual four-part story, based around the four seasons. Spring is the weakest of the four, being a strange, somewhat menacing story of renewal (in the manner one might expect of Time Lords) on a planet of highly-evolved flightless birds. Summer is a bit of a comic tale of an encounter with Isaac Newton.

It's the last two stories that make this audio drama worth your effort, and which are most affecting. Autumn finds The Doctor and Nyssa enjoying an extended stay on Earth, while Nyssa writes a novel, falls in love, and The Doctor plays Cricket. It's a very internal story for both The Doctor and Nyssa, although much more for Nyssa. Though very little actually happens, the story adds more layers to Nyssa than we saw in her entire television run. . . which leads us into Winter, where the hand of writer Paul Cornell is easily detected. Here he covers some of the same territory as he did in the television episode "Human Nature." It's been many years since The Doctor and Nyssa parted ways, yet she is having strange dreams about him. The Doctor, likewise, having settled down with a wife and a family, is having dreams about her. Their encounter in this dream state becomes an extended idyll on a critical moment in The Doctor's life.

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a nice character piece, four different adventures for the Doctor and Nyssa. I think my favourite was the one where the Doctor played Cricket and Nyssa tried to write a book and had her first boyfriend. It just made their adventures seem that much more real to have them not always running away from aliens but also have time to sit and enjoy things for weeks at a time. I also liked the last story when Nyssa was older and thinking of her time with the Doctor.

[Thomas Sherlock · Rating 5 out of 5]

An intriguing little anthology. The first story toys with regeneration in interesting ways, the second gives David Warner time to shine as Isaac Newton, the third feels like Paul Cornell’s definitive take on the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa and gives them excellent and very human material, and the fourth provides a nice little coda to Five’s era. Recommended.

[Debra Cook · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a difficult adventure to understand. I think it was 4 stories in one but the last one almost sounded linked to the Master screwing with the Doctor's life. They all seemed to be about the circular way of time birth to death. I think.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Fifth Doctor and Nyssa experience four different adventures across time and space as the seasons change.

[Ritchie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very frustrating. Every time the story gets really good it just ends and another starts. Never really felt like this one finished. Five and Nyssa, well, never mind. Now you know what it's like.

[Shaun Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

4 short stories make up Big Finish's first foray into anthology storytelling, and there isn't a bad one in the bunch. Outstanding storytelling, great acting (especially by my favorite guest star, David Warner) a deepening of the special relationship that five and Nyssa share, and a finale to die for. This might be my favorite Fifth Doctor story of the line thus far. Great audio!