Love and War

This one is a bit odd for me, just couldn't get into it enough. I followed the story fine enough, understood all the characters and who they were but something about it just didn't click with me, perhaps its the super long episodes, with both clocking in over an hour, just hard to stay fully engaged for that long. I want to read all of the VNA in order sometime soon, so hopefully reading things upto this point will give a bit more clarity and I understand where Ace and the Doctor's relationship is up till this point in the novels. This one hasn't disinterested me from the novel adaptations but it has made me see why people didn't immediately buy them, hence their cancellation :/

Love and War, a great book turned into a great audio play. All due to a brief mention in the Brain of Morbius, the Hoothi were created. With the cover art for the book, and audio, it's easy to imagine what it would look like for the Hoothi to explode from human to Hoothi.

The acting was fantastic, with some of Sophie Aldred's best big finish work, and Bernard Holley making you totally hate his character, it's right up there with some of the best acting BF has had on anything they have produced, that ive listened to.

The plot was a little harder to follow in the audio, and not as in depth as the novel, but that's to be expected, and the love story between Ace and Jan, was really cut down due to this, but still brought out as excellently as it could have been for an audio.

Replay was very good overall, I was as captivated as the first time thru.

The main complaint was 'special effects' which means, audio sound, and it could have been better, it was ok, but ok is not good enough for a story this good.

Overall, i'm giving it a 9, it was a fantastic first story for the novel adaptations, with room to improve, and hopefully a nice goal for others to aim at. If all novel adaptations are this good, then they need to adapt all the Virgin novels.

Love and War kicked off a whole new era for the Doctor Who Virgin New Adventure novels as it saw the departure of Ace and the introduction of Professor Bernice Summerfield as the Doctor's new companion.

Overall, the tale works thanks to the beautifully crafted guest characters who have a web of intricate relationships. The story explores a variety of ideas, including some mature themes, though not in an exploitative way. The plot is nearly as strong as the characters, setting up an epic struggle based on a monster that was little more than a throw away line in the classic series becomes a fully fleshed out terror in a plot that is really given an epic feel by Big Finish.

The story is, at times, uncomfortable. It takes Ace to a point of very raw emotional vulnerability and then we get to see her emotionally breakdown in a very painful uncontrolled way. It's a difficult moment to listen to for such a beloved companion and is quite jarring. Love and War is very good for what it is, particularly in giving us a solid origin for Bernice Summerfield and all its great character work, but it's not the type of Doctor Who story I'd like to hear all the time.

The audio adaptation of Love and War is interesting in that it is Big Finish’s first real foray into the territory of the Virgin Novels that include the Doctor. Yes they adapted the novels Birthright and Just War as audio dramas with Bernice Summerfield deleting the Doctor from the story, but those novels were Doctor light anyway. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the character, Big Finish decided to adapt the first appearance of the character originally written by Paul Cornell into a full cast audio drama. Jacqueline Raynor did the adapting into audio form and she really knows how to adapt.

There are very few differences in this adaptation from the original novel. The main one is toning down the romance, which works for the best as the Big Finish audience does range from really young to adults and cutting out the military and library scenes. While I liked those scenes they could easily have been cut from the novel. The introduction of Jan is slightly different as they really couldn’t do it on an audio format.

What the audio drama does even better is the reaction of Ace to the Doctor’s manipulation as Sophie Aldred’s emotion can’t really be felt as much in writing. The audio also adapts the Doctor Who Magazine Prologue which is also great as it brings back Charlie Hayes back to play Death. The Hoothi are also even more graphic as you hear the squelching and explosions of the fungus. This is definitely the superior version of the novel, and if you can’t find the original novel for a good price then purchase this from Big Finish as it is just as good as the original novel.