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thesims4blogger · 3 years

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The Sims 4 Paranormal Stuff: Developer Blog (Part 1)

SimGuruConnor has released part 1 of the Sims 4 Paranormal Developer Blog series.

Hello Simmers! Welcome to a small 2-part Dev Blog about our newest Stuff Pack, Paranormal Stuff! This pack has been an absolute blast to work on, and I’m excited to share what this pack is all about!

I’ll try not to reveal too many spoilers for the pack either, so I’ll keep things somewhat brief. Our topics for today are the new Scared Mood and the Haunted House Lot Type, plus an interview with our Audio Artist too!

Get Scared

Sims can now relish in the mortal dread of the Scared Mood! The Scared Mood affects Sims in a variety of ways, with my personal favorite, the new Scream Incoherently interaction, where a Scared Sim runs up to another Sim to scream their lungs out. This can result in the other Sim calming down the Scared Sim, or resulting in both Sims becoming Scared. This can create a Scared Mood wildfire if you’re not careful!

Whoa, whoa, whoa, it's okay!

Sims afflicted with the Scared Mood also have trouble communicating with others, the urge to panic-run everywhere, and are slightly more prone to accidents. If no other Sims are around to help calm down a Scared Sim, they might just have to Hide Under The Covers for a while.

But if being Scared just isn’t your Sims style, consider purchasing the new Brave Trait. This Satisfaction Reward Store Trait will rapidly reduce the incoming fear a Sim feels and help Sims regain their composure faster. While no Sim is totally fearless, this trait should help mitigate some of those creepy feelings.

The Scared Mood and the Brave Reward Trait are all base game features coming with the Paranormal Stuff patch on January 21st. Tons of previous Uncomfortable Buffs are now becoming Scared Buffs, such as the “Startled By Ghost” Buff or the “Thalassophobia” Buff from Island Living.

While being Scared might not be a common occurrence in your everyday Sims life, living in a Haunted House is a whole different story…

Happy Haunts

Introducing the Haunted House Lot Type!

The Duplantier Dwelling, created by Doctor Ashley! This “canon” Haunted House will be available in the gallery!

They’re like regular houses, only haunted! Although unassuming during the day, at night, these places get super weird. Your Sims may notice things like flickering lights, pipes rattling, or even creepy dolls staring at them in the corner. All are totally normal occurrences in a Haunted House, but it may take some time for your Sims to adjust to their new surroundings.

Sims living in a Haunted House will also be introduced to floating apparitions known as Specters. They’re cute little critters, but their motives aren’t entirely clear. You can try talking to them, or even offer them presents in hopes of establishing a good rapport. If they like you, they’ll drop special loot for you and your family. If they don’t like you, well, you’ve been warned.

o o o (> ‘ u ‘ )>

Learning to get along with your new ghostly inhabitants is crucial in a Haunted House. Things like botching seances, neglecting Specters, or letting accursed objects invade your house will have a negative impact on its spiritual serenity. There is a delicate art to co-existing with the entities of the house, and thankfully you’ll have an expert on the matter to assist you!

Meet Guidry

Claude René Duplantier Guidry was a seasoned Paranormal Investigator in his previous life, but now he exists to help anyone brave enough to live in a Haunted House! You’ll probably run into him eventually living in a Haunted House, but don’t worry, he’s a nice ghost!

Guidry will gladly offer his wisdom to those who seek it. If you’re confused, alarmed, or slightly uncomfortable by your new haunted surroundings, give Guidry a holler and he might be able to help. He can also offer valuable objects to help your Sims, too; all you need is to reach out!

Still got it.

All Guidry wants in return is to crash at your place for the time being. Sounds like a fair deal, right? But if you’d prefer to fly it solo, you can always disable his nightly visits—he won’t be too upset, maybe.

As mentioned before, Guidry was a Paranormal Investigator before his untimely demise. If he sees potential in you, he can certify you with a Paranormal Investigation License, granting access to the Paranormal Investigation Freelancer Gigs. Only those who are qualified enough can join the ranks of Paranormal Investigators, but more on that next time!

Be Brave!

Living in a Haunted House adds a layer of risk and reward for your Sims, and each successful night yields Reward Store Satisfaction Points for everyone in the Household. Specters can also drop treasure that can also be collected, consumed, or sold to an Oddity Collector. So although your Sims might go through a bit of peril, they’ll thankfully be compensated.

One of my favorite pieces of haunted treasure is the new Sacred Candle. Not only do they look cool, but they also help protect Sims from paranormal influences. Place them around your house to make sure Sims are properly shielded!

A properly protected Sim.

Things like Sacred Candles and performing ceremonies at the Séance Table are integral to keeping your Sims happy in a Haunted House. Without using these paranormal tools, the entities of the house might get a little bossy.

And while it might be in your Sims’ best interest to keep the spirits of the house in check, watching things go horribly wrong in a Haunted House can be just as fun too. So whatever works for you!

Like Tiny Homes, this Lot Type can be toggled on or off at any time. So whether you’re a casual thrillseeker who wants to spend a couple of nights in a Haunted House, or a seasoned Paranormal Expert who wants to take on a new challenge, this Lot Type should offer something for you!

Crosspack Stuff!

Pets get to share the fun too! They especially love the accursed objects that show up!

I think they’re gonna get along great.

As mentioned before, a ton of old Buffs from multiple packs are now being converted to the Scared Mood. I think 70 something Moodlets were converted? Honestly, I lost count. Anything that seemed more appropriate for the Scared Mood was transferred over.

Oh, and you might remember an old Lot Trait from City Living called Haunted. For clarity’s sake, it needed a name change, so now it’s the Spooky Lot Trait. It also benefits from being combined with the new Haunted House Lot Type and will have an increased chance of spawning Ghosts at night. So use both for maximum haunted-ness!

Audibly Frightened

Last but not least, I’d love to turn it over to our Audio Artist for this pack, Briana Billups! She did a killer job bringing Haunted Houses to life! Trust me!

Conor: Can you tell us what an Audio Artist does on The Sims 4?

Briana: Big, broad picture: an audio artist decides what everything in The Sims 4 sounds like. We record, create, and edit sounds to the art and animation of the game. Little, very detailed picture: creating the actual sounds is usually one of the smaller aspects of our job. We are meeting with other departments, like design, animation, and VFX, to understand the overall vision of new game features and how we can fit in sonically. We are meeting with each other to make sure all our new content still keeps the very fun and quirky vibe of the Sims. We come up with new tools and implementation where necessary.

Conor: What sort of things go into the creative process for creating audio?

Briana: Every audio artist/sound designer has their own creative process, but I like to make a “sonic mood board” of sorts. I typically like to have a good idea of what I want something to sound like in my head before I record or edit it, so it’s nice to have sound effects or music to refer to that represents my original inspiration or ideas. When I was in college, I would make Spotify playlists for whatever I was working on. I would listen to them once a day, adding and editing as necessary, so when I actually got to work, I was in the right headspace. Now I’m usually less formal about this sort of stuff, but for this pack, I would refer back to things like Vincent Price’s demonic laugh from Thriller or Casper the Friendly Ghost Cartoons and the looping soundtrack from the queue of a horror ride at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk (Ghost Blasters)

Conor: What were you most excited to work on for this pack?

Briana: Definitely all the haunted house sounds! Good sound design is the crux of so many horror movies and video games, so even if we were keeping things more “Casper” and less “Poltergeist,” I still wanted to give a good scare here and there. I actually scared myself one day while playtesting another feature in the game!

Conor: If you had to choose, what is your favorite audio clip you’ve ever added to The Sims 4?

Briana: I would say my favorite SFX were the sports arena loops in EP08: Discover University. When you visit the arena for the soccer/esports match or graduation, you can actually listen to the whole game or ceremony. It was great to craft a whole story from start to finish using just sound. I also snuck in a lot of developer names when writing the scripts for our voice actors.

Thanks, Briana!

More To Come!

That about covers this first foray into the Paranormal Stuff Pack! This pack has been a ton of fun to work on, and watching my Sims flee in terror has been more enjoyable than I’d like to admit.

Next blog, we’ll focus on the Séance Table and developing your Medium skill, as well as the new active freelance career Paranormal Investigator.

Big thanks to the Stuff Pack team for helping this pack come to life, and thank you, Doctor Ashley, for building our featured Haunted House!

Until next time, SimGuruConor

#news #the sims 4 #ts4 #sims 4 #sims 4 paranormal #stuff pack

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depechemodespiritera · 7 years

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At 56, Depeche Mode bandleader Martin Gore no longer feels the need to pull any lyrical punches. So he gets right to the prickly, political point on the band’s latest Spirit set, starting with its clickety-clacking rhetorical question of a lead single “Where’s the Revolution,” with a grim societal accusation intoned in unusually ominous fashion by frontman Dave Gahan: “You’ve been kept down/ You’ve been pushed ‘round/ You’ve been lied to/ You’ve been fed truths/ Who’s making your decisions?” And the album – in scathing indictments of our corrupt, fossil-fuel-favoring, technology-dependent, extinction-bound culture – just gets angrier from there, in “Fail,” “Scum,” “Poorman,” “The Worst Crime,” and the drone-warfare-damning “Going Backwards,” which posits that “We can track it on a satellite/ See it all in black and white/ Watch men die in real time/ We have nothing inside.”

Gore didn’t set out to pen a set of turbulent protest songs that throb with the dark zeitgeist pulse of our post-Brexit-and-Russian-influenced-Trump-election times. It all arose from an instinctive gut feeling he had two years ago that something had gone wrong with humanity. Something horribly, perhaps irreversibly wrong. When he began composing the Spirit material at the end of 2015, none of these startling global U-turns had happened yet, he recalls. There were serious forebodings, to be sure. “The Syrian crisis was going on, which obviously led to the refugee crisis, the Russians had invaded Crimea, and there was a war going on in the Ukraine,” he sighs, in uncomfortably 20/20 hindsight. “It just seemed like we were getting into bad situations everywhere you looked. And there was that whole spate of police shootings in America – black people getting shot – so maybe I was feeling particularly sensitive or something. But I could feel something in the air that did not feel good.”

Gore also had the unusual vantage point of being a British expatriate who now resides in Santa Barbara, California. Gahan lives in New York, but keyboardist Andy Fletcher has remained in London, where his favorite non-touring activity is going down to his local pub every night and – having been kept up to date on world affairs by the less-biased coverage of BBC News – discussing political frustrations with his good mates. “That’s his thing, and I suppose once you’re a few pints in, those discussions get very lively,” Gore says of his childhood chum, who first formed Composition of Sound with him back in 1980, before adding Gahan (who changed their name to Depeche Mode) and releasing their frothy synth-pop debut Speak & Spell a year later. Whereas in America, he adds, “I do get into discussions with people, but they’re not quite as lively. But I have a 14-month-old and a six-week-old at the moment (with second wife Kerrilee Kaski; he has three kids with first wife Suzanne Boisvert), and the song “Eternal” on the new album I wrote for Johnnie Lee, my 14-month-old daughter, reflecting the EPA and climate change and stuff. And it was kind of serious, but almost meant to be a black comedy, as well, when it mentions the ‘black cloud rising’.” Considering the giant miasma of pollution hovering over China, and the current arms-proliferation posturing of North Korea, he sighs with parental chagrin. “But unfortunately, right now we’re in the middle of that. I mean, I’m not old enough to remember the Cuban missile crisis. But I feel that now we’re in a situation that’s almost as scary as that. Well, scarier because now it’s actually happening.”

When Fletcher first heard his friend’s thought-provoking new compositions, he remembers being somewhat taken aback. Especially considering the fact that Gore traditionally writes on acoustic guitar, which must have made the music sound even more like Dylan-skeletal protest anthems. “At the time, I think me and the producer (multi-instrumentalist James Ford, who also contributed drums on every cut) were a bit worried,” he says. “But then, as we recorded the album, the world situation got worse and worse. We had Brexit. And then Trump actually winning? And then Marine LePen, this hard right-winger, running for election in France, which is not good in a country that is so cosmopolitan? By the time we finished the album, we all thought it was a perfect time to release it. And I’ve always been interested in politics – it’s what I studied at school. So for me, everything that’s happened has been really interesting, and I have to admit that the chatter in the pub has gotten very good because of it.”

Fletcher gets his information from the London Times, the Financial Times, and, of course, the BBC, which he swears by. “The news in Britain is so much better than the news in the States, because you’re really only covering one thing at the moment, and that’s Trump. And all the other things happening in the world? They’re not really covered.” One of the toughest hurdles he ever had to deal with was when Gore relocated to far-off California, and the pair could no longer hang and ruminate on the day’s events, Earth-shattering or otherwise. “It’s weird, because Dave and I sort of connnect as brothers, but – like brothers – you don’t want to be in their company all the time,” he explains of how the Depeche Mode dynamic works. “But Martin is different – he’s been my best friend since age 11, and him moving to America was terrible for me, because it’s difficult, calling someone from London to Santa Barbara, when one person has just woken up and the other’s going to bed.”

What else is in Gore’s livid litany of pet peeves? “Hey – what have you got?” He chuckles. “Trump defunding the EPA and putting a man in charge who doesn’t even believe in climate change? It’s lunacy,” he growls, menacingly. “And unfortunately, he’s not the only one who’s a denier – you find them everywhere you go. And I always say to people, ‘Well, if you don’t believe in climate change, then why don’t we – just for caution’s sake – say that maybe it is happening? What do we have to lose?’” This directly inspired the deceptively gentle Spirit march “The Worst Crime”, which proposes public lynching as penance for ignoring, or harming, the environment (“Once there were solutions/ Now we have no excuses… we are all charged with treason”). “For me, the worst crime is destroying the planet,” Gore declares. “We have this great opportunity to change things, and we’ve had so much evidence, so much scientific proof for so long, but we keep choosing to not do anything about it. And it’s not just destroying the planet for us. It’s destroying it forever. And the system in America is just very, very flawed. I mean, I can’t quite work out when lobbying was a good idea, and why it still exists – and is accepted – I don’t understand, because it’s just so corrupt and so… so wrong. It must happen in other parts of the world, but nowhere near the extent that it does here.”

Even the most sonically-uplifting Spirit number, “Scum,” calls an unspecified antagonist on the carpet for being ‘hollow, shallow, and dead inside.’ Could it be a Wall Street hedge fund manager who bilked the middle class out of millions then walked away, scot free? Gore snickers. “That song is far more powerful if I don’t tell you who my ‘scum’ is,” he elaborates. “Because if I say, ‘It’s this person,’ then it kind of detracts from it, because when a listener hears a song, they put their own imagination to work on it, and then it becomes far more powerful.” But in the “Black Celebration”-ish thrummer “Poorman,” (“Hey, there’s no news/ Poorman’s still has got the blues/ He’s walking around in worn-out shoes/ With nothing to lose,” Gahan murmurs in his classic catacomb-cryptic croon), he demands more accountability. “Again, I think the system is completely screwed and flawed,” Gore says. “People should have gone to jail, but instead they’re getting called into the White House. And the song “Fail” is kind of the synopsis of the whole album, really.” As a species – mistakenly thinking it’s the entitled end product of evolution, “we’re not doing a very good job. We need to start finding the path again.”

Hence the ethereal album title, Gore adds. Some naysayers might describe the record as unequivocally pessimistic, but he respectfully disagrees – pay close attention to what Gahan is singing, and you might fidget uneasily in your seat. “But Spirit is quite realistic – I’m being realistic about what’s going on at the moment, and kind of pointing things out. And by naming it Spirit, I’m hoping that it gets people to think, and maybe somehow rediscover that sense of spirit that we once had, but now seem to have lost.” Mention that DEVO predicted this – humanity’s atavistic de-evolution – four decades ago, and he laughs softly, almost to himself. Everyone’s obsession with their personal device is not only a mass distraction, he believes, but an omen of some kind of impending Apocalypse. “With all of our technological advances and the way we’re using them, it’s, uh, not turning out so well for humankind,” he says. “The only thing that’s headed in the right direction at the moment is medicine. We are getting breakthroughs in medicine, although if we end up in some nuclear holocaust, the medicine’s not going to help us as much. So I think that if we don’t destroy ourselves, we could get to a point where we’re actually able to live for a lot longer.” He pauses to let out a protracted sigh. “But I don’t know what that would actually do for our species, either.”

Fletcher is more optimistic. From an almost scholarly distance, he analyzes England’s recent Brexit snafu, wherein non-London outliers were roiled into enough of a xenophobic frenzy, they essentially voted against their own self-interest to leave the European Union. “The crazy thing is, it was all the villages across Britain – who don’t have any migrants – who voted for Brexit,” he says. “And the fact is, it was a 50/50 vote, and I think any major constitutional change should be more like 60/40, or even 70/30, not 50/50. But I’m not that doom-y about all this stuff. You get stages where things like this happen, so I don’t think the world is any closer to coming to an end.” He has hope, then? “I do, really,” he replies. I mean, what will Trump be able to achieve? Not much through Congress. The only way he can cause a bit of trouble is as Commander in Chief. So yes, this album is pretty angry, but we do normally write about these subjects, but we usually use sex and religion to get the point across. It’s just that Spirit is very direct, although we had one album, Construction Time Again, which was this direct, as well.”

Fletcher also secretly enjoys all of the intrinsic irony involved. Whereas Depeche Mode began as a percolating danceable outfit, it gradually streamlined itself into a sleek, undulating serpent of a synth-rock machine that purred like a long, black hearse leading a funeral procession, aided immensely by Gahan’s ebony-garbed, drone-voiced stage persona. Gore-sculpted songs like “Strangelove,” “Personal Jesus,” “Behind the Wheel,” and “Shake the Disease” straddled the aesthetic line between Goth, New Wave, and industrial, and the band’s diverse audience grew accordingly. And – no matter how grim the trio gets – Fletcher says, “there’s always a lot of people clapping their hands and singing along. And in fact, we got the best reviews we’ve ever had in our career for Spirit, and Depeche Mode generally doesn’t get good reviews. The way our music is made, you need to listen to it a lot of times – you can’t just listen to it twice and then do a review of it. I remember our album Violator – which is a 10 out of 10 record in anyone’s book – just getting average reviews when it came out.

“But we put on good shows, we make good records,” he continues, “And for some weird reason, we’re in our 50s but we seem to be more popular than we ever were. So we’re in a very lucky position – we’ve got loads of our old fans, and they still buy CDs. And then we’re picking up young fans, as well. I mean, we can’t do anything wrong! This American tour sold out faster than our last two tours, and I can’t work out why – I mean, it’s a similar tour, but it’s just gone through the roof. And we’re not a high-profile band – we’re not on the magazines or in newspapers. I just can’t work it out.” And Depeche Mode is one of the few bands from the post-punk era that’s not currently out on an advertised retro tour, playing some vintage cornerstone from its decades-old past, note for note. The group is as relevant – and thought-provoking – as ever these days.

And the three musicians still work well together as a collective. Gahan – who also put out the occasional solo effort – co-wrote four less-political tracks on Spirit, “You Move,” “Cover Me,” “Poison Heart,” and “No More (This Is the Last Time).” “And I used my usual range of analog synths, guitars, and everything came together really fast – we mixed the record on our third session,” Fletcher says, citing Ford’s studio assistance as crucial. But I think technology makes your job harder, not easier, because it gives you hundreds more options. And now there’s this situation with all the superstar DJs,” adds the musician, who still books old-school DJ gigs himself. “In the old days, a promoter would have gotten some young bands to play, but now it’s some superstar DJ who just uses his laptop. And the fact is, it’s replacing bands now – it’s a very unhealthy situation, and for young bands at the moment, it’s just terrible now. Record sales are embarrassingly low, you’re not given any tour support from record companies, so the income available is almost nonexistent. That’s why we no longer get hundreds of great rock bands around the place.”

Gore has yet to see Mike Judge’s hilarious satire Idiocracy, in which Luke Wilson – playing a man of average intelligence from our era – is accidentally frozen in cryogenic slumber for 500 years, during which so many stupid people keep mindlessly breeding that, when he’s awakened in the Great Landfill Collapse – he’s the smartest man in the world. The director’s vision for the future is as grimly dystopian as Gore’s on Spirit, save the public execution “Worst Crime” part. But he has one thing to thank for the album’s relevance, which increases every scandal-beset day. “The American electoral process is so long, the beginning of it had only just started when I began writing this record,” he says. “And it just takes soooo long over here, doesn’t it? It gets so long and dragged out that everyone’s just completely bored with it by the end.” It gave the dirges time to grow, take on even creepier, bigger metaphorical meaning. Or, as Fletcher succinctly puts it, “it’s not like every one of our albums is like this. But I think it’s good that a band like Depeche Mode does a record like Spirit. And people can’t say that we’re jumping on a bandwagon, because, Hey – the songs were written two years ago!”

– By Tom Lanham

Appearing 8/30 at Hollywood Casino Amphitheater, Tinley Park.

#depeche mode #global spirit tour #illinois entertainer #magazine cover

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aviewfromthepanopticon · 5 years

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The Auntie Matter

Big Finish’s summary: England in the 1920s. Whilst K9 is off in the TARDIS leading the Black Guardian on a wild goose chase, the Doctor and Romana are enjoying a leisurely lifestyle as the Lord and Lady of a London townhouse. But trouble never stays away from them for long, and before they know it a chance discovery of alien technology leads them deep into the heart of the English countryside where a malign presence lurks. As the Doctor dodges deadly butlers and ferocious gamekeepers, Romana is faced with a malevolent Aunt and an even deadlier peril — marriage. Written by: Jonathan Morris Directed by: Ken Bentley Release Date: January 14th, 2013 Series: The Fourth Doctor Adventures, Series 2, Story 1 Cast: Tom Baker (The Doctor), Mary Tamm (Romana), Alan Cox (Grenville), Lucy Griffiths (Mabel), Julia McKenzie (Florence), Robert Portal (Reggie), Jane Slavin (Ligeia)

This audio is simply a DELIGHT

Everything about it is just... so much fun. Just endlessly amusing.

Some commentary on this audio from Vortex:

Writer Jonathan Morris says: “The story is set in 1920s Hampshire and is a kind of a what-if, the what-if being, ‘What if PG Wodehouse had written a Doctor Who story in 1978?’ Well, The Auntie Matter endeavours to be the answer to that question. “It’s a frothy, silly, summery, farcical comedy, but with grisly undertones. I’m immeasurably proud of it. I think, through attempting to channel the voice of the Master, it contains some of my wittiest writing.”

Jonny attended the studio recording and was delighted with the passionate performances. He grins: “To hear Tom Baker performing my words and doing it so well, with such attention to detail, with such irrepressible humour and with such panache! Many times I closed my eyes and it was like being transported back to 1978 – or sticking on a DVD of a Doctor Who from 1978. “I count myself inordinately fortunate to have been given such an opportunity; even if in retrospect I still can’t quite believe it happened! It will be a memory to treasure for the rest of my life. It’s just mind-boggling.” (Vortex 107)

Director Ken Bentley adds: “The Auntie Matter is still one of the most bonkers stories I’ve worked on. You can always rely on Jonny for something unusual, and every now and then and he delivers a real peach. “The combination of such quintessentially English comedy characters and science fiction turned this into something akin to an absurdist play. Robert Portal did such a fantastic job of bringing Reggie to life that he’s on the list of characters I’d like to see return.” (Vortex 107)

We open on the Doctor and Romana pretending to be a married couple in 1929, where they co-own a townhouse on Baker Street in London. When they purchased this townhouse is a mystery. This seems to be Romana’s first visit to the townhouse, and they stay there later in the 4DAs (when Romana is in her Second Incarnation type later) both earlier in the 1920s and during the Victorian era (they also stay there in the 1960s and in the 1980s).

Regardless of where the townhouse came from, Romana is bored out of her mind pretending to be a Human, so she decides to go out and learn about Human scientific advancement (no wonder later in the 4DAs Romana has a list of fun activities to do/exciting people to meet, in case she has to spend extended periods of time on Earth).

ROMANA: You did what? DOCTOR: I told you, I linked the randomizer to the TARDIS guidance systems and left it on automatic in a low oven. ROMANA: So now the TARDIS is flitting randomly through time and space? DOCTOR: Yes. Until the Black Guardian gets tired of chasing it, and then it will return to us here in London. Eventually. ROMANA: Eventually? DOCTOR: Oh, after its visited a thousand worlds or so, it shouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks, a month at the most! ROMANA: And in the meantime, Doctor, we’re stuck here on Earth? And what about the dog? He’s still in the TARDIS! DOCTOR: Oh, he’ll be in his element! I left the scanner open so he can look outside, and if he gets bored he can always look things up in the databank. He likes that. ROMANA: Aren’t you forgetting something? What if the Black Guardian manages to locate us while the TARDIS is away? DOCTOR: Ah! That’s why I’m building this! ROMANA: Which is? DOCTOR: It’s an etheric field disturbance detector! ROMANA: Huh? DOCTOR: It detects disturbances in the etheric field. ROMANA: Ah! And does it work? DOCTOR: Not yet, but it will do! When it’s finished. Then the Black Guardian won’t be able to sneak up on us without our knowing about it! *chuckles* ROMANA: I can’t help thinking it might have been more logical to finish building the detector before sending the TARDIS off on a wild goose chase! DOCTOR: Yes, I suppose it would, now you come to mention it. Oh well. *knock on door* DOCTOR: Hello? Yes! MABEL: Your breakfast, your Lordship. DOCTOR: Breakfast? Ah! Yes! Put it on the table over there, will you? No. On second thought… I’m not hungry anymore. Could you take it away again? MABEL: As you wish, my Lord. DOCTOR: Hmmmmm, now then… where was I? *sounds of tea being poured* ROMANA: But of all the places in the galaxy, why choose here? DOCTOR: Why? What’s wrong with Earth?!?! ROMANA: Ooooh, nothing. It’s harmless. *tea is now being stirred*... If a little primitive. DOCTOR: Primitive? *tea is set down* ROMANA: Well, yes. They’ve only just worked out general relativity. They’re barely one step up from banging rocks together. DOCTOR: I’ll have you know this is one of the three great periods in Earth history! The roaring Twenties! A time of Gershwin, F Scott Fitzgerald of Hemingway *laughs* a ton of flappers and men in spats… of diamonds as big as the ritz! ROMANA: So that’s why you chose this time zone. DOCTOR: ….well… well no. It was a complete accident. But I don’t know what you’re complaining about! I found us a nice house, didn’t I? ROMANA: Yes, I… I just wish… *sighs* we’d landed on a more stimulating world. DOCTOR: More stimu - !!!! You’ve barely given it a chance! You should get out there! See the sights! Enjoy some of the local culture! ROMANA: While you stay here trying to get that machine to work? DOCTOR: Well I’m hardly going to get it to work if I go out with you, am I, Romana? ROMANA: I suppose I could always immerse myself in the scientific literature of this age. That might while away the afternoon! DOCTOR: Yes... that’s the spirit. Carpe Diem. ROMANA: I’ll just pop down to one of the bookshops in Bloomsbury. I shouldn’t be longer than half an hour! DOCTOR: Sonic screwdriver… sonic screwdriver… ROMANA: I SAID I’ll - DOCTOR: I know I put it down somewhere… ROMANA: UGH, nevermind. Goodbye Doctor! DOCTOR: Uh, there you are! Now, just a matter of calibrating the temporal anomaly…

At the bookstore she goes to to learn about Human knowledge, Romana meets a man who is desperate to find a lady to marry and bring home to meet his aunt (who is a body snatching alien, shhhhh, he doesn’t know)

BOOKSTORE EMPLOYEE: Yes Ma’am, can I help you? ROMANA: I’m looking for any publications relating to recent mathematical and scientific developments. EMPLOYEE: Was there anything in particular you were interested in? ROMANA: Oooh, you know, set theory, quantum theory, the photo-electric effect, that sort of thing. EMPLOYEE: I’ll take a look in the back. REGGIE: I say! That’s a bit of a coincidence, what! ROMANA: What is? REGGIE: You, coming in here, asking about books on the photogigamy effect, when that’s precisely what I was looking for too! ROMANA: Really? You don’t strike me as the scientific type. REGGIE: Oh, yes. I’m a sucker for all things sciencey! The more advanced, the better as far as I’m concerned! And it’s not everyday a chap comes across a pretty girl who's interested in quantic theory! ROMANA: Quantum theory. REGGIE: That too! ROMANA: It relates to the behavior of subatomic particles. REGGIE: Oh, I know! Fascinating little chaps, aren’t they? ROMANA: I was wondering in particular what conclusions have been drawn from the photo-electric effect with regards to particle-wave duality. REGGIE: Oh! That! Yes! Wan old business, isn’t it? Been exercising the grey matter about it myself, actually! ROMANA: And have you come to any conclusions? REGGIE: Not conclusions, as such. But I’ll tell you what, I’d love to discuss it with you over a spot of lunch! If you’re willing. ROMANA: Hmmm, I suppose I have nothing better to do, Mr eh? REGGIE: Connally-Basset, at your service. But you can me Reginald. Or Reggie if time is short! ROMANA: Pleased to meet you. My name’s Romana. REGGIE: Romana. Is that short for something? ROMANA: It’s funny you should mention that… *bookstore shop door opens and closes with a dinging bell

Reggie has an alien implant, put there by his aunt, and through it his butler (who is an android) feeds him information regarding increasingly advanced science to talk to Romana about. So while he stumbles over pronouncing words right and all that, he does seem to have an actual understanding of the concepts Romana brings up when they are talking more in depth during lunch. Romana is very willing to believe that this guy is an actual authority on Earth science (Gee I wonder why Romana is so forgiving of this guy mispronouncing every term and stumbling over the basics as they talk about science. Wonder what leads her to think someone who so clearly doesn’t know what the hell they are talking about is actually worth hearing out?) Overall, Romana is very happy to meet someone who can tell her all about Human scientific advancement.

It also needs to be noted that Romana knows literally nothing about the social mores of early 20th Century Earth, particularly among the English upper class. So when Reggie invites her to lunch she says yes, because she wants to talk about science. She has no idea her acceptance of his invitation can be construed as anything other than she simply wishes to continue their conversation about human scientific advancement. Similarly, when Reggie invites her to come to his country estate alone, specifically to meet his aunt who he makes clear is his family matriarch, she says yes, because he told her he has books about science there. She has no idea her acceptance of his invitation can be construed as anything other than that she simply wishes to take a look at the books he keeps at the manor.

Meanwhile Reggie plans to tell her the truth once they are at his estate, because “She might not mind being manacled to a chap who was mentally negligible once she's seen the size of his country estate!”

Throughout this process Reggie is a bit thrown that she never wants to talk to him about anything but science, but hey a super gorgeous lady is giving him the time of day and accepting his courting invites so he isn’t going to question things too much.

Once Romana is at the manor, Reggie’s alien body snatcher aunt makes it clear that she REALLY REALLY REALLY wants to steal Romana’s body.

You see, the Aunt’s body snatching process results in the bodies she takes aging at a super increased rate, so they tend to last her only a few months at the very most. It’s very annoying because every time she gets a new one she has to erase all of Reggie’s memories about the last woman he was engaged to, and then send him off immediately to find someone new.

Reggie, we find out, was raised from infancy by this alien to be used as a lure to capture Human women. It is implied that he is very very handsome and beyond super rich.

The prospect of taking over Romana’s body really excites the bodysnatching aunt. A Time Lord’s body, even with the increased aging factor brought on by the bodyswap, would be good for THOUSANDS of years.

As if that wasn’t enough of a reason for her to be obsessed with Romana, even having made sure Reggie was only bringing home exceptionally bright Humans, Human brains were still leaving the body snatching aunt feeling cramped. She’d have no such problem with Romana’s brain, since Time Lord brains are far larger than even the aunt’s original body’s!!

So yeah, this alien is very very very set on capturing Romana. She orders both her Robot-Gamekeeper and her Robot-Butler to bring Romana to her no matter what.

This of course leads to Romana fighting and ultimately defeating the aunt.

Romana’s pretty sure she did it entirely on her own.

Meanwhile, after Romana leaves him alone, the Doctor gets restless and goes out to foil an alien invasion. He does this with the help of his and Romana’s housekeeper Mabel, because well... you know how it is when the Doctor’s left alone around any given Human for too long. Originally he wanted Romana to come with him (he was not actually aware she left), and ran into Mabel while looking for her, so he decided she should come with him instead. It started when he decided to test the machine he was building. It picked up a signal, and he wanted to check it out. He then stumbled upon a crashed spaceship not too far from an old manor house, which was being guarded by androids. This led to him discovering that the manor house was run by a body snatching alien. The body snatcher wanted to kill the Doctor - Four was functionally useless to her, since she only wanted to live inside a woman’s body.

This seems to primarily just be an excuse to work in this quote:

AUNT FLORENCE: Leave the man, it's the girl I want!

The housekeeper the Doctor made his companion for the day and the guy hitting on Romana fall in love and get together by the end of the story.

REGGIE: Toodle-pip! ROMANA: I’m sorry? REGGIE: Oh, it’s an old Earth saying. It means goodbye. ROMANA: (slowly, almost sounding it out) Toodle-pip, Reginald. MABEL: So, I suppose this is toodle-pip for us, too? REGGIE: What?! MABEL: Well, I’m a kitchen maid, and you’re… Lord Basset of Basset Hall. REGGIE: Yes. I suppose you’re right. MABEL: Yes. REGGIE: I mean, what would people say? MABEL: Exactly. REGGIE: Imagine the brouhaha! *snorts* MABEL: Yes. REGGIE: So I suppose that gives us no alternative. MABEL: Nope. REGGIE: We’ll just have to let them talk, won’t we? MABEL: Wha? Reggie… you mean? REGGIE: I certainly do! Light of my life! MABEL: You mean you love me? REGGIE: From the very first moment I clapped eyes upon you. Reginald, I thought, this is the girl for you and no mistake! MABEL: Oh, Reggie! REGGIE: Come, my dear. We can discuss the wedding arrangements over breakfast.

At no point did either of our two nonsense Time Lord dorks notice the other was also working on foiling the exact same alien invasion, or even how they were directly helping each other.

(In the following scene there are places where the Doctor and Romana are both speaking at the same time.) DOCTOR: No extraterrestrial activity detected. Ahah! It works perfectly! *door opens* Romana! ROMANA: Doctor, are you still working on this machine? DOCTOR: Well, just making a few final adjustments! Where have you been? ROMANA: Well… it’s funny you should ask. I’ve just defeated an alien menace! DOCTOR: Have you? ROMANA: Yes! Single-handedly! DOCTOR: Well that’s a bit of a coincidence! Because while you were off sight-seeing, I also saw off an alien threat! ROMANA: Really? DOCTOR: Oh yes! Single-handedly! ROMANA: You’ll forgive me if I find that a little hard to believe. DOCTOR: Well you should have been there! It was terribly dangerous! ROMANA: Been where? DOCTOR: Basset Hall! ROMANA: BASSET HALL?! DOCTOR: Yes. ROMANA: But that’s where I’ve just been! DOCTOR: Really? Basset Hall? ROMANA: Yes! You don’t mean to say you were there too? DOCTOR: Yes, of course! I faced an alien Valjax who had possessed the body of a woman- ROMANA: YOU faced an alien Valjax? DOCTOR (in unison with Romana): There’s no way you have been there. I feel sure I would have noticed, and even if you WERE there… Who was it who set the robot gamekeeper to explode? Eh? Tell me that! ROMANA (in unison with the Doctor): I think you’ll find that I was the one who faced the alien Valjax! Even if you were there, you weren’t the one who defeated it! Because I was the one who set the robot butler to explode! ROMANA: *sighs* I’ll get the butler to make us a cup of tea. I think we have a spot of explaining to do.

Since this first audio in the 4DAs Volume 2 came out six months after Mary Tamm’s death, following the story itself there is an extended tribute to her. Obviously the entire second season is dedicated to her memory.

From Vortex:

Before we launch into a full preview of season two of The Fourth Doctor Adventures, it seems fitting to talk about Mary Tamm, who eagerly embraced the opportunity to return as Romana for this series. “Nothing will keep me away,” she told me when I first approached her, and she was true to her word. Even cancer, and months spent enduring treatment, didn’t quell Mary’s passion for the project. We, as colleagues and as fans, are indebted to her for seeing the series through, under awful circumstances. She came to every studio recording full of enthusiasm, laughed endlessly, and – on the last day I saw her – told me that doing the recordings had helped her get through it. She was a fantastic lady, and this season is dedicated to her. (Vortex 47)

Jonny added: “There’s a very moving tribute to Mary included on the end of the CD/ download. There’s not much more I can add, except to say that it was [an] honour to write for her and to hear her performing words I had written, and performing them so beautifully, so precisely, and with such a joyful lightness of touch. “I feel privileged to have been associated with her, even in a small way. We Doctor Who fans love all the actors and actresses from the show dearly, and I hope Mary realised how admired and appreciated she was.” (Vortex 107)

Overall I really enjoy this audio.

The entire second volume of the 4DAs feels like an exciting transitional period in Romana’s life, set after the Key to Time quest but before she regenerated. You can see her really start to explore the traits that would eventually define her second incarnation, while still remaining very much recognizable as the Romana I of Season 16.

Not to mention of course that the Wodehouse vibe of this story works exceptionally well for the Fourth Doctor, particularly for a story set during the Williams era.

This is just over all and through and through an exceptionally enjoyable audio. I find myself returning to it again and again, since it truly delivers on being incredibly entertaining and fun.

#Doctor Who #Big Finish #The Fourth Doctor Adventures #Fourth Doctor #Romana #Romanadvoratrelundar #Romana I #The Auntie Matter #The Doctor

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