An Autist Reviews: A Spoonful Of Mayhem (Missy 1.1)

*This is an older review, it is not as detailed as my more modern reviews*

*All Reviews Are Spoiler-Free Aside From Any Spoiler Sections*

Trapped on Earth, unable to use advanced technology, and, worse, unable to murder anyone, Missy, the Master’s female incarnation, finds herself needing to go outside of the box to find a way to escape. Using magic and the help of her two wards, Missy will find a way to escape… but first, she has to unravel the sphinx’s riddle and drown a phoenix!

This is a rather simplistic story, but it’s very fun and it has amazing dialogue. Before we get into the good parts of the story, let’s talk about the bad parts of it. The dialogue is solid gold… except when it comes to Missy’s wards, Oliver and Lucy. Both have massive dips in quality randomly throughout the story, but most would have been solved had the dialogue not been used to describe things, and instead, the narration be used more often. The dialogue does get really annoying because of how odd it is, and especially when the siblings are in danger they seem to barely be phased quite often, and let’s not even talk about the fact that, for some ungodly reason, the sister will randomly start using really old-timey language and it completely messes up the entirety of the dialogue. Also, the resolution of the story feels rather rushed, and other, less than plot-based reasons, make it worse. Still, the story is jam-packed with amazing humor from Missy, who really carries the story, no surprise. The descriptions are beautiful, the path taken to the end is natural and builds in pace as the story goes until the story finally resolves itself! It’s a really nice story with some great writing, the biggest problems are with the siblings, but, like I said, they’re still quite often shining stars.

Okay, let’s talk about why the main character's rating is a 7. It’s not Missy. The siblings are also main characters in this story, and they, sadly, have varying levels of acting quality. I’d say somewhere around 65-70% of their dialogue is well-acted, but the rest is acted really poorly, and frankly, I blame the poor writing on that. Missy barely ever dips in quality, but that’s to be expected! The side characters are all amazing, I can’t think of a bad line between them, and the Djinn is solid gold! Dan Starkey does an amazing job as Cosmo, the Warden who is trapping Missy, but for his last lines he’s really unable to display good rage, but that’s possible mostly on the effect on his voice when he shows his true form. Still, great acting quite often from everyone, but there are lots of dips throughout!

There is 15 minutes' worth of music in this story. There isn’t a single bad track. I literally can only rave about it. It fits the time, the scenes, it enhances the emotions, it does everything good music should. I wish I could give an 11/10 because it’s that good! The action effects also never waver, from transmats to collecting candlesticks, every effect is glorious! The background effects are amazing quite often, but also just go missing quite often, making some scenes feel emptier. The voice effects are also amazing, except for two. The voice of the Warden is really not great, especially at the end of the story when the Warden is trying to shout, and the other bad effect is the voice effect during transmat, it makes the voices really weird and warped, which, I guess, could be cool, but it comes off to me as annoying. Also, just in general, most effects are amazing, every detail is well, well, detailed!

Now, the re-enjoyment takes a hit here… you see, I don’t want to listen to the story again, I just don’t. Also, every single detail is easily discovered the first time through, this isn’t a story where you get more and more with each listen! I will say though, that this story is a fun listen and that you should check it out even if you might not want to listen to it again soon.

All in all, an amazing story with beautiful narration, great, pacing, and some of the best humor Big Finish has ever come out with! Sadly, it does suffer from some stunted and overly descriptive dialogue, some poor line deliveries from the main characters outside of Missy, and some rather poor voice effects at times. Still, the music and fun story should be enough for you to listen to this story, especially given that the next two stories are some of the best I’ve ever heard...

Total - 8

Plot - 8
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Story - 9
Pacing - 9
Dialogue - 7
Narration - 9
Enjoyment - 8
Twists - NR
Resolution/s - 7
Ending - 8

Acting - 8
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MCs - 7
SCs - 10
BGs - 8

Effects - 9
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Music - 10
Voices - 8
Actions - 10
Background - 8
General - 10

Replay - 7
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Re-Enjoyment - 8
New Details - 5

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