At last - a really good Doctor Who Christmas special! While a former Doctor Who writer would have just thrown them all in at random, Steven Moffat here has the clichés of snow, Christmas presents and Victoriana all present, but now with a plot to support them - a clever reworking of Dickens. Some striking and original images include fish flying through the sky and a "Santa's sleigh" pulled by a shark! Matt Smith is as good as ever, and Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill are fine in their short appearances. Michael Gambon here is so much better than in the Harry Potter films and the non-actress Katherine Jenkins is skilfully used in a story that handles its tragic elements with an impressive lightness of touch. Ten out of ten from me!
It's amazing how many producers of these seem to forget the name. As podcasts are (by definition) for mobile devices and therefore meant to be listened to on the move, the likelihood is that there will be background noise from traffic, etc. For safety reasons, the volume shouldn't be turned up so loud that this is drowned out. If the listener is on a bus or train, things are often no quieter. For these reasons, it's essential that the volume of a podcast should be "normalised" (i.e. the peaks should be at the maximum allowed undistorted level) and its dynamic range should be severely curtailed - that is, there should be very little difference between the quiet and the loud bits. I probably have hearing that is just below average in efficiency and I've lost count of the number of times the podcast was so quiet that I couldn't hear most of it (even when turned up to full volume on my phone), or had a section with various speakers muttering inaudibly in t...
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