Reviews

Wow, well that was a great conclusion to the last one.

So many interesting concepts and they were all handled really well; Mr Shift, mind running, a living planet that wants to use it's inhabitants as fuel. It had such a great atmosphere too, the world felt alive, literally. The Doctor was at his best here, you never really knew if he had thought it all through or whether he was coming up with his plans in real time. Leela and K9 were a joy to listen to in this story, especially the latter, he just worked quite well in this story.

There were plenty of twists and overall I think the scene towards the end was filled with clever reveals that I wouldn't have seen coming. My only gripe, and it is a small one is how there was an evacuation ship somewhere nearby in space ready to evacuate an entire planet, but that's a minor detail in an otherwise great story.

10/10.

Wow! This episode was such a return to form after the last two. It managed to consistently maintain a high level of tension that kept me engaged and actually made me scared (even though I know that the Doctor and Ruby will survive) at a few points throughout. I can't wait for the inevitable future Black Archive on this episode and its myriad themes (which other people will be able to analyse much better than me).

I have a lot of love and affection for Partners in Crime, but recognize that rests almost entirely on the charisma and chemisty of Tennant and Tate. Their scenes leading up to and including their reunion are some of 10's best, in my opinion. It is so easy to remember and focus on these scenes and this aspect of the episode that it is easy to forget this is also the episode with the Adipose.

I don't know what this episode was trying to say about weight or weight loss, but it can't be healthy. It sours the effects, score, and features a lot of rough performances along the way. It's still an essential start to one of the best runs of Doctor Who episodes, and I have a ton of happy memories around the start of the Doctor and Donna, but yeah, I can't pretend these flaws aren't there, either.

The Time Monster suffers from a sudden tonal shift a little over halfway through, side characters that seem like parodies of themselves, and a meandering plot

But by god it's fun

I liked everyone having to say TOMTIT with a straight face. I enjoyed side character scientists Feminist and her assistant Gay Man. "Male and female are just shapes" non-binary Kronos was an inspired choice. And, let us not forget the two best lines in all of Doctor Who appear in this serial: The Master's "I'm sorry about your coccyx too, Miss Grant." and Jo's "I'm fine! Dead, of course, but I'm fine."

While I haven't reviewed Dark Water yet, the first part of this story, if I reviewed the whole series in order I think I would really struggle to keep at it. So, I'm going to just focus on Death in Heaven for now. Yay me, I guess, but it leaves me to talk about the more fun part later.

Yes, I follow the generally trend of ratings here, where I think Death in Heaven is a weaker conclusion to the strong set-up of Dark Water. Still, though, there is a lot to like here. I love Michelle Gomez as Missy and she is still extremely fresh and fun here. Twelve and Clara have a lot of great moments - my favourite being the two of them outright lying to each other at the end of the episode. It's pretty haunting and a thing rarely done with companions in Doctor Who. I won't be the first to say this and this won't even be the last time I will say this about a Doctor Who episode, but this would have been a very memorable ending to Clara.

Oh well. The episode does have its problems. Some of the acting around Danny or the writing of the "Brigadier's cameo" felt a little ham-fisted and overblown. It is understandably dramatic, but it falls flat after so much nonsense around Danny's character up until this point. He felt more like a nuisance than a person. That being said, that ending with Clara saving the boy instead of Pink was well done, and feeds into the episode's very memorable ending. It's not even the only memorable aspect of how the story resolves - that Missy was doing all this in some ill-conceived attempt to connect with her old friend. It is touching even knowing how horribly Missy abused people's lives and well-being, including Osgood's death (or at least one of them) which I also found really well done.

All told it is an episode with more strengths than weaknesses, but it isn't completely strong either. Like many Moffat scripts, it feels a little overwritten in some parts and underdeveloped in others. But, just like all of those scripts, it's hard to forget this writing, either, or write it off as pointless. There's a lot of creativity and energy to Death in Heaven that really helps carry the episode and make it something worthwhile.

Death in Heaven really doesn't live up to the fun I had with Dark Water, and I feel that overshadows some really well put together moments. Clara's big confrontation with the Doctor I found a little overplayed at first, and it does suffer severely from the way Danny was handled up until this point. If he had just been written a bit better this episode could have hit really hard. I do think Samuel Anderson makes it pretty clear that was never on him though - he was handed a pretty rotten role but here, actually engaging with the world around him in a non-cynical way - he was pretty good.

I also love the Cyberman and Missy reveals, which are just executed in a great blend of fun, nostalgia, and even in a way I really didn't see coming at first. It was all pretty delightful, and I think it is easy to forget the initial surprise of Missy. I was sure excited when I realized who Michelle Gomez was though, and, in hindsight, Moffat did a pretty good job at living up to the hype of her introduction. So, yeah, it's not a perfect episode, but it sure was an unforgettable one that I just loved, in spite of its flaws.

This one is a bit of a mess and poorly regarded for a reason.

From sloppy child actors to equally egregiously written adults, this episode is kind of firing on all cylinders with regards to where Moffat and this era of Who can get annoying. The nonsensical plots, the Danny drill sergeant, the meandering character work - it's all a bit of a recipe for disaster. Danny in particular is so bad here. It almost makes me think the Doctor is right to dismiss him as a soldier, because he seems to project so much of his own crap onto everyone else. It does not hold up well at all.

The tree stuff is just awful. There's Doctor Who sometimes suspending credulity here and there, they basically do that in every story, but this is way too far to be acceptable as a story for anyone but the very young. Moffat ought to have avoided forests as a setting for his story because they seem to break his interest in telling something coherent.

Not to mention this episode's pretty troubled relationship to mental health, which I'm hardly okay with just brushing aside like a minor quibble. It's an outright harmful message.

Sure, there's enough earmarks of quality here and there and attempts at interesting material to keep this from going full Chibnall, but only just barely so.

The Caretaker is one of those episodes where the science fiction takes a back seat for more grounded character-based content. In Who, this can and has been an effective way to show the Doctor living on Earth a bit, and having a bit of fun. Usually it might be a bit of a palette cleanser after some particularly dramatic events.

In this case, we are following Time Heist and are using The Charaker not only for a fun romp but also to create a bunch of drama between Twelve, Clara, and Danny. And I am not really here for it. That the alien stuff is practically incidental would be fine if the character work were better, but as it stands, our characters are all a little off-putting in their own way.

The Doctor feels more abrasive than usual, even by the standards of the Twelfth incarnation. He treats Danny unfairly, which is compounded when Danny turns around and treats Clara pretty unfairly both here and going forward. And Clara, though probably the strongest written of the three here, gets put in this awkward position that doesn't do her character many favours.

It's an episode I wish worked a little better but that and our very underwhelming supporting cast make this much more of a slog than it needed to be. This episode should have been fun and while it kind of is, it does so in a way that makes me like our main characters less, which is never a good idea.

It is a wonderful concept for a story that just doesn't quite manage to secure a fully realized execution.

Time Heist is a fun story that deploys a pretty enjoyable cast of characters, a very fun setting and monster, along with a decently written story. I always like when we get a full crew of characters in stories like this or Dinosaurs on a Spaceship to change things up a bit. I definitely think Moffat sometimes goes for twists just for the sake of twists, and that sort of writing holds back the quality a bit, but it is a fun enough romp, and production does a great job at making the Space Bank feel Spacey. It is far from bad, but pretty aggressively average. It's amazing how much of the story I forgot my first time around.

EDIT: There are also some fun details in this video. A number of villains and other criminals appear in this episode as part of the bank's files, from the show, the comics, Torchwood, and the Sarah Jane Adventures. That's cool and part of a trend in Moffat's work to acknowledge and incorporate the wider franchise. I like that sort of world building and it makes the franchise feel both more lived in and connected.

I think Listen is a remarkably strong episode and Doctor Who story. It is an excellent bit of horror and mystery, while, just like Midnight, somewhat frustratingly leaves you with more questions than answers. Yes, it is also somewhat frustrating that Clara is once again the explanation for everything, I feel it is easy to look past that given how emotionally-drive Moffat scripts are. This is a story of fear itself and it is quite masterfully done, at least in my opinion.

That scene with the figure is haunting, and leaves so many questions. If it all was just a childhood fear instilled by Clara, was the mysterious entity really there? What was it, exactly? I think that mystery is what makes it so tantalizing.

Every Doctor shows fear in some way at some point. Capaldi still manages to stand-out here. But Jenna Coleman is also just so excellent here. Overall, a very impressive episode that sticks in my memory. Easily one of my favourite New Who episodes.

This is a fun enough idea in and of itself. Shrinking and travelling into a Dalek is pretty cool, and the best part of this episode explores Rusty's character, how it relates to the Doctor, and what a "good Dalek" even means. Some of the designs around the Dalek's interior are pretty interesting and I do love those shots of the Doctor face-to-face with a giant Dalek organism more than I don't. That stuff is largely great, but it feels like a very Moffat-heavy episode, even if he isn't the only credited writer.

There are some really strong, memorable lines in this story from Rusty, but for every one of those we get awful ones from the Doctor. He goes way too anti-military here and it is only done for the sake of drama with Danny Pink down the road, and the whole "Clara is my carer" thing is just not a funny line and makes Twelve seem worse than what feels natural for his character. This won't be the last time Moffat pulls this questionable feat, either, which is frustration because Capaldi always deserved better than that.

The way the story hypes itself up at the beginning, calling the inside of the Dalek "the most dangerous place in the universe," is one of many ways this story holds itself back. Even just how ham-fisted some of the writing can be at certain parts of the story really bothers me, like around the soldiers or the introduction of Danny Pink (which was pretty awful and only made worst in hindsight knowing what is in store for that character).

Finally, while I enjoyed the morality struggle between Rusty and the Doctor, it definitely gets overdone at a certain point and I found the ties to the larger narrative of the season about Twelve not knowing if he is a good man a little clumsy here. It's an alright story, but not the best. Basically just an inferior version of Dalek, really.

Deep Breath is a fairly solid start to the Twelfth Doctor. There's a lot of awkward writing choices along the way that make it somewhat unsatisfying, but overall it works as an introduction to the new Doctor and some of the plot concepts we could expect out of Series 8. The Paternoster Gang were starting to wear on me pretty heavily at this point, but everyone is doing a great job acting. It's mot the overblown use of Clara and the gang to begin with that feels unnecessary. A story more independent of Moffat's older characters would have done a lot to benefit Deep Breath, but that is sadly true of a lot of the Twelfth Doctor.

The dinosaur CGI wasn't great and the T-Rex was kind of pointless anyways. It barely even paid off with the appearance of the clockwork robots. They, and their scenes in the restaurant and underground lair, were pretty great. Lots of good moments there. Lots of potential overall, to this episode, unfortunately it didn't all come together as much as I wish it would have.

The Rebel Flesh and The Almost People are a strange duo of episodes. While important in that the ending of this two-parter is quite significant to the story arc of Eleven, Amy, River, and a bunch of other important details in the modern era, the main focus of the Gangers and the Rebel Flesh isn't that compelling to me. It feels like more of the same old story of lesser beings facing exploitation, which feels like ground a little too well-tread for my tastes at this point.

It's not terrible, but some of the dialogue feels very on the nose, and the more interesting aspects of this story are largely reserved for The Almost People. It really doesn't feel like this story needs to be in two parts, and it makes rewatching these episodes a fairly rough prospect for fans, I find. I found the characters outside of the Doctor and his companions pretty bland, too. I don't really care about anyone other than the Doctor, Amy, and Rory because of this, and that makes this contained base under siege style episode feel very limited because of that.

What I did appreciate was the content behind the scenes. Production managed to create a pretty compelling setting to me with a limited budget. There's good atmosphere in the story as the whole factory has a lot of good, creepy energy to it. It and the main cast manage to keep this episode from being a total snore, but it really is not that effective beyond the nice details, and not very notable beyond the fact this kicks off a bunch of major continuity points important to this era of Doctor Who.

A somewhat middling reaction from me. I didn’t really feel this one as much as other Moffat scripts. What should have been suspenseful and tense episode kind of wound up being sort of noisy and crowded affair for me. Really not a fan of the kid character here. Ruby and the Doctor remain outstanding for me, but otherwise, this ranks just above Space Babies in my books.

A nice ending to the House trilogy. However, how are you bring Bret into this, an absolute stab in the back so cruel. I love how it makes Sara accidentally set in stone the Daleks Masterplan and her realisation of it and her realisation of Bret's death being permanent is absolutely devastating. A house of wishes is one of my favourite things in Doctor Who and it works really well with Robert as a character, having a daughter, wanting to escape but also not, him wanting only the best for her. That slim chance of hope Sara gets when Robert eventually becomes the house so she can escape, only to find there's no boats off the island. So even after thousands of years of being dead, Sara can't live ever :((

It's a little wild to think that at this point I basically have nostalgia for Day of the Doctor. It really is an ambitious story that more or less pulls off everything it is going for. Ten and Eleven are very fun interacting with each other, Tennant feels back in form right away and I love his scenes with the Queen, and the War Doctor, with virtually no build-up or established backstory, comes back fully swinging and feeling completely realized within the Doctor Who universe. John Hurt manages to give this character so much weight he feels very much like an incarnation we simply hadn't seen before, with all the weight and history an established one might already have.

This story does a lot well, with memorable set pieces and a strong use of both Billie Piper and Jenna Coleman as companions, too. It really feels like the whole emotional weight of the Moment and the Doctor saving Gallifrey hinges on Clara. And for once, without the forcible hand of overwritten crap like Clara being in the Doctor's time stream, or being the most important perfect blank slate of a character she all too often was, it just works so well here. She is just a person innately recognizing this moment is wrong, and challenging the Doctor to be the Doctor, to live up to the promise of his name that had so heavily defined the ongoing narrative at this time. It's really well done, and as overblown and Moffaty as the ending can be, I would argue by and large it works well as a celebration of all things Doctor Who. A great homage to the series itself while also being a nicely put together production, so big of an event they even showed it in theatres - and it feels pretty earned to me! There's a real cinematic quality to Day of the Doctor that gives it an appropriate amount of weight.

So much so that it really sucks Chibnall worked so hard to erase the emotional pay-off of Gallifrey living after this story and Time of the Doctor. This was something the Doctor had earned, and it was immediately burned away by inferior writing. I hope RTD can correct that embarrassment, because for all his faults as a showrunner, Steven Moffat's legacy deserved better than that. Day of the Doctor was an astounding achievement for the franchise, reopening the notion of inter-Doctor crossovers again while opening up new possibilities for the series in a thousand different ways. To be fair, neither Moffat nor Chibnall ever followed up on that opportunity meaningfully, and while I'm sure if Ecclesten had returned or if the event had a bigger budget, things could be improved.

I still just love this special for what it is and the optimism it represents. It's an easy to digest, fun piece of Doctor Who history with a lot of moments worth revisiting. The big scene with "all thirteen" Doctors was great, you have the curator, and even the Zygon negotiations, all done really well and showing the Doctor at his best in the process.

Name of the Doctor is just okay. It is a half-decent resolution to the Clara plot line, it has some interesting ideas about the Doctor, and works alright as prequel of sorts to the 50th anniversary.

The monsters look really cool and are utterly wasted. That still bothers me more than anything else about this episode. I think Name of the Doctor is somewhat overrated in that regard. It is very heavy on Moffat ideas without any of the usual benefits associated with that show runner. Instead, Name of the Doctor feels very self-indulgent and congratulatory in a way I don't think is deserved.

Y'all ever seen the Youtube edit where they put Ecclesten in place of John Hurt at the end of this story? That hits hard and gives a sense of what Name of the Doctor could have been - although John Hurt's appearance did hold a lot of weight, too.

So it's fine... just alright, really. Very average - as average as these sort of big stories can get. I remember watching this when it originally aired. I rolled my eyes half as often as I did enjoy Name of the Doctor, and I think that's worth remembering. For every memorable tea party, there is a half dozen scenes with the Great Intelligence that go nowhere. The pointlessness of the villain really bothers me. He has this big plan and Clara just undoes it with a little hop into a glowing pylon. A quick rescue by the Doctor later, and Clara is fine, destined to continue with the show for another few years and leaving Name of the Doctor (and most of 7B) without a satisfactory conclusion.

It's something I found very disappointing. This episode would probably be rated much lower if the monsters and special effects didn't look cool, while Coleman, Smith, and Kingston's performances all stand out as something that helps prevent Name of the Doctor from feeling like a complete dud. But, in my eyes, only just barely. It's still a pretty meh experience on the whole.

This episode was the first Ncuti episode this season that I liked so far. Actually, not liked, loved! Everything about this episode, from the side characters, to the Doctor and Ruby, to the plot was absolutely amazing. I, like others, was hesitant about Moffats return and was scared of this story being too "Moffaty" in a bad way. Well, it was extremely "Moffaty" but in the greatest way. Confining the story to one area helped streamline the story greatly unlike the messy plots of Space Babies and TDC. Seeing Ncuti play a more serious and grounded version of the Doctor is much more preferable to the over energetic and over acted Doctor we see in both Space Babies and TDC. Another great part about this episode is the numerous call backs to previous Moffat episodes like fish fingers and custard, Villengard, Anglican Marines, and "the moon and the presidents wife". These references never distract us from the plot and serve as great easter eggs for the devoted fans. Ruby's mystery is also getting more and more interesting with her age being extremely high. Susan Twist also got a much bigger role this time and I'm very interested in what her role in the season ends up being. In conclusion, this episode has gotten me completely back on track with the season after 2 episodes that were, to me, incredibly boring and not entertaining. I'm really excited for 73 Yards and getting more of the mystery unraveled.

The Cyber Nomads continues the in-universe retelling of the history of the Cybermen. This volume is more of a pure retelling of events we have already seen in Classic Who, from the Second and Fourth Doctors adventures. The author, and narrator, David Banks does a good job of putting everything in a chronological order. He adds little details here and there to really fill out the history. I rather enjoyed the way that this was done. Mainly for completists, I would also recommend this for fans of the Cybermen.

The Early Cybermen is an in-universe retelling of the history of the Cybermen. This volume is more of a pure retelling of events we have already seen in Classic Who, from the First and Second Doctors adventures. The author, and narrator, David Banks does a good job of putting everything in a chronological order. He adds little details here and there to really fill out the history. I rather enjoyed the way that this was done. Mainly for completists, I would also recommend this for fans of the

Origins of the Cybermen is an in-universe book about the early history of the Cybermen, written, and read, by David Banks. The books cover from the beginning of the Solar System up to, just before, their first invasion of Earth. Banks has tries to put together in chronological order what we have learnt from Classic Who, with small details added to fill those gaps. While it can be a little dry, overall he does a good job. This is really only for completists of the Doctor Who 'cannon'.

I did not care for this audio much at all. Sure, it makes an interesting sort of prelude to Time War content, I guess, but otherwise it just feels like a waste. A waste of Evelyn Smythe, who felt like such a strong companion in her initial appearances, a waste of Romana's return, a waste of the Daleks, and a waste of the Time Lords. Even the sound effects got annoying after a while. Not a fun audio, definitely not something I would like to revisit any time soon, and overall a bit of a disappointment, even by early Big Finish standards. That being said, it very much feels like something the company would be able to polish more in the future.

I do appreciate its role in Who history though, and this is an early yet great prototype to the great voice acting of Nicholas Briggs for the Daleks, which I definitely think is a bright spot here in an otherwise very skippable audio.

Slipback is a boring, drawn out story, which is a feat at only 1 hour. The plot is an overlong drudge, that honestly could have been told in 20 minutes. There is no sense of actual characters, except for one 'person'. The quality of the recoding is good considering its age. Really, this is for completist only.

I'm one of the few on this site who can actually mark this as having been played! I spent a good amount of time on it in my childhood, during the brief time it was available.

Can barely remember anything about the actual gameplay. But boy, it was the wild west of the internet... Nearly unmoderated social interaction in a children's game, aha. I even had a 'Worlds in Time exclusive girlfriend', if memory serves. Could've gone very badly! But we just played the game together.

It does make me nostalgic. I remember enjoying it a lot. It's a shame that things like these are totally lost from time. Hopefully online games like these are better preserved in the future. It's an important piece of history that should continue to be available.

Oof, that was disappointing. I was really hoping for something after such a rough run of early Fifth Doctor audios in the early big finish range.

I like Nyssa, Turlough, and Peri in these early stories. It is great to see them returned in these early stories with the original actors, and they all feel very much in form with their reprisals. Yet Nyssa here in Winter for the Adept is pretty useless, only with a couple interesting stuff around Nyssa's psychic abilities. Peter Davison is pretty great here, too, but on the other hand India Fisher as Peril was notably awful. I'm surprised people enjoy it, as I just found her almost unbearable here, but I'm glad she wound up as Charly down the road as clearly that worked out. Knowing how talented Fisher is, I more blame the writing.

The writing is rough, too. I was all excited for an Andrew Cartmel script but it really didn't amount to much of anything. I had a lot of trouble getting through Winter for the Adept as a result of all this, basically forcing myself through the audio just to finish it and be done with the story after several false starts.

It is a shame too, because the idea of the plot is a pretty fun one. The idea of a potentially haunted schoolhouse is fun, and there are some moments to Winter for the Adept I appreciated, such as when Nyssa gets rescued on the Alps early on, or when the Doctor causally starts insisting they need to do a seance. That stuff was fine, but too much of this audio is devoted to nonsense about a couple eloping, or other details that hold it back like some lacklustre music (although some impressive special effects to balance that category out a bit, to be fair). All told, it was okay. I don't hate that I listened to it, but I didn't love getting through it, either.