🙏🏼C.Baker --> Fine!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

Big Finish has buried The Diary of River Song, but the character returns in a new series, set after the death of River in Forest of the Dead.

They've come up with an easy but sensible way of bringing back River from the Library records by putting her consciousness into a cloned body, which will last a limited amount of time.

The opening story takes its time to set up the premise of this series and the central characters.

The futuristic city of Shangri-La, filled with robotic servants, comes to life pretty well through the sound design.

All the robot voices are done well. I love the robot personalities, especially the taxi robot.

Alex Kingston is as delightful as ever, and she carries the story well with her detective work here.

This is something of a detective/crime story, which is always nice to hear.

So this Garrison Clay person is a good amalgamation of real-life tech billionaires with ambitious projects, and I see a lot of potential in him.

The premise here seems to be that this clone-River is sent on various missions before being returned to the Library, and it feels as if they are trying to do anohter War Doctor Begins thing here.

While this is a pretty atmospheric opening installment, it's not anything special in terms of narrative development. There's a lot of chatter around, but not a lot of action.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS;

• It's strange that they're using the same theme tune as the Diary of River Song series. Not that I'm complaining, because it's a good track!
• The climax is a bit flat, but the cliffhanger ending is intriguing!