And so this strange, vaguely Christmas-themed but really more Joe-themed audio comes to an end. It was certainly something. On the one hand, it feels like there are parts of this audio worth exploring in much greater detail. The Werelords are silly but could have been pretty cool. Instead, they are annoying, and it doesn't help that the howling sound effects dominate this audio in a way that is unrealistic, distracting, and repetitive to the point of being infuriating.

I'm not going to lie, I kind of hated this one. Were it not for the Sixth Doctor and Colin Baker kind of carrying this thing with his always reliable performance in Big Finish, I don't think Brightly Shone The Moon That Night or the entire Blood on Santa's Claws release is at all worth pursuing for fans. It feels very disappointing, even as the story does something kind of interesting by tying everything together and providing at least a decent explanation for why Joe just sort of appears in the TARDIS all of the sudden, along with a number of other dangling plot threads. In that regard, it is satisfying, and I really like the stuff where Peri is reunited with a number of characters from earlier, the return of many elements of Blood on Santa's Claws stories in general, or how the Doctor takes out the Werelords. There's a lot of potential here but, for one thing, I don't know why the story of Joe is at all a good idea for a Christmas release, and two, a story this short really doesn't have enough time for the Werelords, who have these thousands of years worth of history living on Earth and apparently doing nothing the whole damn time. Joe was at least a mystery to solve as a kind of plain companion, only to be made a worse villain who I found was just not good in this role at all. I just can't believe how disappointed I was in this one. It did not work for me at all.