I'll be honest, I was pretty skeptical going into Death and the Queen.  I knew this was fairly well regarded among the fan community, so when it starts with Donna engaged and the Doctor in full Mister-Grumpy-Pants mode (a trend that weirdly seems to plague the character in Big Finish), I thought I was going to have to get a bit contradictory.

Things didn't look much better when a big head in the sky showed up and wiped out an entire army.  Donna having to explain basic compassion to her new fiance Rudolph had me very confused as to the purpose of this audio and what we were going for here.

Yet it ends up being a fascinating story with a lot of these plot points proving essential in setting up a very interesting second half to the story.  Donna ends up having a dance with Death while the Doctor uncovers a scheme by alien con artists to gobble up a soul.  I really like the detail that the aliens are not that interested in the Doctor, instead valuing the love and sacrifice involved in taking Donna much more.  It was interesting, and the audio does a great job of evoking these powerful visuals just through speech, sound effects, and music alone.  That's kind of the whole point of Big Finish, sure, but I can appreciate when a story does it as well as this one.