My re-listening of 8DA's 16-episode arc era is near its end.

After half of Stranded 3 where the main characters aren't even stranded anymore, Snow finally takes the story back to Baker Street.

First some positives, it is nice to have the extended cast back. The absence of Aisha and Tony created some interesting new character beats for Zakia and Ron (although still don’t like the fact they changed the relationship dynamics between Aisha and Zakia, and just left it). Liv meets Tania in the future right after they had their first fight and need to escape the pursuit of Divine Intervention is really good.

BUT, Andy still doesn’t have anything interesting to do, which is consistent for this series (still don’t understand why he needs to be in this, except BF just really like Tom Price. I like him too, when he is at where he should be, in Torchwood!).

On paper, I should really enjoy Snow, an emotional tale about the consequences of time travel and the subject of grief. If not for the fact that a much cleaner, more nuanced, and superior vision of the same story already exists with the same main cast, Absent Friends by John Dorney, which it has some permanent consequences for its characters.

Speaking of permanent consequences, (Spoilers for the next set) they choose to immediately undo the death of Tania just for Liv to realize that she wants to stay with her. And in the next set, Liv still chooses to go back to the TARDIS, but has a perfect ending where she comes back right after she left. This is a perfect example of BF’s recent symptom of “have its cake and eat it too”, sacrificing 20 years of 8th Doctor’s ongoing adventures for nostalgia, reminiscing the good old days of Charley, Liv and Helen, forever trapping these characters in the same loop.