📝6/10

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

This time: it’s the beginning of a new era, reborn!

MY SCATTERED AND TOTALLY IRRELEVANT NOTES:

Big Finish celebrates 25 years of Doctor Who audios with a re-release of their first Main Range release, The Sirens of Time, but with a fresh coat of paint!

Rather than focusing on one Doctor per episode, this re-edited version naturally switches between Five, Six, and Seven throughout the first three parts, strengthening the multi-Doctor feel and tying the three separate adventures together to the overarching narrative of the story. We notice the parallels between the three Doctors' separate adventures better in this version.

Additionally, the story opens directly with Five appearing on the German U-boat instead of on Gallifrey, followed by Seven appearing on the alien planet. We get to the Gallifrey scenes later on, followed by the introduction to Sixie. This order works much better than the original edit.

The reshuffling of scenes actually helps to revitalise this story a bit and keep it more dynamic. This extends to the cliffhangers as well, such as the Part 1 cliffhanger, which is also the introduction to the Sixth Doctor and the Temperon. And surprisingly, Six is involved in the Part 2 cliffhanger as well!

The new edit doesn’t improve the overall feeling of emptiness and confusion in the writing, though. That means that the story is still occasionally confusing to follow.

Part 3 heightens the tension on all three fronts quite well but is also something of a mess. Additionally, the cliffhanger to Part 3 isn’t on par with the first two. Part 4 then plays pretty much as in the original edit, with the three Doctors together against the eSirens of Time in an overlong and messy closing installment. The effects used on the Temperon's and Siren's voices are fortunately much improved.