This was just alright.  I had some moments with Once and Future - including Past Lives, The Artist at the End of Time, and The Martian Invasion of Planetoid 50, but the rest, including the Union, felts a lot more mediocre in comparison.

I'm not sure what the missing ingredient is.  The Eighth Doctor, Susan, and River are all fun, and each get little moments that stay with me.  I love the scene between Susan and the First Doctor who emerges in a brief moment.  In fact, this audio has a rather impressive number of cameos and appearances in a way that definitely makes this audio feel special.  Maureen O'Brien playing The Union was a lot of fun.

Yet it all felt so... unimpressive.  I kept feeling like I was waiting for the story to really dig into something - the Union's mindset, the Doctor being challenged in some way - anything, really, to give this story some weight and meat to it.  Instead it feels like a whole lot of build-up for nothing.  I didn't really get a satisfying pay-off to the degeneration plot line, it feels like it all just sort of lined up with the Union being behind everything, without any real surprise to anything.  If anything, the audio makes it clear that the story didn't really matter at all - nothing of significance happened and nobody is going to remember anything.  That's deeply unsatisfying in a way the better chapters of Once and Future manage to at least dance around even if it is true of the whole range that the stakes are quite low overall.

The writing felt like it was just kind of lazily checking off some boxes - wrapping up the loose plot threads around degeneration, the Monk, and such, in a relatively straightforward way while giving us some crowd-pleasing moments with all the big cameos and stuff.  The Fourth Doctor gets to show himself quite a bit here and that's not objectionable, or even a complaint, but it does feel like it is just there because it can be.

In the behind the scenes content, Nicholas Briggs mentions that this will be the last big Doctor Who crossover he will spearhead creatively, and I found that very welcome news.  Once and Future wasn't bad or anything but stuff like The Union made it feel tired.  The novelty of crossovers and characters meeting like this has long worn off, and I now expect the story to actually do something fun, or really dig deep a little bit.  This crossover event's best part by far was when they put Gomez and Tennant in a recording together and just let them dig into their characters and improvise a little bit.  There's room for new direction in this franchise, but I definitely think Briggs stepping aside a bit, and letting some newer talent take charge of it for the next big anniversary event, will be absolutely necessary if Big Finish is going to pull it off at all.  And I do hope that is the case.

Also, we need more stories with Missy and the Tenth Doctor.  Or maybe Missy can meet the Fourteenth just to leave continuity alone.  That stuff was magic, I still can't get over it.  The Union feels like a footnote in comparison.

Since writing all of this, BillFiler did point out that there is a pretty firm, well-written through-line of the plot where the Doctor really learns to accept himself and his identity.  I've bumped up my score overall a little bit because of that, as it is a part of the story I hadn't really considered in my original review but absolutely is something there and I did register as a listener.  It doesn't change the sour note all the memory stuff generates, or any of the other problems I talked about either, but it's something.  The Union winds up being better than some of Once and Future, but still feels pretty average overall.  It's probably worth a listen (at an affordable price) but nothing I found that special.