This one was hilarious! I absolutely adored the part where The Doctor started to open up non-stop , it really shows he was hiding his emotions so much.

i love season 4b 🥰

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.

What this story, and this boxset, has captured perfectly is the dynamic of Tennant and Tate - the stories utilise their chemistry perfectly, to ensure that the stories are exciting, and flow. Their performances are, similar to their TV series, a highlight of what are already well paced, well conceived, enjoyable stories. This story particularly was a lot of fun - it captured the comedic elements that these characters excel at, in a story which was already well layered, and a fun romp. The supporting characters weren't quite as strong, but were still developed nicely to bring me into the world we were exploring. It captures some of the best components of Doctor Who - bringing in some dark horror concepts, coupled perfectly with the lighter comedic elements. A great story!

Death and the Queen - 7/10

The final story of this boxset was certainly a pleasant end to this run of stories, while it's not the greatest it's definitely the funniest.

I had a lot of fun with this story, it is some of the best comedy i've experienced in a Big Finish so far - it is almost entirely Tennants performance that secures this for me. I love every scene with him in this story it's excellent.

The plot is good and provides an entertaining hour, there's a few twists and turns which are all done well too. I particularly enjoy the giant cloud talking - its an amusing image to say the least.

The entire cast of characters in this story are brilliant, I really like them all but in particular Hortense. Donna and the Tenth Doctor are characterised well here and bounce off each other wonderfully throughout the story I think - they have some great moments.

The setting is super fun too in the fictional empire of Goritania, without giving anything away its an unusual place that even the Doctor himself has never ever heard of.

Overall Death and the Queen gets a 7/10 and is a very solid final story for this boxset, I do have to say its inspired me to want to listen to more of this range.