Fast times offers a solid and strong opening for The Fugitive Doctors audio adventures. Jo Martin gives a wonderful performance, I loved her Doctor from her first episode and she is just as good here, oozing strength and confidence, even with so much uncertainty and unknown about her past and herself, this incarnation feels like a powerful force. Martin is a delight to listen to. The Daleks appearance here is surprisingly well done, they know the Doctor, she doesn't know them. But she still eludes and beats them with style. It's not the most amazing story but it is a solid hour of fun that gives us time with this mysterious incarnation and sets up the status quo of her fleeing division, a pursuing antagonist in Cosmogan, Alice Krige giving a lovely performance, and while this is in a lot of ways just a Doctor Who story with Daleks, it feels interesting and like we are in an unknown era. Really excited to see where this series goes as there is so much potential in this incarnation.

It's a fun exciting opener for the Fugitive Doctor stories. After a quick shop in prison, we're immediately on the run with the Doctor facing an enemy that claims to know here: the Daleks! Jo Martin gives a great performance as a Doctor who isn't quite down with the whole hero thing,  but just can't help herself getting involved. It's a confident opener to the series, excited to see what else is to come.

This is a very good opening to a (hopefully) very good era. Although it doesn't start out promising with a generic prison story it quickly picks up the pace into a mad dash that is a crazy fun listen. The last 20 minutes are incredibly good. All the vocal performances are on point as well, with Martin being as incredible as she was on the TV Show and new-comer Alice Krige is great as the more professional foil to Martin's doctor.

Still, it's not without fault, the biggest of which is that it's just Doctor Who. It's good Doctor Who, but Doctor Who none the less. Which may seem like an odd complaint about a Doctor Who audio but it raises the question of what is the point of the Fugitive as an incarnation. She's still a time lord who travels around the universe in a TARDIS while fighting daleks and has a seemingly encyclopaedic knowledge of Earth history. So why is she a pre-Hartnell doctor, and not an Unbound, or a future one, or something else. None of the potential of having a pre-Hartnell doctor is realised and it leaves me slightly disappointed at what could have been.

Still, the story is good, and the Doctor is incredible, so I will be returning to this range. I'd highly recommend it as well, it's just a shame as it could've been a bit more interesting.

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

“FAST TIMES – A THRILLING FUGITIVE RUN WITH A FEW BUMPS ALONG THE WAY”

Most Wanted marks Big Finish’s first dedicated box set for Jo Martin’s Fugitive Doctor, a character shrouded in mystery ever since her brief appearances in Flux and The Power of the Doctor. With her past still largely unexplored, Fast Times kicks things off with an action-packed, high-energy chase, firmly establishing the core of this incarnation—constantly on the run from the Division, the organisation she once served.

The setup is simple but effective: the Doctor is captured and thrown onto a prison spaceship, where she quickly finds herself standing up for a bullied inmate while clashing with a brutish warden. It’s a perfect showcase for Jo Martin’s Doctor—tough, no-nonsense, but still possessing that classic sense of compassion and responsibility. She doesn’t pick fights needlessly, but when forced into action, she’s commanding and unyielding. This version of the Doctor thrives in tense, high-stakes environments, and the prison break scenario allows her to shine.

FADE, THE DALEKS, AND A MYSTERY IN THE TIMELINE

One of the most intriguing aspects of Fast Times is its introduction of Leah Harvey as Fade, an inmate who starts off as a frightened prisoner and gradually evolves into something of a companion figure. Her backstory is compelling—she’s on the run from the Daleks, who wiped out her family, making her wary of trusting anyone.

The most fascinating twist? The Fugitive Doctor has never encountered the Daleks before. This raises immediate questions: is this Doctor truly pre-Hartnell, experiencing her first brush with the Doctor’s greatest foes? Or is something else at play, such as memory loss? This uncertainty adds a fresh dynamic to the Doctor’s interactions with the Daleks, who, for once, are more terrifying to the companion than to the Doctor herself. Instead of engaging them immediately, the Doctor initially chooses to escape and leave Fade to fend for herself—an unexpected moment that underscores how this incarnation is still developing her moral compass.

While the chase format works well for the most part, the inclusion of the Daleks feels somewhat unnecessary. The second half of the story essentially turns into a The Chase-style pursuit, with the Doctor and Fade hopping through time—from the late Cretaceous period to the Manhattan Project—to evade the Daleks. While these settings add variety, they don’t contribute much beyond spectacle. That said, the Doctor using a nuclear bomb test to eliminate the Daleks is a strikingly bold move, excessive yet oddly satisfying.

COSMOGON—A NEW DIVISION THREAT

Adding another layer of tension is Cosmogon, a Time Lord agent tasked with capturing the Doctor. Her pursuit of the Fugitive Doctor adds to the sense of urgency, and their interactions suggest a long history yet to be uncovered. The fact that the Doctor’s new friends actively work to hold off Cosmogon so the Doctor can escape is a satisfying moment, reinforcing how quickly she inspires loyalty even when she tries to keep others at arm’s length.

VERDICT: A SOLID START WITH ROOM FOR MORE

Fast Times is essentially one long chase sequence, but it does a great job of establishing Jo Martin’s Doctor and setting up intriguing mysteries for future stories. While the Daleks’ inclusion feels somewhat unnecessary, the dynamic between the Doctor and Fade, as well as the looming threat of Cosmogon, keeps things engaging. This Doctor is still figuring herself out, and that makes her journey all the more exciting to follow.

📝81/100

For a start to a new doctors era on big finish I am fully hooked can’t wait to listen to the rest

A fantastic introduction to the Fugitive Doctor - and this is a Doctor who truly requires an introduction, given how little she was fleshed out on screen. The story does a commendable job crafting her own distinct character. She’s differentiated enough from the regular iterations of the Doctor to justify her fugitive status, yet she isn’t portrayed as mean or needlessly callous. She retains the essence of the Doctor, avoiding the easy route of sacrificing people or behaving cruelly.

The episode serves as a fun, energetic introduction, balancing character setup with glimpses into the broader plot and ongoing storyline. Jo Martin delivers a standout performance, particularly in moments like her first encounter with the Daleks. The production maintains a lively pace, and while it’s clearly a foundation for future arcs, the excitement for what’s next is undeniable.

Fast Times was fine. I'm not a fan of the Daleks' presence. They shouldn't be there at all. Since they apparently have to be there, I was hoping they would have a much smaller role. Since they apparently have to be the main antagonists, I really think that there's got to be a much more interesting way to do "the Doctor meets the Daleks for the first time, again, but this time she's a fully trained Division agent with combat experience and a fully stocked armory in the Tardis" than just teasing the fact that she's meeting them out of order. Beyond that, I thought the prison fight scene characterized her brilliantly. She'll help those in need, but she's more than willing to be the one to throw the first punch. The "All Hail Division" stuff felt a bit silly, and I'm still not sure how I feel about the Oppenheimer trick. All in all, it wasn't bad, but it wasn't great.

Hearing 13's theme again gave me chills. That was a great start, I wasn't too sure about it at first but as it got into it there were a lot of things I really liked. The idea of fugitive coming across the Daleks for the first time was a really cool idea, and I loved the way they dealt with the Daleks knowing her but her not knowing the Daleks (I thought quite similar to Genesis but with the roles reversed), something you can only really do with a pre-hartnell doctor like this. I also thought scenes like the one where she used the New Mexico nuclear test to nuke the Daleks were also really interesting ideas, this one specifically being one I'm surprised hasn't been used in Doctor Who in some way before (to my knowledge), which as well as being cool, new ideas, show the differences, and more violent nature of this Doctor than those we're more familiar with. The overarching plot of Fugitive being, well, a fugitive is also seeming quite interesting to me so far, and I thought the way that she evaded Cosmagon at the end through the protection of those she'd helped in the episode was a nice touch, and really shows that even though she's a very different Doctor, she still can't help but help people, and is, in the end, the same person. The only real issue I had with it was that I felt the start was a bit too slow, and it jumped around with the prison stuff a bit too much before getting into the main plot, other than that though I thought this was a great start for the Fugitive Doctor's solo stuff, and, assuming all of BF's thirteen era stuff is like this, I am very excited!

In the interviews on the production of Valentine's Fast Times, the writer of the Fugitive Doctor's premier story in her own range recounts calling Chris Chibnall to discuss the character, and the crucial detail that her creator spoke of her in a hypothetical, spitballing light; Chibnall "thinks," instead of knows, that his own creation is X, Y, and/or Z. This approach I would have previously turned my nose up at, believing it points toward a lack of focus, but here, it's intensely respectable as an almost post-modern fanbrain, theorising the ambiguous nature of your creation alongside your audience. Such is incredibly opportune for writers, and Valentine indubitably takes this in his stride. The Fugitive Doctor is a cog in the works of Doctor Who's aesthetic and stylistic continuity, attracting caricatures and locations directly lifted from late-20th century comics, sixties Daleks and their surrounding sensibilities, and the dense mythology of the revival, all of these epicentral to her; Fast Times picks up Coda's leftovers and makes a deliberate, three-course meal of them. Most refreshing about the character is how reined in she is from the grandeur mythos surrounding her origins, and the Doctor's more omnipotent depicted tendencies. As much as she is a fugitive by name and nature, she is also the ultimate tourist - a welcomely earnest, sobering portrayal - and likewise, is not afraid to be petty (the 'Colonel Runaway' scene from A Good Man Goes to War would look positively infantile compared to the jabs Martin perfectly delivers). In this respect, a dialogue is opened with Fugitive's on-screen contemporary, as her seclusion and unwillingness to meditate on matters imitates those of the Thirteenth Doctor's, albeit delivered in a delightfully more blunt fashion. The sprawling nature of Fast Times complements the grounded characteristic of Martin's incarnation, which progressively grows on me the more I listen to. An utterly eclectic seizure of the open floor its Doctor presents in her conceit, Fast Times is a thoroughly enjoyable listen which ought to be treated as a touchstone for everything with this Doctor coming forward.

Paranoid that the Doctor knows secrets that could compromise them, Division elect to betray the Doctor and try to bring her in. Suddenly branded a fugitive, the Doctor finds herself taken prisoner pn Punishment - a hulk ship - and roped into a prison break.

Robert Valentine kicks off the series with this story and out the gate it presents a vulnerability we never saw in this incarnation of the Doctor on screen. For the first 10 minutes, gone is the confidence and suffer-no-fools attitude she's usually depicted with. It feels like a bit of an unusual choice. Though as characterisation goes, the Doctor here is much less keen to get involved and connect with Fade - a character who is essentially the companion for this story - but begrudgingly finds her compassion get the better of her, even when in a turbulent situation herself.

Fade is not a lot to write home about as a character but she does introduce the Doctor to the villains of the piece. Yes, it's the Daleks. Having the Daleks in the Fugitive Doctor's very first story feels like a questionable decision when, ideally, this series should be presenting something fresh. This does however come with the acknowledgement that this perspective may be skewed by an overall feeling of being burnt out on the pepperpots with their prevelancy, and they don't particularly outlive their welcome in this episode.

The Daleks also give Fade a bit of backstory as a resistence fighter, and make for a quick and easy setup for the Doctor to be tempted to join a resistance, a very classic setup for the character in their earliest incarnations and a strong way to bring her sense of morality out.

There are breadcrumbs throughout pointing to a mystery of why Division turned itself against the Doctor, with the Doctor herself not having any idea what she's supposed to know that could be considered so dangerous to them. The presence of the Daleks adds to her confusion - although the audience is in on the secret this time - as their grudge against her is as strong as ever while she finds herself on the back foot with no idea who they are. Another potential breadcrumb is a possible disconnect between events depicted in the TV series' Once, Upon Time, and what's depicted at the beginning of this story, though it can be taken in good faith that the events of Atropos are something the series may yet circle back to.

There's plenty of action and variety in the story, from the prison break to a crashing spaceship and a trip through history while facing off against the Daleks. Even if not the strongest of openers,  Fast Times certainly won't leave you bored and provides some solid set-up for the Fugitive Doctor's adventures on the run.

this was a great reintroduction to the fugitive doctor, setting up some new mysteries and getting the worldbuilding off to a great start. we haven't heard much of cosmo but i have a feeling i'm going to like her. very interested in if things are going to go anywhere with the daleks, and her memory issues. it could of course be she is pre-1 or it could be a hint she's 2.5.... who knows! overall though, i really enjoyed the characterisation of the fugitive doctor in this, it felt very similar to her tv appearances.