This story blurs the line between a gothic horror/weird tale and a sci-fi and I really enjoyed it. The first half was kind of boring but it really picks up later on

This story doesn’t do much for me. There’s no real passion in it.

We meet with Vicki in 1164 BC. After her separation from the Doctor and Steven. She’s going into a cellar and talks to a mysterious creature. She describes a story from her travels.

It’s a story about how she went to a frost fair and discovered a mysterious egg. It turns out to be the egg of a Phoenix, drawing in all the heat around it so it can hatch. So they have to stop it from freezing the earth. Jane Austen is also there, and she’s just as tacked on as this sentence.

After finding the egg. Everyone urges it to stop freezing the world, but it doesn’t listen. When it hatches, Jane Austen cuts off its heat source and it dies. Committing genocide on the last of the Phoenixes (phoeni?).

Except for one little cinder, which was left behind and stuck to Vicki. She keeps it alive, as she can relate to it. Both being lonely after they’ve left behind something grand. And there’s the start of something poigniant here, but the story doesn’t spend any time on it. After this, it’s over.

The biggest problem here is the writing. Sentences are very “curved”, that is to say, they never really quite know where the actual destination of the words actually lies, choosing instead to prolong and prolong until finding what they’re looking for.

See. Like that. The story has trouble getting to the point.

And it does that a lot, which detracts from what it’s trying to say. Especially when combined with the switches between time periods. I’m all for being challenged, but this is just obtuse without reason.

I’m also sad at missing out on an ending that could genuinely be something special, but it just isn’t there yet. It just adds to the aimlessness the story already suffered from.

So that leaves very little. Just some wandering through frozen England, which is fine, but not memorable in the least. Could have been much more. For now, it’s just the second time Vicki’s farewell has failed.

okay I remember listening to this for the first time 2 years ago and HATEING it but after listening to it tonight I love it and really runs with the Vicki n Steven n 1st tardis team which we where again robbed of As there actually one of the best tardis teams a very siblings and grandparent dynamic frostfire as a story is also quite as it cuts between the narrator older Vicki and the story with younger Vicki I never felt lost in the story as there’s cues Like the music and sound effects changing and indicating where you are anyway

I have mixed feelings on Frostfire, but have come around to it a bit. This is not a great audio series for people getting into Big Finish early on. When I first listened to it, I kind of tuned things out, and couldn't really grapple with the content.

It was only after becoming more familiar with the dynamics of early era Doctor Who featuring the First Doctor, Vicki, and Steven. After getting to know these character better, and getting more used to the style of Big Finish, I really enjoyed my second pass on this story. I always had a lot of love for Vicki and her time in the TARDIS, and I quite enjoyed her character here. The tragedy of her story and existence post-Doctor Who is really well done, especially knowing she did eventually seem to find happiness according to The Storyteller webcast.

Maureen O'Brien was pretty great here reprising her role as Vicki and doing the narration. Keith Drinkel's take on The Cinder less so, impacting my overall thoughts on the story and performances. I also think this story and The Cinder feels a little too similar to the X-Men's Phoenix, but the story and experience of Frostfire is fun enough it didn't bother me all that much. I do also think this story is a great introduction to the Companion Chronicles and it sets the tone for the series while giving the audience a sense of what they can expect out of these stories going forward.

A quick one today - I found this a real mixed bag. Kind of fun, but lacking quite severely in certain areas (spoilers ahead) - 3.5/5

I'm going to start with my biggest criticism of this story - why was it Jane Austen? She is a character who crops up quite a bit in the Whoniverse, and in the real world was quite an interesting person. The space she took up in this story could have been filled by anyone. They really didn't do anything with the fact that it was Austen - her existence in this story was pointless.

My other big gripe is that Ippolito, or as I called him in my notes, the sword guy, was just not an intriguing character. I could not get invested in him at all, and did not really get what he was doing in the story. What was his motivation? What role was he supposed to be playing? It was not very clear to me, and I definitely feel like that lack of development of his character lost the story something it really needed.

However, it's not all bad - they did a fantastic job telling a story like this with only two voice actors, and Vicki doing the voices of the Doctor and the others was great fun! Also, the gradual reveal of who Vicki was talking to was done really well - we were given just the right amount of information to figure it out ourselves, but in a way that it felt like it dawned on me without feeling like it was too obvious. The audio maintained a creepy tone with those sections that I really enjoyed - there was never any sense that this was 'getting old', for example. It made me feel uneasy in the right amount, the right way - those sections especially were very well written and performed.

So, this one wasn't for me, but that doesn't mean it didn't have some good elements, or that it's not worth a listen.