I’ve definitely recently been in the habit of putting on an audio from my backlog and I’ve been getting through a lot of really quality stuff, but a lot of the tame, milder, more forgettable stories are the “worst” of big finish outside of a few outliers like a Nekromanteia. Especially when big finish costs this much, it’s a real shame when a play is in one ear and out the other. I got this on sale last week and it’s really nothing special. I like the foreshadowing and it’s a Cybermen story that’s a meta homage to the Cybermen, so like, that’s neat! But I gotta tell ya, I’m not going to remember this play.  I’m going to remember feeling excitement and comfy but couldn’t tell you much else, but for plays like this one, I find it really hard to critique or remember. I had a great time listening to it, as I always do listening to big finish, but I doubt I could ever hold a conversation about the secrets of telos (or 50% of big finish I listen to). I am casting this review out into the ether as the only proof that I ever even thought about the secrets of telos. 6/10

This is part of a series of reviews of Doctor Who in chronological timeline order.

Previous Story: The Children of Seth

This is the second sequel to The Tomb of the Cybermen that Big Finish have done, luckily it's much better than the other. This being an earlier Doctor, unaware of Adric's death makes for some interesting tension in this story with Tegan and Nyssa having to dart around any of the Doctor's questions about his future.

Honestly, I was fairly surprised that they told the Doctor in the end, it makes me wonder what the implications are and if the reason the Doctor seemed so defeated at the end of Earthshock was because he knew how it would play out. Regardless of those elements though, this was a fairly good Cyberman story on it's own and I thought the 80s TARDIS team meshed really well with the 60s Cybermen.

No matter how cool I think this particular 60s Cyberman voice is, it's very difficult to understand both in this story and the original. Without subtitles you're better off just guessing what they're saying at certain points. In regards to the original story, it really feels like they saw how many people survived The Tomb of the Cybermen and decided that was too many. And here I was  under the impression that the crew all survived afterwards.

Still, it's a great story, definitely better than the other one and I'm really curious to hear how this is all wrapped up.

Next Story: Aquitaine

This story had no business being this good. I was expecting a straight forward fan service story, but was met with something much better than that.

Setting the story off of Telos was the smartest move, a few returning characters. A perfect blend of 80's and 60's Cybermen stories. The action of the 80s, and the ooky-spooky space fairing of the 60s.

At times it's very difficult to understand the Cybermen's voices, so I just kind of gave up and went off of context clues.

All of the Fifth Doctor's Big Finish outings find it hard not to bring up Adric, to the point where it's kind of comical. We get it! They didn't discuss it on the show. But it's getting a bit much haha. Well handled in this story though!