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TARDIS Guide

Overview

Released

Wednesday, June 14, 2023

Written by

James Goss

Cover Art by

Lee Johnson

Directed by

Ken Bentley

Runtime

60 minutes

Time Travel

Future

Story Arc (Potential Spoilers!)

Once and Future, Time War

Location (Potential Spoilers!)

The Final Gallery, Braxiatel Collection, Eye of Orion

Synopsis

Suffering the effects of degeneration, the Doctor heads towards the end of the universe in search of answers. Instead, he finds his daughter - Jenny - and an Artist whose works appear to mark the end of every world they touch.

The Doctor stabilises into his Fifth form to join forces with Jenny and the Curator to solve the mystery of the Final Gallery and the art it has collected.

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7 reviews

It's a great story, talking about some important questions, for example the fact that the Curator finds out that he was responsible for the cataclysms in this story.
Fifth Doctor and Jenny here have a great chemistry together, although at some point jokes about "Haha she is his irl daughter" get annoying - and good that they stop exactly when needed to proceed with interesting dialogues.
Colin Baker's Curator is amazing, now being the tired Artist, who tries to hold the art at the end of the universe. If the Doctor ever decides to retire at the end of his life, that's how it should be done.
It's a great story on it's own, but it is almost irrelevant to the overall tory arc. The Doctor immediately forgets everything that happened once he departs and then proceeds to the next story.
But I will lie if I say that I didn't love it. It is irrelevant, yet very enjoyable, heartwarming and just a good listen in general. If you want to listen to only one story from this anthology, pick this one, you won't regret. This one can be forgiven. Unlike the next one...


Five_Hundredth_Drax

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This review contains spoilers!

This is what an anniversary special should be: something that comments on how all things come to an end, or at least change. Hypocritical for a show that will never die? Perhaps. But eras of the show certainly do die. Runs come to a close. Arcs reach their conclusion. What a brilliant, beautiful idea from James Goss that the Curator should become the artist at the end of time, remembering the universe for us.

I LOVE the idea of the Curator appearing as any old Doctor. It should be a right of passage, a chance for actors who have moved through the role to consider their place in the story when they're old enough to look back on their time with it. Why shouldn't "revisiting the favorites" include them all?


jiffleball

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This review contains spoilers!

I'm just getting around to these Once and Future specials, but so far they really seem like something else.  Just a real trip for fans.  Sure, I understand the critique that Big Finish is a little guilty of just bashing together existing characters for stories like this.  I can't say it bothers me much, though.  Whatever Doylist philosophy one might feel about the matter, at the end of the day this is an audio with Peter Davison and Georgia Tennant playing father and daughter in-universe for Doctor Who - you can't tell me that isn't something.  I couldn't help but be won over by this story through that dynamic alone.

Then you have all these little bonuses.  It's delightful having Colin Baker as a future incarnation of the Curator.  The implications are fascinating as is the story at hand.  The whole idea that every world the Curator creates something on being destroyed was intriguing enough, and then it wound up being this pretty sophisticated story criticizing capitalism, the value of art, and even the nature of the universe.  The far future near the end of the universe is a neat time period we only ever occasionally touch on in Doctor Who, and it's great when we explore that idea a bit like we do here.  This was pretty great overall.  It wasn't the most moving or deep thing in the world, but it had a decent amount of depth for an anniversary special like this.  I would definitely recommend it.


dema1020

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This review contains spoilers!

Honestly, this one just frustrates me.

It's a pretty solid Story, even if the degenerated 5 takes a backseat in favor of Colin's Curator, who is the Highlight here. I almost wish this was a simple Exploration of the Curator and his love of Art, his Insecurity of being the reason so many Places get destroyed and so on.

This is genuinely great Story beat and as far as a Curator Story goes, this is pretty damn good I'd say, even if I really wish we fully delve into it. But well this is another Entry in the Fun yet VERY messy "Once and Future" and it's going to have a remix of Characters, so uhh.. Throw in Davison and the Doctor's Daughter!!!

I think Davison is amazing in the Role of the Doctor. And I really like the Doctor's Daughter as an Episode, the pairing makes sense, so much so that we already got it in BF's own 20th Anniversary Boxset. Here it feels like an Afterthought, they don't feel important, there are some nice Exchanges between the Curator and the Doctor but ehh.. That's kinda it?

I hate being critical about a Story with "What it could have been", but really I find this more interesting to discuss than what we ended up getting with this one.

Not at all bad, a VERY good Curator Story, a very "eh" Doctor Story. Overall I can't give it anything higher than 3, part of me is tempted to rate it higher, because the Highs are very high, but the Lows feel uninspiring and bring this Release down for me.


RandomJoke

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I would be lying if I said that those 4 stars are for a great story and not for the fun of having these characters interact. Not that the story itself is bad. It’s just ok. Most of it is just things happening (rob a bank, check out a gallery), until those things come together to continue the story. Though I find especially towards the end that there are some great moments, which help elevating it to a 4. So it’s not just lookit these guys being silly together.

But it is most of it.


Owen

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Quotes

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JENNY: Doctor – Dad? Um. Have I helped – like – fix whatever's wrong with you?

DOCTOR: No. But you have told me that whatever happens to me, that won't be the end.

JENNY: Is that the best I'm gonna get?

DOCTOR: You don't get the best from me. You get it from you.