This was my first story featuring the Eminence, who is quite a creepy villain! Very much of the Great Intelligence mold, a formless intelligence, but one that is quite effectively unsettling! Caskets popping up spreading gas everywhere turning people into Eminence zombies. The story explains enough of the Doctor's previous encounter, though I was surprised the Eminence was powerful enough to still be in his mind.

This story isn't as much about the Eminence as it is about society falling apart in the aftermath of a brutal war, and many references made to the rich elites on Earth. There are interspersed propaganda new bulletins, and the plot involves at first a collapsing tower the Doctor and Mel land in and ends in a seed vault on Earth. This story goes places! The Eminence's plan of 'starve everyone' seems to fail pretty spectacularly once they just find more seeds, really shouldn't have withdrew your warriors, dummy.

The ending makes clear the Eminence is still out there, so we'll see if its plan makes more sense then.

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

Previous Story: Spaceport Fear

After hearing so much about the botched release dates of stories with the Eminence I realise I'm probably one of the few people to actually be doing them in order on their first try. Loosely following from Destroy the Infinite (from the Doctor's perspective specifically, not the universe's) this story is another fun outing for the Eminence. On it's own the Eminence is not the most interesting of villains but it has a brilliantly chilling voice and the stakes always feel high.

This story is a really fun one, the worldbuilding in particular stands out. All the characters feel dynamic and interesting and it was genuinely sad when they died (especially in Barlow's case). The story does take a while to get going admittedly and it also gets resolved annoyingly quickly considering how much they built up the threat of the Eminence but nonetheless it's an enjoyable listen all the way through.

Next Story: Mind of the Hodiac

I have a vague remembrance of the Eminence from the 8DAs and it took me an embarrassingly long time to put together that that Eminence and this one are the same monster. That said, I can't remember very much of what the Eminence even did in the 8DAs, so in that way, it was good that this story predates the 8DAs, so it explained the concept of the Infinite Warriors and gaseous intelligence completely. Which is great if you're forgetful, like me.

This episode takes us to a tower, which has to be destroyed to get rid of the last of the Eminence, which humanity had been at war with. The plan the Eminence constructs when the Doctor shows up, is to possess him and use him to infect the seed banks of Earth, so all of humanity could be infected and turn into Infinite Warriors. Because, in a 4DA released after this, it turns out the Fourth Doctor was already possessed before, meaning Six had a trace of Eminience in him still.

Big Finish. We love making sense...

Anyway, I did enjoy this episode - it wasn't anything particularly hard, high concept, or complicated, but it was a fun listen and I liked the way the seed banks were pivotal to the plot. I also enjoyed the constant updates from the newscaster, who would go on to be named in the 8DAs as Casey Carraway. It never fails to amuse (and frustrate, and delight) me that no matter how much you think you know about Big Finish, there's always some story somewhere that you knew nothing about that connects to the rest of the BF universe and recontextualises everything in a throwaway line or unnamed minor character. We love stories, indeed.