Shave and a haircut

Like most of this season so far, I broadly enjoyed The Story & the Engine, despite not loving it. The concept of a barbershop in Lagos where a giant space spider is fed through stories sounds awesome, and it was admittedly fully engaging. Ncuti here also gave a good performance; I particularly liked his story of Belinda's days as a nurse. However, despite the great premise, this episode is let down by an absolute over-abundance of clunky exposition. The amount of explanations here is off the charts, and it hurt the pacing and flow of the story. Plus, I just found the Barber's plan to be fairly muddled and unclear when all was said and done. Still, I did enjoy most of this.

Side Note: I was seriously not expecting that Fugitive Doctor appearance! That was pretty fun; it was the first Doctor cameo that I didn't know going in.

Prerequisites: Season 1 (not Series 1)

I actually ended up liking Lucky Day quite a bit. It's no masterpiece, but it lacks many of the flaws I can point to in the previous episodes. The twist with Conrad genuinely surprised me, and while I think his heel turn was a little clumsy in a few ways (it works less when you consider that widespread alien invasions have happened quite a few times before), it also worked very well. As 73 Yards showed, Ruby works pretty well as a solo protagonist, and I liked her here. Plus, that scene with Conrad and the Doctor at the end might just be my favorite Ncuti moment so far. For once, he felt like a distinct character, and I really liked his anger.

I unfortunately had the reveal spoiled for me (thanks Instagram), but I might as well address the elephant in the room: yep, this is a sequel to Midnight. My feelings on that are complicated. On one hand, this is ultimately an enjoyable episode, and it'll stand as a relative high mark for the Fifteenth Doctor. On the other hand... that isn't exactly saying much at this point, and it utterly fails at even approaching how good Midnight itself is. For starters, I kinda think that this was retrofitted to be the Midnight creature; the rules it follows and how it behaves don't really match up at all. Other than that, we've got the standard RTD2 stuff: messy exposition, Ncuti crying, an excitable costume change, and uninteresting side characters. Still, for all that criticism, I did genuinely really like the horror here. I like it when Who gets dark, and the concepts here are fun to play with.

Lux is pretty good, although certainly not great. It's admittedly plagued by a lot of issues common to this era: bad expositional dialogue, a rather rushed third act, etc. Still, I really quite liked the concept here. Cumming is great, Mr. Ring-a-Ding looked great, and I quite liked the animated segments. Of course, that brings me to the elephant in the room: the fourth-wall breaking and the actual fans. On one hand, I found most of the dialogue to be pretty poor, and it felt almost question-begging in its assertions about the fandom. On the other, it was kinda sweet in an odd way, and seeing the Doctor physically come out of a tv was fun. Overall, this wasn't anything super amazing as an episode, but it's certainly a big step up from The Robot Revolution.

Prerequisites: None explicitly needed, although I'd recommend at least Boom to give some context.

The Robot Revolution, while definitively better than Space Babies in just about every respect, is still a fairly mediocre season opener. The performances and visuals are fine enough, if unremarkable, but honestly what I most enjoyed was Belinda herself. She wasn't exactly an example of a masterclass in character-work, but I found her quite refreshing. My biggest critique of Ruby Sunday is that I never felt like she had any conflict whatsoever with the Doctor. It made that Doctor-Companion relationship really boring, and I'm glad that it doesn't appear to be the case here. Other than that, the basic plot is... fine. It's got your standard Mrs. Flood cameo, clunky dialogue, and predictable third act twist that I've come to associate with this era of the show. I know this sounds pretty negative, but I don't hate RTD2. I just think it could (and should) be much better than it currently is.

New New Paradigm

Prerequisites: The previous 11DC audios, and Series 7 of New Who.

Victory of the Doctor is a fantastic conclusion to this range, and one of the most satisfying audios I've ever listened to. The initial plan against the Daleks is a fun one, and the scenarios the gang puts the Daleks through are fun to listen to. Afterwards, I really liked the scenes with Valerie and Roanna debating whether or not to kill the Doctor. This kind of thing is a great pinnacle of the various frustrations the Doctor has brought into people's lives up to this point, and I love the character conflict it brings. Then of course, the ending was clever enough to be entertaining, and the epilogue was excellent. Shaw did a great job with these characters, and the sendoff he gives them is one of the best. This ranks up there with some of my favorite New Who seasons finales, which is high praise.

Blightedness

Prerequisites: The previous 11DC audios, and Series 7 of New Who

The Last Stand of Miss Valarie Lockwood is amazing, and easily one of this range's best stories. It's epic, bombastic, and manages to both tie up a number of loose ends from the previous boxsets while also teeing up a great finale to follow. I absolutely adore a lot of individual moments here, but my favorites have to be the very beginning and end. Dudman's performance in both is extremely good, and it just elevates great writing even higher.

Paradigm of Evil

Prerequisites: The previous 11DC audios and Series 7 of New Who

Daleks Victorious is another great entry in this range, although it's probably (relatively) one of the weaker entries in this saga. For most of the runtime, it's a fairly standard, if well-done, Dalek base-under-siege story. On the plus side, it was very nice to see the Paradigm Daleks again; they were horrendously underutilized in the show proper. Seeing them have actual roles and begin to have fleshed-out functions was a great touch. I also appreciated a lot of the story beats on display; this audio does a great job of making you think that the heroes are going to win the day completely (and yes, I had totally forgotten what the title was). The last five minutes here are utterly fantastic; I love how the Daleks actually feel threatening now. That moment when they recover from the Yearn and manage to kill the entire population of Medrüth is truly harrowing, and I loved it. The Doctor's pure despair at the end is palpable. Honestly, my only real critique here (other than the very simplistic story of the first two acts) is the Yearn itself. As was the case in their previous story, I like the concept, but the vocal effects used are extremely garbled. It takes actual effort to decipher what they're saying at any given moment, which is extremely annoying when most of their dialogue is very plot relevant.

Email Job

Prerequisites: The previous 11DC audios and Series 7 of New Who

Didn't You Kill My Mother? is a strong opening to the boxset here, but not really close to this range's best (which is a bit odd, considering how much I love Dorney's work). It's got an intriguing setup, some pleasing Dorney trademark timey-wimeyness, and an excellent third act. I quite liked the reveal of who the consultant was; I didn't see that coming, and it has the potential for some great stories in the rest of the set.

Conversion Therapy

Prerequisites: The previous 11DC audios and Series 7 of New Who.

Sins of the Flesh pleasingly does live up to the hype, and I can confidently say that it's one of the best Cyberman stories I've heard in a long time. On audio specifically, the only story that likely surpasses it is Blood and Steel from the BSNAs, and that boxset is fantastic. Paralleling Cyber-conversion with actual conversion therapy feels like a subject that's both brilliant and obvious, and I'm happy that it was handled so well here. The subject matter is handled with grace, and there's some truly heartbreaking and uncomfortable dialogue sequences here. Of course, it's anything but subtle, but it's not trying to be. The Cybermen are legitimately interesting here, which is something I can't say for the majority of their appearances. This is some great stuff.