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DanDunn
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DanDunn has submitted 19 reviews and received 8 likes

Review of The Green Death by DanDunn

23 January 2025

This review contains spoilers!

We have the Season 10 finale The Green Death, the end of Pertwee’s fourth season and Jo’s final story. It’s your usual UNIT story setup where some new company has set up what appears to be a clean energy enterprise, but under the surface lies something sinister. But on this occasion it’s nothing alien, it’s just humans who’ve gone too far with their waste disposal, pumping all waste into the mines, creating a toxic slime that kills anyone who touches it, except a nest of maggots who begin to grow to alarming size, their bites carry to toxins from the slime and it’s only a matter of time before they grow into giant flies. Overseeing the whole operation is a man-made supercomputer called BOSS, who’s basically Hal 900 but with the sanity of Holly from Red Dwarf.

For Modern Who fans, think Arachnids in the UK from the Whittaker era, but longer and better. Though admittedly The Green Death has had its naysayers over the years for valid reasons. A lot of the effects, including the blue screening and the giant fly are in the worse half of Classic Who’s terrible effects, the story is a tad too long with some sequences that feel like they’re just trying to kill time, Jo leaving falls into the category of a companion falling in love and wanting to marry someone they only just met at the start of the story, and really at this point the whole UNIT formula was becoming a bit tired and played out.

All these are very valid, but they’re also countered by some of Classic Who’s best practical effects with the giant maggots, one of my favourite one-off villains in the BOSS who has one of the best voices of any Doctor Who villains, it’s a refreshing and bold take for the threat this time to be something that isn’t alien for once. We even get in rare form for Classic Who foreshadowing of the Doctor’s regeneration the following year, we get a sequence where he travels to Metabilus III to retrieve one of their crystals, something that seems so inconsequential but goes on to have huge ramifications later on. Jo’s decision to marry Cliff after only a few days knowing him (and he was unconscious for a portion of it) is far-fetched when it would’ve been fine if she’d just stay to begin her relationship. But the romance is better developed and more believable than how it was handled for other companions like Susan, Leela and especially Peri! And it does lead into one of my favourite endings and companion departures. After beginning their relationship on bad terms with the Doctor being frustrated with Jo’s clumsiness, the two formed one of the strongest bonds between a Doctor and companion, one of the closest in Classic Who to being akin to a romance, Jo even says that Cliff reminds her of a younger version of the Doctor, which is as close a confirmation as we can get. When she agrees to marry Cliff and leave with him to travel to the amazon, the Doctor shares some final heartfelt words with her and gifts her the Metabilus crystal, and then whilst everyone begins to celebrate, dance and sing, he stands away from the crowd, finishes his glass of champagne, then quietly leaves and drives off into the night. No tears, no speeches, no wailing music, just very simple but powerfully effective and above all subtle! Something Russel T. Davies could learn a thing or two from!


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Review of Spearhead from Space by DanDunn

23 January 2025

This review contains spoilers!

We come to the Third Doctor’s beginnings with Spearhead from Space. I consider Power of the Daleks to be the most important Doctor Who story of all time, but this would not be too far behind in that conversation either. Even though changing the Doctor’s appearance worked brilliantly with Patrick Troughton, attempting this a second time to prove it wasn’t a fluke was just as risky. Not only that but taking such a radical approach to the format of the show. From the start of this era, we’d be spending most of the time on present day Earth rather than out amongst time and space, the show would take on a much larger cast of regular characters, move to a colourised presentation, adopt a more action-based tone with clear influence from Quatermass, and lean heavier into themes and topics that reflected on the then-present-day culture of the 70s. Whether that be the introduction of the Silurians and addressing the theme of two differing societies unwilling to co-exist based on different form of prejudice, or Inferno which based itself on the Russian’s attempt to drill to the centre of the Earth that was happening at the same time.

I can’t imagine how much of a shock it must’ve been for fans coming in from the Second Doctor era being thrown into a new era, with so few recognisable elements carried over. Unlike Power of the Daleks that used the Doctor’s number one enemies to help ease the transition with the Second Doctor, Spearhead from Space almost feels like a completely different show with only the Brigadier and UNIT there to help provide some familiarity. Fortunately, not only was Spearhead from Space successful but it went on to become part of my all-time favourite year in the show’s history and makes for a perfect jumping on point for newcomers to Classic Who.

As an added bonus, due to some filming troubles behind the scenes where they weren’t able to film on their usual videotape, Spearhead from Space ended up being the only Doctor Who episode made on 16mm film, making this the most cinematic looking episode in the show’s history and one of the best looking overall.

The real strengths of this story come from establishing the new setting for Doctor Who going forward with the introduction to the Third Doctor, continuing from the end of his previous life having been sentenced to exile on Earth without the use of his TARDIS, beginning his long employment with the military investigation group UNIT led by the Brigadier by assisting them with the alien invasion of the week and bringing on board a companion that can almost match him as his intellectual equal. Enter Dr Liz Shaw played by the later Caroline John who unfortunately only stayed for the one season and thus never got the chance to properly travel in the TARDIS. Nonetheless despite her short stay, Liz quickly become one of my favourite companions and one of the most capable the Doctor’s ever met with her scientific expertise.

Perhaps the biggest risk when going into this story was the fact that they gave the responsibility of beginning the new era to writer Robert Holmes who previously had scripted two of the worst Doctor Who stories of all time with The Krotons and The Space Pirates. Thankfully in one fell swoop he wipes the stigma of those stories away with this episode and it would be the first of many top-notch stories from him, Holmes might just be the best writer the show ever had and stories like this demonstrate why.

Season 7 is notable for being the first season to rely entirely on original monsters, an approach that worked so well that two of them would go on to reappear in later years, one being the Silurians and from this story we have the Autons. Living plastic drones under the control of a collective intelligence called the Nestenes who plan to use the Autons to infiltrate and destroy the human race. The Autons would go on to appear the following season in the much weaker but solid sequel Terror of the Autons which mainly served to introduce the Master and then would not be seen until 2005 with the relaunch of Doctor Who in its first episode Rose. These are one of Doctor Who’s more terrifying monsters with their blank facial expressions, their relentless will to destroy and their near indestructability. It wouldn’t shock me at all to know that these things scared the daylights out of children in all three appearances. Particularly in this episode during one of Doctor Who’s most iconic scenes where the shop window dummies come to life and begin marching through London killing everyone in their path. A scene that was frankly terribly remade in Rose, for one thing the Autons in this story don’t just fire wildly at people off camera so that we don’t get to see anyone killed! Also, the Nestenes in this story are defined as having no proper form and are represented by their chilling puppet Channing, rather than just being a roaring CGI blob making faces at the camera.

Overall, one of the best Doctor intro stories of all time and in my mind, the story that sealed the deal on Doctor Who’s long term future having proven twice that the show can change lead actors.


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Review of Daughter of the Gods by DanDunn

23 January 2025

This review contains spoilers!

For our very best from the Second Doctor, we come to what I was certain was going the be the last of The Early Adventures considering the First Doctor’s move to The First Doctor Adventures and the fact that the Second Doctor would inevitably follow suit, which would make this series practically redundant. I was wrong however as the series released two more stories later on in 2021 but has had no news of any follow up so I guess that’s that for The Early Adventures. Frankly it’s a shame this story wasn’t the one to end The Early Adventures because it’s one hell of a finale and to me is my favourite multi-Doctor story of all time.

The story follows that the Second Doctor’s TARDIS collides with another TARDIS of the same appearance in the vortex, the resulting crash leaves the crew stranded on a planet under attack. But before the Doctor can step in to defend this world, he finds that he’s already on the case as his first incarnation along with Steven and Katarina of Troy are coordinating the defence and evacuation of the planet. But something is very wrong as the Second Doctor knows that Katarina never properly travelled with the First Doctor as she died on her very first trip. What’s more is that the consequences of the accident that brought both TARDIS crews to the same place are far worse than they can imagine as some old friends of theirs are slowly conquering the galaxy with their fully functioning time destructor.

This story draws very heavily on the events of The Dalek’s Master Plan, particularly the first half of it where Katarina, having joined the TARDIS in the previous story, made history by becoming the first companion to die in Doctor Who. That said I wouldn’t say it’s entirely necessary to see The Dalek’s Master Plan first to get the appropriate context as this audio does an excellent job of bringing the audience up to speed through the events and dialogue of the story.

Throughout The Early Adventures and in most Second Doctor audios up until 2022, the voice of the Second Doctor was provided by Jamie’s actor Frazer Hines, and it’s got to be said, Frazer Hines is the single best impersonator of the Second Doctor of all time, nobody can touch this man! From the inflections to the mannerisms, it honestly feels like you’re hearing Patrick Troughton’s voice. Shouldn’t come as a great shock given how they were close friends throughout their time on the show. Since 2022, the mantle has been passed on to Troughton’s son Michael who is great in his own right at capturing the spirit of his father, but Frazer Hines will always be the best.

So as the cover and premise suggests, this is a multi-Doctor story where the Second Doctor encounters his first incarnation, while multi-Doctor stories are rare in the show, Big Finish have used the advantage of having all the actors at their fingertips to do plenty of multi-Doctor stories playing about with different combinations. But maybe a little too much as while multi-Doctor stories are always fun and are an instant buy from me, they have admittedly lost that air of feeling special. Not to mention the more cynical reality that multi-Doctor stories tend to coast on the premise of the Doctor meeting other incarnations rather than tell a story of any depth. I mean in 2020 we had David Tennant and Tom Baker team up in a story to fight the Daleks, what’s the plot? Who are the other characters? Is there any compelling drama to this Doctor pairing? Who cares!!! It’s the Tenth and Fourth Doctors fighting Daleks, what else do you need!!! Which is fine, I enjoy that sort of thing but none of the multi-Doctor stories have ever managed to make it into my all-time favourites. That is except for this one where the Second and First Doctors meeting one another isn’t played off as a gimmick but rather the means of adding to the drama of the story where the Second Doctor knows how to fix the situation and set time on its correct course, but having learned what that will mean for Katarina, the First Doctor will not accept that. This leads to some excellent interactions between the two Doctors and the two TARDIS teams as they weigh up the choices of what to do next. Speaking of the companions, another common thread in multi-Doctor stories is that the companions, on the rare occasions they’re even involved, tend to be more of an afterthought, not much consideration is really put into the interplay between different TARDIS teams. But in this one the potential is given the treatment it deserves as Zoe, Jamie, Steven and Katarina have great chemistry with each other and show that the companions of different eras meeting one another can also make for some exciting character moments. You do of course get a lot of the entertaining and even funny back and forth moments with the two Doctors and how their egos clash with one another, particularly when they’re caught and interrogated by the Daleks which reminded me of the “Don’t call me Junior” bit from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where the two Jones’s had a full-on argument despite being held at gunpoint.

But the real star of this is Ajjaz Awad as Katarina, a character that despite making an impact in Doctor Who history, never had enough time to really make a connection with fans. Much like Sara Kingdom, it’s astounding how Big Finish have found a way to further develop such a short-lived character. Both writer David K. Barnes and Ajjaz deserve commending for fleshing out Katarina and making her inevitable fate all the more tragic. As well as showing what she means to the Doctor from the Second Doctor’s regret for losing her and the First Doctor’s guilt for how she came to join the TARDIS in the first place.

The two Early Adventures stories that followed in 2021 were good but this really should’ve been the proper finale to the series. There’s no better way of concluding a series that helped bring the show of the 60s back to life, Daughter of the Gods is a true love letter to the show in its infant years and is one of my all-time favourite Doctor Who stories.


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Review of The War Games by DanDunn

23 January 2025

This review contains spoilers!

We now come to my second place choice for the best stories of the Second Doctor with his ten-part epic regeneration story, The War Games! None of which are missing, which is a bloody miracle, I think being Troughton’s final episode and possibly the final episode of the show entirely (given how they were not yet given the greenlight on Season 7) awarded it special treatment.

Now I will say that The War Games is not every fan’s cup of tea, as you read correctly, it is ten parts, which is over four hours long!!! So, if you’re not accustomed to Classic Who’s longer length stories then this will likely burn you out. Also, the villain’s plans for conquering the galaxy and why they’re using humans from various historical wars is admittedly silly. I don’t think they’d have got very far with Romans and WWI soldiers against…well…. ANY invading monsters the Doctor’s had to save more advanced humans from!!! Also, how many thousands of soldiers were they prepared to lose in their experiment before deciding to begin their conquest of the galaxy???

It introduces the show’s second antagonistic Time Lord, the War Chief, though it has been suggested he may have been an earlier incarnation of the Master (if not an inspiration for the Master) which they heavily leaned into with the recent colourised version. It is curious that this character has never reappeared in Doctor Who, both the show and Big Finish, not even been mentioned! I know he’s killed in this but since when has that ever stopped a returning villain?

While insanely long, I wouldn’t say that things could’ve been cut from it either, every episode has its purpose and introduces a new piece of the puzzle as the story slowly builds from what starts off as a pure historical to a grand conclusion. Which in itself is what earns this the second place in the Second Doctor’s best. The story finally reveals the name of the Doctor’s species, the Time Lords, a race that the Doctor is desperately afraid of, yet when faced with the impossible task of returning thousands of abducted soldiers home to their correct points in time, the Doctor is left with no choice but to call on his people for help. What follows in part 10 is some of the best 25 minutes of Doctor Who ever made which I have to get into major spoilers for, so you’ve been warned.

The Time Lords with little effort take control of the Doctor’s TARDIS as he attempts to escape and bring him back to his home world (though the name Gallifrey wouldn’t be introduced for another 5 years), a place where up until this point we’d only had fleeting references of but was now becoming a reality onscreen. The Time Lords with the merest thought place a forcefield around the villain’s planet and erase the villains themselves from history. Then for an encore they place the Doctor on trial for breaking their laws of non-interference while sending his companions back home with their memories wiped of ever travelling with him. The Doctor is found guilty and is sentenced to exile on Earth with his knowledge of operating the TARDIS taken away from him, and to make matters worse they sentence his current incarnation to death in the trippiest regeneration the show’s ever done. One thing I loved about the regenerations of Classic Who was each one was different, they were stylised and unique, now in Modern Who they just keep using the same crappy special effect.

This finale is one massive jaw-dropping ending to the Second Doctor’s life and as perfect an introduction to the Time Lords as you can get; all-powerful techno-gods whom the Doctor is powerless and terrified of! It’s just a pity the Time Lords went from 10 to 0 from here on out, becoming so useless and pathetic to the point where anyone can just waltz in and take over/destroy them, including the Doctor, which is exactly what happens over and over again!!! In this story there’s no stupid robes, no overly bureaucratic political nonsense, no presidents, no CIA, no outsiders living in barns, no relying on the Doctor for help, it’s just a race of god-like beings who operate in ways beyond our comprehension. There wouldn’t have even been a Time War with these particular Time Lords! But I have come to accept that that’s just the way things are in the show now and the Time Lords will never reach these heights ever again.

Of course, The War Games has gone on to have a further impact on the Second Doctor’s legacy with the ending showing the Second Doctor begin his regeneration but never showing the full transformation. This would be the first seed of an interesting fan theory that properly grew during Troughton’s two returns in the 80s. First The Five Doctors where he’s travelling alone and mentions Jamie and Zoe being returned home with their memoires wiped (which happened moments before his regeneration) and then The Two Doctors where the Doctor and Jamie are working for the Time Lords when throughout his entire life the Second Doctor was avoiding them like the plague. Now you can put this down to the writers just not having a good memory of the events of the Second Doctor’s life as it had been over a decade ago and there were no repeats. But it paved way for one of the best fan concepts in Doctor Who, an idea that was so popular it even got its own page on the old Doctor Who website, Season 6B. The idea that in the midst of his forced regeneration, the Second Doctor’s execution has halted by the Time Lord secret service who decided to employ him as an agent, with an older Jamie returned to him with his memories restored. Then once his work was finished the secret service wiped his memories and sent him back to his execution. It’s not perfect, but the theory does help make sense of the continuity slip ups in The Five & Two Doctors. Big Finish then decided in 2022 to go all out with this theory with their start to The Second Doctor Adventures with a new series that began with Beyond War Games.

The War Games is one massive finale for the Second Doctor, debatable if it is one of his best as it’s certainly not for everyone, but I’m not exaggerating when I say that final episode is one of Doctor Who’s best content.


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Review of Father Figure by DanDunn

22 January 2025

This review contains spoilers!

A surprising mixture of moving and bizarre way of a companion grieving the loss of a family member as Victoria in the immediate aftermath of The Web of Fear decides to visit a local cemetery where her mother is buried. When she arrives she comes face to face with what at first she believes is her father back from the dead only to quickly realise to her horror that the Daleks left one final trap for the Doctor and Victoria from beyond the grave. Again, very moving with Victoria coming to terms with losing her parents and saying goodbye to her father one final time, and just bizarre having a killer robot wait over a hundred years to enact a long dead revenge scheme.


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Review of That Time I Nearly Destroyed the World Whilst Looking for a Dress by DanDunn

21 January 2025

This review contains spoilers!

This kind of goes to what I was saying with the Tales of the TARDIS mini-series and just the whole showcasing the companions post travels living these wonderful lives, which is fine, I'm not against that, but I also think it's kind of cheesy that every companion of the Doctor leaves and become these great world leaders, setting up charities or travelling the world fighting injustice. So much so to the point where when I read a story like this, I find it kind of refreshing having the Second Doctor's first companions Ben & Polly leave and just go on to live either very normal and uneventful lives like Ben owning a pub, or very flawed lives like Polly becoming a model and then having a career in music, going from one marriage to another and becoming very vain about her looks. This short story focuses more on Polly as we her life decades after having left the Doctor and all the mistakes she's made and suddenly she's flung through different points in time, encountering different Doctors and changing history to such a cataclysmic extent all to find the perfect dress. The actual plot of the story isn't even that significant, it even has a quick fix solution that's dealt with "offscreen". It's just more about Polly and how much she's changed from the kind and innocent character from her early travels, and it has a wonderfully touching ending that gives a cool nod to the Season 6B whilst having Polly and Ben find one another again and so many years after their adventures and the lives they've lived, finally admit their feelings for one another. A great way to cap off the Past Tense collection of short trips


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Review of The Prints of Denmark by DanDunn

20 January 2025

This review contains spoilers!

We have The Prints of Denmark from the Second Doctor’s third volume of the Companion Chronicles box sets, as of a few months ago, it was the last release of The Companion Chronicles, a series originally was meant to conclude in 2020 but production issues (COVID most likely) pushed it back to 2022. Overall it's a great box set and up until the announcement of the next release it would've served as a great conclusion to one of Big Finish's longest running series'

The Prints of Denmark sees Zoe wander off from the Doctor and Jamie as they’re exploring a video library of unique recordings over the centuries. She ends up bumping into another time traveller who offers her the opportunity to see history without the randomness of travelling in the Doctor’s TARDIS. As they travel and she observes the past, she begins to notice anachronisms such as electric lamps and photography in the middle ages, but her worries are confirmed when she’s taken to see the premiere of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, live on the big screen! All manipulated by her fellow traveller, a certain meddling Monk.

This is the first in my reviews to feature the renegade Time Lord known as the Monk, a title he picked up in his very first meeting with the Doctor. The Monk holds the accolade of being the first antagonistic Time Lord in Doctor Who history, long before the Master we had The Time Meddler from Season 2 where the First Doctor encountered one of his own people disguised as a Monk in 1066 who was plotting to change the outcome of the Battle of Hastings. Why? Mainly for sh*ts and giggles! The Monk’s whole deal is that he considers history to be one massive toy room for him to play about with, he’s a Time Lord who’s not exactly evil like the Master or the Rani, or even that dangerous, but he’s someone with no cares or responsibilities for preserving the natural course of time. Onscreen the Monk only appeared twice in the show, in fact he’s also the first individual villain in Doctor Who history to come back for a rematch where after being stranded in 1066 and vowing revenge on the Doctor, the Monk returned the following year in the twelve part epic The Dalek’s Master Plan where he briefly tangled with both the Doctor and the Daleks before being chased away. To date the Toymaker holds the record for the longest gap between appearances in the show for a former villain, but it’s only a matter of time before that record gets shattered mark my words.

The Monk wouldn’t appear again in Doctor Who until 2010 when Big Finish brought back the character for the Eighth Doctor Adventures, there he was voiced by Graeme Garden, a few years later he was recast as Rufus Hound who’s played the Monk ever since and has encountered almost every other Doctor. In 2021 they also introduced a female incarnation called the Nun voiced by Gemma Whelan (Yara Greyjoy from Game of Thrones) who faced off against the Tenth Doctor. The Monk’s a great villain and I’m counting the years until he’s brought back onscreen.

The Prints of Denmark is the quintessential Monk story as it encapsulates everything about his character, changing history to such an extreme degree, but not for reasons of malevolence or domination, but rather for his own childish amusement and having a friend of the Doctor’s to mock and show off to. Rufus Hound and Wendy Padbury work brilliantly off one another with Zoe having to play the Monk at his own game to try and set history back on track as we get some creative and funny descriptions of how history is affected by the early invention of television (I never knew I would want a Kanye West all rap version of Hamlet so badly!) If your unfamiliar with the Monk, this is an ideal listen to get acquainted.


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Review of The Mind Robber (TOTT version) by DanDunn

16 January 2025

I'm usually not a huge fan of these recent Classic Who DVD trailers and Tales of the TARDIS shorts, not to say they're bad at all, it is always wonderful seeing the old actors for the companions and even the Doctors show up for like a mini story hyping up the main story/season you're about to watch, they are what they are in being these overly happy and emotional shorts, I'm just not a fan of the idea of making them canon with the show, or even Big Finish and how they seem to be derailing a lot of previous projects. Case and point the recent Trials of a Time Lord seemingly forgetting Peri's second travels with the Sixth Doctor because apparently it's actually wonderful that Peri remained as a queen married to King Brian Blessed and not something that was utterly ridiculed by fans and even Nicola Bryant.

But this short for The Mind Robber I've no complaints about, Jamie and Zoe are two of my favourites and seeing Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury together again just really brings warm feelings to my heart. It has a bit of that sappy fairy-tale logic with Zoe saying all they have to do is close their eyes and they'll remember their travels with the Doctor but I appreciate it just leaves it as a suggestion


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Review of The Enemy of the World by DanDunn

16 January 2025

This review contains spoilers!

We now come to a story that at one point would never have been considered as one of Troughton’s best. After a long period of five out of six episodes being missing and the majority of the fanbase having a negative overview as it seemed from the audio that The Enemy of the World was very boring, miraculously all missing episodes were discovered with the footage intact in 2013. When this story finally got a DVD release you have never seen such a change in opinion quite like this story as the fans seemed to look upon this story in a more positive light now that the footage had been restored. What was once presumed to be a very dull and overlong six-parter turned out to be one of the most well directed and well performed stories of the Second Doctor era.

Troughton brings what is arguably his best performance in Doctor Who as not just the Doctor. The story sees the Doctor in the midst of a plot to bring down a man who’s determined to be dictator of the world, interestingly enough though the man in question, Salamander, looks exactly like the Doctor, which gives his enemies the perfect opportunity to have an impersonator to expose Salamander for the villain he is.

Troughton may not be my favourite Doctor, but he is quite possibly the most talented actor to ever play the Doctor; in this story he delivers a tour de force performance as the Doctor, the villain, the Doctor impersonating the villain and the villain impersonating the Doctor. Sometimes most of which in the same scene! What really sells this premise is the fact that Troughton slips so seamlessly into his other role as Salamander to the point where it doesn’t just feel like a cheap doppelganger story, you really buy into this other character he plays, especially in scenes where the Doctor impersonates Salamander with such confidence but with a slight hint of secrecy in his mannerisms. William Hartnell really was right about Troughton being “the one man in England who can take over”, he’s just incredible in this story.

The Enemy of the World has often been described as Doctor Who being a 007 film and that’s honestly an accurate statement as this features plenty of espionage, characters with their own duplicitous motives, more focus on action and less sci-fi and a literal supervillain with a frankly ridiculous method of trying to rule the world. The story does admittedly go a little out there in it’s second half with the reveal of how Salamander is planning to take over the world but it is in the same spirit as a James Bond film so I can’t fault it for that. There’s also the accidental hilarity of this story taking place in pre-2018, which makes for a fun game to play on all the things that we of course had pre-2018 but missed the headlines on, like rockets used as public transport! I guess they just didn’t think the show would make it that far.

The Enemy of the World is very different from any other Doctor Who story, it’s neither sci-fi focused or a pure historical, but rather a political action thriller which may throw fans off a bit but with some great directing and performances, not just from Troughton but from an excellent side cast as well, this makes for a fun viewing and I’m happy it got reappraised for the better on its fully restored release. I can’t speak for what this was like with only the audio and tele-snaps as I missed out on that and of course having the footage missing doesn’t ruin other stories from the 60s that suffered a similar fate, and just because the footage is found and restored doesn’t mean the overall opinion will change drastically, but The Enemy of the World proved to be the acceptation to that.


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Review of Second Chances by DanDunn

16 January 2025

This review contains spoilers!

We come to Second Chances from Big Finish’s Companion Chronicles series, in fact the last of the monthly output of single releases for the series. From 2014 onwards the series moved to four story box sets released yearly up until 2019 and only focused on the First and Second Doctors, we had a recent third box set for the Second Doctor back in 2022 which seemed to indicate the end of the series, that was until late last year when Big Finnish announced the series return in 2025 with a fourth box set for the First Doctor.

Second Chances as well as concluding the series’ monthly output also concludes a long running story arc around its lead Zoe Herriot which began as far back as the series beginning. Where Zoe’s memories of travelling in the TARDIS gradually return piece by piece and has drawn attention from “The Company”, which is fiction terms when a place is called “The Company” it always means EVIL!!!!! Over the course of a few stories “The Company” holds Zoe prisoner and tries to use her extracted memories to find the secret of an alien species she'd previously encountered.

Which brings us to this story where Zoe remembers a traumatic event where she failed to prevent the destruction of a space station at the hands of a deadly virus. But is then shocked to discover that the event from her perspective is about to happen very soon and now she finds herself with a second chance to rewrite one of her greatest mistakes. But of course, “The Company” want something from her in return.

There are references and returning characters from the previous stories linking to Zoe’s plight against “The Company” but fortunately the story does allow you to listen and be able to catch on to the events of the story arc and understand the characters and their motivations, which is rare for a conclusion to a story arc. Wendy Padbury delivers her best performance as Zoe from two different points her life in a story that unlike most of The Companion Chronicles focuses more on the older version than the one from memory as she tries in vain to change the events of her past. The story conveys excellently the theme of regret and what you would do for a second chance at things, not just from Zoe but from the villain as well who is well developed through some short and simple but effective flashbacks. It does go for a status quo ending with Zoe and her memories of the Doctor being wiped by the Time Lords but aside from that this is a great ending for Zoe’s story in the Doctor Who universe. Well worth a listen even without the prior context of its predecessors.


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