There's nothing special about The Wishing Beast, but I do appreciate it being a three-parter. The Doctor and Mel meet too kooky old ladies who turn out to be luring people to evilly turn into ghosts to feed and support their younger brother who has been turned into a dragon monster. The ladies are not terribly interesting, and we've seen that trope before. The Doctor also has a tearful goodbye to Mel as he supposedly sacrifices himself, but come on, we know the Doctor's not going to be bested by two old women and a vacuum cleaner. Overall, it's totally fine but forgettable. Also does feel very much in the 'house style' of the 2006-2009 era of Big Finish.

It's been a few years since I've listened to this one, but dropping by with a review: this story is absolutely phenomenal. An incredible psychological examination of Davros underpinned by a tour de force from Terry Molloy. This is one of Big Finish's best, and pairing him with Colin Baker's Doctor was the right alchemy.

The Sixth Doctor and Davros are just a fantastic match for each other. This is the third meeting I've heard on audio and all three have been great stories. Terry Molloy is such a good actor, and infuses Davros with the right amount of evil and morals. Davros stands as the definitive work on the character, but this is another excellent showing. (A tiny note on the Davros redesign controversy - the Doctor does say once you see how hideous Davros is on the outside Mel will realize he's evil...not ideal).

Mel features prominently here as she is given a love interest and also gets to put her computer programming skills to work. Davros has stumbled upon Mechanoids and is putting dead human parts in them to create the titular Juggernauts. He's also disguised himself as a doddering professor. Mel is so horrified at him by the end of the story she leaves the Mechanoids to kill him, but naturally Davros survives (only to self-destruct even though we know he survives - weird call).

All around great and fun performances and character development for largely Mel and a bit for Davros too. Good stuff!

Plot-wise, a 3.5/5, but the unique atmosphere earns it another half star. The first episode in particular is spellbinding as the Doctor finds himself at a cabaret club in 1930s Berlin. My only previous Iris experiences were in the Excelis saga where I found her quite annoying honestly. Hear she's used in smaller doses and fits the overall vibe of the story. I wasn't expected the twist that this was Iris' Valeyard story. It was a bit hard to keep up with the exact machinations of everything, but the frame narrative and overall vibes were sublime. Fun listen after the Iris/6 reunion 22 years on was announced recently.

Tom Baker is now in his settled form in this story, and what a delight it is. This is a moody, atmospheric story, that keeps up the mystery and always finds ways to change the story. We go from there being no crew members and finding the dead Wirrn to introducing the crew and then Noah is taken over by the Wirrn. Then two more people are revived, and one is killed off quickly. Harry is trying to be heroic but is bumbling and sexist, and Sarah Jane is put through it with the Doctor talking her down to get her angry enough to persevere. The Tom Baker era is in full swing!

A perfectly fine little story with the Doctor thinking about how much he misses Ruby. Not exactly new ground for a Doctor and companion, but there's nothing inherently wrong with the story.

It was bound to happen eventually: a release in the 3DAs that was not an absolute banger of a boxset. Brain Drain sets up a conference in Scotland that the Doctor accompanies Liz and the Brigadier to extremely early in their time together. Then the story makes the bold choice to take the Doctor out of the equation for a third of the story. We know that a man, Linus, is hearing his 'father' in his brain who is an evil alien, we as viewers learn this very quickly and it takes a long time for the protagonists to catch up to what is obvious to us. Even then we don't get that much info on the villain...because it's an alien the Third Doctor will defeat in the future but we haven't met yet either as an audience. The plot is too predictable for the audience, and not enough for the Doctor. I also felt like Liz was weirdly underdeveloped in this, I know it's the beginning of Season 7 but I remember her being great in Intelligence for War. Finally, yes the alien leads to people having dementia, but it's not like it's responsible for all dementia just two people's so I don't see it as tasteless as some others did. Fingers crossed the fall set with undoubtedly Sarah Jane gets the range back to its usual sterling form. This story does have one of my all time favorite covers though! Gorgeous!

Unfortunately this one just did not grab me at all. I think it throws way too many things at the wall, and immediately you are confronted with learning about a very alien society and have  cavalcade of different characters you need to keep track of. Without that initial buy in, I was struggling to stay focused reading and really care about what was going on. The alien world was cool when I could understand it, but this one wasn't for me. (The villain also came sort of out of nowhere and was handled with far too easily)

There's a comic where Sarah Jane and K9 go to Egypt and find an extant colony of both Silurians and Sea Devils that are alive and well? Longer than the usual back-up strips, there is some good dialogue for Sarah Jane and some funny lines we get with K9. It's a suitably grand note to end the back-up strips on, but again it's nothing special. Maybe we could've used more Sarah Jane in comics?

Relatively generic, as the Freefall Warriors take on a Skeletor-like arch nemesis of theirs. Watch out for asteroid belts!