As I suspected, this is more a coda than a finale, but I think viewing it as that made it work really nicely.

There's a lot of lovely character stuff in here, Andy running a zoom quiz for the TARDIS Team, Liv working on the front lines, the clapping for the NHS, the loss, the joy, the new year. This felt very authentic to the real 2020, which I think is both a benefit and a detriment.

The loss of two members of the extended cast is almost glossed over, but then this is covering a year, it does make some sense, and honestly that's kind of how that year was sometimes, sometimes terrible things happened, and you had to just keep soldiering on.

I don't know, it's a really weird one. I think there's something to be said for portraying the pandemic in this sort of story, but I think there's also something to be said for not doing it, almost cheapening it, I'm really not sure where I stand on that.

But the character focus does work for me, and I think it's a very fitting coda to the series (I just wish that sets 2/3/4 were more like set 1)

One last thing I do know is that this is going to be very frustrating to add to the Torchwood Timeline lmao

I adore it when through prose we get to see into the heads of characters that we don't get to see the perspectives of in the main show, and that's exactly what this story is.

The insights into Davros' mind are brilliant, and pairing him up with Eleven for these stories is a stroke of genius. His thoughts about The Daleks, hearing how he sees them as his kids is just great, the moments where he talks about knowing the true feelings of the daleks, how they can only feel hate, but how he sees more emotion than that, and you can't quite tell how much of it is delusion and how much is maybe true, maybe they can only hate but maybe there's varying levels in it. The but where he talks about how the daleks would be a lot calmer if everyone else would just die as well was great, and the choice to have daleks fight krillitane, almost exact opposites, was spectacular.

And then the ending, The Doctor's plan to prove to Davros that 'Dalek' can mean something else if he makes it do so, the daleks blowing themselves up and leaving Davros, never to call on him again. The fact that he almost considers The Doctor's offer until The Daleks call him one last time for the Time War.

It's just another great character piece.

What an ending. Wow, just wow.

This story starts off with a bang (pun intended) with the explosion at the academy, a set piece that's done brilliantly. Insurgency showed us the lives of those at the academy, and how it's all coming to ruin, now Imperiatrix doubles down on that. We get a brilliant peek into how most gallifreyans feel about Romana at the moment before the explosion through the use of a reporter talking about what's just happened, a great way to bring together the threads from Insurgency.

The different responses to it as well and the politicing that comes from it, everyone trying to spin it their own way, is great. Darkel is genuinely vile, saying the explosion wasn't a major incident because it was aliens affected, not gallifreyans, but it's just so so good.

I hadn't really gone into it before, but John Leeson does an incredible job in these stories, sleeper star of them to be honest. The difference in his voice when he's playing Pandora-K9 as opposed to regular K9 is just great... And now he's gone (not really but still). K9 is dead, and K9 is allied with Pandora :CCCC

Aftermath of Andred's unceremonious death is also just superb. In Insurgency you're almost starting to like him again, it seems like there's a chance his relationship could be fixed, which makes Leela's response all the more heartbreaking. Her talking to his body, vowing revenge, just, god, it really does just hit. That's the scene that brings this up from a 9 to a 10 for me.

And Lalla Ward's Acting here. It's just spectacular. I think Romana's heel turn to becoming imperiatrix could have felt out of nowhere, even with the setup and stakes against her, but Lalla Ward ***kills*** it. The Fury of a Time Lord is a phrase that's usually only really applied to The Doctor, but seeing it channeled through someone else here it spectacular.

The twist about who was behind the bombing was also fun, and the way it's done. It's right there in your face at the start of the story, but you don't think about it for even a second until it's brought back later.

Narvin is great here as well. They talk about it in the interviews as well, but yeah, you can really tell, especially in this story, where his loyalties lie. He hates Romana, but his loyalty is to Gallifrey, and Romana is what's best for it at the moment. He risks his life to save her despite some of this mess being his fault, and it's just brilliant.

And then that cliffhanger. A Gallifreyan civil war. Romana 1's reappearance as Pandora.

Bring on Season 3!

I really wanted to like Stranded you know. I really did. I absolutely adored the first boxset, the second kind of wasn't for me but I loved what it was trying to do, the third started going a bit too far, and here it's pretty much finished (the last story seems to be almost more of an epilogue than full story, this pretty much wrapped everything up) but all I can think is... 'meh'.

In theory, again, I think what this episode is trying to do is great, bringing our core cast of six (Eight, Helen, Liv, Tanya, Andy, Robin) together, guided by an almost mentor figure in The Curator, walking through the ghost of the core setting of the story so far. Having our characters experience echoes of Baker Street is a lovely way to cap things off, brief glimpses into the lives of the other residents as we draw to a close. It's really really nice.... in theory.

In practice, we havent' had a story with the action centred on present day Baker Street since what, Divine Intervention all the way back in Stranded 1? Even then it was more spread out, I think Must-See TV was the last story to really focus on that setting, and that was ten stories back. There's a similar problem for the test of the cast outside that core six as well. The last story that focused on Ron was Snow in Stranded 3, then you have to go back to Stranded 2 for the last stories focusing on Tony, Aisha, and Zakia.

If Stranded focused more as a series on those other members of the side cast, and was more centred on Baker Street itself, I think this would hit so so much harder, but as it is, it doesn't.

And then there's the resolution. The side of things with Eight and Robin works, I think it could've had more emotion to it, but generally solving the multi-boxset problem by sitting down and trying to empathise, figuring out what you can do rather than trying to stop things that have happened or whatever, changing the future through kindness. That's a Stranded ending for the story, and I really like it...

Now the keys on the other hand, again, I think it could work if more attention and focus had been given to the keys themselves before this set, but as it is... meh. The Doctor and Robin are gone, but they've both got their magic keys, and we've all got our magic keys, so maybe because we've got more magic keys here, we can use them to summon The Doctor and Robin back, and hey, lets add the TARDIS keys to the summoning circle because they're also magic connected to time as space and that too.

It just.

I don't know.

I really wanted to like this story.

Get Andy is one of the Doctor Who stories I've listened to.

I joke but like, I don't have much to say, Stranded 4 just isn't doing all that much for me so far it seems. There's some interesting ideas in here, the scenes with Andy and Mr Bird, walking across a war-torn earth, unable to tell where or when they are exactly, are pretty good, I'm always a fan of more Andy, and I think Him and Bird work well together. In the commentary there's mention that this was an attempt at mirroring refugee stories with this, and while I can see some of the comparisons, it just doesn't work as one for me. At the very least to tell this kind of story, when you've got such a diverse expanded cast, multiple gay characters, people of colour, a trans character, I don't think it makes sense to make the focus point of that story your basically one cis straight white man (there's argument to be had over Andy potentially being Bi from Torchwood stuff, but at the very least it's not touched on at all in Stranded, and is more hints than anything confirmed).

Then there's also the side of things with Eight's slow death in space. It's an interesting character exploration, but again, they were talking on the commentary about this section being influenced by peoples experiences of a lonely death during covid, which just doesnt' really work as a point of comparison at all. He saw his friends just an hour or so ago, and he's got the TARDIS reconstructions of them to comfort him.

I think that's a lot of my problem with this, I get what they were going for, but they just missed the mark in ways that almost feel too obvious.

The scene towards the end with Liv, Helen, and Andy though, now that did work for me, without any caveats.

I don't know, I want to like this more than I do, and frustratingly I think I liked it more before listening to the interviews

A delightful panto story after recently reading the mess that was 'Behind You'.

I think the story sort of lost it's way a bit as it kept going on and the threat emerged, but even then it was still a delight to read. The characterisation for Ten and Rose is spot on, I love their back and forth, and this view inside the head of early Season 2 Rose is a really interesting one.

I adore a panto, so that probably helped here, but even without that the way this is written is just incredible. The comedy especially got me every time, talking about the rage of a time lord as Ten asks how Rose can not like pantos, Rose's comment about how it must be innaccurate after seeing the panto's gallifreyan costumes because the robes just look silly and Ten moving quickly on. It's just a load of fun.

And the use of autons for the bits about actors playing actors playing characters is also just silly in the best way too.

This being just a fairly standard story, nothing standout, nothing offensive. You kind of get the impression that they were mostly just playing it safe for this release, being so early in Big Finish's lifespan, which makes sense. That all said, some things do seem to come out of nowhere or just feel a little disconnected.

Gatiss hamming it up is always a bit of fun though, definitely my favourite part of the experience.

I’m torn between a 6 and a 7, the plot definitely feels a bit middled in places, splitting the adventure the way it does (one part with each doctor and then bringing them together for the end) is really nice in terms of bringing them all back, letting them all stand on their own before showing them together, but it doesn’t really give enough time to each of them for their individual plots to have too much depth.

Part one wasn’t as bad for it, but parts two and three did feel a little rushed.

That all said, part four bringing them all together is really fun, and I can’t imagine what it’d’ve been like listening to this when it dropped. I love their interactions, and they all do just shine.

On the one hand, it's probably not a good idea to write reviews ~6 months after you listened to something.

On the other, there's something to be said for the what moments you can remember from a story after 6 months. Going back to review Whispers of Terror, I could remember how much I enjoyed it, I could remember the plot, the characters, the monster, the setting.

Land of the Dead, I remember absolutely nothing. Hell, going back to read what I said about it at the time on the forum also didn't help, even then I said I couldn't remember much and that it generally just felt a bit meh.

It's a story that just had exactly 0 impact on me.

I really liked this story, playing with the medium the story is in is always going to be really fun. The setting works wonderfully on audio, listening backs to tapes just as the characters are is great, and having one of the characters be blind just adds to it even more.

There's also some really fun interplay between the ‘monster’ and the antagonist, and it's these sort of stories where almost everyone sucks (especially if driven by politics) are great to listen to.