Sometimes you go to Doctor Who for the biting social commentary, the thrills, the horror, the out there sci-fi concepts, the depth to every interaction, how it's building on 60 years of lore.

Sometimes you go to Doctor Who to sit down in front of the telly, throw on an episode, and just have some fun.

The Robot Revolution definitely doesn't do the former of those, but it doesn't need to, it's all in on the latter and works. Is this the best Doctor Who story I've ever watched? No. Is it one that I can absolutely see coming back to, throwing it on when I just want some fun? YES.

A brilliantly fun story that does exactly what I think Doctor Who needed to, backed up by brilliant effects (cosmetic, practical, and CG), a wild premise that's fun from start to end, some spectacular acting, and a cliffhanger that almost has me sad we're not getting a 2 episode premier again.

If I were asked to sum up Sil and the Devil Seeds of Arodor in two words, I'd say 'Surprisingly Forgettable'.

This story, along with some others such as Zygon: When Being You Just Isn't Enough, has become somewhat famous in Doctor Who circles for its place in canon. If Revival Who is the tip of the iceberg, and Big Finish is just below the surface, Sil and Zygon are possibly the deepest you can go where a typical fan will still be able to at least recognise their DWU connections.

Sil also sees the return of Nabil Shaban and Christopher Ryan as Sil and Kiv respectively, reprising their roles from over 30 years prior, and stars Sophie Aldred herself, playing a newly created member of Sil's species, acting as a foil to him in the episode she primarily appears in.

All this is to say that Sil and the Devil Seeds of Arodor is a fascinating piece of media... conceptually.

While I have to commend the set design, costumers, and some of the actors, the story here is nothing to write home about. Some parts don't seem to make sense or seem to come out of nowhere, Sil isn't anywhere near as fun to watch a protagonist as he is an antagonist, the direction isn't great, and while I absolutely could see a courtroom drama doctor who story working out incredibly (just look at Trial), here, it just isn't. The writers seem to have a vague idea of what people want from a courtroom drama, but don't understand what really makes them tick, and fact the judicial system is invented for this, and the intricacies of it actually matter somewhat unlike Trial, just makes me wonder why I should care.

I genuinely don't understand how this ended up like it has, from the premise and concept, you'd expect it to either be competent, not necessarily good, but competent, or a complete trainwreck. This somehow manages to be neither.

I don't care about the courtroom drama, I'm not laughing, either at or with the story when there's a moment that would otherwise be pretty funny.

I'm just bored.

A rather short story, but I think it serves it's purpose.

This story once again centers around Az, our new recruit at PROBE, and I think is a decent character piece for him. It shows off how he feels about his new job, still glad that he's got it, still awed by what's going on, but starting to feel a bit out of place, a bit left to the wayside. His worrying he was only recruited for his powers makes sense, and so a story where we get to see him use both his powers and his humanity to help a lost soul is a great idea.

That said, while a good idea, I find the execution here a little bland. Az's interactions with Giles and inner monologue are great, but I can't help but feel there could've been more done with the actual ghost child himself. I love the interactions that we get, but it does feel like there's some missed potential.

Still, I did enjoy the story, and the ending with Giles finding Az, taking him out for dinner to talk about the day, but still scolding him a bit with the mention of not paying for the afternoon, was really nice, and I definitely recommend reading.

Preternatural Days is a great introduction to the PROBE team, and generally what life in PROBE is like.

Following a new character with no-prior associations with PROBE, as his life is thrown when Giles steps into his life reminds the reader a lot of stories like Rose or Everything Changes. Rose especially seems an apt comparison to me with Az's workplace being the hideout for a cult, the story ending with him being put out of a job, before joining PROBE, being fully whisked into the world of myths and monsters.

However, the sections we get from Giles' perspective, and Az's view of PROBE HQ really help to set the story apart. PROBE HQ isn't The Hub, with it's alien equipment, it's labyrinth of tunnels and storage, and it's extreme level of security... it's a small office in Whitehall. Giles isn't The Doctor, adventuring around, the eternal traveler, never worrying about where they're going or how they're making a living... he's a government official. This is his job, and he's struggling to keep the department going.

The actual threat as well also helps make this more unique, Torchwood and The Doctor deal with aliens and monsters. PROBE deals with necromancers and cultists.

Finally, there's a few really fun continuity nods in there, Miracle Day, Doomsday, and Face The Raven are all subtly hinted at, and I really enjoy them.

Overall, a strong start to the collection.

A delightful short strip!

K9's finest hour really does use it's four pages well, it's not exactly a complicated story, but it doesn't need to be. We get a villain's plan, their motivation, and their defeat all done really well in the space there is.

K9 is also just a delight, I love that his robotic nature is used in how he realises the villain's true motivation, but not in the basic 'scanners tell me you're lying' way you might expect.

Overall, absolutely worth reading for a fun little expedition with K9.

Breakfast at Tyranny's is a brilliant reintroduction to our cast and reminder of where year 2 left off.

We're thrown into the deep end, each of our core trio separated, living strange new lives, slowly realising that something's wrong. It's a great way to remind everyone of the trio's personalities on their own, rather than thrusting them all back together and hoping you remember what happened.

I also really like the focus that Cindy gets here. Since joining the TARDIS team, she's been unfortunately sidelined a lot of the time, so bringing her to the forefront here is a great choice. I also really like the reappearance of Noobis, his character also being expanded on through this, wanting to join the team, and it ultimately being a combination of him and Cindy that get them out at the end.

The ending itself is interesting, the artwork is really fun, and definitely has me wanting to see what happens next!

An interesting take on classical mythology, that ends up devolving into Just a bit of a boring runaround.

I really like what we get here of this take on the Greek Gods, giant, immortal scientists with some incredible powers, intending to create the perfect, peaceful race, with Prometheus, wanting to give humanity free will.

I love just the scale of this, the image of the temple, showing just how incredibly vast it is, acting as a complete city, even though it doesn't look like that from a distance. The how the ageless nature of the gods is communicated, Prometheus seeming completely unphased by having to knock against a wall for thousands of years to escape, and where we originally find him, chained to a rock that was once a mountain.

There's also the ambiguity of where these 'gods' fit in, if The Doctor found Prometheus on Earth, if he brought him there at the end, if none of this was connected to Earth at all. It leaves itself open ended, which is definitely appreciated.

Unfortunately, while the setting is well fleshed out, the actual plot of this story itself ends up being very standard Doctor Who fare. Running around some corridors, escaping being killed at the last second thanks to K9 and the sonic, etc etc. I think more interactions with the other gods could have done this story a lot of good, but as it is, well, it's fine.

A pretty fun setup for a story.... shame it doesn't live up to that.

The basic premise of a world where virtual reality through dreaming has become the norm for entertainment is pretty fun. There could be some really interesting worldbuilding done with the economics of it, what exactly the relationship between the dreamers and their 'pets' are like, the relationship between Four and the family he here who he's met before. All of these are are alluded to in this story, but non get the time of day though, and instead we're thrust right into the middle of an 'invasion'.

The dream worlds we see are beautiful, and there's a real sense of danger to our characters in them... but when we get out of that world, things start falling apart for me. The 'pets' coming together to form a giant devil not only feels very silly and out of nowhere to me, but also implies a level of consciousness to the creatures, which are mentioned to be native to this world, and is just completely overlooked. The method to defeat them also feels like a bit of an ass-pull, they do set it up a little with not wanting to go over the river, but even then, it feels out of nowhere.

And finally Sharon's departure... I mean, I guess it lives up to a lot of classic companion's departures. Like those it's out of absolutely nowhere, and because of a man she met like three hours ago. It just doesn't work.

In short, there's a lot I want to like about this story, but it consistently fumbles the bag or overlooks every single one of them. I feel it could've done better with another issue or two in the magazine.

A near perfect cyberman story for me.

In my option, there's three core elements that make the cybermen great, and by extention are needed for a great cyberman story:
1. Conversion: The threat of conversion is extremely important. If you're not terrified of conversion, might as well be a robot.
2. Inevitability: The cybermen should be able to come from anywhere, a 'natural' next step in human evolution.
3. Unstoppable: The cybermen can be beaten, they can be defeated, but they can never be vanquished. Going back to point one, they should be almost a fact of the universe.

Supremacy of the Cybermen has all three of these in spades.

Conversion is a major factor in all four of the split stories we're presented with here: Nine watching Rose being converted and killing Jack, Ten having to fight to prevent the cybermen from seizing a cloning factory which would let them infinitely reproduce, Eleven getting pseudo-converted himself, and of course Twelve seeing Gallifrey having been converted.

Inevitability is less of a factor here, the cybermen already existing in all the timelines we see, but there's something to be said for their conversion of other species, the seed being planted that not only could humanity succumb to this, but as could the Silurians.

And of course, how Unstoppable they are.

Nine in an apocalyptic London as the Cybermen have taken over, Ten fighting for his life, siding with the sontarans, being forced into an actual war, and succumbing to his worse impulses, Eleven watching as the Cybermen have taken over from the dawn of life on earth, failing to prevent them from lauching out into the stars, and Twelve, at the head of it all, seeing how it was all done, watching the conquest of time from where it's begun.

The cybermen presented here truly are unstoppable, and I adore it.

Each Doctor's story takes a different route in showing the attempts to stop the cybermen, and each doctor but one fails. The scale of the story is magnificent, and I think the fact that the doctors never end up meeting adds a lot to that scale as well.

The only thing keeping me from rating this a 10/10 is the ending. Some interesting designs for a cyber controller and potential far future cybermen is unfortunately not enough to distract from the fact that the story concludes with a big old reset button. On the one hand it did kind of have to, with how large scale it is, but the fact there's no consequences for it whatsoever does leave you somewhat unsatisfied.

That said, every single moment before that point works.

Another couple of time jumps here, though these ones I feel have enough attention drawn to them that they do really work, and on top of that this story has some really interesting ideas.

The opening where the daleks are seemingly being driven back, with our characters realising that there's more to it than they're letting on, and that there's some connection to project infinity.

Seeing what Alby's become now, not only because of Suzan's death, but because of the little he does know about project infinity.

The mental link that the daleks used from last episode being used again here is neat, I especially like the way that it's used tactically, it makes sense for all dalek positions to be put through the pathweb for tactical reasons, so our characters using that to their advantage is great, and gives a solid explanation as to why they're not all just immediately killed.

And of course, the reveal of project infinity itself. Multiverse stories are all the rage now, but I can appreciate the fact that they weren't as much when this released, so it doesn't fall into the tropiness that can often be associated with them. The fact they're not wanting to use it to pull resources from another universe to destroy the daleks, but instead wanting to just see what they did and how they can replicate that is a small thing, but I think adds a little touch of realism to it which I appreciate.

Then the ending, out heroes all being captured, the reveal that Susan isn't dead but is one of many ready to be turned into a dalek, the same thing that's going to happen to our heroes, and the parallel daleks seemingly being somewhat heroic? it's an interesting place to end, setting things up for the next season.

Unfortunately however this falls into one of the same pitfalls its three predecessors did, that being that it's just a bit too long. At 74 minutes, you get the impression that at least 20 minutes could easily have been shaved off, bringing more attention to the actual meat of the story rather than the many long discussions that surround it. I'm definitely not one to complain about taking a moment to talk (see my 11/Valarie reviews), but here it does feel like it drags at times, which unfortunately brings the story down somewhat