This is absolute peak. The Third Doctor and Sarah Jane land on a lesbian hippy art commune... on an abandoned oil rig... which is floating... on a planet with nothing on it but sea... and they're menaced by eldritch horrors. What a scenario! There was such a genuinely menacing buildup in the first two parts and the characters were all really likable, which made them literally dying via crying hit all the harder. And The Gulf itself is such a good villain! I definitely headcanon it as a member of the Pantheon (God of Sadness maybe?)

If that all isn't enough to convince you to give it a shot, the Doctor quotes Jon Pertwee's "I Am The Doctor" song whilst psychically beating up the baddies. I was squealing as soon as he said "I cross the void beyond the mind". Nuff said.

Heartbreaking: the person in a ninth doctor audio who cut their hair, lived as a man, and used he/him to enter a gentlemans club ended up being a cis woman just pretending and got married to a man and was not, in fact, a gay trans man 💔

Obscure Victorian rural folklore references, old man yaoi, oh my! The 3DAs continue to impress. Was it just me, or did the guy who played the Reverend sound uncannily similar to Colin Baker?

A rip-roaring blockbuster of an audio. Sutekh has turned the entire planet into a not!Phaestor Osiris and Mummybots are roaming the streets sacrificing people. All hope seems lost and all that can be done is mustering a force of the lower class to assualt his grand palace. This audio doesn't stop to breathe at any point and it's all the better for it. Leela's confrontation with Sutekh was hilarious too, I'll be unable to watch the season one finale without thinking "hehe horseface" now. Speaking of the finale, while some might think it decanonised this two parter and his other EU appearances, I prefer to think that his defeat at the end of EoD lead to all this. Where else would he have gotten the whole tech billionaire angle from? ;)

9.5/10, delivers on the previous part excellently.

A masterclass in how to bring back an old villain via audio. This somehow managed to do The Legend of Ruby Sunday - a story I love to pieces - six years before it was even a twinkle in RTD's eye, and arguably even better! Leela's adventure on the side with the lower-class was a welcome detour to the Doctor getting chased Tom and Jerry style across the planet while Sutekh ominously monologued in the billionaire woman's head. The interactions between 4 and Sutekh are just as good as Pyramids, albeit with a bit more flippancy than you'd expect. The cliffhanger was absolutely brilliant and I watched the next one immediately afterwards.

10/10!

Peak.

Bilal my beloved <333

Another day, another Malcolm Hulke banger. This man WILL not miss.

Nick Briggs, I am sending you my therapy bills.

I could talk about Paul McGann's excellent acting - how utterly outraged and scared and angry the Doctor is, and how well it's sold. I could talk about Susan and how her losing Alex nearly brought me to tears in public. I could talk about the Monk - how he's  this snivelling coward who thinks he knows best until things go wrong and he loses something. How it made me care about Tamsin dying despite me not liking her, or how Lucie dying broke me.

But what I will talk about is that ending. With the Doctor playing that recording and filling in his parts. Broken, alone, friendless and having lost everything. Haunting stuff.

11/10. Dark Eyes, you better be as good as this.

Jesus. This one gets dark. In a post-covid world, vivid descriptions of the world brought to its knees by a deadly virus hit extra hard. And hearing Lucie, who has always been so irreverent and eager to make the best of a situation sounding so defeated really hit me in the feelings. The Daleks are at it again and actually feel like a threat this time. The stakes are high, things won't let up for the main characters, and I had a pit in my stomach the entire time listening to it. 9.5/10.

I don't remember a single thing about this episode and I just listened to it today. 2/10.

Another christmas special already? Blimey. This was a sweet little episode that gave Alex some much needed characterisation and built upon the Doctor and Susan's relationship in a meaningful way - as well as how she's grown beyond him. It was interesting seeing the Doctor treating Alex as a sort of surrogate Susan and trying to get him to come in the TARDIS with him the entire time, and it was paid off well with him deciding to go travelling and make his own destiny with Lucie. Poor 8, alone again. 7.5/10.

Now THIS was what I call a fun story. The Ice Warriors, who are continuously proving to be very boring as enemies, are still forgettable, but that's fine because we get not just the Abbot Thelonious Monk back, who is an absolute joy, but Lucie herself!!!! Yeah girl, get that fraud outta here! 7/10.

Gonna be honest, this was a very forgettable story. Tamsin wasn't likable, the Ice Warriors were bland, and there sidecast had few standouts other than David Warner (yippie!) and Tracy Ann Oberman (boo!). This exists solely to build up to the next part and that's fine. 4/10.

Finally, a banger! Book of Kells is a fun, atmospheric sequel to The Time Meddler, and it makes no secret of the fact. Tamsin gets to show off her (admittedly shite) improv acting chops, which is about the most she's gotten to do thus far. The hunt for the Monk and the scooby doo-esque unmasking of Thelonious at the end were a joy to listen to. The norse accents were a bit hokey, but passable. What the hell is Lucie doing?!

8/10.

Look, I like Poe as much as the next person, but the amount of quoting got very irritating. A decent atmosphere meets an incoherent plot and a companion that still has very little personality. I still don't quite understand why the daughter was also a cat that was also an assassin, nor why everything was Poe-themed beyond 'the warden liked Poe'. I know that the one behind most the events in this series is The Monk, because I got spoilt, but I'm wondering what exactly his plan is here.

4/10.

This was a fun enough story. Wasn't a fan of the premise to begin with, but as it was revealed that all the 'contestants' had ulterior motives and secrets (and the Doctor didn't advertise the position himself) it became more and more engaging. Not a great fan of Tamsin immediately but hopefully she'll grow on me. 7/10.

An interesting story, if nothing else. The Doctor finally coming back for Susan was always going to be an event, and they certainly made it one. Despite the actual age difference between Ford and McGann, they sell the dynamic beautifully - and I say this as someone who frankly didn't care that much for Susan from the episodes I've seen with her thus far. The idea of a literally xenophobic group forming after the invasion is cool, but isn't played with quite as much as I'd like. The Guldreasi are naff antagonists and I hate that by existing they prove the loser fascists half-right at the end. Alex is. A character. Ngl I felt no attachment to him whatsoever here, I hope he gets better when he pops up again later.

This was a decent enough story that did everything it needed to and little else. 6.5 or 7/10 IMO.

This was an absolute masterpiece. Every Auntie Pat story thus far has been a banger, and this is the perfect bow to put upon this trilogy. It's full of emotion, pathos, and tragedy. I can hardly blame Lucie for leaving the Doctor at this point. All the secrets, the baggage from Orbis, the recent events of the s3 finale... it was inevitable. It was part Eastenders Christmas Special, part It's A Wonderful Life...ish. The Zynog is an interesting concept but isn't exactly the standout of the story, the real emotional core of the story is Pat-Hagoth, Lucie, and the Doctor. The drunk santa is fun, too.

This was an exquisite opening to Season 4 and I hope all stories remain this strong.

This is a perfectly standard story. Briggs delivers an alright script that takes place right after Talons of Weng Chiang, with the Doctor and Leela still dressed in Victorian garb... despite the story taking place in space. Alright then. The connection to Ark in Space is tenuous at best. It's Nerva Beacon but at this point it's just a space dock. There is no other connection from here. Baker is good, Jameson is good, the side characters are alright. The main villain is imperialists. Imperialists that are also a fleshborne disease that turn people into Cronenburg monsters? Alright then. And then it's all undone in the end by some random aliens. Ok.

There is truly very little to be said of this story. I don't hate it but I only listened to it a day or two ago and I've already forgotten most of it. And frankly, I have no desire to relisten. A somewhat disappointing start to the 4DAs and forgettable overall. For completionists only.

This is a very frustrating story for me. I should love it to bits... but for god's sake, Rob, WHY ALL THE RACISM. It's so hard to ignore, and frankly nor should it be. If just a few details were changed and it focused more on Greel as a not-Phantom of the Opera then it'd be fine, but as is I can't rate it any higher in all good conscience.

On the surface, this story should be one that isn't my bread and butter. Hell, I only watched it for context for the 4th season of EDAs. A 6-part Dalek 60's story should very much not be my cup of tea... on a surface level that is. This story, while starting off slow, is a gritty, atmospheric romp through a London almost reminiscent of a Fallout game. We follow the resistance trying bravely to save their city - and the world - from Dalek invaders. While the 'plucky group of not-British rebels fight the Daleks' storyline is one familiar to any classic who fan, this one has done it the best of those I've seen thus far.

But for all the Daleks and Robomen and spaceships, it's the emotional core that elevates this story. Susan's farewell, whilst feeling slightly questionable to the modern eye (leaving her with some random guy she's just met? fr?) the cast sells it with such earnestness that it's impossible not to like it. Hartnell's "I shall come back" monologue is so poignant, and I hope that the Doctor does come back for her - in the main show, that is. Far better than I expected.

Alright,  I'm gonna be honest. For a while I was this episode's number one hater. When I was first entering my rankings for all of TARDIS Guide, putting this one as a 0.5 was a no-brainer. I had watched it twice - once when it aired and once when I was rewatching 13 in preparation for Flux back in 2021. And I hate hated it. I was very unwilling to engage with a lot of this era as an actual part of this show with its own merits and charm for the longest time, and that coloured my perceptions of a lot of alright episodes. Having seen a lot more classic who and seeing the inspirations a lot of Chibnall stuff took, I've been slowly but surely making my way through episodes that I'd maligned for a while.

This one wasn't one I couldn't imagine growing to like. Praxeus and LOTSD are one thing, but this was another entirely. That said, when I sat down tonight to rewatch this, I was pleasantly surprised. There was a lot more emotion than I remembered. Graham's arc of grieving was exceptional, Yaz's family was charming, and the mystery of the spiders was a lot more engaging than I remembered. 13 has slowly but surely been growing on me as a character for sure. Hell, even Jack Roberts, who is the SINGLE MOST ON THE NOSE STAND IN FOR ANY POLITICAL FIGURE EVER, has his own campy charm to him.

This doesn't mean the episode is perfect, by any means. Despite Roberts having his moments, the obvious Trumpisms get quite grating very quickly. Ryan is alright in this episode but again his arc feels like more an extension to Graham's. And the elephant (or spider) in the room here is the Doctor's handling of the moral quandry of the episode. It is ridiculous. Guns are bad, yet I'm happy to let these creatures suffocate to death underground - a far more humane method of killing them! And the thing is, I wouldn't even mind it as much if ANYONE came out and said "woah, wait a minute Doc, that's kinda cruel" instead of just nodding along as if it was perfectly reasonable. It's not as if the Doctor has never gone overboard in punishing villains before, but at least in episodes like Family of Blood it's called out as being wrong. Could there have been no way to just... take them to another planet or something? Argh!

It's because of this that I can't give this more than 3 stars. I enjoyed it, it was a fun romp, and I would encourage others who are turned off severely by the resolution to give it another go.

moffat if you make one more "two clones of the female companion are attracted to each other" joke i will come for you

If the "youngish doctor travels platonically with older companion" dynamic isn't recreated in nuwho I'll be deeply saddened

I vividly remember my experience of listening to Sky Man. I was on a four hour coach trip and was listening to all of Only The Good. As I stopped off at a bus station between trips, I remember being sat in the cafe as the most harrowing big finish audio I've listened to thus far (May 2024) played out. I have no words for this. It is just brilliantly awful. The story does such a good job of making you love these bumpkin, salt of the earth farmers, and you maybe even believe that Cole is gonna be able to settle down with Elidh and have a happy life there.

And then, it rips it all away.

The descent of the planet into becoming The Retribution is so chilling. The fact that a simple need to help people produced a race as destructive as the Daleks or Cybermen is so viscerally upsetting - Elidh gradually becoming barely unrecognisable from the sweet girl we meet her as hits especially hard. But the fact that the Master deliberately engineered this scenario to fuel his plan in the Heavenly Paradigm are what truly get me. All those comparisons to Wine throughout the story show how utterly callous he is. An entire planet of people who meant no harm to him are fuel for a mad plan to rewrite all of reality to his liking. In hindsight, all that grandfatherly attention he shows Cole is so, so damn evil. He knows what he's doing, and that's what makes it so upsetting.

The Sky Man singlehandedly elevates Only The Good into being S+ to me. Viscoid and Good Master are solid stories in their own right but. Wow. Holy shit. It's gonna be hard to top this.

Peak television. Nuff said.

Why does everyone always dunk on this one? It's got almost everything you could want in a good doctor who episode - an interesting setting, a creepy atmosphere, a moral dilemma based off of time travel, and development for C'rizz. I've seen reviews saying that the main cast are off their A-Game this week and I couldn't disagree more - the team felt like a team here a lot more than they did in a lot of divergent universe stories. (That yowl from Paul near the end when he was being tortured by Flood caught me way way off guard!)  Eight was wonderfully eldritch here, and having C'rizz - the more overtly alien of the pair - questioning him was a neat parallel. Charley sadly didn't get as much to do this ep, which I've gotten the vibe will become a theme in this stretch of main rang stories, but it wasn't glaringly obvious here.

The idea of a planet having a subconscious is tried and true, but it being a creepy little girl singing nursery rhymes is a fun new take on it. Flood was a fun villain and a definite highlight - despite being your garden variety murderer, the actor playing him was clearly having a good time. Planets being more malleable early in their evolution is really cool; concepts that even the Doctor doesn't want to mess with always hit different.

Overall a really fun episode with a cool mystery and good development for the rest of the team. Scaredy cat! Scaredy cat! Scaredy cat!

Oh divergent universe. You strange, misanthropic little story arc you. The Next Life sums up everything this stretch of audios was - an experimental Gary Russell lore dump with some neat character moments and concepts that ultimately does *not* need to be three hours long. You can absolutely tell that they did not intended to be leaving as soon as they did. It was neat seeing Rassilon and Kro'ka exiled to the Scherzo hell tube at the end and the return of Zagreus was a cool twist, but frankly I've tuned a lot of this story out even after just listening to it. Something about a Foundry? Either way it's a relief to be back in the main universe now.

I know this episode polarises a lot of people, and I can absolutely see why - the male-presenting line is goofy as anything. But that's the extent of my complaints for this episode. I adored it! And all of the 60th, too. 10 and Donna were my introduction to the show and always connected with me really deeply, so seeing them both back together on screen is just. Argh!!

14 is such a cool concept - an old doctor's face coming back and immediately running into someone they travel with is such a great idea that I can't believe it took 60 years to be put into practice (ik it was considered during the end of 5's era with Troughton coming back at least). I've seen people saying that he's basically 10 personality wise, but I definitely disagree. He's obviously a lot more world-weary. There's less of a bravado to him, replaced with a much more emotional openness that 10 never had. Tennant slips back into the role just like a pair of old shoes and I loved every second - the scene in the factory where he's talking to Shirley is a highlight.

Donna!!!! I can't exaggerate how much it means to me, a trans person, seeing her A. have a trans kid and B. be ready to throw hands for said trans kid, it feeds my inner child so much. I would have liked to see a bit more of Rose herself, but the episode is packed enough as is I suppose. Also, I know the line where she's deadnamed isn't... great, and that Russell really didn't need to add time lord-y metacrisis meaning behind it, but I like that its there. Trans people do get discriminated against irl and I think it's important that media uncritically condemns it, which the scene does by making the kids the obvious bad guys.

The Meep is brilliant, both visually and as a character. I vividly remember getting so hyped about how well done it was when they posted the clip of it and Rose in the shed. Absolutely brilliant villain that's a joy to watch cackle away like a cartoon villain.

I don't dislike the Binary, Binary, Non-Binary thing. It's phrased weirdly but it's not the uber-cringe awful teeth gritter I've seen some people say it is.

Overall I loved this episode. Yes there are flaws, but for me personally the positives outshine the negatives, which is the case for me with all the 60th Specials.