mediocre but the music was cool

Really interesting story that perfectly introduces The Forge which is a group I’ve been looking forward to meeting  for a good long while from the little I knew of the EU they really interested me, this story is also definitely dark in places and I understand how that may not be for everyone but I didn’t mind personally compared to even just some of the stuff from S22 I’d argue it’s at least a little more tasteful if a little edgy and surface level maybe…  Six & Evelyn’s dynamic here is also just top tier stuff I love the tension they have in this particular story but at the end they still care for each other it’s just good stuff and I’m going to be sad when I move onto the 7/Ace/Hex arc soon.

“All hail Frobisher! All hail the big talking bird!”

Robert Shearman might have to go down as one of my all time favourite Doctor Who writers after this story, this is equally hilarious and unexpectedly devastating with some really dark themes and twists I didn’t see coming.

Colin Baker is great as Sixie while I thought he was good on TV lately after listening to more of his Big Finish work I feel like I’m starting to understand this incarnation a bit more and of course Frobisher my shapeshifter penguin GOAT is absolutely brilliant here I’m really saddened that he only has one more Big Finish appearance after this because Robert Jezek delivers a really great performance here.

The side cast are all amazing too I especially have a soft spot for the evil brother guy he had a lovely voice for a villain but his sibling and mother are also brilliant as is the high priest.

It’s hard for me to completely wrap my head around all the ideas The Holy Terror presents but I think while there’s something to be said about Faith the real meat is tradition and generational trauma, as I read it the fiction represented Eugene’s story or at least parts of it spread throughout the different characters and even though he did an heinous thing there’s nuance there in the end with The Doctor begging him to not kill himself, trying to save him and he just… can’t. Not because of any powerful threat or heroic sacrifice but just because Eugene couldn’t live with himself anymore and to me it hit hard especially to hear a character like The Doctor go through that and to hear Eugene break down it’s a lot more than I was expecting.

I feel like I’ve woken up into an alternate universe because I genuinely don’t see the hype with this one, all of the characters including 15 & Belinda were 2 dimensional at best and it tried to be a sequel to Midnight a story that works so well partly because of the mystery and while it isn’t given away as such I think we’re still told too much about it.

The horror is also non-existent after a the first couple of moments at-least for me I thought the logic behind the “If you go behind her you will die” stuff was really stupid and it was made worse when the deaths look like.. *that* I was on the brink of laughing it looked so bad and it’s not that they had to be super gory because Midnight only had two deaths right at the end that were built up to and were impactful instead of random army grunt getting tossed like a ragdoll.

If this is this era’s “peak” I don’t think the show is for me anymore.

This is one of the most harrowing experiences I’ve had listening to a DW story I swear this boxset was made by a masochist because the depths it goes to are so low I think it rivals CoE so far, I feel so bad for Martine as she’s driven to the brink by the swenyo (not sure how to spell it) as you’ve gotten to know her throughout the past two episodes and especially her relationship with “Mr Orman” it makes the impact of this story hit so much more like a knife that just keeps on twisting.

Although as harrowing as it is I’d be remiss not to mention how trippy and weird the story gets with Martine getting stuck in a vending machine with a Mr Orman lookalike trying to eat her or how she sees her mother in the form of a giant talking tree that grows Ood fruit that tries to kill her, it’s all delightfully deranged in a sort of black comedy way which The War Master series so far is really good at.

I can’t wait to listen to the finale of this boxset which to be honest I wasn’t feeling the first parts at first but retrospectively I’m seeing now what it was building up towards and I’m grateful we got something like this.

This story went places I had no idea Doctor Who could even venture, I am not too experienced with the EU apart from Scratchman which I still need to finish and the previous 8/Charley stories (minus Minuet In Hell) so I am going into most of these blind and what seemed to be a mere spooky house story turned into something more and more twisted with a delightfully dark plot and great sound design, The Chimes Of Midnight lived up to the hype.