📝6/10 = ACCEPTABLE!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “PRELUDE TO TRANSIT”

This prelude to Transit was published in DWM #195. It's a short little piece about a dying war veteran dreaming of white horses, his grandchildren, and other things. The most interesting part is when he escapes his hospital by riding on the aforementioned horse to avoid capture by the authorities before dying as he plummets down into the sea.

This feels like a cold open before the actual story and doesn't really tell me what Transit is going to be about other than it apparently features General Bambera of UNIT.

📝6/10 → ACCEPTABLE!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “SIGNAL AND I'LL COME TO YOU”

While this concluding story of the Future Phantoms set is more active than the previous stories and largely plays out in a train where the Master joins a couple of other characters in chasing phantoms, I have to admit that my head wasn't fully in the game. I can't say that I disliked this, but I'm also not particularly engaged by it. The performances are continuously great, and the sound design works well, but the story itself does not leave lasting impressions.

📝6/10 → ACCEPTABLE!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “THE SITTER”

The Sitter is an intimate and eerie little character piece. It’s another story told by the War Master in his secret chamber, but this time, we follow parts of the story through the characters, Dorothy Stubbs and her sitter Marina, who are plagued by a strange being coming to visit every night. Derek Jacobi's voice is such a delight to listen to, and the performances enhance the key aspects of the narrative.

All three main performances are flawless, and the simple sound design and beautiful music help to build this calm but creepy atmosphere. The story occasionally veers away on tangents, but it maintains a certain level of tension through its ghastly mystery and tragic turns. In the final third, it turns gradually darker and more intense.

📝4/10 → UNDERWHELMING!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “THE FOXGLOVE CYLINDERS”

The second story of the Future Phantoms set is very similar in style and atmosphere to the first one. It’s talky, slow, and lacks agency or tension despite solid performances and agreeable worldbuilding.

📝6/10 = ACCEPTABLE!

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SECOND IMPRESSIONS: “NIGHTMARE OF EDEN”

Taking a clear stance against drugs and drug use (who said Doctor Who wasn’t political in the 1970s?), the fourth serial of Season 17 proved to be another production nightmare. The cast and crew disagreed with the director, Alan Bromly, to such an extent that he left midway through production, leaving producer Graham Williams in charge of finishing it. This was, in turn, what made Williams (and script editor Douglas Adams) decide to leave the show at the end of the season, handing over the reins to his successor (and the last producer of Classic Who), John Nahan-Turner.

Nightmare of Eden is also known for being the only serial written by Bristol boy Bob Baker without his usual writing pal Dave Martin. Is his decision to go solo better or worse for this spaceship-set, anti-drug sci-fi adventure?

Part 1 throws us into the deep end right away, as the TARDIS arrives on a spaceship in the middle of an emergency, with the Doctor and Romana bursting onto the scene and putting their clever heads together to solve the situation. They soon uncover a drug smuggling plot, several murders, and an animal conservation project, all related to each other.

After the initial premises of the plot have been laid out, there is little more to the story until the end. Things roll along at a leisurely pace, and there are occasional moments of light tension or silly action, but mostly endless scenes of people talking to each other or lurking behind corners.

Part 3 changes things up a little by moving part of the action to Eden, where the Doctor and Romana hide from the authorities chasing after them. But things settle back to a spaceship runaround later in Part 3 and throughout Part 4.

The Part 1 cliffhanger reveal is a traditional monster reveal, but a pretty effective one.

Pretty much all of the story plays out in corridors, control rooms, and other spaces of the spaceship, and we meet the various members of the dysfunctional crew, making Nightmare of Eden feel like an episode of Star Trek (though significantly less populated). The obvious drug themes of the plot only strengthen this feeling.

There’s a comical feel to a lot of this as well, which is to be expected (such as the chase sequence back and forth through several rooms in Part 2).

The mystery surrounding the identity of the drug smugglers never sits at the forefront of the plot, and Part 4 casually reveals it to be the two most obvious candidates.

Lalla Ward is closer to her earlier Season 17 self here than the shaky character she was in The Creature from the Pit. She also takes an active role in the adventure, which is always welcome. K9 is also put to good use yet again.

Here we meet yet another slightly off-beat and colourful professor-type character (in the style of Maxtible from Evil of the Daleks or Marius from The Invisible Enemy): Tryst the xenozoologist, played in a tongue-in-cheek manner by an increasingly annoying Lewis Flander.

David Daker plays an unusually capable spaceship captain. He’s not a brash bully or know-it-all as most of them are, but once he falls for the drug, he turns into a complete nutjob and plays it very well. It’s hard to believe that he previously appeared as Irongron in The Time Warrior.

I quite like the basic design of the Mandrels, but they remain underused and never manage to become more than generic Doctor Who monsters.

The two police characters, Fisk and Costa, are quite nice additions; they end up being more enjoyable villains than the Mandrels. Costa is played by Peter Craze, the younger brother of former companion actor Michael Craze, and he previously appeared way back in The Space Museum.

The spaceship set is varied but not very interesting, and the incidental music is good here and there. The editing and cinematography of the scenes in the unstable area are wonderfully trippy. The jungle design of Eden is a major step down from the previous serial, though, and the fact that everything is so dark definitely doesn’t help matters.

Nightmare of Eden is built around important themes, and the performances mostly work well, but it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of being an interesting or memorable Doctor Who adventure.

📝7/10 = ENJOYABLE!

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SECOND IMPRESSIONS: “THE CREATURE FROM THE PIT”

Season 17 marches along to its third serial, The Creature from the Pit, which downsizes the Doctor’s adventures somewhat. This four-parter is the last one to be directed by one of the show’s most beloved directors, Christopher Barry (the technical difficulties during production and the creative differences he had with the stars of the show led to him refusing to work for Doctor Who again), and it was the first one produced to feature Lalla Ward as Romana.

This serial is infamous for its many scenes involving complicated model shots as well as the infamous Erato prop and the scene of the Doctor speaking into one of its very phallic-looking tentacles.

David Fisher, in his third script for the show, changes style from his Gothic horror-orientated The Stones of Blood and leans closer to his lighthearted The Androids of Tara with added Douglas Adamsian elements. This results in a script with a strong first half and a weaker second half, as well as strong characters, good dialogue, and a couple of nice ideas, some of which don't come across very well on screen.

I love the classic adventure film feel of the opening episode: the Doctor and Romana land on a jungle planet and walk into trouble right away as the Doctor is captured and taken prisoner. Evil plants are lurking about, a little fight scene plays out, and commanding characters counterbalance the comical presence from the Doctor.

I rather like how Fisher allows Romana to play a pivotal role in this story and also finds use for K9 so that he isn't simply stowed away in the TARDIS for the duration of the serial. It’s a pity then that Romana isn’t fully developed as a character at this point and that K9 is voiced by the “wrong” actor.

The scene in Part 3 where Tom Baker keeps chatting with the Green Phallos of Doom is one of the more awkward scenes of his entire era, and it culminates in the questionable scene where he speaks into one of Erato’s protuberances. Part 3 also happens to be the least interesting episode, with little to no actual plot and mostly pretty dull scenes.

Part 4 turns a bit messier and sillier and loses some of the charming adventure feel of the first half, with the overacting and Erato scenes dragging it down slightly. The climax in the TARDIS is quite tense, at least.

Baker is still fun to watch as the Doctor, and here he is both funny, heroic, and the right amount of serious. You can see that Romana in this story was meant to be played by Mary Tamm; Lalla Ward’s dress and hair are designed to look like Tamm's, and her performance doesn’t quite match the confident and youthful tone displayed in the previous two serials.

David Brierley briefly replaces John Leeson as the voice of K9, starting with this serial. This was explained by the laryngitis that K9 caught in City of Death, altering his voice. Brierley lacks most of the whimsical magic that Leeson brings to the role.

Adrasta makes for one of the rare strong women of authority in Classic Who, and Myra Frances playing her is a delight throughout, even if she errs on the side of overacting here and there. She proves to put up quite the opposition together with her whip and sword-wielding soldiers. Karela is another strong female and played by returnee Eileen Way, who previously appeared as Old Mother way back in An Unearthly Child.

I love Organon, the silly astronomer and prophet introduced in Part 2. Geoffrey Bayldon (the alternate First Doctor in the Big Finish Unbound range) infuses him with plenty of old, wise man energy, and I’m all for it.

The only part of the cast I’m not sold on are the weird, hairy, and caveman-like bandits who hang around for most of the adventure planning to attack Adrasta. They don’t really add anything to the narrative other than pointless filler and silly fooling around.

The jungle planet seen here is one of the most beautiful sets seen in Classic Who. It looks and feels properly warm and exotic, and the smoke and lighting effects bring it to life effectively. The corridors and open spaces of the pit also look realistic, and the interior sets are nicely designed.

Erato is admittedly one of the less believable monster designs in Classic Who. I mean, what exactly is it supposed to be?

I like the simple worldbuilding David Fisher offers here, which combines a sort of Middle Eastern aesthetic with light sci-fi elements. The performances and direction highlight the lighthearted nature of this adventure, but it's an enjoyable romp with fun comedy bits and some surprisingly good adventure and action moments sprinkled throughout.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• This marks the final appearance of frequent Doctor Who performer and stunt double Terry Walsh on the show.
• Lalla Ward reportedly disliked working on this serial because she hadn’t quite worked out how to play Romana yet and the scripts were written with her predecessor Mary Tamm in mind.
• The production was very aware of Erato’s somewhat questionable design, and the crew even burst out laughing upon seeing it in action for the first time. There wasn’t enough time to alter the design, however.
• The Part 2 cliffhanger, which sees the Doctor apparently crushed under Erato, is also known as “the attack of the giant phallic blob creature.”.
• The Doctor claims, most likely falsely, that Time Lords have 90 lives and that he has gone through 120 of them.
• Morris Barry, who appears as Tollund, is distantly related to director Christopher Barry and is better known for directing three Patrick Troughton-era stories, Tomb of the Cybermen being one of them.

📝7/10 = ENJOYABLE!

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THIRD IMPRESSIONS: “LOVE & MONSTERS”

Hey, look! It’s the infamous bottle episode from Series 2, known for its ELO-heavy score, weird characters, an alien designed by a child, and a sex joke cruder than anything ever seen or heard on Torchwood!

The silly opening scene introduces us to Elton Pope, who finds Ten and Rose in the middle of an adventure. It’s deliberately over-the-top silly and successfully shows us how the Doctor's adventures might look to an outsider.

The entire episode is built around the idea of obsessive fans and how they could form clubs inspired by the Doctor in hopes of meeting him. While this meta-level commentary is fun, it tends to veer towards parody from time to time.

Love & Monsters breaks the usual formula for the show. It focuses on different characters and looks at the show and its tropes from a new perspective. One of its fine aspects is how it tells Elton’s story and how he witnesses some of the failed alien invasions we've seen throughout Series 1 and 2. Another is the support group-like club (L.I.N.D.A.) formed by the characters, which brings these perfectly normal characters together through shared experiences, music, and song. And then there’s the casual mix of an alien slowly killing the characters while they keep looking for the Doctor, and Elton bonding with Jackie Tyler.

The use of ELO’s music throughout the episode adds to the unique feel. It's very infectious music.

I had forgotten the gut-wrenching twist at the end, revealing that the Doctor failed to save Elton's mother when he was a boy.

Marc Warren is a sympathetic lead and a great audience surrogate, easy to identify with. Shirley Henderson (always Moaning Myrtle for me!) makes for his obsessive, slightly creepy but sweet girlfriend, with a fiery attitude whenever needed to defend the things she holds dear. Her ultimate fate is a bit heartbreaking though.

Peter Kay is the Joseph Furst of the revival. Over the top and with a scenery-chewing presence, he’s impossible to take seriously, but he has that silly villain aura over him that works as long as he looks like a human. Once his true form, the Abzorbaloff, is revealed, he turns into more of a joke. The alien design is based on the winning entry of a monster design contest for children, and what we get here is something that would suit better for The Sarah Jane Adventures of the K9 spinoff.

It’s lovely to see Jackie again, and Camille Coduri truly makes the episode with her fun and warm presence, proving that she is a well-rounded character even when not directly involved with the series regulars. The scenes with her are used effectively to show us how family members react to and cope with being left behind and not knowing what is going on with their loved ones.

All the faces on the Abzorbaloff's body are more cringeworthy than creepy. And the face in the slab thing is a step too far if you ask me (especially when you consider that Elton has “a bit of a love life” with a stone slab).

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• Fun fact: There’s a real club named L.I.N.D.A. (short for Lindas Involved in Network Development Association), and it welcomes anyone named Linda With an I or Lynda With a Y.
• The twin planet of Raxacoricofallapatorius being named Clom is a fun gag.

📝4/10 → UNDERWHELMING!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “HIS CLOSE COMPANIONS”

Future Phantoms is a set that sees the War Master sit around a secret room at a college, telling stories to those who find him.

The performances are strong, and there's a spooky atmosphere, but the story never gripped me, and I found it dull and overlong. The script is flat until the very end, where it builds very light tension. The characters leave no impressions, and even the Master himself just sort of exists with little purpose.

This doesn't make me excited about listening to the rest of the set.

📝7/10 → ENJOYABLE!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “STING OF THE SASQUATCH”

Darren Jones takes the listener on a trip to the snowy landscapes of northwest America (Washington State), where the Doctor and Ruby join a ranger trying to solve a case of missing people and two Bigfoot hunters hoping to glimpse the mythical creatures. They slowly unravel the extraterrestrial truth behind the sasquatch.

The setting and the ape-like creatures make for some really nice action scenes, especially in the scene where the sasquacth kidnap Ruby and he launches himself after them.

The story turns high concept sci-fi when we learn that the sasquatch are a friendly telepathic and highly advanced alien race from another universe. They are here to treat an aliel infection, which has infected Ruby. The third act is then a pretty straightforward and standard race against time, but it brings in the supporting characters and gives them stuff to do while allowing the Doctor to shine more than we are used to seeing from this incarnation.

The parasitic worms attacking people are nasty business, especially once they take over Wade as well.

Genesis Lynea (Harriet Arbinger from The Empire of Death/The Legend of Ruby Sunday) narrates with a sort of lazy style that I’m not very fond of and doesn’t quite capture the Doctors' and Ruby's vices.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• Susan Twist appears in the story as one of the missing people, spotted by Ruby.

📝8/10 → ENJOYABLE!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “A BLIND EYE”

The finale to Series 1 of Gallifrey grabs your attention right away with its unique setting onboard a train in late 1930s Germany, where Romana is called into a meeting with conman Arcadian, who's been messing around with time to ensure the proper fate of a German woman whose sister has been missing for several years while travelling with the Doctor.

That woman is Sissy Pollard, the sister of Charley Pollard, who grew up in Nazi Germany and has become quite the Nazi herself. She needs to commit suicide so that the proper timeline remains intact, and Romana and Leela are on the case, only to face pressure from time anomalies and the arrival of Narvin and Torvald. There are still some of the timey-wimey shenanigans here that can be very confusing when listening for the first time, but also the anger Leela feels towards Torvald that fuels her scenes.

The moving train makes for a good change of scenery, and this is easily the most straightforward and tense Gallifrey episode up to this point. It's also interesting that the story is so intricately tied to the Eighth Doctor Main Range stories, though this also complicates the narrative more than necessary.

I still enjoy Lalla Ward’s commanding performance as Romana and Louise Jameson’s energetic take on Leela. Those two are the bread and butter of this range.

Erich proves to be an interesting new addition. He begins as Sissy’s boyfriend and turns into a different incarnation of Torvald before being revealed as the believed-dead Andred under the guise of Torvald in the most gut-wrenching twist reveal of the series.

India Fisher appears as Sissy, and I love how she manages to make her different from Charley while also dipping into some of the same qualities as her sister. Her scenes with Leela, where they discuss fascism and the Nazi ideology, are superb; Sissy tries to prove how she is superior, only to be constantly overshadowed by Leela’s sass and skill. The final scene of the story, with Sissy finally fulfilling her faith, is a pretty chilling way to end the season with.

📝8/10 → ENJOYABLE!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “ON GHOST BEACH”

Niel Bushnell brings us the very first BBC Audio Original with Fifteen and Ruby, and he gets the vibe of the era right—with the jukebox and the Doctor being sassy and funny and dancing around, as well as being good friends with Ruby. He even inserts a Susan Twist appearance and a mavity mention to fit the story within Season 1/15/40.

This is a spooky adventure that initially takes the Doctor and Ruby to Earth in the 1950s before moving them on to an alien planet where they are hunted by ghastly apparitions and memories that aren’t their own and meet Reg, a man whose memories slowly seep into Ruby and the Doctor.

There's some good character stuff between the Doctor and Ruby. It feels in line with the era. There's also a lot of back and forth with their memories coming and going, but it's used well during the tense climax.

The supporting characters of Reg and Charlotte remain a bit underutilised, and the alien Kassif, responsible for everything, could have been given more flesh on the bones, even if Ruby's encounter with them makes for a sufficiently exciting climax.

Bushnell brings the story to a satisfying close with a proper sendoff.

Susan Twist is a great narrator and gives both Ruby and Fifteen recognisable voices.

📝9.6/10 → FAVOURITE!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “JUBILEE”

Robert Shearman is back writing for the Main Range, this time with the oft-lauded Jubilee, a Dalek story with Six and Evelyn. He kicks off the story with a fun fake trailer for a Dalek movie before dropping Six and Evelyn in London in the early 1900s, where they exist on two time tracks at once (a bit like The Space Museum). From here, Shearman begins slowly unravelling this strange alternate timeline, with a British Empire ruled by a president and America ruled by a prime minister, and with contractions in speech strictly forbidden.

Shearman adapted Jubilee for TV in 2005, when he wrote Dalek for Series 1 of Doctor Who. Having seen the episode before listening to Jubilee, I immediately recognised some of the common elements between the two versions, such as the initial mystery of a prisoner the President keeps torturing in hopes of making it speak in time for the jubilee celebrations or the special bond between the companion and the prisoner.

Even though I guessed it was coming, the Dalek reveal in the cliffhanger to Part 1 is fairly effective. What I didn’t see coming was the brilliant shock cliffhanger in Part 2. Shearman keeps hinting about someone in a wheelchair locked up in jail who is responsible for creating the Daleks, making us believe it's Davros, only to then reveal that it is, in fact, the Doctor himself.

Much like Holy Terror or Spare Parts, Jubilee builds an effectively eerie and tense atmosphere strengthened by dark humour and complex but meaningful narrative beats. The Doctor remembers how he’s already been to 1905 to save the world, yet knows nothing of it—still, both he and Evelyn are celebrated figures because of that. All of this feels very unnerving and adds to the tension.

It’s interesting to follow a story playing around with a timeline where the Daleks have been defeated and are then belittled and made fun of, similarly to the Nazis after WWII in our timeline. This is all played about against the backdrop of the Doctor and Evelyn somehow existing on two time tracks at once, constantly living their present and their past. In the second half, we realise that the Doctor has become a fascist totem, his actions directly leading to the creation of the current, dark times.

Colin Baker and Maggie Stables are magical, as you'd expect. Evelyn, in particular, is used well as a counterbalance to the Doctor, as she refuses to stay put and wants to do whatever she can to solve the problem at hand.

The Daleks play a different role here; they are seemingly friendly, but with a presence that still makes them feel creepy and dangerous. This is easily the most effective use of the Daleks in early Big Finish—not too big and bombastic, but with genuine depth and character. The conversation between Evelyn and the Dalek in Part 2 is a great example of this new way to write and characterise the pepperpots—a Dalek with an existential crisis. I also love how the human characters try to control and use the Dalek for their own ends, only to notice that the Dalek slowly but steadily takes control of the situation.

The supporting cast is superb.

The latter half of this story takes a brilliantly dark turn, with some brutal violence introduced as the Dalek begins to realise its potential. We also fully realise the psychopathic tendencies shown by Miriam, who becomes the biggest villain of the piece.

Part 4 unleashes the Dalek threat after great buildup but also gets weighed down somewhat by it. The nature of the Doctor and the Daleks are explored, and this is the most enjoyable aspect of the final episode.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• The Daleks movie advertised at the beginning stars Plenty O’Toole, who we know better as the name of one of the Bond girls in Diamonds Are Forever (1971).

📝10/10 → FAVOURITE!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “THE QUINTESSENCE”

The Quintessence begins with an atmospheric Part 1, which sees Jo Grant led into a huge and seemingly empty manor house by a strange and playful child in a chilling dream sequence that sets up the narrative. I like how we then get into the adventure straight away when Three and Jo decide to investigate the alien planet with the mansion.

Doctor Who has always done spooky tales well, and The Quintessence taps into that with the stormy weather, the dimly lit Gothic mansion house, its inhabitants, who seem to know Jo from before, and the slowly unravelling alien presence. The talk of angels, seances, and heavenly songs only strengthens the creepy atmosphere before the brilliant cliffhanger reveal in Part 1—it’s the Cybermen!

The cast is pretty small, so we learn to know the Pepperdine family quite well and understand their situation, their motivations, and their actions. And all members are superbly performed, but especially Chris Larkin (the son of Dame Maggie Smith!) as Arthur and Felicity Cant as his daughter Emmeline. The character arc Arthur and Emmeline go through in this audio is powerful and made me feel revolted and heartbroken at the same time.

Part 2 further adds to the tension by revealing that the Cybermen have been instructing the Pepperdines to convert themselves into Cybermen remotely, and this is both creepy and heartbreaking to hear the partly converted Emmeline. Part 3 then further complicates things when we learn about Arthur’s scientific tinkering, leading to one of the more effective cliffhangers I’ve heard in a BF release in a long time.

Part 5 delivers another twist and effectively messes with our heads by completely changing the narrative (and introducing the lovely dog Houdini; what an apt name). Jo and Emmeline seemingly live a peaceful life together, but this simulated reality is constantly disturbed by the dark reality pushing through. Felicity Cant steal the show in this part with that unnerving performance of hers. This entire part is increasingly unnerving to listen to and is one of the creepiest single parts I’ve heard from Big Finish in a long time.

Part 6 sticks the landing with a great emotional turnout that pits Jo and the Cybermen against the Doctor. This is where Tim Treloar steps up as he tries to convince Jo that eternal life without death and suffering isn’t worth it.

We return to Mondas in this story, and it’s always exciting to see the people and the development on the planet.

Katy Manning is back as the older Jo, and she fits very naturally into the story. She delivers one of the strongest performances for Big Finish here, especially in the second half of the adventure. Tim Treloar is superb as the Third Doctor, and together with Manning, he easily taps into the lovely relationship between Jo and the Doctor.

The Cybermen are made very effective in the story and not overused like in many other instances. The Cyberplanner is great, especially once we learn that it’s Emmeline inside the casing.

The performances and sound ensign perfectly evoke the early 70s era, and the regular twists and tense moments make this six-parter flow extremely well. There are also several quite unnerving scenes of emotional and physical torture that are difficult to listen to, giving The Quintessence an effectively palpable, creepy, and stressful atmosphere.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• The mix of Victorian and Gothic aesthetics with robotic foes using portals to break through from their world to ours brings to mind a similar setup in Evil of the Daleks, while the slow conversion of people into Cybermen shares vibes with the Big Finish Main Range release Spare Parts.

📝9.8/10 → FAVOURITE!

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THIRD IMPRESSIONS: “CITY OF DEATH”

David Agnew (script editor Douglas Adams and Graham Williams under pseudonym) brings us the very first Doctor Who story shot on location outside the UK (Paris, France). It marked the highest average viewing figures for the Tom Baker era (14.5 million) and is generally considered one of the better serials of Classic Who. It’s also the second time we meet Julian Glover on the show, this time in his more famous appearance as Count Scarlioni.

I’ve always loved the opening sequence, the camera that sweeps over a brown and orange alien world until it shows us Scaroth’s spaceship, stuck on the planet.

The change of location and the focus on location footage give City of Death an instant edge as it looks and feels fresh. Tom Baker and Lalla Ward have great chemistry, too, which makes them a joy to watch together. Of course, the cosy Parisian feel with its cafe visit is quickly hampered by an apparent crack in time, causing time loops.

It’s pretty weird how effectively Part 1 works despite hardly developing the plot at all—we mostly follow the Doctor and Romana as they go sightseeing and notice time anomalies, and Count Scarlioni doing strange temporal tests. The infinitely quotable and fun dialogue helps here.

The Part 1 cliffhanger reveal is very effective even when you know it’s coming. It’s one of those classic cliffhanger moments. Part 2 has the brilliant reveal of the multiple genuine Mona Lisas before ending with another shocker cliffhanger.

City of Death proves to be a great mix of the best aspects of Doctor Who: exotic locations, a unique and compelling mystery surrounding the Mona Lisa, time travel and temporal experiments, a trip to history, and an alien desperately trying to escape its fate. I love how the narrative is told across multiple points in time simultaneously and how the time periods cleverly blend into each other.

The only thing that I’m not very fond of is the suggestion that the explosion of Scaroth’s ship 400 million years ago created the radiation that led to the creation of humanity.

Baker is at his very best here, and his slow decline in the role is beginning to show after City of Death. Ward is given a great opportunity to develop her character’s quirky, intelligent, and youthful abilities further (she is still sidelined a bit until Part 4, though, even if her hanging around with Duggan is enjoyable to watch). Glover is, unexpectedly, superb in a scene-stealing performance that is both suave and menacing.

The guest cast is marvellous from beginning to end. Highlights include the overworked Professor Kerensky (frequent Dalek voice actor David Graham, who previously popped up as the bartender in The Gunfighters) and Detective Duggan (Tom Chadbon), happily clubbing down anyone he deems a threat and one of the best companions who never were. Julian Glover is one of those guest actors who is superb every time he’s on the show. He’s very different from King Richard from The Crusade, but just as compelling.

This one has one of those unforgettable and fun incidental music scores.

The John Cleese cameo in Part 4, where he plays an art critic reviewing the TARDIS, is my all-time favourite cameo in Doctor Who.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• Romana mentions the Braxiatel Collection, which will play a pivotal role later on in the extended universe, especially the Bernice Summerfield stories.
• The Part 3 cliffhanger, which sees poor Kerensky rapidly aged to death, brings to mind the Time Disruptor from The Daleks’ Master Plan or the TOMTIT machine from The Time Monster.

📝6.2/10 = ACCEPTABLE!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “THE NIGHTMARE OF BLACK ISLAND”

Anthony Stewart Head narrates the tenth New Series Adventures release by Mike Tucker. This is a maritime adventure with stormy seas, secret caverns, a dark forest, and a remote lighthouse island—like a Nu Who take on The Sea Devils or Horror of Fang Rock.

The story begins building a murky atmosphere right away and introduces the monsters who wait behind every corner but only come out at night. Eventually, we bump into familiar elements—a group of normal people stuck in an abnormal situation, a mysterious person (old, gaunt, and wheelchair-bound) leading suspicious scientific projects under the guise of running a nursing home.

Rose wanders off to get in danger, driven by strange dreams she's had. She allies herself with Ali, a pretty annoying girl. Ten spends most of the story investigating on his own before pursuing back to save Rose. Except for Ali and Bronwyn, the supporting characters are hardly memorable.

Morton is a very generic villain type, down to the disability schtick. He gets the job done but lacks deeper character.

You could be fooled into thinking that this adventure would involve the Sea Devils, but the clue’s in the title. The monsters are nightmares created by the children in the area and controlled by reptilian aliens.

The second half brings in some action as the nightmares begin terrorising the Doctor as well, turning into Slitheen and Daleks. And the climax is a tense monsterfest again.

Anthony Stewart Head does a great job narrating the story in a way that underlines the moments of tension and excitement and greatly captures the Doctor's different moods.

📝5/10 = MIDDLING!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “GALAXY FOUR (AUDIOBOOK NOVELISATION)”

Maureen O’Brien (Vicki) narrates the audiobook version of the Target novelisation of Galaxy Four, written by the writer of the original serial, William Emms.

The original serial is fully missing, and the telesnap reconstruction does it no justice—there are a lot of scenes with no dialogue and only a couple of settings and a handful of characters, so the reconstruction is dull. The animation is a better way to experience the story, and this novelisation also works well because you don’t have to sit through long moments of silence and strange sound effects. The text does a fine job of describing the action, the world, and the characters, and it’s a faithful recreation of the original four-parter, down to most lines of dialogue and every twist and turn in the story. It also helps us to better understand Maaga and the Drahvins, as Emms describes their thoughts and feelings.

The story itself still isn't overly exciting. The theme of not judging a book by its cover is as effective as ever, and Maaga is a compelling villain, but the overall plot is too thin even for a four-parter. Most scenes go on for a long while, meaning that your minds begin wandering, and that’s never a good sign. There’s not a lot of action or tension, even if you know that the world the characters are stuck in is rapidly meaning its points of destruction.

Chapter 4 is where the air runs out. The climax is lengthy and slow, and even the narration or the interesting exploration of the differences between Rill and human concepts don’t keep up the momentum. The very ending, when the planet is destroyed, is an effective moment.

The small sound effects help greatly in bringing the story to life, and O’Brien’s narration is lovely, especially her character voices for Maaga, the Drahvins, and Vicki. I also enjoy that they bring in a male voice in the scene where Vicki is talking with the Rill—the entire Chapter 3 is pretty lovely.

📝2/10 = VERY UNENJOYABLE!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “THE BOY AND THE DALEK”

Mark Griffiths opens the Adventures Before collection with a childishly written and confusingly plotted “prequel” to The Daleks (1963-1964). It features Two, Jamie and Victoria, in small roles at the start and the end (but they aren’t well-written at all and barely make a dent in the story; they might as well have been left out entirely). The short story is mainly focused on a human boy who has been transported to Skaro and joins a seemingly benevolent Dalek scientist (named Dalek 444), who helps him get back home. 

We also meet the gold-domed Dalek Emperor from Time Lord Victorious, who is suddenly part of Skaro at this time, and other Daleks, all who talk and act very differently from how they were characterised in the TV serial. Nothing that is said, done, or described here screams “prequel to the Daleks” until the very last few paragraphs, which casually show how a dying Dalek 444 mutant sees One, Susan, Ian, and Barabara arrive in the petrified forest on Skaro. In that sense, this story fails to do the very things it seeks to do, and it’s not a successful Second Doctor story nor a good Dalek story.

I was frustrated and annoyed when reading this and frequently raised my eyebrows at some of the bafflingly off-beat plot decisions Griffiths makes here.

📝8/10 = VERY ENJOYABLE!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “THE ROOTS OF EVIL (2024)”

Steve Cole writes a prequel to The Seeds of Death (1976), where a man called Latz agrees to do a job for Harrison Chase, joining forces with Chase's future right-hand man Scorby to break into a UNIT facility to retrieve an alien plant called the Eloko. There we learn how its attack inspired Chase to hunt down other similar plants and how Scorby begins working for him. The story also shares a connection with Day of the Daleks (1972), and it's straightforward, exciting, and written to fit well within established characterisation.

I like how this story teaches us some basics in planteology through Chase's passion for plants.

Poor Latz is a former UNIT soldier serving as nothing but alien food. Scorby is the highlight of this story, as his greed and rash decision-making end up making a bad situation worse, even if Latz tries to contain him. I love how Scorby is described as “a tall, rugged man with a face as sour as his body odour.”

The tail end turns into a Gothic horror adventure as the Eloko begins spreading and terrorising the characters and spreading its roots into poor Latz's brain.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• This story shares its name with another 4th Doctor era short story, written by Philip Reeve and featured in the recent 15 Doctors, 15 Stories anthology (and its previous editions).

📝5/10 → MIDDLING!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “SPORE”

British YA novelist Alex Scarrow brings here his first and only work for the Whoniverse. Set in the US with the Eighth Doctor battling an alien infection, it’s narrated by Nicholas Pegg. The story is well-written, and the American setting and characters work well enough, but the story itself hardly leaves an impression.

The story introduces Captain Evelyn Chan as a new companion for Eight. There’s barely any time to develop her, though, and she remains pretty forgettable by the end of the story. She has yet to reappear in the Whoniverse.

There’s some good action in the second half, but I didn’t get a proper feel for the story while listening.

📝6/10 → ACCEPTABLE!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “THE BEAST OF BABYLON”

The Beast of Babylon, written and narrated by Charlie Higson, is an adventure with the Ninth Doctor set during the small gap at the end of Rose (2005), during which the Doctor showcases to Rose that the TARDIS also travels in time.

It’s quite a nice little adventure with a one-off companion, the clever and open-minded Alli. The best part is the moment when Nine talks about leaving Rose behind due to her commitment to Mickey.

The Staran is an interesting monster, and the back half of the story, set in Babylon during the reign of Hammurabi, is a great historical setting for the adventure.

The story reaches a sweet conclusion: Alli persuades the Doctor to return to Rose and invite her onboard the TARDIS, after which the final scene from Rose plays out from the Doctor’s perspective.

📝4/10 = UNDERWHELMING!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “THE FALL OF APALAPUCIA”

This story did nothing for me. The characters are uninspired, the narrative uninteresting and the sci-fi aspects are forgettable. I probably would have liked it more if I had watched The Girl Who Waited recently, but since I haven't, I can't even recall what happens in it.

📝6/10 = ACCEPTABLE!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “SMILEY'S MIRROR EXHIBIT”

The Tenth Doctor gets involved with a snotty kid and a mirror exhibit moments before Planet of the Dead. Ten is well-written, but I found his scenes with the kid annoying up until Smiley revealed—a smiling, fanged monster who is genuinely creepy and cleverly defeated. The final little twist also reveals a stronger connection with the episode this is a prequel to.

📝7/10 = ENJOYABLE!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “BECKY'S IMPOSSIBLE DAY”

This is a simple little adventure with a nail salon owner named Becky, who comes face to face with an alien that feeds on colour. A very visual and clever idea for a monster that would have worked well for Titan Comics. Nine shows up to save the day, supposedly right before he gets involved with the Auton business in Rose.

This isn't anything mind-blowing, but I like how it explores Nine's emotional trauma by having him face the alien and forcing him to remember his darkest and least colourful moments (i.e., the Time War) to defeat the monster.

📝3/10 = UNENJOYABLE!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “GALAXY FOUR (LOOSE CANNON RECONSTRUCTION)”

Galaxy Four is a bit of an oddity in that it's one of the most socially conscious Classic Who stories, almost Star Trekian in its narrative, and it also happens to be one of the most missing serials (no tele-snaps and hardly any publicity shots exist; Part 3 was discovered a decade ago, and there's a snippet of surviving material at the tail end of Part 1). We do get some grip on the story, even if the production is nigh impossible to evaluate as a whole. This review is based on the Loose Cannon reconstruction.

At its core, this is a classic warring factions story disguised under a flashy sci-fi production, an all-female guest cast, and some important life lessons. The story itself is hardly representative of its themes and structure and is very repetitive in its content.

The plot sees the characters walk back and forth between two sets while trying to come up with different ways to escape the planet they're currently on. It's one of the emptiest four-parters the show has ever done.

Frankly, the action-heavy opening part, coupled with a busy soundtrack and poor sound quality, makes it very hard to understand what is going on at the beginning of the tale.

The twist in Part 3 is meant to be a genuine surprise, but I find it predictable from miles away, seeing how Maaga and the Drahvins are depicted and performed before this.

It's truly jarring how the moral lessons of the episode stick out, due to there not being much of a plot to naturally embed them into.

The idea of the ugly alien race being the good one and the beautiful alien race being the evil one (don't judge a book by its cover!) isn't particularly original but feels like a pivotal piece of education for 60s kids. And it's always a good thing to remember in the 2020s as well, kids!

William Emms obviously came up with the educational part first and then struggled to find a way to convey the message. The conclusion to the story feels very confusing as well, so it's a pity it doesn't exist. In its current state, it's a bit too messy to work.

The Doctor having to work against the clock and save everyone from a planet about to explode into nothingness is unusually bleak and depressing for Doctor Who. Add to that the rather dark ending of the story, and you have the beginning of a fairly dark and depressing season of Doctor Who.

This is an unusually action-packed episode for the Doctor, with poor 57-ish-year-old William Hartnell running around the sets trying to save everyone before the time is up. He does a good job regardless of this, though.

Stephanie Bidmead does a good enough job of feeling just as unlikeable and treacherous as she's meant to be as the villain of the piece—her fourth-wall-breaking moments are particularly effective.

The Drahvins, being a race of women warriors using men as tools, feel very forward-thinking and mean Galaxy Four is a story with a predominantly female cast, which is a rarity.

Why, oh why, did the producers insist on creating new Dalek wannabes? This time, the Chumblies (aptly named by Vicki and then accepted by everybody as a fact) become something of a hybrid between the antlike Zarbi from The Web Planet (1965) and the clumsy Mechonoids from The Chase (1965), and they appear a lot in this serial doing absolutely nothing of note, and we mostly just hear their beeping sound, so they aren't all that effective (if they ever were).

Steven is unfortunately done dirty here because he is given the lines originally meant for Barbara (this story was written while she was still a character in the show), and he lacks the energy and personality from The Time Meddler (1965) and later stories.

The Drahvins are mostly wasted potential, as their female warrior side isn't used to great effect, and they end up spending most of the story sitting inside the crashed spaceship. Additionally, the story makes it a bit too obvious that they are not the good guys here, particularly in how cold and ruthless Maaga appears to everyone and everything from the beginning.

I'm sad to say that the Rills (who we, fortunately, get to meet properly in the existing Part 3) are nothing but shouty alien lumps that work better on paper than brought to life on a shoestring budget.

It's a pity this missing story is so visual in structure because it is a chore to sit through and try to figure out what is going on. I had to read the episode synopses online to keep up with the narrative.

Unfortunately, watching a handful of pictures of Chumblies and listening to annoying beeping noises four episodes in a row does not make for a very compelling story.

Much like with The Web Planet, the head-piercing sound design is one of the chief reasons this story is hard to sit through, especially without supporting visuals.

Galaxy Four is slow and tedious but also very light on actual tension since the two halves of the story tackle the main characters very differently, and there's no proper time to build up to anything.

I'm not very sold on the production design from what we can see from the pictures and the surviving material. This is one of the least visually pleasing stories of the Hartnell era, but that was probably unavoidable considering the production cost of upcoming, gigantic stories.

📝5/10 = ACCEPTABLE!

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THIRD IMPRESSIONS: “DESTINY OF THE DALEKS”

Season 17 was the last season of Doctor Who in the 1970s and brought some minor changes in front of and behind the camera. Legendary science fiction writer Douglas Adams was appointed new script editor, following his successful debut adventure The Pirate Planet in the previous season. Series star Tom Baker was joined by a new companion, played by Lalla Ward, who had previously appeared in another part in the last serial, The Armageddon Factor. Baker and Ward were briefly married following their time together on the show.

Script editor Adams and producer Graham Williams wanted to start the new season with a bang, and the best way to do that was obviously to craft a story featuring everyone's favourite bug-eyed monsters, the Daleks. Their real-life creator, Terry Nation, was hired to write the script in hopes of recreating the success of the legendary Genesis of the Daleks from Season 12.

Alas, Destiny of the Daleks is nowhere near as good as its predecessor, which may be one of the reasons it was to be Nation's final contribution to the show.

Fans of the show will immediately recognise the Nation-esque element in the script—from slaves working for the Daleks to the Daleks' desperate plan to save themselves to become the greatest power in the universe. That concept is undoubtedly worn out by now, and Terry Nation fails to deliver anything new or exciting to reinvigorate his creations.

But the worst part about Destiny of the Daleks is that Nation tries to copy the template he created for Genesis of the Daleks: we are back on Skaro, once again looking very different from ever before, and human beings are once again pitted against the Daleks, and Dalek creator Davros makes yet another appearance (I like his introduction at the end of Part 2 when we see him covered in cobwebs).

Davros is brought to life for the first and only time by David Gooderson, and I feel it's safe to say that he is nowhere near as good as the charismatic Michael Wisher, who played him in Genesis, or the legendary Terry Molloy, who has played him since 1984. Gooderson is quite bad in the part. The costume doesn't fit his body at all, and he has the voice and stature of the character all wrong. Davros has never been my favourite Doctor Who villain, but in Destiny of the Daleks, he is just bad and boring. And the Doctor pushing him around like a toddler in a pram certainly doesn’t make him feel more sinister.

That being said, the Daleks aren't much better, either. Since Davros became the new big baddie in most post-1974 Dalek stories, the Daleks themselves have become mindless machines repeating the same lines over and over again and acting as weak and stupid comedic sidekicks to their creator. And in Destiny of the Daleks, particularly, Nation seems to struggle to decide whether to make the Daleks serious or not. So, he switches back and forth for the better part of the story, making the Daleks shout threats one second and having them defeated by the Doctor's hat in another. And they still don't understand how the Doctor thinks and acts, which is just lazy writing.

Nation gets a couple of things right, though. The beginning of the serial, introducing us to Lalla Ward's Romana, is an interesting and memorable sequence—because it also establishes that Time Lords can influence their physical appearance when regenerating (something that Steven Moffat expanded upon during his time running the show). Nation also manages to make the final sequence of Part 4, with the Daleks attacking the Movellan spaceship, quite exciting (even though the ending of the adventure as a whole is all too brief and hasty, like the endings seen in most stories from the 60s).

That brings us to the only new creation Nation offers us: the robotic alien species called Movellans, currently at war with the Daleks. In Destiny of the Daleks, the Movellans are the opponents of the Daleks, a part previously played by the Thals. The Movellans' role in the story remains ambiguous for quite a while, which I liked, and the twist involving them is the only truly interesting part of the entire story. The Movellan spaceship is also beautifully designed, and I also like the fact that the Movellan crew is entirely black. That makes Doctor Who in 1979 feel ahead of its time.

The most exciting of the episodes is Part 1 with its explosions, its sneaking around, and its tension—it's like a James Bond movie with a smaller budget. The thriller atmosphere of the episode feels fresh but also gets a bit worn out by the end. But for the most part, the atmosphere—coupled with whining winds and earthquakes—feels a bit eerie. But a real sense of excitement is absent, mostly because the viewer knows the Doctor and Romana are on Skaro, which means there will be Daleks (thanks for spoiling that, story title!).

The special effects and the model work on this story are quite good as well. So big shoutouts to director Ken Grieve (in his only Doctor Who work, sadly) and production designer Ken Ledsham for their great work trying to make the story feel interesting, exciting, and believable.

After a thrilling ride in Part 1, the second episode reverts to good old walking, talking, and mining before once again putting up a chilly show for Part 3. This kind of roller coaster writing can be very annoying at times and feels particularly clumsy in Destiny of the Daleks.

Lalla Ward as the new incarnation of Romana doesn't leave any lasting impressions yet, but she gets the job done with honour, even if she doesn't quite match the charisma of Mary Tamm. She hits it off with Baker right away, and the two bicker back and forth like a married couple (hehe!). Romana, on the other hand, isn’t particularly interesting in this story, which is mostly because she is given nothing interesting to do. Most of the guest cast is quite anonymous as well, particularly Tim Barlow (from Hot Fuzz) as Tyssan and Peter Straker as the Movellan commander. It's quite rare for Doctor Who to feature such an unmemorable and mundane cast, but here we are. No stellar performances, no standouts, just plain acting.

Destiny of the Daleks is a very plain, stripped-down Dalek story, showing exactly why it was good to finally let Nation go. It's unusually slow and boring for a Dalek story, and there truly is a somewhat clumsy tinge to it all, even in the faster moments. The story is saved by its production values, a few good scenes between the Doctor and Davros, and the witty and snappy dialogue as well as the clever humour, inserted by script editor Douglas Adams. The scene in which the Doctor reads a book called "The Origin of the Universe" while being stuck waiting for help is a nice and unusual bit of comedy. But for all that it is worth, Destiny of the Daleks is a lazier and poorer recreation of Genesis of the Daleks, just as Planet of the Daleks is a forgettable recreation of The Daleks.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• This is the one where they come up with the clever idea of giving K9 laryngitis to explain why his voice changed (the real reason being that the K9 was unsuitable for all the location filming required for the story and so was needed only for a short scene at the beginning, voiced by Dalek voice actor Roy Skelton).
• At least Nation finally decided to forego his usual “Oh my God! It’s a Dalek!” shock cliffhanger reveal at the end of Part 1 by replacing it with a much lamer version where they burst through a glass wall, shouting “DO NOT MOVE! DO NOT MOVE!”.
• The Doctor thinks it's vital to know what the Daleks are doing on Skaro. Well, it’s their home planet; what do you think? It’s like asking a human what they’re doing on Earth.
• I like how the Doctor demonstrates why the Movellans cannot win their war by playing rock, paper, and scissors with them and proving that they’re stuck in a logical impasse.

📝5/10 → MIDDLING!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “THE FOUR FACES OF IMMORTALITY”

This story is a prequel to The Five Doctors and is centered on Gallifrey, where we follow Borusa as he meets three other Time Lords and learns what happened to him after he lost the Game of Rassilon. Wait, what? This prequel is set after The Five Doctors?

Well, it's technically also a prequel, as we learn about the three Time Lords who played the Game before Brousa and how they ended up imprisoned.

This isn't the most exciting of stories. It's mostly an info dump about Time Lord society or recording the events of Five Doctors. It's written in a tongue-in-cheek style, though.

We also meet other familiar Time Lords, such as Vansell and Rassilon.

📝9/10 = EXTREMELY GOOD!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “LITTLE DID SHE KNOW”

A story focusing on Tegan as she returns to her family in Australia, written by Janet Fielding herself. It works much better than I thought—we meet a family still feeling the effects of losing Tegan’s aunt Vanessa and learn about Tegan's deceased mother and her difficult relationship with her father—all the while strange lights appear in the night sky.

I love how relatable the characters are and how Australia comes to life with very simple methods. The little alien plot is never the main focus but proves to be an important piece in the narrative. Because this helps Tegan reconcile with her father in the beautiful closing scene of the narrative.

There's good drama in the climactic moments, when Tegan tries to save her father while a snake wounds her brother, and she is convinced that the Mara still has ahold on her.

📝4/10 → UNDERWHELMING!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “THE LONG CON”

A San Diego Comic-Con exclusive issue that ties into Titans 10th, 11th and 12th Doctor runs. It's essentially a couple of pages with each of the three Doctors in short and pointless scenes. The biggest takeaways are Eleven and Alice discussing Hamilton the Musical and Twelve visiting a comics convention. Completely inessential.

📝7/10 → GOOD!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “GALLIFREY: THE INQUIRY”

The Gallifrey saga continues with The Inquiry, which sees President Romana face a hearing for her actions while Leela tries to uncover the truth about what happened to Andred.

I love a good courtroom drama, and The Inquiry goes all in on that track when key characters are called as witnesses against or in support of Romana, which further shows the political tension on Gallifrey. The story is mostly focused on exploring the circumstances around the Timonic Fusion Device and on Leela breaking her way into the Matrix to learn about Andred’s fate. Everything remains fairly contained but still moves the overall plot forward satisfyingly.

Leela and Romana continue carrying the weight of the story on their shoulders, while the guys plot behind their backs. Lalla Ward is particularly good when she lashes out against those trying to stop her. Braxiatel and Narvin are great in this as well, and it’s a joy to hear Lynda Bellingham as Inquisitor Darkel.

Braxiatel is fleshed out a bit more, especially his Collection and the danger he puts the Matrix and Time itself into, but I still can’t really graph his overall role in the series. The scene where he reveals Anred’s fate to Leela is a highlight of the series so far, with superb performances from Jameson and Miles Richardson.

The third act is pretty busy with explaining what’s been going on, and I can’t say that I got all of it.

📝8/10 → VERY GOOD!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “BANG-BANG-A-BOOM”

As was radiation for Big Finish in their Main Range, the last release of each release was meant to be a light-hearted or fun Christmas special or parody. Bang-Bang-a-Boom! parodies the Eurovision Song Contest and the Star Trek franchise.

What we get here is Seven and Mel arriving at a space station and encountering dead bodies, all the while the three-hundred-somethingth Intergalactic Song Contest is underway. The political tension between two participating neighbouring worlds causes stir-up and conflict behind the scenes of the production, so the Doctor gets involved in trying to solve the problem.

The writers know their Eurovision and write a fantastically sharp political satire that perfectly mirrors a lot of the political shenanigans involved with the real-world contest (especially so in recent times). Seven and Mel are also the perfect TARDIS crew to get involved with such a story, especially since the Doctor’s decision to impersonate a spaceship commander further complicates things. 

Sylvester McCoy goes all in on being light-hearted and fun here, and it’s a nice change of pace from the manipulative and sinister Seven we so often encounter. Bonnie Langford is wonderful, especially when paired together with the intergalactic pop star Nicky Newman (Anthony Spargo), who is delighted to meet someone who has no idea who he is.

The Star Trek elements come from the science-y and space-y stuff that both sound believable but also so out there that it's impossible to determine whether it's realistic or not. The cover art also mimics the poster for Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

And there’s the murder mystery element here as well, which is nothing new to Doctor Who. That makes this something of a The Curse of Peladon or The Robots of Death parody as well, or even a twist on a classic Agatha Christie-style whodunit.

The supporting cast is colourful and fun. Angvia is a fun character, exaggerated and romantic, with an East-European accent; Geri is a rodent character with a cute voice (she sounds distractingly like Alpha Centauri; both are voiced by the inimitable Jane Goddard); Loozly is a hot-headed interpreter; and Dr. Harcourt is a medical officer working closely with the Doctor. David Tughan’s Logan the Commentator is also a very fun character and a parody of typical Eurovision commentators.

One gripe I have is that the individual episodes are all over 30 minutes in length, making this adventure a tad overextended.

The music is nice, especially some of the dramatic musical cues whenever a dead body is discovered. Which happens a lot, by the way.

The constant small twists and turns keep the story fresh, even though there isn’t a whole lot going on. There were so many twists that I couldn’t keep up with them all the time.

The strange romance subplot between Angvia and the Doctor is bizarrely funny.

The dialogue is frequently funny and over-the-top, with the cast delivering them in a way that makes them even more amusing. I found myself giggling more than once while listening to this.

Part 4 finally offers some “performances” from the Intergalactic Song Contest, and they are horrible and funny. It also features one of the funnier takes on a classic “murderer reveal” I’ve heard. The entire episode is the strongest part of the story and one of the best single episodes I've heard in the Main Range.

I love the little fake-out ending before we get the real reveal of the killer. And how the Doctor inadvertently wins the contest for Earth.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• I adore the continuity announcements by Nicholas Briggs at the start of every part. Feels like a nice callback to the TV days.
• They finally begin using era-appropriate theme tunes from this release onwards!
• The title of this adventure is a play on Lulu’s song Boom Bang-a-Bang, which won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1969 for the UK.
• It took me a bit too long to realise that Angvia is a deliberate anagram of a different word (it begins with a “V”).

📝6/10 → ACCEPTABLE!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “THE JAZZ MONSTER”

This story takes us back to New Orleans in the Jazz Age. Titan previously visited the era in their 11th Doctor comics. Is this coincidental or deliberate?

I like the connections to the earlier adventure in Wupatki and its living music; how the alien force uses music as its weapon. And we get to see more of Gabby's new mysterious powers, revealed in the previous collection.

The supporting characters are forgettable. Cindy isn't given anything proper to do, and I still haven't warmed up to her.

It's interesting to have another music-based adventure, even if the idea is beginning to feel overused and the story itself is quite traditional. The dialogue gets very technical as well, which drags things down a notch.

The back half of the story moves to Chicago, where Ten and Gabby have to prevent the Nocturnes from invading by inhabiting music records—this part flies by with no real impact.

The last few pages left me somewhat confused as to whether or not there was a timey-wimey element involved.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• The Doctor takes on the moniker of Doctor Venkman. Love a Ghostbusters reference!

9️⃣🔽 → EXTREMELY GOOD!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: "LOVE AND WAR"

Love and War is a momentous piece of Doctor Who prose by Paul Cornell. Not only does it combine a romance story with an effective alien invasion plot, but it is also the introduction of time-travelling archaeologist Professor Bernice Summerfield. It is also a sequel to Frontier in Space of sorts, as it plays out in Heaven, a planet inhabited jointly by humans and Draconians after the war between the two races.

The state of Heaven and the alliance between humans and Draconians are touched upon, but the latter species never shows up properly, which is a pity. Other races, such as Sontarans and Daleks, are also mentioned.

There's good time devoted to exploring Heaven, the Travellers, the archaeological dig, and the Library, as well as the Puterspace and its strange visions.

One of my favourite moments is the first meeting between the Doctor and Benny; they hit it off right away. Another great moment is the one where it is revealed that Jan is a pyrokinetic; this made him instantly more interesting to me.

What's confusing is Ace's state here. She was coldly left on an alien planet all alone by the Doctor at the end of the previous novel, Nightshade, yet here she is travelling with him again as if nothing had happened. She spends a good chunk of the book together with the ragtag group of musicians and travellers and quickly falls in love with one of them, Jan. Their relationship brings a sweet romantic element to the story, but it sort of comes out of nowhere and ends as quickly as it begins. Her previous love interest, Robin, gets a fleeting mention.

I truly appreciate the time put into exploring Ace's past through her relationship with her mother and former love interest Julian. She also gets the opportunity to properly deal with the ghosts of her past.

Cornell writes with a mature, immensely readable style. He's not afraid to use mature language or explain graphic transformations but doesn't make things needlessly convoluted like he did with parts of Timewyrm: Revelation.

The Puterspace and the stuff going on inside of it are confusing at first, but once the Doctor enters for the first time, it begins making more sense, as well as bringing plenty of tension to the story. It functions as a pretty thinly veiled allegory for hallucinogenic drugs.

The fungoid creature featured here, the Hoothi (previously mentioned in The Brain of Morbius), formed of a hive mind from thousands of absorbed people, is a very traditional but very effective monster. And their plan to use corpses as an army is effectively creepy. Phaedrus is a pawn in their plans, first shown to be nothing but vile and calculated, but later revealed to have a very humane and tragic motivation behind his actions.

The Doctor is once again manipulative, to the point where he sacrifices Jan to save the entire planet. This is the second novel in the row where the Doctor directly prevents Ace from pursuing her romantic interests, and this time it leads to Ace's explosive exit from the TARDIS.

Cornell ties up the book nicely and takes on Benny as the new full-time companion. The last third of the novel is fast-paced but can turn somewhat muddled.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS: 

• Cool how fellow Doctor Who fan and writer Paul Magrs appears in the book as a minor supporting character.

8️⃣⏹️ → VERY GOOD!

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THIRD IMPRESSIONS: “THE SATAN PIT”

The Satan Pit isn’t all non-stop action and tension like most second parts in Nu Who two-parters. It keeps building anticipation for the reveal of the big bad in the last third, almost to the point of excess. But what keeps it together is the many great scenes with the Doctor and Tennant’s strong performance.

There’s action as well, on Rose’s end, as she and the crew defend the base from the evil Ood. Rose seems to be the only one who can keep her calm somewhat, which makes her stand out. Zach also proves to be an unusually capable captain.

It’s pretty interesting how this episode suggests that every iteration of the Beast, in every religion and culture, originates from the original seen here. The scene with the Doctor slowly descending into the pit and contemplating the nature of the Beast, the universe, and his travels is a top-tier Ten moment.

Another great moment is the scene where Ten and the Beast finally go face-to-face and Tennant holds a long Doctor monologue. The CGI might not be the most effective, but the sheer size and design of the creature and its presence and voice make it so effective.

All the stuff with the Doctor seemingly dropping to his death and Rose refusing to leave the planet turns a bit too melodramatic for my taste, and the resolution is perhaps a bit too rushed, but other than that, the story largely sticks to the landing.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• Captain Zachary represents “the Torchwood Archive,” whatever that's supposed to mean.

8️⃣🔼 → VERY GOOD!

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THIRD IMPRESSIONS: “THE IMPOSSIBLE PLANET”

They begin the episode right off the bat with that smug moment in front of the TARDIS. Blergh!

Fortunately, though, the focus quickly switches to some effectively creepy and fascinatingly sci-fi stuff—impossibly old wiring on the wall and whispery voices speaking to the weak-minded; a space station on a barren rock orbiting a black hole; and the introduction of one of the more successful aliens in Nu Who: the spaghetti-faced telepathic Sensorite cousins known as the Ood.

The worn-out space station and its crew are one of the more successful and memorable ones seen in the revival (together with Bowie Base One in The Waters of Mars). The fact that we spend a good amount of time with most of them helps to flesh out the crew members.

Themes of slavery are explored through the Ood, a race living to serve. It's not a very deep-cut commentary, though, and is returned to in Planet of the Ood in Series 4.

The episode largely plays with traditional Doctor Who stuff: a base crew partaking in a revolutionary project that goes horribly wrong; the Doctor losing access to the TARDIS; evil powers from before time and space uncovered and possessing people. But it does all of that while effectively building a tense atmosphere and consistently planting hints as to who or what the big bad is.

Silas Carson is the OG voice for the Ood, and he’s already perfect at it from the onset.

The one and only Gabriel Woolf, arguably one of the best actors to ever have played a Doctor Who villain, returns here to voice the Beast (joining the exclusive club of actors who have worked on both the classic and new versions of the show). That cold and menacing voice of his is just as effective as it was back in 1976, when he played Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars.

David Tennant and Billie Piper are fine when focused on the main plot points and interacting with the guest cast, but when left alone talking about mortgages and the like, they fall to that annoying smugness again, and I cringe all the way through those scenes.

They use very simple methods to make the possessed Toby creepy, but it definitely works. That writing all over his body and the red eyes, followed by his destructive actions, tell us all we need to know about the nature of the threat.

The latter half of the episode brilliantly builds up to one of the more memorable cliffhanger reveals in Nu Who: the Ood suddenly turning into killers; the creepy voice of Gabriel Woolf announcing the arrival of the Beast; and finally, the trapp door to the Satan Pit opening…

📝6/10 = ACCEPTABLE!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “HOURS 6-9”

The Doom's Day event continues with two Titan Comics issues, covering the next four hours in Doom's mission to find the Doctor.

Hody Houser wrote the Titan story for Time Lord Victorious and returns here. We get another ball in Bridgerton style in issue 1, along with Missy (with very accurately written dialogue, I could hear Michelle Gomez saying it) and cat people (like those in New Earth and Gridlock).

The slightly longer format allows for a bit more time to develop Doom, and we get a look at her assassin skill set as well.

The second half of issue 1 sends Doom back to the Stormcage. Doom meets employees and inmates there and runs into Missy again, who tries to convince everyone she's the Doctor.

The entire first issue feels more like Missy's story, but it does strengthen the idea that Doom is a very capable assassin and isn't easily fooled.

Issue 2 begins with a mission on New Earth. Missy is back but doesn't do a lot this time. Here, they actually have something they want to say as Doom defends a bookshop from a woman who wants to destroy all the old books.

The second half of issue 2 concludes the Titan part of Doom's Day. This is set in a barren world with a lone inhabitant planning a genocide. It's more of the same back-and-forth between Doom and Missy; the former kills the target, and the latter admits she's not the Doctor.

This began promisingly but ran out of steam after issue 1 and feels ultimately like wasted potential.

The art style is pretty good throughout.

📝5/10 = MIDDLING!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “HOUR 5”

The Doom's Day event continues with the next four hours of Doom's quest, which plays out on the pages of Doctor Who Magazine and its comic strip.

The Doctor Who Magazine part of the story finishes with Doom killing the idea of a unicorn at a mediaeval fair and meeting Jo Grant for some reason. Art is still fine, but Doom remains a flat protagonist.

📝5/10 = MIDDLING!

Dooming through time and space, one hour at a time!

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “HOUR 4”

The Doom's Day event continues with the next four hours of Doom's quest, which plays out on the pages of Doctor Who Magazine and its comic strip.

This is a run-around with the Cybermen on a 1930s Hollywood Western set. Why and how? No idea, but a plastic gun is all that is needed to defeat them.

📝6/10 = ACCEPTABLE!

Dooming through time and space, one hour at a time!

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “HOUR 3”

The Doom's Day event continues with the next four hours of Doom's quest, which plays out on the pages of Doctor Who Magazine and its comic strip.

The Sixth Doctor, killer clowns, doll-sized clones, and Autons feature in this story. It's a short and simple affair that does next to nothing to personify Doom more.

📝4/10 = LACKING!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “HOUR 2”

The Doom's Day event continues with the next four hours of Doom's quest, which plays out on the pages of Doctor Who Magazine and its comic strip.

Target Selected is literally one scene of Doom meeting River in the Stormcage while Death looms upon her, and River sends her to her next destination. A short story with fine art, but it hardly covers an hour.

📝7/10 = ENJOYABLE!

Dooming through time and space, one hour at a time!

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “HOUR 1”

James Goss kicks off this multimedia event with a short story that covers all the basics. We are introduced to assassin Doom (working for the Lesser Order of Oberon, the same company Brian the Ood works for in Time Lord Victorious) as she realises that she is dying. She has 24 hours to find the Doctor and allow him to save her.

I enjoy the simple humour sprinkled throughout and the depiction of a very dull and grey company personified in the bored company booker Terri.

The story jumps between Doom talking with Terri about her current pickle and the botched mission leading up to it. An undisclosed (but old) incarnation of the Doctor pops up briefly before Doom is sent to the Stormcage for her next mission.

📝6/10 = ACCEPTABLE!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “SQUARE ONE”

This second chapter of the Gallifrey saga sees Romana attend a top-secret summit between the universe’s time-travelling powers while Leela and K9 investigate the powers of Free Time.

The story is slightly easier to get into than the opening installment, as it's more focused on its two plots and a smaller pool of characters. Leela’s investigation is the most interesting part of this, as it carries tension and mystery, with a few fun moments as well. The time slip stuff provides a fun extra twist to the story.

The political stuff most likely pays off later down the line, but at this point, it still feels a bit confusing. The performances and music are very good.

The final stretch creates good tension, as everything is revealed in a sort of Agatha Christie-style scene. Still, there is something about this that doesn’t quite grab my attention as effectively as the first part did.

📝8/10 = MORE ENJOYABLE!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “THE CHURCH AND THE CROWN”

This story instantly transports you to 17th-century France and the time of King Louis and Queen Anne and growing unrest between the church and the crown, in what is essentially a pure historical take on The Three Musketeers.

It’s been a while since I listened to The Eye of the Scorpion, so I forgot that Erimem joined the TARDIS at the end of that story and makes her first trip with Peri and the Doctor in this one. But I love how she immediately hits it off with Peri and shows great fascination for this new time.

Part 1 is pretty busy with setting the scene and throwing in a lot of characters who discuss the current political situation. The standouts from the beginning are the historically accurate depiction of Cardinal Richelieu, who’s portrayed well by Michael Shallard, and King Louis XIII as played by Andrew Mackay.

I’ve always enjoyed dopperlgänger stories in Doctor Who (such as The Androids of Tara), and here we have another one: Peri looks exactly like Queen Anne, leading to plenty of confusion when the former gets entangled in an assassination plot against the latter. This allows for more time for Erimem to find her role as a companion as she joins the Doctor in his attempts to save Peri, while Nicola Bryant gets to pull an impressive double duty as both Peri and Queen Anne; she truly keeps both characters separate while recognisably voicing both of them.

Caroline Morris is a force to be reckoned with, and the energy and fierceness she gives Erimem brings to mind Louise Jameson and Leela. I quite enjoy how she often takes charge of a situation, much to the Doctor’s chagrin, and how well she interacts with the other characters.

Peter Davison is also in top form and sounds like he's enjoying himself.

The music, performances, and setting give The Church and the Crown a feel akin to Phantasmagoria mixed with The Marian Conspiracy, and I’m all for it.

Part 2 continues to twist and turn the political intrigue while feeding the tension between the King and the Cardinal; all the while Erimem tries to ease tensions, and the Doctor is being brutally interrogated. Part 2 is much the same, but the performances and the great dialogue keep it all going even if the story hardly moves forward.

The chaos and battle scenes are played out surprisingly effectively, and Part 4 brings the story to an exciting close, with a few final twists to boot and consistently strong performances and music.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• The Doctor says that his “arms are a bit longer," and I was thinking: are his arms too long (see: Wild Blue Yonder)?

📝7/10 = ENJOYABLE!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time!

VICTORY XXIV

This story isn’t technically a part of the Time Lord Victorious event, but it tells us what happens to the Tenth Doctor immediately after it and before his regeneration in The End of Time.

Robert Napton’s story sheds some light on the Time Agency and its activity. They remove an entire galaxy from existence, which grabs the Doctor’s attention and sends him over to the Agency to shut them down for good. This creates natural tension between the Doctor and the Time Marshal when both sides try to prove why they’re right. The titular Hourglass is a creepy piece of technology that counts probabilities for various events.

The back-and-forth between the Doctor, the Agency, and the Hourglass keeps the story flowing at a good pace, especially towards the end when we are literally racing against time.

Neve McIntosh does a fine job narrating the story. The energy she gives the Doctor and Helen is superb. Sadly, the other characters are effectively sidelined.

📝8/10 = VERY ENJOYABLE!

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VICTORY XXXII

The Time Lord Victorious event concludes with this short story, penned by Dave Rudden and published in the Wintertime Paradox collection. The TLV connection is small but significant.

This is a charming little story about a woman (Anke) who runs a museum of impossible things—objects from alternate timelines. The Doctor tries to reach her by telephone multiple times to warn her of the dangers of such a museum and to get permission to investigate the items but is constantly dismissed by Anke—until her collection risks tearing up the fabric of space and time.

Anke is a very sympathetic person. We don't learn a lot about her until the end, but she comes across as very likable. Rudden writes the story with a warmth and familiarity that makes it a fun and intimate read.

I find it fun that the Curator pops up here in a key role. It's always great seeing more of him in the extended universe!

The ending is sort of a head-scratcher.

📝6/10 = SLIGHTLY ENJOYABLE!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time!

VICTORY XXII

The final Eaglemoss story sheds light on Dalek Executioners and the Strategist. We also learn the anatomy of the Dalek gun stick. The short story is a neat little piece of the Dalek Strategist stuck in the Time Vortex and contemplating the nature of its failed plan.

📝7/10 = ENJOYABLE!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time!

VICTORY XX

The second Eaglemoss Figurine story delves deeper into Dalek commanders, scientists, time travel, and saucers before delivering the short story Mission to the Known. Here, we follow the Dalek Scientist, Commander, and Executioner as they experiment on ancient races before the Dalek Emperor gives them new orders: to destroy Gallifrey before the Time Lords are created.

This is a small but pretty enjoyable piece of the TLV story, and it feels like an important cog in the machine for the final stretch of the event. However, this entire scene appears in All Flesh is Grass as well, albeit slightly altered, and the ending of it spoils the main twist in the novel.

📝7/10 = ENJOYABLE!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time! 

VICTORY XXV

This story is a little coda to the Time Lord Victorious event (and a prequel to the A Dalek Awakens escape room story) and involves the Fourth Doctor going up against a lone Dalek.

We are onboard a starship transporting humans to a new world when a bunch of the crew is awoken from their cryogenic sleep ahead of time after the ship is boarded by a Dalek. They decide to experiment on it to potentially use its assets, but that is naturally a bad idea. The Doctor is needed to sort everything out.

Jonathan Morris builds the atmosphere slowly, and the guest cast performs the script believably (particularly when first facing the Doctor and dismissing everything he says). We learn early on that one of the humans is working with the Dalek and can sense everything going very wrong eventually. It takes a while for the Doctor to show up in the story, and this time is used to effectively build the threat.

Tom Baker is in good spirits, but his Doctor here is more of the older, funnier geezer type than the occasionally very alien and rude version we saw on TV.

The story turns more entertaining once Brooke becomes a Dalek puppet. It's also interesting when the Dalek taunts the Doctor with his future crimes.

📝5/10 = MIDDLING!

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VICTORY XXI

Following the final battle in All Flesh is Grass (Victory XVIII), the Daleks are stuck in the Time Vortex between the Dark Times and their own time, with the Doctor on board their ship, leading to a tense confrontation between the two sides.

If you have a problem with Nicholas Briggs talking to himself in different voices for about 95% of the runtime, then this audio isn’t for you. The cast is literally made up of Paul McGann, two guest characters, and multiple Dalek characters, and this easily turns grating, especially when you add the fact that the dialogue mostly consists of Daleks spouting technobabble and panicking about their ship breaking down and the Doctor constantly working against them.

The limited setting and small cast don’t allow this story to evolve a lot, and the little tension it manages to build in the second half is never effective enough to help this one stand out.

📝6/10 = SLIGHTLY ENJOYABLE!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time!

VICTORY XIX

The BBC Audio Originals range joined the Time Lord Victorious event with a Brian the Ood-centric story. Having escaped the battle with Eight and Nine, Ten and Brian explore the planet of Magnox, a Mecca for knowledge. Here, the Doctor seeks to find out whether or not his recent actions have been the right thing to do.

This slow story spends a lot of time fleshing out Magnox and its people and providing more characterisation for Brian. It takes a very long time until the story finally picks up, once the Kotturuh catch up with the Doctor.

Jacob Dudman makes this well worth a listen. He does a great job as Ten, and the other character voices are fun as well, not least his voice for Brian.

They mention Islos from the Daleks! web series! And I like that little coda at the end, with Eleven on Islos.

📝7/10 = ENJOYABLE!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time!

VICTORY XVIII

All Flesh is Grass continues the Time Lord Victorious arc from where The Knight, The Fool, and the Dead left us. Una McCormack takes over the story and sends a Tenth Doctor, driven too far by his confidence, into battle against Eight, Nine, the Daleks, and some vampires.

What begins as a battle evolves into a story where the Doctors are forced into an uneasy alliance against the remaining Kotturuh and the Daleks, who try to use vampires to develop themselves into super-Daleks. This brings plenty of natural tension between the three incarnations. But it also means that the entire TLV stuff is sidelined for another Dalek plot to foil.

I really like how Ten continues being cocky and confident, while Eight tries to be the force of reason. Nine is well-written as more scarred after the Time War, even trying to get the Kotturuh to pass judgement on the Daleks.

We meet Inyit, the last of the Kotturuh, who greatly expands upon their function, and we learn why exactly it's dangerous to kill every Kotturuh in existence.

I love Brian's little solo operation towards the end of the book. Other than that, he appears way too little in this story.

This is an interesting take on a multi-Doctor story, but the middle of it sort of just spins the wheels until the climax, and it's not overly exciting. The book picks up tension once the Daleks finalise their experiment and the Kotturuh’s ultimate destruction nears.

The final battle is epic and has that season finale feel to it. It's great to see the three Doctors unite to save Gallifrey from the Daleks and their new Symbionts, even if Nine and Ten know that their planet is gone in their time.

If you follow the guide and read the second Eaglemoss story (Victory XX) before All Flesh is Grass, it will spoil the twist of Gallifrey being the Daleks’ Ultimate End for you.

📝7.0 = ENJOYABLE!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time!

VICTORY XI

The first Big Finish audio in the Time Lord Victorious event is Echoes of Extinction, which consists of two half-hour parts: the first with Eight and the second with Ten.

The first part sees Eight arrive at an undisclosed location, coming face-to-face with a creature forced to kill anyone it meets: an imprisoned woman and her jailer robot. He soon begins investigating the creature’s purpose and abilities. This first half of the story is pretty meh on its own, but Pau McGann is great, and Paul Clayton provides a superbly compelling performance as Edwards, the robot jailer turned servant.

The second part picks up during the Tenth Doctor’s travel home from the Dark Times, as he joins an expedition to the long-dead world sometime after the Eighth Doctor has left it. David Tennant slips back to his old role effortlessly, and the 30-minute story builds tension. It also shows how the Doctor has learnt his lesson from the Time Lord Victorious business, which is why it's satisfying to listen to it at this point. The guest cast is superb, especially Burn Gorman and Arthur Darvill. This part is simple but pretty exciting once the Network is fully unleashed.

📝6.8 = ENJOYABLE!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “THE INFINITE CORRIDOR”

Yet another TARDIS-bound story, and I generally like how Titan explores the inner workings of the timeship or plays around with time and dimensions in these stories. This one is all about bubble universes, but the idea is never explored in depth. It makes for a simple but fun adventure with great art. Cindy gets into trouble again, and we get a little setup for the next collection at the end.

The titular door-filled corridor reminds me of a similar corridor seen in the Toymaker's house in The Giggle.

📝5.0 = MIDDLING!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “LADY OF THE BLUE BOX”

Another short Free Comic Book Day issue. It's TARDIS-bound, and there's a hint of a danger that comes and goes with little impact. It's mostly interested in welcoming Cindy on board the TARDIS.

Cindy joins the TARDIS properly, and I don't know what to think about it because I don't particularly like her.

I love how the TARDIS interior is explored more. We see the gallery with pictures of past Doctors and visit the wardrobe again.

📝6.6 = ENJOYABLE!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “THE WISHING WELL WITCH”

It's charming to have a modern-day story set in a small English town during a supernatural book fair. The witch-cult stuff brings in a classic horror element.

We see some cracks form between Gabby, the more experienced companion, and Cindy, who wants to do things her own way. We also meet an old local named Randall, who becomes quite a useful guide.

The wishing well monster is effectively scary, and it's made more so when the Doctor's misdiagnosis sends it into town on a feeding frenzy.

The little scene of the fortune teller warning Cindy of Sutekh's imminent arrival is just like the foreshadowing scenes RTD used to insert into his episodes.

The second half is a very traditional run-around with the alien, and the Gabby/Cindy stuff is sidelined before we reach a forgettable conclusion.

The art style is hit-and-miss. It mostly works but messes up Tennant's face big time.

📝5.9 = SLIGHTLY ENJOYABLE!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “THE ARENA OF FEAR”

The Arena of Fear picks off where the previous story left off. Our friends have been transported somewhere and can't remember who they are or why they've ended up where they are. I like the setup of a bunch of different characters thrust into an alien world to fend for themselves while slowly figuring out what's going on—it's like in the original Secret Wars event in Marvel.

There's a lot of characters here, and the entire thing ends up being rather underwhelming. It's over before it really starts, and it's never very exciting.

They go over this last of the Neanderthals thing again, like in Ghostlight and Timewyrm: Genesis.

I love the new nickname for Captain Jack: Jock Hotness.

📝6.0 = SLIGHTLY ENJOYABLE!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: “THE MEDICINE MAN”

This story takes us back to the Stone Age, where we meet a Neanderthal shaman who agrees to nurse an unconscious Doctor back to life. I like how these cave people are shown to be intelligent in their own way—knowing how to hunt, tend to wounds, and be artistic.

Soon enough, we have an alien invasion story in the Stone Age, complete with traditional flying saucers and a group of ragtag aliens who've gathered together to fight the Monaxi and prevent them from destroying the Earth.

We follow the story from Munmeth’s POV, and when Gabby uses words he's not familiar with, they've been cleverly scratched out from the speech balloons. There are a few panels that repeat the same scene: how it really plays out and how the TARDIS translated it to Munmeth.

I like the discussion on the doomed fate of the Neanderthals. It seems like a classic theme in stories featuring them; see Ghostlight and Timewyrn: Genesis.

I'm a bit tired of these new alien baddies who turn out to be old foes of the Time Lords. It happens all the time in the Titan comics. The Monaxi here are no exception, even if we get a good climax with them.

The cliffhanger ending is certainly intriguing!

📝5.8 = SLIGHTLY ENJOYABLE!

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: "CINDY, CLEO AND THE MAGIC SKETCHBOOK"

This is a Doctor-lite episode, focusing on Cindy and told through Gabby's art and her diary entries to Cindy.

I've always struggled with these introspective issues—we certainly get a better grip on Gabby and Cindy, in particular, but it's not very exciting.

It's interesting to read Gabby's thoughts on the various Doctors and previous companions. The tail end also changes things up as we realise that Gabby warns Cindy of Anubis and the Osirians, after which she faces Cleo and Ebonite in the next chapter of the Osirian saga. This is mostly set-up, but at least it brings back Captain Jack at the end.

📝7.4 = ENJOYABLE!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time!

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: "WEAPON OF CHOICE"

This story is intriguing right off the bat, with the groovy score and the four assessors inspecting time technology on a barren moon (Torvald, the Time Lord and the lady inhabiting the body of an enslaved woman stand out). It has Raiders of the Lost Ark vibes to it.

It takes a while to place everyone, but I like how quickly we are introduced to the main players—Torvald, Narvin, Romana, K9, Leela, and Braxiatel—and get a hunch of the basic plot beats that are relevant in this series, such as the space politics and terror organisations, the character drama, and the wider nature of Time Lords and Gallifrey.

I really like how effectively the characters are established. Romana and Leela are strong women (the former surrounded by people who constantly annoy her; the latter frequently solving problems with her fists), and there’s an intriguing tension between Leela and Torvald, while Braxiatel seems like a very dry Cardinal (as they all are).

The simple music and sound design and the superb performances contribute to building a surprisingly effective atmosphere.

So this Free Time movement and the conflict surrounding the regulation of tune travel is a political allegory I find very intriguing.

The abundance of characters and new concepts mean that this is somewhat confusing at times, but I see great potential in the political intrigue and the character drama, such as the conflict and tension between Romana, Narvin, and Braxiatel.

Alas, the episode lost me a bit in the end. Leela being appointed as Romana’s bodyguard should be cool, though.

STANDOUT DIALOGUE:

K9! We have been unfilterated!

📝8.2 = VERY ENJOYABLE!

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“CARRY ON DOCTOR WHO!”

The opening part takes some time to reminisce about Ian and Barbara, who left at the end of the previous story, in what is a beautiful and rare little piece of character introspection in Classic Who. The episode then proceeds to properly but effectively introduce the new TARDIS team and the historical setting. The lengthy scene inside the TARDIS works as a great introduction for new viewers to the basics of the show while easing in Steven in a charming and funny sequence for the existing audience.

The Time Meddler is the very first (of many more to come) pseudo-historical and makes it a rather fascinating point to blend a historically important event with anachronisms such as 20th-century technology. The blend of history and modern technology isn't explored all that much, which is a pity because it could have made for some interesting and tense plot developments. It is used effectively to pique your interest in the first half of the serial, though, and helps The Time Meddler stand out among the historical adventures of the Hartnell era.

Also for the first time, we have here a historical adventure that isn't about the time period or historical event itself; no, it's about two members of a mighty alien race with different philosophies facing off against each other in a mostly harmless battle of wits.

It's always a joy to see a story that holds such historical importance in terms of the show's canon, and the Part 3 cliffhanger must have been a shocking revelation because it feels satisfying even for those of us who know it's coming. While it’s clear early on that the Monk is more than meets the eye, it’s a great reveal to find out that he is a Time Lord as well.

I'm somewhat bummed about how Dennis Spooner makes Steven and Vicki wander back and forth between the monastery and the outside woods multiple times since they cannot make up their minds about what to do. Spooner doesn't give them anything useful to do. The same goes, to a lesser extent, for the Doctor until he finally decides to face the Monk.

If William Hartnell was saddened about the departure of co-stars William Russell and Jacqueline Hill, he certainly doesn't show it: he's filled with his usual grandfatherly warmth and sass here, particularly when trying to prove to Steven that the TARDIS is a time machine. Hartnell is at his very best in the second half of the serial (because he barely appears in the first due to his holiday), once he finally faces the Monk, allowing the two Carry On legends to steal the show together.

Without Ian and Barbara to guide her, Maureen O'Brien truly stands out as the more seasoned of the TARDIS companions. She immediately feels much more mature and capable, so this cast change does her character wonders.

Alongside Vicki, we find the energetic and defiant Steven in a part still somewhat finding his footing but not too obviously trying to replace Ian. The new companion relationship is well explored through Vicki and Steven's solo ventures, which take up a majority of the serial.

We meet another acting legend in Peter Butterworth, who appears as the Meddling Monk—one of the most memorable villains of the Hartnell era and the first Time Lord character other than the Doctor or Susan to appear on the show. Butterworth is a highlight; funny and mischievous, yet just the right amount of selfishness as well, but all in the name of fun!

It's refreshing to meet a villain who isn't evil for the sake of it or who plans to take over the world or destroy it—and we are still a few years away from the Master's introduction—so the Monk is simply meddling for the fun of it! I almost want him to win!

The Saxon supporting characters aren't all that interesting or integral to the plot. They feel almost like rehashes of the tribe members in An Unearthly Child (1963), which is funny because the lady Saxon is played by Aletha Charlton, who previously appeared in that story. The Vikings are here to provide a bit more tension, but they end up quite forgettable and useless (but I always root for Scandinavian characters in Doctor Who!).

After a string of mostly very serious and educational historicals, it is refreshing to watch an adventure that feels more tongue-in-cheek and light-hearted and doesn't take itself or its setting too seriously. However, the pacing is perhaps a tad on the slower side during the first half of the story; there are a lot of teases and beginnings, but very little plot development. This story also lacks a sense of a climax: the ending is very small-scale and sudden, even if it is one of the most satisfying endings to a villain's schemes in Classic Who.

The simple sets and costumes capture the time and setting well, as is tradition for Doctor Who's historical episodes. The capable direction and cinematography mostly help give this story a sense of scale.

It's weird to watch the clumsy and unconvincing fight scenes given how well previous historicals have choreographed and directed similar scenes.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• “Up there is the scanner; those are the doors; that is a chair with a panda on it. Sheer poetry, dear boy.” This is such a classic line delivered with the utmost heart from Hartnell.
• "What do you think it is? A space helmet for a cow?" says the Doctor about a (historically inaccurate) Viking helmet—another golden classic line.

📝8.0 = MOST ENJOYABLE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

This minisode/trailer was released in conjunction with the Season 2 Bluray release.

It’s a rather charmingly made story with beautiful visuals and music. Old Vicki tells the story of her travels with the Doctor, while a montage from her TV adventures flies by. The latter half is a teaser of the extra content on the Bluray release, and it sort of breaks the magic of the first half.

📝6/10 = MIDDLING!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time!

VICTORY XIV

Jon Culshaw narrates this Short Trip, which sees the Delgado Master attempt to break into the most secure vault in the universe. Culshaw is good at channelling Delgado’s take on the Master, and the story is a fun little take on a one-man heist movie, with the Time Lord Victorious angle bringing in a couple of familiar elements from other stories.

The story is intriguing to begin with, but it runs out of air a bit halfway through.

It’s easy to miss out on this, but part of the story takes place on an unnamed jungle planet, where the Master acquired the Devolver (from The Enemy of My Enemy, Victory XIII), which he uses for his plans.

📝6-/10

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time!

VICTORY XIII

This audio focuses on the topic: the Daleks seize the Doctor's TARDIS to coerce him into forming a peaceful alliance with the Wraxians, an improbable alien race. This is something of a political drama. We slowly learn about the Wraxians, their secret technologies (the Devovler), and the planned alliance between them and the Daleks. We follow the Doctor, who is very suspicious between the two races.

We eventually learn that the Dalek race is threatened, which is the reason they require the Doctor’s help, and that the Doctor knows why there have been loads of alterations in the timeline lately. This is when the story finally begins picking up speed, but even then, it mostly trudges long with very little excitement.

Paul McGann still sounds bored, while Nick Briggs has loads of fun with various Dalek voices. The guest cast is much less interesting in this audio compared to He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not (Victory XII).

The story delves slightly deeper into the wider repercussions of the Tenth Doctor’s messing around in the Dark Times: it has caused changes in the established timeline, creating new planets and races and changing established ones. We also learn that the Devolver is technology from the Dark Times, where the Doctor takes the Daleks.

📝6/10 = SOMEWHAT ENJOYABLE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

HAPPY TIMES ON SKARO!

This story opens with a lengthy TARDIS sequence before we are taken to Skaro, at a time when the planet is run by peaceful Daleks maintaining a huge educational facility. The story slowly reveals new aspects of this strange occurrence (the Daleks lack weapons but have names; they have pleasant voices and use their skills for various benign purposes), keeping the reader on the edge while they await the inevitable turn in the plot. And with the Doctor being suspicious of these new, nice Daleks, we are in another Power of the Daleks situation here.

The story doesn’t evolve a lot from its initial premise, and the biggest takeaway is the Doctor's refusal to believe that there could be a reality where the Daleks aren’t brutal and cold-blooded killing machines. This leads to his argument with Ace over whether or not such a universe should exist and the wider philosophical debate over whether established realities should be altered.

Blackman herself narrates this story, and her narration isn’t all that interesting. It’s a bit mumbly and monotone, and it doesn’t give the characters much personality.

📝6/10 = SLIGHTLY ENJOYABLE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

REVENGE OF THE GREAT TREE!

Philip Reeve and Sophie Aldred transport us to a massive tree space station in space, where the Fourth Doctor and Leela are met with people hell-bent on revenge against them—it’s The Face of Evil all over again!

The story is mostly preoccupied with building a mystery of what the Doctor has supposedly done (or will do) that has made him a villain in the eyes of the Heligans. They spend a good chunk of the story arguing about whether or not this Doctor is the man of legend, while the Doctor and Leela get nothing to do.

The culture, people, and surroundings of the Heligan Structure are also explored in detail.

We eventually learn that whatever has happened took place 900 years ago for the locals but is still in the Doctor’s future, when he is the Eleventh Doctor.

I love the real energy Aldred puts into her narration. Her Leela is superb and helped by Reeve’s accurate dialogue for her. Four also has many recognisable moments, and Aldred pouts in a great effort to sound as bombastic as Tom Baker sometimes did.

📝2/10 = VERY UNENJOYABLE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

THE RONETTES DID IT BETTER!

I struggle with audios that feature confused or muddled beginnings, and The Sandman is just that. It’s a mess of strange sound effects and editing that make it very difficult to grasp what is going on. The only takeaway of Part 1 is that Sixie and Evelyn arrive in a world where the Doctor is believed to be the mythical, child-murdering Sandman. This puts the Doctor in a unique position among the aliens he comes across: they fear and loathe him, forcing the Doctor to use this status to slowly uncover the hidden secrets of the Clutch.

Part 2 doesn’t help much in terms of making sense of things—we still get strange sound effects, voice-modulated performances, and a plot that is all over the palace yet nowhere at all simultaneously. This audio flies way over your head, and Simon A. Forward clearly doesn’t grasp how to write an interesting Doctor Who story. You could say that he gets it all backwards!

This story is so dull and full of itself that I have completely zoned out by the time we hit the second half of it. I couldn't tell you a single thing about what is going on in it, and that's never a good sign. And what's worse is that the climax in Part 4 is a lengthy scene of incomprehensible bugger.

It's always a joy to hear Sixie and Evelyn together, but this time around Colin Baker and Maggie Stables don’t inject a lot of energy into the story. Stables drown under all the confusing stuff.

This audio goes all in with the supporting cast, mostly consisting of the lizard-like Galyari, all with weird voices. Anneke Wills, best known for playing companion Polly alongside William Hartnell’s and Patrick Troughton’s Doctors, is part of the cast but completely wasted in a performance you don’t even notice.

📝6/10 = SLIGHTLY ENJOYABLE!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time!

VICTORY XII

Carrie Thompson’s Big Finish story finally gives a voice to everybody’s favourite Ood assassin, as Silas Carson goes up against Paul McGann. We finally learn how Eight gets dragged into the Time Lord Victorious event when he arrives on a desert planet looking for a wonder of the universe that is missing and bumps into Felicity the fugitive and Brian the Ood, an assassin sent after her.

This story quickly turns into a sort of intimate mystery of Brian’s true nature as well as the nature of the Wild West-like setting the Doctor has arrived in. The twist of Brian being a killer isn’t very surprising, though, if you've already read The Knight, The Fool, and the Dead (Victory VI). 

Later on, the story turns into a sort of relationship drama when we learn the true nature of Felicity and Sophie and why Brian is after them. Brian is biding his time, holding Felicity hostage, while the Doctor frantically works to find a way to defeat him. And that’s the gist of this fairly flat adventure.

Silas Carson is the one standout here, and he plays out the sinister split personality of the character to perfection, but Misha Malcolm and Melanie Stevens are pretty good as well. The locals with American accents sound typically overdone, and Paul McGann sounds somewhat bored.

The story builds up to the conclusion, which explains how Brian ends up in the Dark Times and how exactly Eight appears together with the Daleks at the end of The Knight, The Fool, and the Dead—a story further explored in the next audio, The Enemy of My Enemy (Victory XIII).

📝7/10 = ENJOYABLE!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time!

VICTORY X

Defender of the Daleks sees Titan Comics join the Time Lord Victorious event with a two-part story written by Jody Houser. It sees the 10th Doctor wake up in the TARDIS with no recollection of where he is and why, and then come face to face with the Daleks. They force him into an alliance against the Hond, an ancient race seeking to wipe out every living being, including the Daleks and themselves.

This adventure is fast-paced, even if it takes a good while to set things up. The big panels and the quirky dialogue see to that. There's also a light mystery: how does no one remember the Time War? Why are the Dalek defences on Skaro so limited? 

It's a bit confusing to place this story at first, because the last we've seen of Ten, he was initiating a battle against Eight, Nine, and the Daleks. In the Titan continuity, he's just been on an adventure with Thirteen and cannot remember it. The strange way some panels and scenes connect also confuses me.

Things pick up halfway through once the Hond are introduced. They look like green Clayface copies that wish for nothing but to die, because they are pain itself, made sentient. Hauser then brings the conflict to a very hasty close.

Thirteen pops up in the end to help Ten get out of the situation, and while it's cool to see Ten and Thirteen together, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense with the event in mind.

Hauser writes Ten with his usual quirks and humoristic quips. A bulk of the story is about him being witty to the Dalek Strategist, and this goes on for quite a while. It's both fun and a bit slow.

It's unclear exactly how this fits into the larger TLV arc—there are no Kotturuh here, no Brian the Ood, and no other Doctors. It seems very detached from the main TLV conflict. I think it would be better suited to being read early on in the order.

The big, colourful panels and the solid art style bring the story to life effectively.

📝8/10 = VERY ENJOYABLE!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time!

VICTORY VI

The first novel in the Time Lord Victorious event takes Ten to the Dark Times, a forgotten age before the Time Lords, and onto a planet awaiting the arrival of the death-bringing Kotturuh. They are trying to cheat death with a new piece of tech called a Lifeshroud, and that's problematic, of course. Because once the Kotturuh arrive, kill the inhabitants anyway, and kidnap the sole survivor wearing a shroud, they face the rage of a Doctor hell-bent on stopping the Kotturuh from playing gods.

The book fleshes out the Kotturuh and their actions quite well; we don’t see them a lot but learn of their design and processes. We meet several alien worlds and their inhabitants judged by the Kotturuh and how they react to the various lifespans granted to them.

The second half slows down a bit as the Doctor and company prepare to counter the Kotturuh. It then picks up again towards the end as the Doctor begins to show his Time Lord Victorious complex again—he wants to wipe out the entire Kotturuh race, thus changing the future and saving countless lives from death.

But things take a dark turn as Steve Cole begins killing his darlings, leaving an angered Doctor face-to-face with his adversaries. The way he decides to take that one drastic step, despite asking himself whether he has the right, makes him very dangerous and unpredictable, and he becomes something of a villain himself, despite his benevolent intentions.

I like Estinee and Fallomax, who travel around selling Lifeshrouds that don't work to fool worlds and make money. They bring a humane element to the story and are similar to other fraudsters we've met in the franchise. Estinee turns out to be much more, of course, once we learn that she has a natural ability to avoid dying.

One of the most intriguing aspects of the novel is the introduction of Brian the Ood, an Ood assassin who keeps interacting with his translator (named Mr. Ball) and joins the quest to track down the Kotturuh and stop their plans. He's not afraid to use weapons when needed, which causes tension between him and the Doctor, even if Brian is frequently right in his assessments.

Cole writes the story like a New Who episode: it's fast, with short chapters and constantly shifting locations. The story moves furiously forward while fleshing things out as it goes. He also paints vivid alien landscapes and injects the text with well-placed humour.

Cole inserts short interludes between the regular chapters, and these are delightful surprises, as they give us earlier Doctors and their companions, discussing death and sharing the same tale from the Brothers Grimm, told slightly differently every time. The most interesting of these is Interlude 3, where the Eighth Doctor tells the story to Brian the Ood before Ten had met him. This scene takes place during the He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not audio story (Victory XII).

The novel is brought to an effective conclusion, with Ten donning traditional Time Lord gear only to come face to face with Eight, Nine, and the Daleks, hell-bent on stopping him from continuing with his charade. This then leads directly top he nect book, All Flesh is Grass (Victory XVIII).

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• The way the Kotturuh kill people so that they decay and fall into a heap of bones has similar vibes to the Time Disruptor in The Daleks’ Master Plan (1965-1966).
• “Verv-Hoondai Chalskal, High Ambassador of Skalithai and Standing Throne-Being of the Pan-Victis Defensive Alliance” is such an RTD-era name for an alien. The alien in question is a pretty humorous figure as well.

📝7/10 = ENJOYABLE!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time! This time: victory number 15!

The Ninth Doctor and Rose join the Dark Times on the pages of Doctor Who Magazine! The story starts by introducing the sadistic Commander Rassilon and the elderly Medicus Androkan—this is Gallifrey before the Time Lords, and it's under attack by big vampire bats!

I love the art style and the breezy pace of this. The story packs a lot despite its relatively short length, and it's interesting to see it explore Gallifrey in the Dark Times. The very traditional vampire characters and the three hungry sisters taunting Rose bring horror vibes, and the story deals with death through the Gallifreyans fearing it.

It's interesting to see the battle between the Gallifreyans and the vampires and the joy Androkan shows when he realises that the Doctor represents the future of Gallifrey. I also enjoy the climax, with a vampire Rose attacking Nine.

The red-clad vampire warrior Drogann is like a character from a superhero comic, and I like him.

📝0/10 = UNRATED!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time! This time: victory number 16!

I could spend a couple of paragraphs analysing this story, but it's literally a T-shirt with a cool picture of Brian holding Mr Ball and asking the reader if he can help them kill somebody. The text behind him is difficult to read. This is a fun little extra thing for the Time Lord Victorious event, but it's barely a story.

It shall receive a rare 0/10 rating because rating it anything else feels unfair.

📝4/10 = UNENJOYABLE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time! This time: confused in times of war!

I’m confused by Tip of the Tongue—it’s set in 1944 but doesn’t feel like it, and it throws you straight into the story through a bunch of pretty bland characters. The Doctor is barely in the story to begin with.

The Truth Tellers are strange characters, given fun voices by Nicholas Pegg. What we learn later on makes them more interesting but doesn't give the story more value.

The last stretch is pretty good, once the Doctor gets going. Nyssa has no business being here though.

I'm generally a fan of Patrick Ness’ writing, but here he delivers a boring story that leaves no impressions.

📝4/10 = SLIGHTLY UNENJOYABLE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time! This time: it’s a red wedding!

This story throws us straight into the adventure, with Six and Peri visiting an alien wedding. It’s somewhat hard to get into the story when the characters and the setting are so unfamiliar. While we slowly learn about Koyutu and their wedding traditions, which involve the bride and groom going through a body renewal process similar to regeneration, this very exposition-heavy story makes it a slog to listen to.

The story picks up somewhat once the Rani is revealed to be involved. But even then, the story remains very muddled, the characters don’t pop out, and the adventure never turns truly intriguing. The Doctor also blends into the background of it.

Sophie Aldred’s American accent is fun to listen to, and it brings Peri’s narration to life.

📝7/10 = SLIGHTLY ENJOYABLE!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time! This time: showtime of the Daleks, part V!

The fifth and final episode of the Daleks! series sees the Daleks battle the Mechanoids on home soil. The animation allows for an epic battle between the two races, with countless Daleks and Mechanoids firing at each other while explosions destroy Skaro around them. While this is happening, the Dalek Strategist decides to play his own game and go against the Emperor, working with the Mechanoid leadership to send the Emperor back to the Dark Times. This leads to the next part of the storyline, told on the pages of Titan Comics.

📝6/10 = MIDDLING!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time! This time: showtime of the Daleks, part IV!

Part 4 sees the Daleks and the Mechanoids join forces against the Entity. The Dalek Emperor and the Mechanoid Queen assess the situation while the Mechanoids gather their forces, and we finally hear the Entity address the Daleks. The Strategist keeps playing his own game. There’s a bit more tension and action present in this episode, but it doesn’t do much in terms of narrative development.

The Emperor is finally feeling some heat as the Mechanoids decide to give him over to the Entity, only for the Strategist to banish it back to its own reality, after which the Mechanoids declare war on the Daleks.

It's a pity the Entity remains so ambiguous and is never properly seen or encountered in this series, as it seems to be the strongest link this series has to the wider Time Lord Victorious event.

📝5/10 = MIDDLING!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time! This time: showtime of the Daleks, part III!

Part 3 brings back the Mechanoids from The Chase, as the Daleks are forced to attempt to ally with them. I’m sort of growing to like their version of the Dalek Emperor, and it’s interesting to see the Mechanoid Queen as well (she has a cute crown). The Mechanoid voices are vastly improved from the original voices.

I like the little tension formed between the Emperor and Strategist, who tackle the problem from slightly different angles.

This is another talky one, mostly centred on the Dalek and Mechanoid leaders conferring. A lot of the writing focuses on highlighting the differences between the Daleks and the Mechanoids. The tail end erupts into a battle between the races, who don’t see eye to eye on anything, and the Emperor leading the Entity straight to Mechanus.

Sadly, the version of Mehcnaus seen here is uglier and less interesting than the one seen in The Chase.

📝4/10 = MIDDLING!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time! This time: showtime of the Daleks, part II!

The second part changes things up, as Skaro is put under attack after the Archivians betrayed the Daleks to an entity that exists outside time itself. The Emperor and Strategist are panicking as Skaro is obliterated in another epic battle scene. The situation forces the Daleks to gather reinforcements by contacting The Sentinel of the Fifth Galaxy, who gathers a hidden Dalek army.

Part of the action is set on a desert planet, and the animation looks like something from a PS2-era game. And here we meet the annoying R-41 robot, who thinks the Dalek Sentinel (a Dalek with a classic Dalek design!) is the Dalek Emperor. This second half of the episode is slower and less interesting, as it mostly sees the Sentinel chat with R-41, and it’s just a build-up for later plot developments.

In the end, the Daleks are still pursued by the Entity, and time is running out...

📝6/10 = SLIGHTLY ENJOYABLE!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time! This time: showtime of the Daleks, part I!

The Dalek fleet arrives on Islos to get to their archive and find information about the Dark Times. We meet the new, golden, and dome-headed Dalek Emperor properly, and Nick Briggs has a great time voicing him. The Dalek Strategist also appears here, so we get a good understanding of the hierarchy here.

The animation is crude, but the opening installment goes all in with a major battle scene and imaginative design, and we are shown the true power of the Daleks as they force the locals to surrender the archive. The Archivians are interesting new robotic creatures, sort of combinations between the Angel robots from Voyage of the Damned and the Daleks themselves. They also have quite a witty personality, which is fun.

The Daleks are betrayed in the end, as the Archivians and the contents of the archive escape to the Dark Times through a portal, leaving the Daleks as sacrificial lambs.

📝5/10 = FINE!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time! This time: everything you ever wanted to know about Daleks!

This story is found in the Eaglemoss Collections Magazine. Part of it details the Dalek Restoration Empire and how it became involved in the Dark Times. Another part shares information on the Dalek hierarchy, different Dalek Emperors, and the anatomy of the Emperor Dalek. The main story is a short scene in which the Dalek Emperor receives a message from an old and rundown Dalek Drone, warning about the Doctor. This leads to the Dalek seeking information from the Archive on Islos, as detailed in the Daleks! animated web series.

📝8/10 = ENJOYABLE!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time! This time: the TARDIS has something to tell us!

This little story by James Goss is written from the TARDIS’ POV and reveals how she decides to pull Ten into the Dark Times to teach him a lesson after his mistake with Adelaide Brooke in The Waters of Mars. It also explains how Eight, Nine, and Brian the Ood get involved in the event. It’s always fun to read the TARDIS’ thoughts on things, and this one is pretty relevant to the arc.

📝5/10 = FORGETTABLE!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time! This time: lost in space!

The Last Message is literally a one-minute video of a lonely Dalek floating in space and telling us it has to warn the universe about the Doctor. That's it. Not much of a story and not much of a trailer.

📝6/10 = ENJOYABLE!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time! This time: a date with Death!

Simon Guerrier’s Lesser Evils is a Short Trip featuring the Ainley Master coming face to face with the Kotturuh, who have arrived on the planet Alexis to judge the locals. He has vowed to keep the planet safe and tries to persuade the Kotturuh to not grant the gift of death to the people of Alexis.

This is a slow but well-written story that further shows the work the Kotturuh are involved with. It doesn't offer a lot in terms of deepening the TLV story, but fans of the Ianley master might want to check it out. Jon Culshaw's narration gives it an extra nudge, especially his great impression of Ainley’s soft-spoken Master voice. Also, the voice effect used for the Kotturuh’s voice helps to visualise it better.

📝10/10 = FAVOURITE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time! This time: when water drives you crazy!

The Water of Mars is, and will always remain, one of the finest episodes in the 60+ years of Doctor Who. It’s a delightful mix of great production values, a capable cast, a compelling story, a creepy monster, and memorable moments.

The TARDIS takes Ten to Mars and research base Bowie Base One, right before the base and its personnel are terrorised by a terrible water-based alien life form. The Doctor soon realises that he has the power to alter the course of history and avoid the entire crew from being killed by the aliens, which unleashes his Time Lord Victorious complex. The Waters of Mars is a brilliant showcase of how to make a compelling base under siege with deer meaning—that of a Time Lord’s burden and responsibility—and how even the Doctor can go too far.

The episode sets up the setting, the crew, and the monster within the first five minutes. Then it uses the rest of the runtime to flesh everything further out, while effectively building tension and providing plenty of excitement by turning the ongoing situation worse by the minute. The tight direction and frat soundtrack also help in building the atmosphere. There’s enough time to build a satisfying story with beautiful character moments while keeping things going at a good pace.

David Tennant is at his absolute best here—a Doctor weighed down by his believed status as the Last of the Time Lords and the immense burden of responsibility that comes with it and finally snaps him. The way he just stands around in a corner, listening to the crew panicking and watching the catastrophic events of the base go down, unable and unwilling to do anything, is genuinely gut-wrenching. And then he suddenly fights back and defies every rule and principle with full force in a way that is both satisfying and scary, and only Tennant could pull it off.

All guest characters are great, even the ones we barely get to know. Captain Adelaide Brooke is a no-nonsense leader who doesn’t allow the Doctor to control her or attempt to change the course of history. Gadget is one of the more memorable robots in the show, but sadly underused.

The makeup work on the infected is one of the best seen on the show, and the design of Bowie Base One and its different rooms is effective as well. 

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• It’s funny how I’m technically older than any of the Bowie Base One personnel seen here. The oldest, Captain Brooke, was born in 1999, and most of the others in the 2020s or 2030s.
• I love that the Ice Warriors get a mention and that they bear a fleeting relation to the aliens we meet here.
• The Time Lord Victorious multimedia event builds off the ending of this story, and there’s truly a compelling base for a wider exploration of a “victorious” Time Lord laid here.

📝9/10 = SUPERB!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time! This time: an old Big Finish Short Trip, reborn on audio!

This Subscriber Short Trip release is an audio version of the 2002 Big Finish Short Trip release in the Zodiac collection. It's exactly the same fun body switch story, with added sound effects and great narration. These added elements are enough to bump the rating to a 9/10.

📝5/10 = MIXED!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time! This time: the dangers of television! 

The Idiot’s Lantern transports us back to the early 50s, sometime before the coronation of Queen Elisabeth, in the infancy of commercial television sets. It’s the story of the Connolly family, led by the abusive Eddie Connolly, and an alien trying to invade Earth by possessing people through television.

The depiction of 50s family values and abusive fathers feels a bit heavy-handed. That being said, it does recieve a good payoff when Rita decides to essentially throw Eddie out and send Tommy away with the Doctor—well, until the very end, that is, where Rose persuades Tommy not to give up on his prick of a father.

The latter half of the episode is more focused on the alien invasion part, which isn’t anything too special but cleverly mixed with the breakthrough of television as an entire nation watches the Coronation. The climax at the TV tower, with the Doctor climbing to save the day, is a pretty exciting sequence.

I have to admit that seeing the Doctor and Rose in period-accurate get-ups and driving around on a Vespa is pretty cool. The return of the smugness between them is less so. I love how Ten puts Eddie in place by reacting to his bullying (a moment partly ruined by the fact that Rose tries to do the same). What annoys me is how leisurely the Doctor begins investigating before Rose loses her face, after which he goes on a furious rampage to save the day.

The supporting cast is one of the more unlikeable in New Who: I don’t sympathise with the Connolly family at all, even if the father is a major prick and one of the most unlikeable characters in Doctor Who history. Tommy is an annoying kid, but at least he makes for a good ally in the climax as Rose is incarcerated. The only supporting character I like is Mr. Magpie, as played by Ron Cook.

The Wire is a creepy villain. The nice lady speaking with her victims through the TV set is an effective idea, and Maureen Lipman’s performance perfects it. However, the “hungry!” catchphrase feels like too much of an attempt to make the wire stand out more and makes her less nuanced later on. The faceless people created by the Wire also make for quite creepy zombies.

Euros Lyn is a great director, so I don’t know why exactly he wanted to use so many Dutch angles in this episode. They are in every other shot, it feels like. Also, the simple suburban setting doesn’t really make this period piece justice.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• Is Gatiss trying to remake his VNA novel Nightshade with this one? Both stories feature TV programs and big research/TV stations as major plot elements.
• The Wire has a similar function and design as both the Library Robot in Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead and the Ambulance in Boom.

📝6/10 = FINE!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time! This time: who’s who in Who!

This little story in the Doctor Who 2021 Annual is written like a news article by River Song. It fleshes out the main players of the TLV event—the Kotturuh and races who have come into contact with them, such as the Racnoss, the Osirians, the Eternals, the Dæmons, and the Time Lords. It's well-written and a good help to get a grip on the overall story arc, but it’s not essential.

📝8/10 = VERY ENJOYABLE!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time! This time: it's the beginning!

James Goss opens the Time Lord Victorious event with this short story, giving us a taste of the Dark Times and the death-bringing Kotturuh. It's a brief tale, but effectively sets up the main idea of an alien species travelling to every planet, assessing the value of the life forms on each planet and adjusting their lifespans accordingly.

📝5/10 = MIXED!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time! This time: they took a pill in Ibiza.

With The Rapture, Big Finish goes for another experimental approach for a Doctor Who story, as evidenced by the opening scene pretending to be a radio program and the setting being the ultimate party island of Ibiza, complete with clubbing, drugs, alcohol, and the like. This memorable setting and the constant flow of club music we hear in the background instantly help The Rapture stand out.

This story also mixes in God’s heralds, or his angels, who are on the island to judge everyone’s souls. This brings a strange quasi-religious element to this but also adds effective tension. The overall atmosphere in this audio makes me suspect that Big Finish tried to go for a Virgin New Adventures approach with this story by going a bit experimental and a bit mature with it.

Sadly, this story turns very messy and overly ambitious partway through Part 2, mostly down to the sound design. It’s difficult to follow, but also oddly eerie and bizarre. Things improve slightly in the last part, though, and The Rapture certainly makes for a different experience that stays with you for a while after listening.

The Doctor feels somewhat forgotten here, but Sylvester McCoy is in great form. Sophie Aldred is also great, but Ace is unusually angry and annoyed throughout this. All this nonsense of her wanting to call herself McShane now just feels stupid.

A big part of Ace's story sees her come face to face with her younger brother, who’s revealed in a nice twist in Part 2. I look forward to hearing where this development is taken in future audios.

The supporting cast’s performances (mostly the ones voicing the partygoers) frequently sound unnatural and wooden, and that’s distracting.

7️⃣🔼 = ENJOYABLE!

Thworping through time and space, one sidestep at a time!

“BUMBLING BOYFRIENDS AND COLOURFUL PEPPERPOTS!”

Based on the 1964 seven-part TV serial The Daleks, Dr. Who and the Daleks is a strange cinematic reimagining of Terry Nation’s classic story. It combines the show's familiar premise and basic structure with a fresh take on the character and the lore.

The plot largely follows Nation’s original scripts, but it streamlines the narrative and gives us a 90-minute version of a 175-minute story. All main plot points are maintained while the filler fluff has been left out, so the natural flow of the story is better. We get here a fascinating piece of 60s adventure sci-fi, and it is in many ways a superior version of the original serial (not to mention the recent colourised edit).

It’s still a bit slow in the middle, and there's little to no action until the climax. The cave climbing sequence is vastly improved from the original (it’s the dullest sequence of the seven-parter), thanks to the improved sets and the dramatic score. The climactic battle provides an exciting and explosive finale to the adventure.

Peter Cushing embodies the William Hartnell incarnation of the Doctor in his light-hearted, absent-minded, and curious lead performance as human inventor Dr. Who (yes, that’s his name), but goes for an approach of his own; he’s more proactive and considerate than Hartnell was at this point during the show. Roberta Tovey is a genuinely charming, intelligent, and likeable granddaughter Susan (better than Carole Ann Ford and far less whiny), and Jennie Linden is pretty close to Barbara (but much duller) as the older granddaughter. Meanwhile, Roy Castle provides comic relief as Barbara’s bumbling boyfriend Ian, a far cry from the dashing and heroic William Russell version that I admire greatly, which bothers me somewhat.

The Daleks are as mysterious and effective here as in the original, and the Thals have been faithfully recreated as well, even if the individual character remains a bit flat.

Seeing this colourful reimagining of the Daleks—with all the big sets and wonderful pastel colours—is amazing. The new Dalek designs look better than anything ever seen during Classic Who; in contrast, the TARDIS set looks much less interesting. The production successfully transports us to the barren world of Skaro, and the 4K restoration brings the sets, costumes, and simple effects to life even better than before.

6️⃣🔽 = SOMEWHAT ENJOYABLE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“THE CHASE, AKA HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY EVADE DALEKS!”

Terry Nation returns with a wild extravaganza that sees the Daleks chase the Doctor and his companions across time and space through six episodes before finally seeing Ian and Barbara leave the TARDIS at the end. It’s known as The Chase, and it's a wildly uneven affair.

Terry Nation is a lazy writer. With The Chase, Nation yet again repeats himself by essentially copy-pasting elements from his previous scripts: the idea of changing settings for each episode is taken from The Keys of Marinus (1964), while the cliffhanger to Part 1 (the “Oh my God! It’s a Dalek!” cliffhanger) is a blatant rip-off of the cliffhanger to Part 1 of The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964), and the Mechanus episodes are like a compressed version of The Daleks (1963-1964). Add to that his decision to use yet another jungle setting and include another secondary monster of little value (the Slyther vs. the Mire Beasts, or, perhaps worse, the Fungoids!) and his biggest selling point, the "new Daleks," also known as the Mechonoids. And what is up with all these cringeworthy episode titles (The Death of Time! The Death of Doctor Who!)?

The Chase is also known as the point in the original run of Doctor Who where the show decided to start parodying itself. Nation's intention was probably to provide a fun-time light-hearted adventure featuring the Daleks, but the blend of a nonsensical plot, very tongue-in-cheek performances, silly concepts, and that strange, jazzy circus score makes this feel more of a spoof than an actual, serious adventure within the show's canon.

The problem with anthology stories is that we visit so many times and places throughout the six episodes that none of the settings come truly alive or feel particularly important to the story (with the possible exception of Mechanus). The first two episodes are dull and go nowhere; the middle two episodes are laughable and pointless; and the final two are trying too hard to recreate The Daleks on a smaller scale. None of it truly amazes me the way the best Doctor Who episodes do.

There are also no real stakes at play. The Daleks are so hopelessly lost in their pursuit of the Doctor, and the other dangers faced by the TARDIS crew are so stupid that there's not an inch of tension in the plot. However, the narrative remains fresh and unexpected in its silliness, which makes this one of the better-flowing six-parters in Doctor Who history.

Not only does the opening episode of Nation's anthology epic include some rare scenes of life inside the TARDIS, but it also includes an extended sequence with the Time-Space Visualiser (never to be seen again, sadly, although it does pop up again in other media), allowing the TARDIS crew to watch such historical events as The Beatles playing "Ticket to Ride" on Top of the Pops (the only surviving clip of that gig, ironically), and Ian jamming delightfully to the tune; Shakespeare talking with Queen Victoria (both to be seen again!) or the Gettysburg address—scenes that are completely irrelevant to the rest of the plot but somehow very fascinating nonetheless. These are the sort of moments we rarely see in the modern show because there's little to no time for extra fluff beyond plot-relevant scenes.

Part 3 is a mess of an episode, featuring additions to canon (the Doctor built the TARDIS??!), the making of history (the disappearance of the Mary Celeste), a nonsensical plot, non-sonic screwdrivers, a Dalek screaming like a human as it plunges into the water (sigh!) and terrible American accents (brought to you by the one and only Peter Purves in his Doctor Who debut a couple of episodes before his return as a totally different character, and the new companion—did I mention how strange a story this one is?). This is probably one of the weirdest, messiest, and "funniest" episodes in Doctor Who history.

What is Part 4 supposed to achieve? This trek through a house of horrors is ... interesting, to say the least, and proves to be a low point for the Daleks. This entire episode is, in fact, a low point for the series up to this point. It’s also ridden with production errors (such as the infamous Dalek visible at the back of a shot several scenes before they have arrived on the scene) that make it look like it was improvised on the spot.

The last two episodes on Mechanus provide some good sci-fi adventure. Granted, these episodes are a rehash of the far superior story The Daleks, but there's some nice production design here, and the concept of the imposter Doctor is good on paper, as is the futuristic city of the Mechanoids and the battle between them and the Daleks.

If there is one thing that truly works with The Chase, it is the naturally warm character relations between the main cast members. The Doctor is sharp throughout this and showcases determination, warmth, and empathy, but also a sense of humour. Vicki feels like a full-fledged part of the team by now, and Barbara and Ian are so closely knitted to the Doctor's world that their departure by the end of the story truly hits all the feels (the moment in Part 2 where Ian asks for Barbara’s cardigan and she replies, “Oh no, not again!” is an iconic one). That being said, Vicki's characterisation is all over the place. One second, she is eerily close to Susan; the other, she's more of the seemingly intelligent kind she is meant to be. It's as if Terry Nation wasn't told about the fact that Carole Ann Ford wasn't on the show anymore (despite, you know, writing her out in his previous story!).

The Doctor taking offence to Barbara apparently calling his singing awful, answering Morton Dill with "No, it ain’t!” or running scared from a Frankenstein's monster robot; Morton Dill's doofus dialogue (“You have different years here?”); the stuttering Dalek—whether by design or accidentally, Terry Nation provides a script filled with dialogue that frequently makes me giggle—and that’s a rare feat for a Doctor Who story, even today.

Crammed into the final few minutes of the last episode, Ian and Barbara's departure feels very sudden, but it's filled with genuine emotion from a heartbroken William Hartnell bidding his farewell (in what is a top-three acting moment from the man on this show). Seeing these two close friends get the happy ending they deserve still makes their exit one of the best the show has ever done.

Morton Dill is so bad he's good. The unnecessary supporting role in Part 3 landed Peter Purves the new companion role three episodes later, and that terrible accent and goofy persona are something to remember, for better and for worse. He’s one of the few supporting characters who’ve survived an encounter with the Daleks.

New companion Steven (played by the aforementioned Purves in the fastest return of a guest actor in the history of television) is energetic and likeable, making the last episode of this serial worth the watch. Yes, he's shoehorned in just to introduce him as the new series regular, but Purves seems to put his heart into the performance.

There's something clever about the impostor Doctor. He is antagonistic and selfish, much like the Doctor was when we first met him in An Unearthly Child (1963), a clever callback to how much the character has developed in just two seasons. How no one noticed the obvious difference between him and the real Doctor is a real mystery, though.

The Daleks in The Chase are made ridiculous and useless for no good reason. Gone are the Nazi allegories, larger-than-life plots, and cold-blooded murders. What's left are hopeless shells of stuttering and one-liner-dropping dustbins.

The Mechanoids are a concept that works only on paper. They are big and clumsy, with terribly annoying voices, and lack any of the character or authority of the Daleks. It's no wonder they ended up being another failed attempt at recreating the success of the Daleks.

Most ideas fall flat due to bad execution. The Visualiser is a concept never used for anything substantial; the action direction on Mary Celeste and in the House of Horrors is messy and sloppy, and the Doctor's robot clone doesn't look at all like Hartnell and falls short on amateurish sound design and editing. The way they edit between Hartnell and his stand-in is so jarringly bad that a three-year-old would have done a better job using nothing but MS Paint!

Richard Martin's direction simply isn't good enough. The House of Horrors sequence is made worse by Martin's directorial decisions, and the frankly impressive set used for Mechanus is likewise made less impressive by the fact that Martin doesn't know how to direct the characters acting on it.

This adventure is a mixed bag for me—there are many good and enjoyable things about it, but also so many silly and downright bad things that drag it down for me. All things considered, The Chase should be a 5/10, but there are enough good things (the variety, some of the humour, the performances, and Ian and Barabara’s exit) to push the rating to a 6/10.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• This is the first time we encounter a doppelgänger of the Doctor, something that will reoccur multiple times going forward (in stories such as The Massacre, The Enemy of the World, Meglos, The Arc of Infinity, A Nightmare in Silver, and so on).

8️⃣⏹️ = ENJOYABLE TIER: HIGH

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“WHEN YOU SAY BOOK, I SAY…!”

...ish is tremendously original. There is nothing quite like it in Doctor Who or sci-fi in general. The 2016 film Arrival comes pretty close, and that came out 14 years later. Kudos to the writer Phil Pascoe (in his first and only contribution to the Main Range) for the ingenious originality of the script and the many clever word plays and intelligent jokes littered throughout the four episodes.

This story has one of those few plots I can't really wrap my head around. It is multi-layered and intelligent, yet confined and not too majestic. It’s something of a murder mystery with similar vibes to Whispers of Terror, but even more demanding. The scholarly quality of most of the dialogue makes the story seem more educated than most Doctor Who adventures, and the atypical subject matter is unlikely to entice first-time listeners. The first two episodes don't achieve much in terms of plot progression, but the two latter parts still manage to wrap things up neatly.

...ish delves deep into what could be described as intelligent academic writing, actually utilising linguistics as a plot device. It's a unique concept well-suited for the audio format, but it also takes away a lot of the magic of a science fiction story by turning everything overly complex and confusing. All this being said, there are some interesting things and concepts buried beneath all that pretentiously complicated dialogue, and the second half of the adventure turns up the dial on tension and the creepy factor.

The Sixth Doctor fits this story better than any other Doctor would. His obsession with language makes him the perfect candidate to save language itself. Colin Baker clearly enjoys himself in this one, and the intelligent dialogue (which could easily sound pretentious when performed by any other Doctor) fits his personality perfectly.

The other characters are also fairly enjoyable, especially Moray Treadwell as the ambiguous but creepy Book. Peri gets entangled in the intricacies of language as well, and Nicola Bryant provides another fine performance, and she gets a lot to do in the second half.

The atmosphere turns from complex and confusing to complex and weirdly fascinating. The idea of language itself being destroyed (as it starts doing in Part 3; the characters are slowly losing more and more of their vocabulary) is actually a pretty grim one, and clever writing makes the threat feel real. Much of the atmosphere is downplayed by the messy first half that risks imploding the entire adventure, but it's made up by the more tightly paced second half.

Things turn real interesting once the Doctor blocks his and Peri’s ability to say "...ish," which affects any word with that sound in it, before things are switched so that “...ish” sneaks itself into words it doesn’t belong in.

The unprecedented subject matter, brilliant acting, and surprisingly well-realised themes keep this story intriguing. Had all four episodes been similar to the first two, I would have lost interest fairly quickly and most likely given up on the story.

The climax is breathtaking, clever, and sharp, made all the better by Baker and Bryant, who put their hearts into the performances.

With a tighter-paced first half and a somewhat more coherent plot, this story would likely be another timeless classic. As it stands now, it is brilliantly original and surprisingly clever, but not the best example of an all-time great Big Finish story.

8️⃣⏹️ = VERY GOOD!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“CHRISTIAN DINOSAURS!”

Another BBC Original set on a ship, this time the Blue Groper in the late 18th century, a ship filled with convicts and a professor on their way to uncover evidence of dinosaurs.

The first part of the story slowly but effectively sets the scene and builds the atmosphere onboard the Blue Groper during its voyage to Luna Puesta.

There's good time devoted to characterisation, both between Martha and the Doctor and between Martha and the crew. I also like the exploration of scientific research of the time and how it was deeply tied to faith.

On the other hand, the story slows down a lot in the middle and barely builds up to anything until the ship arrives at the island. It then arrives at a very minimalistic and slightly disappointing conclusion.

Martha is written and used well, with Russell utilising her education to make her useful in the story. I also like the passion shown by Professor Tomlinson.

Gary Russell easily could've gone for another Silurian or Sea Devil encounter here, but fortunately, he decides to make up a new aquatic reptile species instead, the Mantisaurs, which are friendly aliens. They aren't very fleshed out but feel like a breath of fresh (sea) air.

Seán Carlsen narrates with great energy, giving the characters distinct voices—his Captain Sadler is great, and his Professor Tomlinson sounds a bit like Stephen Noonan’s First Doctor. His Ten fluctuates between accurate and very flat, and his Martha is fine. It's occasionally hard to distinguish between the Doctor and Martha in scenes where they are talking to each other.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• So, the TARDIS stops bullets now. Seven could've used that when he was gunned downin front of the TARDIS in Doctor Who.

6️⃣🔽 = FINE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“A BOAT BETWEEN DIMENSIONS!”

The first season of The Lost Stories comes to an end with The Macros, a story written by Ingrid “the worst guest actress in the history of the show” Pitt and her husband Tony Rudlin and dealing with the 1943 Philadelphia Experiment, which attempted to turn the USS Eldridge invisible.

Our story kicks off with Six and Peri materialising on the USS Eldridge, but on a different spatial and temporal plane than the crew of the ship. It’s a slightly confusing and very mysterious beginning to the adventure.

This is the sort of historical story that suggests alien involvement in a seemingly strange real-life occurrence. It’s much more interested in exploring the dimensions and timey-wimey science than the actual event and the people involved, though.

There’s a strong sci-fi element here as well in the form of Planet Capron and its ruler Osloo (a sneaky nod to Norway, I’m sure!) which just feels like a shoehorned element in a historical event that could work well without it. The worst part is that the script is so interested in Capron and its tiresome court politics that it leaves no room for the historical narrative to flourish.

Part 1 rolls along but does nothing to make the characters interesting or the story interesting to listen to. The shocking cliffhanger reignites my interest for Part 2.

Part 2 gets more focused on actually solving the problem at hand, but it’s too little, too late. It’s a pity, because the second half is more dramatic and a bit more tense as well.

The President doesn’t turn truly interesting until Part 2, when she opposes the Doctor and his attempt to save the day. I also love the climax and the little twist ending—something of a mashup of The Time Monster and The Sun Makers.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• This story was apparently twice lost, because when BF contacted Pitt and Rudlin about adapting their unmade script for The Macros, they had just lost their computer, which held the original scripts, meaning that they lost access to Part 2 and parts of Part 1 and had to recreate the story from memory.

8️⃣🔽 = VERY GOOD!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“WHODUNIT IN THE SNOW!”

Here we have a classic set-up of a bunch of people stuck (snowed in) in a location (a hotel in this case) and haunted by monsters.

The supporting characters are fleshed out properly by this character-driven plot, and they feel believable.

It's a fairly contained story, but Mark Wright's writing makes it vivid, and Mina Anwar’s northern accent is perfect for the narration.

The tension is slowly but steadily built, culminating in the reveal of the alien monsters.

The monsters kill the characters one by one, and the dire situation forces the strangers to work together, but despite this, the adventure can feel a bit slow in the middle.

Also, Rose and the Doctor (in particular) feel sidelined.

The story picks up momentum again once we learn about the true nature of one of the characters (he's a reptile alien) and when he escorts Rose to his spaceship.

I like the twist that reveals that some of the humans we meet here are actually aliens under disguise and part of a crew of criminals on the run from the law (and that law is the titular beast of Scar Hill).

5️⃣🔽 = MIDDLING!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“RAIDERS OF THE LOST SPEAR!”

This is a simple little heist story involving Viking artefacts and a visit to a Viking village in Uppsala, Sweden, to find Odin's lost spear. This leads to a standard fair Third Doctor story: they get captured, spend time chatting, meet the Master, and escape, only for Jo to get recaptured and be sacrificed. It then speeds through all of these familiar elements to reach the climax with all characters gathered in one room.

The strangest thing about this is how we supposedly witness the origin of Old Norse mythology, as the Viking characters we meet are the “real-life” Vikings Odin, Thor, and the rest are modelled after. Sadly, the story does very little in terms of exploring these characters, and they remain little more than pawns.

Another weird thing is that this story turns into a bit of an Indiana Jones adventure, as we learn that Odin's spear is the Spear of Destiny, which was thrust into Jesus as he hung on the cross and was later hunted down by Hitler during the war, to be used as a weapon against his enemies. And it's just one of several old artefacts with great power that the Time Lords are trying to track down.

The Master is shoehorned into the story. He has no real purpose, and the story would've worked just as well without him.

The author narrates his story with a flat tone, not giving his characters a lot of personality. It doesn't help that his Three and Jo aren't very recognisable in the first place.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• It's great how the story seeks to address a lot of the prominent myths surrounding the Vikings. It even mentions the fact that they are the only people who named one of the days of the week after their bathing day (Saturday).

6️⃣⏹️ = FINE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“KILLER HUSKY DOGS!”

The Teeth of Ice brings back reporter James MacFarlane and the 8th Doctor once again, but this time, Andrew Lane brings us a base-under-siege story set in Antarctica. The icy winds and severe cold of the setting, coupled with the research base and its crew, bring to mind John Carpenter's The Thing or the 1967 2nd Doctor story The Ice Warriors.

Storywise, this is a pretty familiar base-under-siege, but it flows better than the two previous BBC Audios by Lane, mostly thanks to the setting. While the previous stories dealt with vampires and zombies, here we meet a take on werewolves (they look like huskies!), and they make for believable foes. The Doctor works well here, MacFarlane is pretty likeable, and the other characters don’t leave much of an impression.

One of the supporting characters is given a voice that sounds a bit too much like Strax, and it’s distracting.

The last act makes for quite a tense ride through the snow and ice, followed by an explosive climax.

6️⃣⏹️ = FINE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“LOOK, MOM! I'M A TIME MACHINE!”

Picking up where the previous release left us, Dark Gallifrey: War Master 3 sees the War Master and John Hart come face to face with the Imbomination, who keeps tormenting them in different ways by shapeshifting into different forms and playing with their emotions and psyche.

Benny pops up throughout the audio, but this third part is finally devoted to the War Master and his exploration of Dark Gallifrey. The story is at its best when it allows the War Master to slowly manipulate the people around him to reach his own goals.

This turns into something of a mess, as the Master becomes a god and Captain John thinks he is a TARDIS (a gag that is so overplayed that it turns stupid). It does shed some light on Dark Gallifrey and the Imbomination, but it's all still left annoyingly ambiguous.

The romance between Captain John and the Terrified TARDIS is a fun idea but not very effective because we’ve seen something similar before in The Doctor’s Wife.

Tariyé Peterside puts in a great performance as the Imbomiantion and easily steals the spotlight here. Derek Jacobi is a delight as always, and James Marsters isn’t too bad, either. Jonathon Carley pops up to join Captain Hart in the guise of the War Doctor, but to be fair; he's nothing more than a cameo and a pretty cheap one at that.

The constantly shifting music is grating to my ears. With this comes very sudden tonal shifts that are very much intentional but pretty tiring.

6️⃣⏹️ = FINE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“NO SINGING IN THE RAIN!”

The world of Wupatki, the music-based Shan'tee, and the other life forms living in a symbiotic relationship are great concepts and wouldn't work as such on TV.

It's interesting to see a threat spreading a virus through music, threatening peace and life in Wupatki. But this also requires a lot of exposition, which slows down the narrative early on. There's a lot of action after the first act, followed by more exposition, so this isn't the breeziest of reads.

Tennant's Doctor is written well, while Gabby feels somewhat sidelined. The supporting characters don't pop out very well, with the exception of Smokey. The monster threat also isn't very palpable.

The art style is good, but Tennant's face looks weird at times.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• The Presley Foundation has probably been named so to reference Bowie Base One in The Waters of Mars.

🔟🔽 = MASTERPIECE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“GENESIS OF THE CYBERMEN!”

Spare Parts opens with one of the most atmospheric, tense, and dramatic first parts of any Big Finish story I’ve heard. It sets the scene and the rapidly deteriorating Mondasan society effectively; it introduces the local population, all fleshed out beautifully and performed with real heart, and it slowly reveals the emerging Cyberman threat and the genesis of the Doctor’s second biggest foe.

With the Mondasian inhabitants at the forefront, Spare Parts successfully blends strong character drama with a fascinating science fiction adventure. The very humane Cybermen are the most creepy part of the entire story. Their sing-song voices, as heard in their first appearance in The Tenth Planet, are spot-on and just as horrifying as before.

Marc Platt creates a properly engaging, emotionally grating, and vivid story, and the performances help it come to life. Even Davison and Sutton carry plenty of weight as the 5th Doctor and Nyssa, and this comes from someone who isn't a big fan of either character. Davison goes in with fierce emotional energy, and Sutton brings out all the best qualities of Nyssa; the two of them interact with the guest cast effortlessly.

Spare Parts forms an ominous and tragic atmosphere from the onset, slowly revealing more and more of the story that will eventually end up being the origin story of the Mondasian Cybermen. It's horrifying to hear about the experiments made on the humans on the planet; it's terrifying to hear how Cybermen are created and how they suffer under all those metal parts; how the necessity of survival drives the surviving humans on Mondas on the brink of disaster and finally tipping over. There are some truly harrowing and heartbreaking scenes in the final two parts, so emotional and horrifying that you will never forget them.

Platt nails the 5th Doctor and Nyssa and their distinct personalities dealing with the Cybermen post-Adric. He also nails the inherently creepy original Cybermen and writes deeply humane characters that the listener cares for. The tense and dark atmosphere translates incredibly well through Platt's dialogue, and the best parts are those that force the characters to express their emotions.

The plot is fairly simple, yet effectively deep and tragic. The script doesn't attempt to hide the fact that we are following the origins of the Cybermen but truly builds up to that pivotal, harrowing moment. There is a logical reason as to why the Cybermen are created, and the story expertly ties into their later (and earlier) appearance in the 1966 TV classic The Tenth Planet. It's also refreshing to hear a story that forces the Doctor to help despite knowing that there is nothing he can do. It's like an audio version of The Fires of Pompeii.

Origin stories for popular villains are always intriguing, and Spare Parts is no exception. It's the crumbling world of Mondas and the events leading to the rise of the Cybermen that keep this story immensely engaging and deeply emotional. And the listener will be engulfed by the harrowing story, despite knowing how it all will end.

At the time of release, Spare Parts was immensely original, thanks to the way it handles the Cybermen and gives them a human edge that is usually forgotten in their other appearances. We have received several alternate origin stories since, but nothing hits quite as hard as this one (including the 2006 two-parter, which was inspired by this adventure).

The sound design and music are among the finest in early Big Finish, and they help create and maintain the dramatic atmosphere that will stick with you long after you've finished listening.

People repeatedly highlight Spare Parts as one of the most emotional and hard-hitting Big Finish Doctor Who releases, and I can understand why. It's dark, it's tragic, and it's scary. It gives the Cybermen a backstory, which, to date, is the best one they've been given.

6️⃣⏹️ = FINE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“IF HUMPHREY BOGART WAS A PENGUIN!”

Released in 2002 as a subscriber bonus alongside Neverland, The Maltese Penguin brings back Frobisher, the talking private detective penguin (previously heard in The Holy Terror), as he takes on a new mystery to solve. The story is told in a similar vein to a traditional film noir crime mystery, and while it also briefly features Colin Baker’s Doctor it is very much Fobisher’s story.

Frobisher’s tongue-in-cheek narration and the groovy music build a recognisable noir atmosphere, and this is further strengthened by the very typical story structure (the detective presented by the case and then slowly working to solve it, mostly by interrogating people and explaining their thoughts to the listener through the narrated sections). Robert Shearman writes great dialogue, and his descriptive scenes, coupled with a healthy pinch of black humour and witty remarks, carry many scenes beautifully.

Robert Jezek’s swinging accent could feel a bit too much for some, but I quite like it. There are other distracting voices among the guest cast, though, such as Alistar Lock’s Chandler or Jane Goddard in yet another over-the-top performance as Mulholland. Colin Baker appears in all three or four scenes and is hardly relevant to the plot.

The story itself keeps twisting and turning and moving forward but is hardly very memorable. The apt take on a crime noir story makes it somewhat enjoyable, though. Still, some of the comedy and mystery introduced in the first act feel less effective by the third, and the lengthy conversation scenes suck a lot of tension out of the story. The fact that we never explore the characters or the world deeper also means that the entire thing feels flat.

9️⃣🔽 = VERY ENJOYABLE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“ICE, ICE BABY!”

Niel Bushnell brings us straight into the classroom, where the Twelfth Doctor crashes a history lecture held by Professor Irene Hyde. That lesson turns into a trip to 1806 and dangers lurking onboard the trading ship Favorite, captained by Fredric “Ice King” Tudor.

The beginning of the story functions as an introduction to Irene as a new one-off companion; it comes with all the usual questions and explanations.

Irene emits a similar kind of energy and excitement for history as Barbara or Evelyn, without being quite as memorable. She is experienced, educated, logical, and determined, which makes her likeable even when she's faced with danger. She's also given a proper and satisfying exit by the end of the story.

Tudor remains somewhat underdeveloped, and the story doesn't do much in terms of teaching us more about him, his crew, or the historical event depicted here.

The Nekkre are a scary and deadly alien threat well worth waiting for. Bushnell writes the action scenes with them very well but doesn't delve very deeply into their backstory.

Maureen O’Brien is a good narrator, but her voice for Twelve sounds very off—less like an angry Scottish man and more like an Ice Warrior with a sore throat.

This isn't the most fast-paced of stories, but the interesting characters, vivid descriptions of the ship, and atmospheric wintry setting mean that it's never boring.

8️⃣🔽 = ENJOYABLE: GOOD!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“WHEN DOCTOR WHO GOES BIBLICAL!”

The seventh Lost Story release is adapted from The Song of the Space Whale by Pat Mills (yes, the same Pat who wrote several comic strips, such as the original The Star Beast), a four-part adventure originally written for the Fourth Doctor and then the Fifth Doctor, before the final version was planned for Season 22 with Six and Peri.

The beginning of the story—with the Doctor and Peri encountering singing space whales that are lured into a trap—reminds me of The Beast Below (the TARDIS Wiki claims that these are, in fact, the same species of space whale!). And the first few scenes certainly do a good job of pulling me in, because I always root for beautiful, helpless creatures pursued and exploited by man. And the creepy spore-like creatures hunting the crew are eerily close to the monsters in The Last of Us or the recent survival horror video game Still Wakes the Deep.

The adventure gets underway right away, once the TARDIS gets stuck into the spaceship hunting the space whales, with the Doctor claiming to be an investigator to find out what's going on and why. Things go haywire right away as creepy creatures hunt the crew onboard the ship—and Peri gets to fight them right off the bat. This is a fairly traditional but surprisingly effective base-under-siege story, with a twist that a lot of it is set inside a space whale.

Part 3 slows things down a bit as we move inside the whale; here we receive some exposition. The people on the spaceship sit around doing nothing all this time, and this removes some of the tension that has been built up so far.

Fortunately, Part 4 amps up the tension again, and it’s a thrill ride until the end.

John Benfield (Captain Greeg) appears in the traditional role of the ignorant and rash leader and seems to relish the part. Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant are delightful, and Byrant gets plenty of fun material to work with (such as the lines “I’m not mental, I’m environmental!” or “I feel patriotic! Spores and stripes forever!”).

The spore monsters are underused, and that’s a pity because they are effective in their limited appearance! The two security guards, Carl and Dave, provide unusual comic relief and could have become fan favourites if they had appeared on TV.

The sound design, music, and editing help maintain a good flow and create a believable atmosphere.

The story balances between tense monster encounters and genuinely funny moments and poignant moments of social and environmental commentary. This story isn’t afraid of going from beautiful moments to tense action and the typical Doctor Who runaround. It can also be a bit too eager about its sci-fi concepts, which weighs down the exciting aspect of the adventure somewhat.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• The Doctor apparently met Jonah (the guy inside the whale) once and confirms that he was vegan.

5️⃣🔼 = PASSABLE: AVERAGE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“NOT MY FRANKENSTEIN!”

The Code of Flesh, written by Andrew Lane and narrated by Dan Starkey, is a follow-up to The Scent of Blood, bringing us back to the late 19th century for another adventure with Eight and James MacFarlane.

MacFarlane takes centre stage once again as he begins investigating strange events that eventually make him cross paths with the Doctor again. MacFarlane isn’t an interesting enough character to carry the story. Eight is fine here, even if Starkey’s narration makes him sound like Ten to me.

This is the sort of story that is technically good at describing the setting and atmosphere but lacks hooks to make it stand out. There are some Frankensteinian qualities to this, but none of them is very vivid.

9️⃣⏹️ = ENJOYABLE: NEAR PERFECT!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

"PLAYING THE PYRAMID GAME!"

The story opens from Jamie's point of view as he visits a bookshop in 1960s London, meets the suspicious named bookseller (Professor Thascalos; the Master, whose presence in the story is a mere cameo), and brings back a mysterious book for the Doctor. We then quickly move onto the main problem, as the Doctor and Jamie are transported into a glass city on an alien world.

The story taps finely into the unique friendship between Two and Jamie, brought to life effortlessly by Hines. It also paints quite vivid alien landscapes and action scenes within it.

I love these stories that try to do something different with the setting or the structure, and this is one of those. The strange world our heroes find themselves in isn't particularly lively, but fantastical and fascinating.

It takes until the third act for the story to get to the Archeons, but once it does, Scott takes the opportunity to make them important in Time Lord history and give them a real grudge against Time Lords.

The climax is a wonderfully vivid sequence of music and sound, using both characters to their full extent.

6️⃣🔽 = PASSABLE: OKAY!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

This time: mirror, mirror on the wall; who’s the evilest of them all?

The TARDIS performs an emergency landing, taking Sixie and Peri to Elizabethan England, where they get involved with a “Spanish wizard” trying to bring a nefarious other-dimensional force to Earth. It’s The Masque of Mandragora and The Talons of Weng-Chiang all over again!

It feels good to be back in this era, and the audio does a generally fine job of describing the people and traditions of the era while seamlessly hinting towards deeper sci-fi elements. The dialogue is of the Shakespearean kind we hear in stories such as The Crusade.

We meet playwright Christopher Marlowe and his friend Tom here, and they are quite colourful characters, with fun performances for Matt Addis and Tam Williams. Sixie sure likes to hang out with his writer pals!

Velez is quite enjoyable; a typically larger-than-life Doctor Who villain, but with an effective presence that looms over the listener and the other characters from the onset. He’s never too over-the-top, but always effectively villainous.

Part 1 is very talkative but doesn’t do much in terms of progressing the story or building tension. Baker and the guest cast keep it pretty believable, though. Peri goes off chasing a poor sacrificial victim and getting into trouble, while the Doctor slowly gathers information.

Peri’s troubles towards the end of Part 1 raise the stakes a bit for the second part of the story, and Nicola Bryant’s acting here sells the weight of the cliffhanger. We then follow Peri as she is stuck in a strange realm and the Doctor tries to locate and rescue her; there’s a lot going on in Part 2, yet things still remain a bit contained. The other dimension does add some tension though, especially when the Doctor finally faces the Omnim.

There's certainly many good ideas here—the invisible flies, the “magical” mirror, the Aztec treasure—it's just that the blend of the ideas doesn't make for very engaging audio.

One of the better parts of the audio is the sequence where Peri impersonates the Queen (and not being very good at it).

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• This story has been adapted by Marc Platt from a 1.5-page story treatment by Barbara Clegg.
• The mute Jack is played by Alex Mallinson, who is better known as a cover artist for Big Finish.
• The inconsistent way the actors pronounce Velez’s name annoys me.

5️⃣🔼 = MIDDLING!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“IT’S TIME, AND TIME AGAIN!”

A year after teaching us not to meddle with time and in the same season where time is being meddled with on two occasions, Doctor Who went wibbly-wobbly and timey-wimey for the first time!

The haunting, experimental quality of Part 1. In another early experimental Doctor Who episode, much like The Edge of Destruction (1964) before it, Glyn Jones offers a fascinating take on alternate timelines and different dimensions, explained by "time and relativity!" as the Doctor puts it. These are classic sci-fi concepts given the Doctor Who treatment and make for an interesting mystery to open up the story with; it’s tense and thrilling, like a timey wimey space thriller.

The shocking Part 1 cliffhanger. "Yes, my dear. And we've arrived!". The moments leading up to another classic cliffhanger must have left viewers in 1965 scratching their heads, and it's still a very effective moment today. What we see here is a potential ending to the story, and we spend the remaining three episodes trying to work out how to avoid that ending. It's a pity the show didn't do more stories like this one during its original run.

Raises questions of whether you can alter your fate. The revived series would use a term such as "fixed point in time" to deal with similar events, but The Space Museum plays around with the idea that we never know where our actions take us—in trying to prevent a certain thing from happening to us, we might cause that exact thing to happen—or not.

The lousy "warring factions" plot. Here we have another story with two groups of aliens in conflict with each other, but Glyn Jones only half-heartedly develops this plot to justify the existence of a guest cast in the serial. It's so ineffective and forgettable on both sides that it feels like a distraction from the main plot, yet there's too much time devoted to it.

Three episodes of running and sneaking around corridors. A common complaint about (classic) Doctor Who is that it contains a lot of running up and down corridors. The Space Museum is one reason that complaint exists. After the brilliant first episode, we are given three episodes of the regulars worrying about their own future while hiding and sneaking around the same corridors and rooms. It sadly doesn't play around with the sci-fi ideas from the opening episode in the remaining three.

Glyn Jones can't write dialogue. The Moroks, in particular, speak clunky, exposition-filled dialogue that sounds so off that it almost gives me a headache.

The Doctor takes a superb lead in the story. He catches up with what is going on quicker than the others but refuses to openly tell the others in order to hopefully allow things to run smoothly. He's also both serious and funny while sounding very clever. Just look at his meeting with Lobos in Part 2; it's such a satisfying scene, or indeed the fun moment when he hides inside a Dalek shell. His return partway through Part 4, as he yet again faces Lobos, is a superb moment of triumph.

The regulars are really good! All four of the main cast members are at their A-game here. William Hartnell delivers his lines like a king and takes the well-deserved lead; William Russell (who is suddenly Doctor Who's version of James Bond; so excited about carrying around a prop gun) and Jacquline Hill still give their best despite departing the show soon, and Maureen O'Brien is finally beginning to find her footing as the newest companion, especially when allowed to raise a revolution by herself. It's also a joy to see the three companions spend a good chunk of the story together, allowing them to bounce off each other's strengths rather than having them take part in separate aspects of the adventure.

The alien races are laughable. We have the Moroks against the Xerons here, and both look and sound like second-rate Star Trek aliens. The Moroks are useless cowards who sound more threatening than they turn out to be. The Xerons are annoying, snotty-nosed kids whom I find it hard to root for (despite one of them, Dako, being played by Peter Craze, the younger brother of future Doctor Who companion Michael Craze, and another, Tor, being played by future Star Wars actor Jeremy Bulloch!).

The music is enjoyable. The incidental music sounds like something from a 60s thriller but also has more sci-fi-sounding elements that make it stand out.

The setting isn't all that interesting. Xeros is a pretty bland planet, and the model work used to bring it to life doesn't look very good. The museum set itself is barren and simple and doesn't have that alien quality over it that some of the better-realised planets have.

No real tension or escalation. The TARDIS crew is supposedly working against the clock, and the Xerons are planning a revolution, but the serial is in no hurry to develop its main plot strands, and it doesn't build up to anything before wrapping all up and taking the four time travellers into their next adventure.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

I love how Ian uses Barbara’s cardigan here to help himself, Barbara, and Vicki find the way out, only for Barbara to get her revenge in the next story byusing Ian’s cardigan to escape the Daleks.

5️⃣🔽 = MIDDLING!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“THIS JAILHOUSE NEEDS MORE ROCK!”

This story is off to a rough start; it’s unclear who is who, where we are, and what’s going on. And even after it’s slowly explained to us what is going on, I’m still quite lost and have a hard time getting a grip on the characters and the plot. I like the general idea, though, of a prison planet populated by more or less unstable inmates.

The most intriguing part about the first two episodes is everyone forgetting who Tegan is. Another interesting aspect is Ivan and his quirky persona.

The story slowly reveals new layers and twists that keep the adventure going at a decent pace. But even then, it only occasionally manages to remain entertaining while mostly trudging along and having no business being six parts long. It then ends at a cliffhanger, supposedly leading straight into next year’s first 5th Doctor box set.

The cliffhangers and their immediate resolutions are great, and the cast is generally superb—this goes for the regulars as well as Philip Hurd-Wood (Ivan) and the two Starclair sisters in particular. Andrew Wincott voices Beyond in the final part, and his interactions with the Doctor are also pretty nice.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

The constantly changing surroundings of Beyond bring to mind the slowly changing layout of the spaceship in Wild Blue Yonder.

5️⃣⏬ = MIDDLING!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“DOCTOR WHO AND THE PIRATES?”

I’m listening to this story as part of the Fifteen Doctors, 15 Stories audiobook release.

Eoin Colfer, the author of the Artemis Fowl series, writes this adventure for the First Doctor and Susan. His tongue-in-cheek writing style isn’t one I’d usually attach to this Doctor. And the entire plot here is so silly that it's almost too much. The Doctor has lost his hands to Soul Pirates and needs a new one, and he goes looking for one in early 1900s London while simultaneously tracking down Susan, who’s gone missing. The style of the story seems to mix Colfer's usual style with a Douglas Adamssian take on sci-fi.

Colfer’s characterisation of One feels very off. He should be grumpy, a bit selfish, and quite alien at this point, yet he thinks, acts, and speaks much closer to his later self. There’s also a lot of action here that doesn't fit this Doctor. Susan barely appears in the story and isn't given anything substantial to do.

The Soul Pirates harvest body parts from people across the universe, and the Doctor has been hunting them across time and space (unlikely, at this point in their lives). They are simple, almost Ogron-like creatures, mostly played for laughs. They feel a bit too left-field for Doctor Who, and this comes from someone who found the little pesky goblins in the latest Christmas special perfectly fine!

The epilogue is perhaps the biggest takeaway here, but also a slightly forced final twist: how this adventure inspired J. M. Barrie to write Peter Pan.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

Wait, so the Doctor suddenly has visions of their future incarnations?

I get some Church on Ruby Road vibes from the pirates and the pirate ship.

9️⃣⏬ = REMARKABLE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“TIME LORD SECRETS!”

Will Hadcroft paints a very suitable setting for this TARDIS team—an industrial plant so very similar to 20th-century Earth industrial complexes, but with a twist of a machine capable of resurrecting mortally wounded people. It’s a simple but strong story idea of the consequences of playing with life and death and letting machines act as gods.

Eventually, this turns into a base under siege, with a terrifying monster and a tense and exciting atmosphere. The sound effects help greatly here, as does Hines’ lively but occasionally stumbling narration.

Hadcroft captures Two, Jamie and Zoe, perfectly and follows the basic story formula of the time while delivering an intriguing story. The Doctor is inquisitive and passionate, and Zoe’s intelligence is put to good use.

The supporting characters aren't very interesting.

The later plot developments carry surprising weight, adding new layers to the story while expertly maintaining tension. The revelation that we are dealing with Gallifreyan technology and that one of the characters is a new Time Lord is superb, and the last few scenes are the highlight of the story.

6️⃣🔼 = PASSABLE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“RAIDERS OF THE LOST HANDBAG!”

This fourth part of the Excelis trilogy brings time-travelling archaeologist Bernice Summerfield to Artaris—now a barren, post-apocalyptic world ravaged by wars and plague—and she quickly bumps into Iris Wildthyme. There’s great tension between the two characters from the start, helped by Bowerman’s no-nonsense attitude and Manning’s delightfully energetic Iris (which, I have to admit, is much easier to listen to here than in Excelis Dawns but can still be a bit annoying).

Iris is here to steal the famed relic of Excelis and allies herself with Bennie to do so. Bennie's arrival causes panic among the population because of a prophecy foretelling Excelis's fall. We also follow the local politics, with Excelis led by a determined Empress.

The story is simple and not very exciting. It turns into a small archaeological expedition toward the end, and Bennie and Iris inject energy into it, but it’s hardly anything memorable.

The atmosphere, music, and performances align with the previous Excelis stories. There’s a slightly mysterious and uneasy atmosphere to this, but I’m not entirely convinced there are new things to explore about Excelis.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

It’s distracting to hear the characters talk about Aragon, who I constantly hear as Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings.

6️⃣⏫ = PASSABLE!

Barking through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“AS GOOD AS IT GETS?”

This episode is supposedly the best one in the series. And it's certainly an intriguing one, about a mysterious girl prisoner escaping from a virtual reality prison. They have a mystery and a moral dilemma here. Dull Professor is interesting, and the unique connection between Annoying Girl and Taphony is intriguing.

Taphony’s powers are pretty cool and definitely add stakes to the story. She is arguably the most memorable and interesting guest character/villain of the show. She has a good motive for her actions, and her attempts to steal Villain Mother for herself actually make me root for the heroes.

Forgettable Girl is good in this one, and Annoying Kid isn’t annoying.

Despite the slow tone, there is a sense of urgency in this once we realise the mortal danger Forgettable Girl is in.

I love the little hook at the end, which transports us all the way back to the beginning of the episode.

5️⃣⏹️ = MIDDLING!

Barking through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“THE GAME OF DEATH!”

What’s up with the future and all these weird hats and glasses people are wearing in place of using normal technology?

And we have yet another story about the dangers of video games and how they can be used to wipe the minds of children. This could’ve been fine if they hadn’t given us the silly scenes inside the game company with the Custodians (the smirk on that one guy’s face makes me want to punch him; also, he looks like Rivers Cuomo from Weezer).

Now that Forgettable Girl and Annoying Kid are sidelined for a bit and we focus on Villain Moher, Dull Professor, and Bad Starkey, things generally flow a bit better. Annoying Mother gets a chance to show that she is actually a pretty good mother when given the opportunity.

There’s also a pretty basic but interesting alien conquest plot here, along with a cool alien design.

The climax is slow but quite meaningful in many ways.

5️⃣⏹️ = MIDDLING!

Barking through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“NOT QUITE THE ROBOCOP!”

Forgettable Girl has a boyfriend now, and he is no better than the other kids. He tries to be cool by calling her "JJ," but that’s just tacky. And he is a baddie, of course, so he gets what he deserves in the end!

So where we follow a Wannabe Roboman who’s gone insane by having human DNA planted into it (hence the mutant copper). This is used to tell yet another classic story of the value of cyborgs and robotic "life.”

So this new Wannabe Roboman (“Birdie”) is actually pretty interesting. And the way K9 is used trying to help it is nice too.

Villain Mother is yet again surprised about the Department doing stuff behind her back, despite evidence of this happening in almost every episode. Smug Face 2 is doing a great job of filling in for his predecessor.

5️⃣🔼 = MIDDLING!

Barking through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“I WANT THUNDER AND LIGHTNING!”

I’m intrigued by the title: “Ukko” is the God of Thunder (with "ukkonen," the Finnish word for “"thunderstorm," literally meaning “small thunder”) in Finnish mythology (and it also means “old man” or “geezer” these days).

It’s nice to get out of the mansion a little! It’s Department tour day!

Smug Face 2 appears properly here, and he looks a bit like Paul Bettany, which is distracting to me. And he’s up to no good, because of course he is!

Bad Starkey suddenly finds himself on Discount Tatooine (AKA a quarry), which is really just a futuristic library card for an alien race of librarians. It’s actually a pretty fun twist in an alien race.

When will the Department learn not to mess around with alien stuff? They keep making the same mistake in every single episode.

The alien race seen here is actually well-designed and interesting (brings Chantho from Series 3 to mind for some reason). The way she acts and talks feels a bit RTD-era Who to me.

The latter half of the episode goes more into typical K9 shenanigans.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

The way they pronounce “ukko” throughout the episode sounds so hilarious to me.

6️⃣⏬ = PASSABLE!

Barking through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“THE NAME’S KID, ANNOYING KID!”

A title mentioning spies has my hopes up! And this is another one with a storm, which is usually a good sign! But then again, we open the episode with some of the characteristically wooden character moments we’ve had a lot in this series, so I don’t know.

Forgettable Girl is sent back in time to 1963, leaving the boys in the present trying to get her back. Now this is a premise I actually like, not that the 60s seen here looks any more believable than the supposed future setting the series usually depicts.

What’s confusing here is that we meet a 60s version of Annoying Kid, who isn’t really the Annoying Kid but looks and acts just like the Annoying Kid, with the added 60s clothing. It is used for a timey-wimey plot tied to the real Annoying Kid, though, and it creates some stakes as well as something for Bad Starkey and K9 to do.

The supporting characters here sort of come across as spoofs on characters from 60s TV shows and movies, but they add a bit of an old-time charm to this.

The scenes in the present with Dull Professor and Villain Mother drag this down a notch.

This is probably the best episode so far. I knew the storm was a good sign!

3️⃣🔽= VERY UNENJOYABLE!

Barking through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“A BUG IN THE SYSTEM!”

Small black bugs cause trouble for our heroes in this one. The effect looks bad, but the concept is creepy enough. And Annoying Kid tries to use them to earn a penny on cleaning up stuff, only for everything to go haywire.

Dull Professor is beginning to feel likeable enough, and I don't mind Bad Starkey. Annoying Kid isn’t too bad here either.

The Department gets involved in investigating the alien bugs and used to bring us a bit of background on the bugs. Smug Face is much easier to take seriously here, though. Villain Mother steps up to challenge Smug Face.

This is again a slower episode that doesn't do a lot with its premise.

The scene with the Wannabe Roboman and the two kids playing dogs is a cringeworthy one.

It all once again culminated in a very stiff climax. And then we get that final scene with Villain Mother and Mystery Face, which I have to say is surprisingly intriguing.

SMUG FACE IS FINALLY GONE!!! But replaced by a guy who seems just as bad; let's call him Smug Face 2.

2️⃣⏹️ = INSUFFERABLE!

Barking through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“ROBIN HOOD AND HIS MERRY EGGS!”

There’s a museum, a virtual forest, and a terrible version of Robin Hood in this one.

K9 is more involved again, but most of this revolves around a very pointless adventure that tries to be tense but just sort of floats around. It’s lifeless excitement from beginning to end with little to no proper plot.

Remember the surprisingly good snake CGI earlier? Well, the monster in this one looks plastic and fake in comparison.

There’s stuff with the eggs from Alien, a weird pink orb, lots of running down corridors, and a time bomb. All elements that make for a mess of an episode.

I mean, this show clearly hasn’t the budget to pull off the ideas in this episode, but I appreciate the attempt.

5️⃣🔽 = MIDDLING!

Barking through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“PLAY IT AGAIN, STARKEY!”

Annoying Kid plays the guitar, so I respect him more now.

All the terrible music and singing drives me crazy, and that is sadly a key element of this episode. It’s like a really badly made version of The Devil’s Chord.

There’s another storm coming in. Last time this happened, we ended up with a decent episode. This time we get some of the worst visualisations of storms and their effects I’ve ever seen.

They are clearly going for a proper drama here, but it just never feels like it, despite the real pickle Forgettable Girl finds herself in and the storm supposedly wrecking most of London.

Annoying Kid plays the hero yet again, K9 does nothing, and Smug Face pops up just to remind us all that he is very smug.

The Forgettable Girl part of the plot isn't too bad (there’s even a sweet little character moment here, once Annoying Kid arrives to save her!), but all the stuff with the Aeolian feels very tacked on and so messy.

Seeing Annoying Kid so sad once he realises that Forgettable Girl fancies Bad Starkey and not him is the first time I sympathise with the kid.

The Aeolian looks like a fancy version of Alpha Centauri from the Peladon stories in Doctor Who, and the concept isn’t too bad, even if the execution is.

4️⃣⏹️ = UNENJOYABLE!

Barking through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“STAR WARS MEETS DOCTOR WHO!”

K9 and the Wannabe Robomen (suddenly talking with a weird accent) discussing fishing is a new level of cringe. And it gets worse once we get Forgettable Girl jamming to a bad song and Annoying Kid bumping into her with a stack of books.

We are back to the weird and stupid monster here, with the strange Jawa Ghosts. They are hardly seen, though.

They also bring back a farting K9. Sigh!

Villain Mother and Smug Face return, and we get some more of their lovely onscreen chemistry. Smug Face is using the Jawa Ghosts in his latest evil plan!

The kids and K9 investigate, and their interplay is still so very stiff. The same goes for the scene between Villain Mother and Dull Professor.

The tension is very artificial here and partly killed by the bad acting. The climax is sort of fun, but oh so wooden.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

“Have you ever considered voice training?” Ooooh, Dull Professor, that's a proper roast!

5️⃣⏹️ = MIDDLING!

Barking through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“DANCING THE SNAKEDANCE!”

This episode is off to a shaky beginning, if you know what I mean.

This time, we’re dealing with strange time disruptions and a strange alien disease. It goes into a sort of timey wimey tangent that doesn’t make much sense. There’s this time snake stuff that is supposed to be so heartfelt but falls very flat.

They decide to give Bad Starkey some characterisation by suddenly talking about his parents and making him go look for them. He’s been quite fine without them so far.

The Tube Corp stuff sits so badly with the rest of the episodes. which is actually surprisingly earnest.

Bad Starkey and Annoying Kid are at it again, while Forgettable Girl is the voice of reason. K9 is given something to do again.

Dull Professor is also pretty useful here again.

The build-up to the climax is slow, and then the climax itself is disappointing.

Oddly enough, the big CGI snake doesn't look too bad.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

“Schroedinger’s cat and kittens!” is a new favourite exclamation of mine!

9️⃣🔼 = REMARKABLE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“HE’S NOT THE DOCTOR, HE’S CASANOVA!”

Returning after his success with The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances (2005), Steven Moffat crafts an inventive timey-wimey adventure, combining a character-driven period drama with pure and fun science fiction. The script fascinatingly shifts between the deserted spaceship and the Doctor visiting different points in Reinette's life, building up a mystery and a connection between the two. It's an early example of Moffat challenging the expectations of the viewers.

This is also a fascinatingly deep episode about the Doctor as a person.

David Tennant is lovely in this story, in one of his better performances. This episode is the one that cemented him as a great pick for the Doctor for me. Sophia Myles proves to be one of the most memorable and solid guest performers in the revived series. She puts in a soft but very engaging performance.

The Doctor is both funny and touching here, ready to help a woman he barely knows, even if it means he gets separated from his companions. The way he’s excited about space-age clockwork, snogging Madame de Pompadour, or befriending Arthur the Horse and getting drunk (and "dancing") at a party are things only Ten could pull off.

Mickey is now officially a part of the TARDIS team, but still a bit of a comic relief character. He's cowardly and not very useful, but luckily he has Rose by his side, as she is pretty good at getting out of trouble by now. The two companions are mostly abandoned by the Doctor throughout this, but they fare very well on their own, and Billie Piper isn't too annoying for a change. Granted, they don't have much of a role to play in the episode, but still.

The Clockwork Droids are a great concept, used pretty well but perhaps not as much as could have been possible. Their design and function are creepy, and they work effectively despite being so simple. What makes them scarier is the fact that they harvest human body parts to run their spaceship.

This is one of the better-produced stories in the early revived series. 18th-century France looks incredible, the droids look realistic, and the old, abandoned spaceship is also pretty nice. The CGI isn’t always up to par (I’m thinking of the “horse through the mirror” scene), but it’s not too bad. The sad music stands out the most.

This is a slower episode, but it's well-paced nonetheless, allowing the Doctor and Reinette to connect properly, which makes the ending feel properly satisfying. At the same time, the air sort of runs out of it after the clockwork stuff is sorted, because the sudden romance between Ten and Reinette feels very forced.

Once again, Moffat manages to craft an atmosphere that effectively combines authentic period drama with dark and creepy scenes, romance, heartbreak, and plenty of sharp humour. There are also slower moments and touching scenes in this story, particularly in the strange way the Doctor and Reinette connect. Granted, I could have done without the romance aspects of the episode, but they don’t drag it down noticeably.

This story strengthened Moffat's position as one of Nu Who's strongest and most inventive writers.

This is still one of the best stories of the revived era and one of the best Moffat has ever written. Watch it, and watch it again many times!

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

The Doctor has fought clockwork androids before, in The Android Invasion (1976) and The Androids of Tara (1979), for instance, and will do so again in Deep Breath (2014) and Robot of Sherwood (2014).

Combining history with sci-fi isn't a new idea for the show. It has been done previously in Carnival of Monsters (1973) and Enlightenment (1984).

We all have to make sacrifices sometimes. Ten allows Rose to keep Mickey, so she has to allow him to keep Arthur (he should’ve been a companion).

The drunken Doctor is one of the better Tenth Doctor moments, filled with quotable dialogue.

7️⃣⏹️ = ENJOYABLE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“RAIDERS OF THE LOST PROFESSOR!”

Please note, that this is a review based on the studio recording of the live event. I have not seen the live version of this story.

This story begins like any other: the Doctor and Charley arrive in Cornwall in 1963 and stumble upon a man throwing himself to the sea, only to then get entangled in the local goings-on. They begin delving into local folklore and a missing professor living in the area.

Their exploration turns into a bit of a treasure hunt in the style of Indiana Jones. The Doctor and Charley are accompanied by Emily Barnfather, whose fascination and willingness to explore make her a very natural fit for this TARDIS team. She’s a bit like a new Charley, but from the 60s, and Nisha Nayar plays her very well.

Here, we meet the Bucca, mysterious binary creatures greatly performed by Annette Badland. The aliens are pretty typical for Doctor Who, but their binary nature at least makes them somewhat special.

The end of Part 1 finally tightens the tension a bit with the inclusion of Robomen, Daleks the Bucca, and the Master. Alex Macqueen is delightful as always in the role of the latter—sly and calculative, but with a certain wit and charm. Part 2 is then a thrill ride (literally) with the Master's machinations intertwining with the Daleks exterminating left and right.

This story sort of lives up to its name by being a mix of very typical Doctor Who elements—the stuff of legends. It makes for a safe and perfectly listenable adventure that hardly tries to tread new ground. The studio erosion is perfectly fine, but I suspect it worked much better as a live-stage performance.

Charley impersonating a Dalek and being very bad at it is hilarious. Brings back memories of Ian coding similar things in The Daleks (1963-1964).

Love how the older Emily (voiced by Badland) narrates the story as if telling a bedtime story for us. The final scene, with the Doctor and Charley picking up the older Emily for another adventure, is also very nice.

5️⃣⏹️ = MIDDLING!

Barking through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“IS THAT YOU, SUTEKH?!”

The title sounds promising, and the episode opens with space stuff, which seems nice!

Stargazing in the night! Robomen hunting our heroes! This is good stuff!

K9 bumping into the spaceship's forcefield with an audible thud made me giggle.

The plot is K9-focused, with the visiting Anubis aliens (they look silly, but are kind of Doctor Who-y) being old mates with the tin dog. They are some of the more well-rounded aliens we’ve seen so far. Their plan to take over the world goes nowhere, but at least they form more of a threat than any of the earlier foes.

The Egyptian stuff is perhaps a bit too much, even if the costumes look funny (Dull Professor rocks a new, cool look!).

I had hoped for a bit more action from this one, but they hardly do anything with the premise.

The Annoying Kid’s car performs the most underwhelming knockout I've ever seen. And Annoying Boy himself steps up to do some good for once.

2️⃣🔼= INSUFFERABLE!

Barking through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“A NIGHTMARE IN TIN FOIL!”

Bad dreams haunt our lead characters, and boy does all of it make for a mess of an episode.

The tin hat stuff is stupid, the dream world looks awful, and performances are once again superbly terrible. K9 is once again mostly sidelined.

The design of the Dream-Eater is pretty cool, but it’s another very underdeveloped monster. Then we get the silly sleep zombie people, and I don’t know what to think.

Surprisingly, Dull Professor finally steps up a bit.

This one delivers a nonsensical climax yet again (such as the stuff with Villain Mother). 

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

Fun fact: Once upon a time, I planned to write a fanfic with a future incarnation of the Doctor, where he enters a strange alternate dimension and faces his most dangerous foes so far. What were they called? The Dream Eaters!

2️⃣🔼 = INSUFFERABLE!

Barking through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“THE MAN WITH A SMUG SMILE!”

We plunge right back to the lovely chemistry between Villain Mother and Smug Face.

I can’t believe they are trying to make a version of the classic “The hero is framed for trying to assassinate the baddie” plot. And then it turns to another classic plot, with the “an evil clone of the hero is behind it all” stuff.

This is another episode with character stuff that does nothing to make me like these characters more. Oh, and more villain talk from Smug Face.

To make matters worse, they make Annoying Kid go through a Turlough phase here, which doesn’t do him any favours.

The worst thing is that nothing happens in this episode. It just trudges along until it reaches the silly climax.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

Forgettable Girl says Smug Face has a “smug smile." See, we are on the same wavelength here!

5️⃣🔼 = MIDDLING!

Barking through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“THE GRYFFADDAMS FAMILY!”

The title certainly sounds promising for Dull Professor!

Now there's a big, bad storm coming and forcing everyone to stay inside! And that’s very bad for everyone, of course!

So this episode intends to give character stuff to Dull Professor, but it’s all too shallow and flat to have any real impact.

Villain Mother is suddenly overprotective; I’d also be annoyed.

I have to admit that they manage to build a somewhat atmospheric mood here with the dark surroundings, strange noises, stormy weather, eerie music, and child ghosts lurking about. The connection to Gryffen’s family also gives everything a logical reason.

Not that it helps much; the performances are as flat as ever, and the script utilities every old trick in the haunted horror book.

The ghost versions of the Gryffen family members are some of the better monsters this show has featured.

We also get a surprisingly good finale to the episode.

4️⃣🔼 = UNENJOYABLE!

Barking through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“I HAVE A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS!”

Two hobos kidnap The Annoying Kid. I hope they get rid of him forever (they don’t!).

The dialogue is so clunky, and the characters express their feelings throughout the episode so terribly that it’s almost comical.

This one’s a mess of clunky editing and writing. But at least they have a theme they are trying to explore somewhat and learning to face our fears and live through them.

Smug Face shouting angrily at the boggart cabinet from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is my favourite scene of the series so far. He then follows it up with the passionately delivered line, “I could force the truth out of you!”.

All these Halloween games and talking about fear and feelings is so clunky that I get annoyed.

Smug Face and Evil Mother continue their Department stuff, and it’s no clearer here than previously.

K9 does nothing but discuss the philosophy of feelings (until the second half, where he actually gets to do something), and Dull Professor is also very useless.

This is a slow and fairly dull episode that keeps teasing a potential alien that finally appears in one of the worst action scenes I’ve ever seen.

Are we supposed to be shocked by the reveal that Smug Face has a robotic hand?

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

K9 calls feelings a “system error” which sounds like a very Cyberman idea to throw around!

6️⃣🔽 = PASSABLE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“FLAT ENDINGS!”

The third Excelis story begins by slowly easing us and Seven into a changed Artaris, locked in war and under totalitarian rule. It's an Orwellian story, and the Doctor's arrival stirs up things yet again.

This story is pretty straightforward, exposition-heavy, and slow, and it takes a good while for the Doctor to figure out who is the person behind all the stuff going on in Excelis, while it's clear to us from the beginning.

McCoy is good, and Anthony Stewart Head is once again great as yet another slightly different tale on Grayvorn/Maupassant/Sutton.

The best part is the fact that Sutton uses the souls of the population to create genetically engineered super soldiers (meat puppets). Sadly, this idea is hardly used at all but could have brought great excitement to the adventure.

The climax is lengthy and talky and doesn't grow a lot, so this ends up feeling a bit flat. Perhaps even pointless.

6️⃣⏹️ = MIDDLING!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“RETURN OF THE BAD KNIFE!”

This review is based on the unofficial audiobook reading of the 1981 Terrance Dicks novelisation, as read by Dwayne Bunney.

Dicks spends a good time in the early chapters to slightly flesh out the opening scenes of the first episode (such as giving the police officer at the beginning a few more scenes!). Once we move onto the Stone Age, the text does a pretty good job of making the tribespeople a bit more well-rounded and getting into their mindsets a bit better. This makes their political struggles a bit more enjoyable to follow, even if they are simple and needlessly convoluted.

Dicks juggles pretty nicely between the description of four TARDIS travellers learning to trust each other and the cavemen going about in their lives.

The knife trial is just as good here as in the televised version, and the big moment for the Doctor.

Of course, there's the same problem here as on TV: the constant back and forth between the heroes being captured and escaping. 

Dicks' writing is straightforward but vivid enough to bring the story to life, though some sequences follow the televised scenes a bit too closely, making them feel a bit clumsy. The story also follows the original scripts very closely, to the point of including the same weakness.

Dicks also manages to keep the tension better than the TV story did, especially during the chase sequence through the Forest of Fear, helped by the inclusion of a sabre tooth tiger.

Bunney's narration is decent. His voices for Ian and Barbara are okay, but his Doctor is a bit one-note. Bunney also brings Kal, Za, Hur, and the other cavemen to life very well.

8️⃣🔽 = ENJOYABLE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“DAY OF THE DOCTOR(S)!”

Multi-Doctor stories are always great fun, and Paul Cornell brings one of them for the Titan Comics line, bringing together Doctors Ten to Twelve as well as a couple of cameos from other incarnations to defeat a universe-shattering threat together.

Right off the bat, Cornell opens the story on Marinus (see The Keys of Marinus, 1964) during the Time War and introduces a cool new redesign of the Voord (it’s about time!). He then finishes the first issue by bringing back his own monsters, the Reapers (see Father's Day, 2005).

We learn by the end of issue 2 that the cool Voord are the baddies here, and I'm all in for it. They end up slighly underused, and their new abilities make them almost unrecognisable, but they are undoubtedly cool.

Further on, Cornell continues to throw in new ideas and take left turns as an excuse to play around with alternate timelines while referencing New Who. This is also where things turn very convoluted.

After two breezy and fun issues, the third and fourth are a bit heavier and less fun.

What makes this story exciting is that it is likely the only time we'll see the Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Doctor in a story together, given that Peter Capaldi isn’t very keen on returning to the role himself. It's also fun to see this as a take on The Day of the Doctor (2013) in the Titan continuity, with two original Titan companions (Gabby for Ten and Alice for Eleven).

And sure enough, Cornell goes all in on the typical bicker and banter between the Doctors. He doesn't simply redo what Moffat did with Ten and Eleven in the 50th and adds a characteristically grumpy Twelve that I could easily imagine Capaldi playing.

It's fascinating how Cornell builds most of the story around a possible future version of Twelve (a sort of Valeyard), had things gone down very differently for him.

This is constantly action-packed and fun, and it flies by instantly. Most of it is action, followed by comical banter and very little introspection or actual fleshing out of the plot—but that's fine because it's all fun.

The art is fine, but the faces aren't always accurate, especially on Tennant and Smith.

A nice little nod to the fantastic Ninth Doctor there at the end!

😐2️⃣ = NOT ENJOYABLE!

Barking through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“A ROCK BLOW TO THE HEAD”

This episode has a cool title, and the premise sounds like it's trying to do something different! This show turns into a high school drama, and that drama is probably some of the worst I’ve seen.

The problem is that we are in a new setting with new characters, but there’s no time devoted to fleshing any of it out (and Forgettable Girl’s new friend is the worst child actor yet). Additionally, nothing of note happens here.

Look, it’s the Robomen again! And they take down the world’s most effective protest, held by a single person!

I love how they make the moment of Forgettable Girl’s big crime this very dramatic moment, worth of slow motion and all!

Smug Face is back, and he keeps getting worse. He’s trying too hard to be soooo evil, and it falls flat.

Villain Mother is mothering and not being very good at it. She even lets Smug Face give her parenting advice!

Bad Starkey and Annoying Kid take a backseat for once, but the episode isn’t any better because of it. The worst part of the episode is when they get something to do in the climax.

I still find the lack of proper K9 action a general problem.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

The “snapping fingers to turn the lights on and off” gag reminds me of a similar gag RTD did with the Doctor and Adam in The Long Game.

😐2️⃣ = NOT ENJOYABLE!

Barking through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“HE’S NOT BOBA FETT, HE’S A VERY NAUGHTY BOY!”

Things go downhill from here.

Why do they put these weird Departement Robomen into every single episode since they never do anything substantial?

Drake is another terrible character. He shall be known as Smug Face henceforth. His scenes with Villain Mother make no sense. And the scenes with the three lead children are even worse than before.

The titular bounty hunter is like a mix of a terrible children’s show character and a supervillain. He is overwritten and overplayed—pretty much Zaroff (see The Underwater Menace) levels of bad but not in a good way.

Between the time-travelling bounty hunter plot and the rogue ferris wheel threat, this is probably the stupidest episode yet. The latter is resolved halfway through, leaving pretty much nothing for the second part.

The CGI leash looks horrendous! And it’s broken by a cup of coffee—that’s stupid!

😐5️⃣ = NOT ENJOYABLE!

Barking through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“ATTACK OF THE SAUSAGE!”

There’s an action-packed intro with the Bad Starkey and K9 before we get a pointless scene with the Dull Professor and the Annoying Kid and another with the Forgettable Girl and her Villain Mother.

At least they are trying to inject some time travel elements into the plot, even if they hardly bring any excitement to this.

I just realised that the Department is supposed to be some sort of wannabe Torchwood/UNIT.

K9 is a bit more in this, which is good, even if he doesn’t get to do a lot.

The design of the Korven is a bit silly, but at least they are a better alien race than the Jizen in the previous two episodes. They don’t do much with them beyond having them kidnap the Dull Professor (and unfortunately fail to kill him).

They seemed to have put some effort into that climax. Well done!

I can’t believe they made K9 fart!

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

I find the title of this episode hilarious. “Korv” is Swedish for "sausage,” and “korven” is the singular, determined form of the word, so it would be “the sausage” in English.

😐5️⃣ = NOT ENJOYABLE!

Barking through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“A DOG WITH BUNNY EARS!”

Surprisingly, this episode continues the story that was set up in the opening episode and is fairly focused on it. Not that it helps, since it does very little with the premise, with a lot of time devoted to pointless character interactions. At least we get some stuff with the Department and see how they collect alien races. And gasp! There's the surprise twist of one character we’ve barely met being the leader of the Department.

Part of the problem is that this series is way too focused on the terrible human character and barely relies on K9. And when it does, it makes up new abilities (such as flying) that the tin dog has never shown before.

The Jizen are still a dull and stupid alien villain race.

The kids remain hopeless and the professor dull. I really don’t like The Annoying Kid and find Bad Starkey annoying as well, which is a problem since they are so prevalent in these episodes. This undersells every joke and emotional moment that the writers are going for.

Why is the music so overly dramatic all the time?

The visuals are clunky, from the uninspired cinematography and editing to the very basic CGI. The action at the end is so shakily shot that it turns stupid rather than exciting.

😐6️⃣ = NOT ENJOYABLE!

Barking through time and space, one adventure at a time!

Following plenty of brainwashing and threats of having my Doctor Who Fan Licence revoked, I decided it was time to tackle this infamous, unofficial Australian Doctor Who spin-off K-9, which aired 26 episodes in 2010 and follows the adventures of the Doctor’s robotic canine friend. The series mixes live action with animation and sees John Leeson return as the voice of K9.

“THE BEGINNING OF A TRAINWRECK!”

The opening credits sequence is very Naughties in style, and I sort of like it.

The writing is really simple—introduce the characters and how they meet K9, include an alien danger, and then get to the end—and while it certainly sets things in motion, it does next to nothing to actually develop the characters. The dialogue is clunky too.

What the heck is going on in the second half, in the weird white realm? It’s as if the episode runs out of plot after 10 minutes.

I can already tell from the first few scenes that the acting is going to be horrendous. The two leads, Starkey (henceforth Bad Starkey, in contrast with the good one, Dan) and Jorjie (Forgettable Girl), are pretty atrocious, and the adult actors are hardly any better. This Professor Gryffen type (Dull Professor) is supposed to be a slightly nutty professor (sort of a take on Professor Marius, who created K9 in the parent show; see The Invisible Enemy), but the performance is too understated to hit that mark.

The Darius kid (The Annoying Kid) is already grating in his introductory scene.

John Leeson seems to put real effort in as the voice of K9, and he’s never bad when doing it. Too bad that the new K-9 model introduced halfway through is pretty bad (why did they add those bunny ears?).

There are these monsters (Jizen), but there is no explanation as to what they are, where they come from, or what they want.

The production is very shoddy. The editing and camera work in the monster attack scenes look horrible. The incidental music plays way too loud all the time.

This isn’t a good start to the series, but it’s not completely hopeless either. It's never funny or exciting, and it’s not boring even if there isn’t a lot going on.

🙏🏼5️⃣ = MIDDLING!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

The 13th season of Big Finish Fourth Doctor Adventures continues with a historical adventure on the sea and a rematch with the Dominators and their deadly Quarks.

“SEXIST DOMINATORS: A COMMENTARY”

This story gets underway right away by taking a traditional route: the companions are imprisoned and try to work out a way to escape. At the same time, the Doctor begins piecing together what is going on and why. This familiar story trail continues throughout, making for a pretty predictable, not overly exciting adventure.

At the end of Part 3, John Dorney injects some excitement into the story, as a power shift within the Dominators puts everyone and everything at risk, leading to the concluding fourth part of the story. He delivers a pretty straightforward climax before concluding this chapter of the Fourth Doctor Adventures by having Harry and Naomi depart the TARDIS (in a scene that leads directly to the Seventh Doctor story London Orbital, released in 2022).

I’m not a fan of The Dominators or the cheap Dalek copy that is the Quarks, but it’s pretty fun to have them here facing Four, Harry, and Naomi. One of the better scenes is in Part 4 as Harry goes through the classic “companion having to impersonate the villain to get the other to the villain’s HQ” schtick.

The three regulars are well-oiled by now. I'm a bit bummed about Naomi, who barely received any characterisation during her time with the Doctor before being written out.

The supporting cast is fine, but nothing remarkable. Nala is the only character I felt was interesting in her rebellious nature.

Here at least, the Dominators are recognisable in how they are bickering and trying to oust each other. They're not any more interesting here than in their original appearance, though. Draga turns out to be slightly more well-rounded than the two Dominators present in The Dominators (1969).

❤️1️⃣ = REMARKABLE!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

This review of the partly missing four-part historical The Crusade is based on the existing episodes 1 and 3 as well as the official BBC telesnap reconstructions of episodes 2 and 4. My watch also included Julian Glover’s intro and outro scenes (made for the Loose Cannon release of the story) as well as William Russell’s lovely recaps of episodes 2 and 4.

“DEFYING WITH THE POPE: A COMMENTARY”

The Crusade holds a bit of a soft spot in my heart—it combines an interesting historical era with a tense plot and amazing guest performances, and it is one of the stronger William Hartnell era historicals despite two of its four episodes currently missing.

I rather like the swift beginning, which sees the TARDIS crew getting into trouble immediately and separated from each other, with Barbara and Ian especially going through rough times (again). We bump into King Richard the Lionheart in the opening scene, and there’s even a fight scene with the regulars before five minutes have passed!

This story is most interesting from Barbara's and Ian's points of view. Barbara is hunted by El Akir and almost killed when trying to escape. Also, consider the unusually dark and bleak turn in Part 3, where Barbara is essentially instructed to murder someone and then commit suicide—this was a children's program after all!

Meanwhile, Ian is knighted in his attempts to save Barbs, facing torture by ants along the way (in what is one of my favourite scenes of the Hartnell era, despite taking place in the missing Part 4). This is probably my favourite Ian story, due to how well the character fits a classic knight stereotype. However, Ian's rescue operation doesn't get underway properly until Part 4, and by that time, they have to desperately hurry up to make it in time for the end credits.

The Doctor and Vicki spend the majority of this story in King Richard's court and don't get a whole lot done. Their scenes are used to explore the intricate court politics at the time, as well as arguing about stolen clothes with the fun supporting characters Ben Daheer and the Chamberlain. The warm chemistry between William Hartnell and Maureen O’Brien is absolutely lovely to watch, though, and Hartnell himself is on top form.

The political tension between Richard and Saladin is in full bloom at the beginning of the story, and nothing is resolved or has progressed by the end of it, which means that some might feel a bit cheated by this adventure, considering how dialogue-heavy it otherwise is.

I'd argue that the only bigger problem with the story is the fact that David Whitaker fails to develop any of the plot strands during the first three parts, and so is left in a great hurry to wrap everything up in the final episode before hurling the TARDIS crew into their next adventure. The fact that a lot is going on in Part 4, but we cannot see any of it, makes the ending of the story a bit less effective.

The Crusade finds its strength in the various fight scenes, dangerous situations, and glorious character conversations. The actors put a lot of power and emotion into the colourful Shakespearean dialogue, making it some of the most enjoyable in Classic Who.

Julian Glover remains one of the finest guest actors to appear on the show, both here and in his later (and more well-known and beloved) appearance in City of Death (1979). Glover's King Richard the Lionheart is as commanding as he is just, and Glover plays him with utmost devotion. At the same time, he is very rash and selfish, as the story depicts him as less of a hero than usual.

Another acting legend comes in the shape of Jean Marsh, making her first of three glorious guest appearances on the show as Richard's sister Joanna. She climbs right up to the top as the best actress to appear on the show and will remain there for quite some while (she'd be back in the 12-part epic The Daleks' Master Plan (1965-1966) in the following season).

The fiery argument between King Richard and Joanna at the end of Part 3 remains among my favourite scenes in Doctor Who history: here we get two acting giants passionately shouting at each other, culminating in the classic line "You defy me with the Pope?!!". I’m so happy this episode exists so we can watch this glorious scene in its original form!

And the brilliance of the guest cast doesn't stop there. Bernard Kay returns from The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964) to play famous Saracen leader Saladin with a treacherous calm and intelligence that makes him instantly memorable (and breaks Oriental stereotypes prevalent at the time). His brother Saphadin is played by the equally brilliant Roger Avon. Another returning actor, Walter Randall (The Aztecs, 1964), becomes the villainous El Akir, calculative and sadistic, and he stands out well despite his similarities with Tegana from Marco Polo (1964).

The costume design and set decoration are impeccable as always, and what we can see from Douglas Camfield's direction is that he brings these characters and the setting to life perfectly.

John Cura’s telesnaps exist for the missing episodes, and the BBC reconstruction uses these, along with the surviving soundtracks, to create what feels like a fairly accurate representation of the two missing episodes. The tense chase sequence at the end of Part 2 is surprisingly well realised through the telesnaps and the onscreen subtitles explaining the unseen action.

Sadly, the use of blackface on the actors playing the Saracen characters, most notably Bernard Kay, means this story hasn't aged very well and should be seen as somewhat problematic nowadays.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• Sir John isn’t a believable fake King Richard because he doesn’t have red hair. We wouldn’t know, of course, because we see everything in black and white!
• The Doctor once again justifies his stealing by calling it “borrowing"—what a kleptomaniac he is!
• I love the return of the “characters standing still in the shot while waiting for the credits to roll” cliffhanger ending to Part 1.
• This story was originally going to suggest that King Richard and Joananna had an incestuous relationship, but these references were removed at the behest of William Hartnell and producer Verity Lambert because they felt such themes didn't fit a family series. Oh, but apparent murder and suicide do?
• Tutte Lemkow is known for playing supporting villains in '60s episodes of Doctor Who, but every single one of his performances (Marco Polo, The Crusade, and The Myth Makers) remains missing from the BBC archives.