Where the last story was both a break from the action and furthered the arc, this story is just a break from the arc to do something fun with the situation. Unless the Rhymonsters at the end will return, this story has very little bearing on the developments of this series, except maybe to make a case to Alex that the Doctor and Alex are very similar. This could be a massive drawback for this story

Except that this story is a brilliant Time War story that would only work in the setup of this series, makes good use of all characters, is genuinely creepy and manages the atmosphere and pacing to perfection.

Well played. It may not further the arc too much but it delivers on all other levels.

In this entry, the Ethicist gets an adventure all of his own. Of course Dr. Who is still hot on his tail, but soon he too becomes tangled in the plot, together with HMF.

The tale is wonderfully told, and I really enjoyed the bard. I can tell how much effort went into that. I also like the time shenanigans, and the fact that there are no easy answers in the end.

The story takes it down a notch after the action of the last few stories to be a bit more linear. It may not be as exciting as the past few stories, but I think this story is necessary. You need stories in which the characters can just be the characters and allow you to become attached to them. After last story's proclamation of Doom and Despair in Alex's future, I can totally understand why this story is here, as we need to get to know Alex more.

And the fun thing is, so does Alex. He is trying to find who he is after the revelation of last boxset and deal with some of his feelings about it. A nice parallel.

Meanwhile the meat of the exciting stuff lies with Cass, who becomes the spider in the web, and unravels the knot that the others have made in the situation. The narrative has really been focusing on Cass's relationship with alternate timelines and knowing the future, and I wonder where it will go.

A quieter affair, wonderfully told, and a lovely way to spend an hour.

May I note that for me this series has this wonderful feeling of pathos. Everything feels so important, even the quieter stories like this. Could just be me but I feel like they've really thought this arc through. I hope it will stick to the landing.

And so we continue with Doctor Wherefore. Last time, the Doctor was fighting off the evil Gallifreyans with his plucky companion Friend and in pursuit of the villainous Alex, Master of Philosophy, who had absconded with the befores of Cass.

In this entry, the Master of Philosophy is roped into an auction in a creepy house involving the Lords of Time, while the Engineer and his snarky arch-enemy Hieronyma get a lead on caSs and the Ethical Committee Member and fight of even more regenerating foes.

On auction: The Spoil of War. And for some reason, the Philosopher must have it.

After reading my little summary above it comes to no surprise that I love this arc to bits. This play deals with the fallout of the explosive shift in status quo of the last story of Uncharted: Reflections, while furthering the Grandson's and casS's character arc and laying the groundwork for what is to come. And what a DOOM is proclaimed. While the identity of Lord Aglovale did not surprise me too much, his fate was bold and has revitalized my interest in what is to come. Also some hints that Cåss's role is yet to reach its full scope. I'm here for it.

As a drawback, this is not a standalone. But then, without a play like this to kick things into higher gear, the arc would be far less interesting.

This is a good one. I don't quite know why, but I like it more than Immortal Beloved. While I think the plot about racism doesn't quite connect with the rest of the plot, the plot is effective: there is a god on Phobos who's been feeding off adrenaline junkies, and to protect people one man goes lower and lower to scare people away.

The atmosphere is on point: it sounds like an ice moon, and the music is atmospheric and eerie. The acting is good, and the characters are interesting. The concept of the threat is great, and the events in the story ramp up the tension enough that the stakes can be felt. The resolution is very good, especially to establish 8 in these adventures.

A good way to spend an hour.

An excellent story. It does what Torchwood does best: monkey's paws. Ianto wants to know what happened to his father, and now he does.

Listen. If you want to do this play, do not read the spoilers. It deserves a listen instead.

The Story
Ianto's dad is dead, and Ianto is reminiscing with some old friends of his father. Except then he shows up in the past, and tries to not only have his cake, but eat it too. Why not change the past? It's a reckless move I've come to expect from Ianto, and unlike Rhys and Ianto's Excellent BBQ, Gareth David-Lloyd knows how not to let this devolve to Ianto snarking his opinions to a beleaguered second player in the play. Ianto comes at this from a place of vulnerability, and he meets a likable yet irresponsible father. He tries to curtail some of his father's reckless behaviour while getting some bonding time the play realises wonderfully.

Then the kicker: what Ianto does is working. His father, Disco, takes his advice and tries to turn his life around for the better. The second kicker: him doing so only makes Ianto and his family's life worse. It turns out his father, who normally never finishes things, sticks around his family only out of a sense of responsibility and loyalty, and it's been grinding him down for years, leading him to be the deadbeat dad Ianto has known and missed.

Of course, at that point, the trainwreck is coming. Ianto can let his father be happy and change the future and his own life for the worse, or he can doom his father to the sad end evocatively described by the play.

And this is Ianto. And Ianto, contrary to his demeanour, has never been nice

The Feels
This story is heartbreaking. The way the unexpressed emotions from Ianto pervade every single scene with him in this play is masterful, and I legit had to think about this a while to sort through the emotions I took away from it. But the story's biggest strength is showing that the world is not always as people expect it to be and bringing that back to the humans in the equation. It's most fantastic move is making Ianto's dad likeable, because that means that the listener has to really engage to bring the two pieces of Ianto's father, the deadbeat dad and the happy partier, together. It is an effective mystery which makes the payoff so much more impactful. This is not just Ianto's dad, but every single character in the play. They are all wonderfully human, and it dooms Ianto. It makes you happy Ianto got to interact with his father like this, but sad because you know it cannot end so simply.

It's second most fantastic move is to show only the buildup to Ianto's selfish but understandable betrayal of his father, and not the whole thing. It leaves you to fill in those blanks, and that makes its tragedy so much more powerful. It baits you with happy father-son scenes, and punches you in the gut in a way that takes a while to process, almost like whiplash. I think it's the best way for the play to end, after all, the actions are not the important bit, as we know their effect already.

Meanwhile, the play supports these two strong points with events paced exactly right, except for a little snag when Ianto suddenly jumps back in time (that could have been a better scene switch).

I think this play is exactly what it wants to be and it is that perfectly. Definitely one of my favourites.

A fantastic character study of what happens when people marked by tragedy are presented with an impossible development to that tragedy. I loved the contrast between the dad and the mom, and I loved that Ianto tried so hard and fooled himself about the reasons for Molly's reappearance. Heartbreaking. The small hints to the answers are woven into the narrative seamlessly, infusing the play with an aura of dread and heightening the effect as you know something is coming.

Torchwood does the zombie weevil outbreak in the tube. This was a pretty intense release, but in the end was just basically cozy Tommy and Ianto fun during a weevil outbreak, as Torchwood One does. It didn't have the deeper layers that most of my favourite Torchwood releases do have. I do think it's a tight script, with fun characters and some good character development though, and I really like the addition of Tia and Bill, who seemed to parody zombie movies in their own way. A fun hour to spend, but nothing too special.

Dorney is back, with the excellent part 2 to his start of the boxset. Like in part 1, the plot is smooth, sleek and evocative. The inheritance-like subplot gets highlighted as Irving goes off the rails and gets influenced by the Angels, while the Doctor and Ray position themselves for the checkmate that Older!Seven has been working towards. There is not much more to discuss; the plot is straightforward but executed to perfection. The end was poetic and fitting, and I loved that the Older!Seven is not from after the Doctor got zapped to the past, but from even further in the future. It sets up an interesting conflict, and I cannot wait to see where it goes. Luckily there will be another 7 boxset this year.

Ray was good, very quippy, but I don't see her defining moment yet.

This play is to be experienced: it's got bling, it's got action, it's got a fast-moving plot that doesn't hold you by the hand too much. It's a classic excellent Dorney play.

The boxset is excellent too: it really feels like 7 gets hijacked and his status quo gets upended. Very effective. The final quality of this depends however on where it goes. I wonder how it will fit in with The Last Day, and while I've seen some speculation on Fenric returning, I actually hope it does something fresh (as Fenric is already the focus of 7s large MR arc's endgame).

Harry and Naomi have been separated. What's worse, in Naomi's time, the world is destroyed. Enter the Doctor, on both ends, who asserts that this is a corrupt timeline trying to oust the current timeline now the Angel has given it an opportunity. What follows, is chaotic.

I think the idea of the Doctor jumping around the timeline to make small changes here and there to solve the corrupted timeline is genius. It puts me in mind of Friend of the Family, and Protect & Survive (the part where the Doctor has to reason backwards to find the tipping point). However, this play does not focus on the changing history and the future to solve the timeline part overly much, as we follow Harry, Naomi and Ray, from, if I am correct, Delta & the Bannermen. For them, this is a decently straightforward tale. However, the tale is still told out of order, and to be honest, I'm not sure if that was the best idea.

The conflict of the play revolves around Madoc Howell and Sally Cain. In the corrupt timeline, they will team up and create Catastrophix, a company which has to do with doomsday prepping and causing the apocalypse. Madoc is described as the moral compass and Sally Cain is described as the ambition, which I interpreted as the driving force. During the play, the (ahem) play of the Doctor and co is to drive a wedge between the two to stop Catastrophix.

I don't see anything wrong with the setup, but the execution is lacking in my opinion. The play almost exclusively treats Madoc as the problem, which is incongruous with the way Madoc is presented as a reasonable and well-meaning kid. He gets hunted by UNIT, treated badly by the Doctor and (through the former two's actions) loses the faith of Ray, who he cares about, without actually being guilty of doing anything yet. Meanwhile Sally Cain is presented as an absolute asshole, but all the play does is have some characters tell her she is bad and she is otherwise ignored, almost let off. While perhaps not the intention, this made listening to the play a somewhat nasty experience where the Doctor was seemingly just bullying this kid/man for no reason where instead he could have easily talked the man around to help him. I just didn't enjoy that at all. Eventually the Doctor and UNIT scare Madoc so badly he almost tries to kill Sally, and while that is never good, I can easily see Madoc have an emotional breakdown when suddenly every single party is trying to get at him for something he hasn't done and, notably, really don't want to do. This kid is going through the wringer and really doesn't want the apocalypse to happen because of him. Of course that Madoc breaks that way is presented as Madoc going too far, and not the Doctor and co being far too heavy handed in their approach towards Madoc. All of it left a nasty taste in my mouth.

Ray is pretty cool here. I haven't done Delta and the Bannermen, but I liked her. She's a bit non-descript so far.

Naomi's and Harry's exit was rushed and felt incomplete. However, I think this was intentional to highlight Older!Seven from the last story being a dick. I'm happy they both got where they wanted to go, though.

All in all...

yeah.

I mean it's a competent story which does a lot of things well but the execution is heavily flawed in my opinion.

So I recently did this entire boxset in two goes, and what I will say beforehand: this boxset has been the most exciting 7 content in a long while. While I enjoyed Harry and Naomi, it didn't seem like it had an (ahem) Endgame until now. More on the boxset later.

In this play, we see yet more UNIT eras at work. In 1999, the Doctor, Naomi and Harry are stopped from immediately leaving by UNIT, who wants them to deal with a rather particular angel. Of course, it goes wrong, as a rich but insecure dude wants to use this to get one up over his brothers and sisters in an Inheritance like setting. To be honest, by itself, this is not a full story, and that is aptly reflected in the fact that this is a Part 1. The setup is good, especially the appearance of another Old!Seven, whose first (ahem) move is to sideline the current 7 to work towards his end. The play has that Dorney new car feel, with lots of moving parts which are all very functional in the story but are given enough focus that they don't seem like cardboard cutouts and an excellent plot and sense for location. The angel sounds in this play have also improved, they even sound creepy now, and the innovation is very, very well done. Excellent.

In my opinion, this is Dorney's best play in a long time, and I cannot wait to see where this plot with Seven will go.