This had a lot of potential.  At first I was really excited by the idea of the Daleks being off balance in this story.  Lacking their usual power, it really looked like they would need to make a sort of uneasy truce with the Doctor and humans to survive on a strange alien world.  That idea has a lot of potential for a story.  Unfortunately in execution, it feels like a bit of an unfocused mess.  The Doctor and Sarah Jane remain strong here, but the story and everything around them is pretty lacklustre.  I did like the design of the Type V Daleks used here.  They just stand out a little bit and help them being taken seriously in a story where they kind of aren't the biggest threat.  There are fun moments to that but it really doesn't come together.  The aliens look way too goofy for me to take them seriously and too many of these episodes end on awkward little cliffhangers that kept taking me out of the story.  I didn't have a good time with this one.

I had quite a bit of fun with Square One.  There's definitely some really dated aspects to the writing I did not find endearing.  The way Leela is treated as an exotic dancer was often uncomfortable and I really didn't appreciate how Romana would refer to these performers as sluts and whores.  Sometimes you can just tell when a script was written by a guy.  In spite of those moments, the story, and idea of Leela infiltrating a peace summit was all pretty good and memorable.  I definitely feel the end detail of it all being some sort of fake summit to divert assassins a little unnecessary as a plot point, but the main focus of the story is Leela trapped in this potential time loop, while assassinations, intrigue, and sabotage are all in play.  That stuff, which is, to be fair, the main focus of this story, is all done really well.  We have a lot of good performers to back that story up, and ignoring some of the more unsavoury elements of the script, there is a good story to be enjoyed at the core of this plot line.  I was a little weary of us continuing with the Time Lords sharing power with these new races, but this was a unique and new take on the idea.  Not bad overall, in spite of some awkward elements.

This episode definitely has its moments.  It's full of neat ideas for the Daleks and feels sufficiently zeroed in on the Doctor and Davros' characters for a return to Skaro.  The Missy stuff might not work with everyone, but I found her very fun and enjoyed the stuff with her, UNIT, and Clara at the top chunk of this episode.  It all felt very true to this world - that UNIT would be keeping track of important Doctor-adjacent people for scenarios like these, and that Missy would be able to easily manipulate the situation to her liking.  I don't know if all the ideas of Davros' past and the Doctor's relationship to him were really paid off in this or the next episode, but it's entertaining and memorable enough this story works a lot more than it doesn't, in my opinion.  It's certainly pretty memorable.

I honestly thought a laser-tag themed story would be gimmicky or a snore, but Warriors of Kudlak proved to be a fun adventure.  By this point, the series already has a pretty strong handle on its character, so everyone gets to shine a little bit.  Clyde really gets to shine here as we see a more friendly side of him interacting with Luke.  A pretty good watch overall.

This one is a true masterpiece.  I am of the belief that the Doctor Falls isn't quite as strong, but it is easy to look at World Enough and Time as its own thing, with its own focus, and its own ending.  Taken like that, this story is kind of perfect.  We start with something truly endearing and heartwarming.  After teasing Missy potentially wanting to redeem herself, we see her, I think, sincerely trying to be like the Doctor - going about the universe and inflicting a little good upon the worlds for once.  And then it all goes horribly wrong.

I love what they do with Bill this episode.  It's a true nightmare, it comes out of nowhere, and it is one of the most impactful companion deaths to date.  I truly despise how this moment is walked back later, but here, it is a stark reminder that there is risk to adventure.  And so this tragedy unfolds before our eyes in a way I found very creative and interesting.  The massive ship they were on with whole floors devoted to agriculture or industry and even artificial environments to reflect that is one of the coolest settings I've seen in any Doctor Who episode.  I also found the scene where the Master reveals himself and we see the fate of Bill to be really well done too.

This is one of those Doctor Who stories that really pays off the more familiar you are with the franchise. Lots of deep cuts and references to Cyberman history dot this story and it's second part, The Doctor Falls.

Focusing on just the first part though, World Enough in Time is so astoundingly good. Taking advantage of fun time dilation effects, while brilliantly showcasing the horror of the Cybermen in a clever and carefully built way, I have no notes for this episode. There's not a frame I think I would change, although the Black and White clip someone made of Bill's big scene, done in the style of Classic Who, really makes me wish there was a version of the episode edited that way, too. I still think it shows how well the source material lends itself to Classic Who and that particular brand of horror.

That's not even to mention all the great moments with Missy. Not only is there the big reveal with Simms, which was a lot of fun and I will fully admit I did not see coming on first viewing, but she just has these amazing moments right from the start. "Comic relief and Exposition" is just brilliant. World Enough in Time has a bit of cheeky fun like that here and there but at its core it is a gut-punch of a story. The Doctor is trying to do the right thing with Missy and instead gets his companion butchered, and the episode lives up to the breadth of such a thing rather well. This is a big deal and it is given that appropriate level of seriousness. Moffat very nicely strikes that balance.

Moffat also is really showing off his ability as a writer here. People will sometimes point out that every second the Doctor wastes explaining the situation regarding Bill is costing his companion large amounts of very valuable and precious time, but it is necessary for us as an audience and basically doesn't hold back the story one bit, because it is done with this sense of urgency and drives us forward into the heart of the story's conflict. It's all but perfect. Sure, some of the effects are more impressive than others, but it still looks great and is absolutely unforgettable as a piece of Doctor Who history. Currently rated as one of the best Doctor Who stories of all time, and deservedly so, I heartily recommend this entire Series, as the 10th season of the revived era is overall is one of my absolute favourites thanks to stories like this.

I went into this skeptical but open-minded.  Sarah Jane Adventures were clearly intended for a younger audience but is still pretty damn good and fun even as an adult.  The K9 series is that kind of lowest common denominator of kids TV.  It's made on the cheap, doesn't have a ton going on story-wise, and just kind of goes through the basic beats of a story without much creativity.  It reminds me a lot of the shows I used to watch in Canada on our public broadcasting network - fine content for children, but nobody else.  I don't think even kids would find this show that funny, especially these days.  This is easily the worst Doctor Who spin-off.

It is alarmingly hilarious how bad K9 looks when compared to his original appearance.  There is some potential with these characters but all the K9 elements of the show feel like a cheesy gimmick.  I worry what the rest of the show could possibly be like because rather than improve, I feel like the low effort sense I got out of Regeneration would have only gotten worse over time.  This at least had a bit of fun in the silliness of the K9 reveal.  What more could a show possibly offer so thoroughly divorced from the rest of the franchise?  K9 is not the kind of character that could ever carry a series on his own.  People barely seem to like him as a companion, even though I think he can be fun in the right context.  This is the opposite of the right context, though.

Watching this recently made me appreciate it a lot more and Time-Flight a little less.  For the Faceless Ones, this was a very creative setting for a Doctor Who story.  It's full of great moments of dark atmosphere and I enjoyed some of the character work of the terminal staff as they grapple with the increasingly disturbing situation around them.  This is not however, a great story for Ben and Polly's exit.  Neither character really shines much and Jamie in comparison already feels much more clearly at home with the adventuring.  Jamie's got some fun moments in this one and definitely helps make this story a lot better than it might look on paper.

I was very pleasantly surprised by The Endless Night. What I initially balked at a bit over the nature of it being a midquel - taking place between the events of Doomsday and Series Four, I didn't really get the point to a story where we really know what is going to happen to Rose before and after. But, I have to admit, it was really cool to see what she was doing during this one.

Taking place on a dying earth, bringing the return of Clive Finch from the very first episode of the new series, and featuring a lot of other important characters from Rose's life, this is a great and really engaging audio for fans of the new series. I really like the balance they took in making a story about a world ending without things feeling too bleak. This could have been too depressing and it is not easy to avoid making a story like this feel that way, but i think the production team kind of nailed it! A really good start to this series that makes me want to check out more.

I have to say, the choice to do a Faust-like story with this Master in particular was tonally quite perfect. Eric Roberts elevates what could be a pretty normal and bog-standard audio adventure into something I just found delightful. Only really knowing this Master from the TV Movie (which I would consider a solid prerequisite for Faustian so you know what's going on), I am very eager to get more of this iteration of the villain as I find Roberts just outstanding.

Of course, this audio really is Lila Kreeg's story, and Laura Aikman fills it well. Faustian isn't a huge story but as a return tale for Roberts I think it is a pretty perfect choice to demonstrate his return. I think things get a little weaker around the secondary characters and the ending, but given that is kind of setting up future events, I give it a pass by and large. I had fun and was entertained, that's the most important part, so it's easy to overlook a few flaws.

This is definitely the peak of Miracle Day.  A rough look at the extent of human depravity through a sci-fi lens on a level comparable to even the bleaker moments of Children of Earth, The Categories of Life feels like everything Miracle Day had been building to.  A solid, solid episode, marred only by the fact that the writers of this season simply didn't have enough story around this idea to fill ten episodes.  I contend this episode along with a few other gems are proof positive that if Miracle Day were only five episodes like Children of Earth, it would have been viewed just as fondly.  A real shame.  This story has a lot to say and really shows the horrors of a concentration camp in a new but mortifying lens.  I was surprised to learn Jane Espenson is the writer for this, in that she is a pretty big name, but it makes sense in that this is solid television.  As a major figure behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Battlestar Galactica, and co-creator of a personal favourite of mine, Warehouse 13, Espenson is a talented writer.  It's also cool that New Who was modelled on Buffy only for Torchwood to eventually get Buffy's best writer.

This was a pretty excellent listening experience overall. Yes, Once and Future is very much a fan service story.  It's all about the "X meets Y" trope so many critique Big Finish for.  Yet I must say I have largely enjoyed these audios so far.  Two's Company was a little rough but it wasn't even that bad, and then you have stuff like this wonderful little project that I had a lot of fun.

The First Doctor, or, maybe the Tenth Doctor, finds himself on a planet seemingly, but impossibly, recreating War of the Worlds.  It turns out it is all Missy's doing as she too, is experiencing some form of degeneration.  Also, the Paternoster Gang are here, and they are a weirdly welcome and delightful part of the audio.  These characters were always good in moderation up until Moffat got a little too self-indulgent with them.  It's really fun to have the Tenth Doctor interact with the gang and Strax has some very fun scenes here.  I especially enjoy him describing the Thirteenth Doctor as a "little boy with yellow hair."

The real showstopper is Missy though.  Her meeting the Tenth Doctor was something else.  The two have this amazing back and forth and you can tell they are ad-libbing like crazy.  It's so good hearing these two just fall into these old roles and play off each other perfectly.  It easily makes up for the more clunky aspects of the story that turn up here and there.  The doctor remarking how he "wanted to go" at the end feels like an example of said clunk.  It is somehow a cute moment for his character, weirdly satisfying, and took me right out of the story all at once.

I would love for Michelle Gomez and David Tennant to get a box set together because this was something else.

I went into this serial bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.  Ribos Operation was a little weird but left me excited for the new adventures with Romana, this has DOUGLAS ADAMS as its credited writer, and it's a fun little premise with a famous little robot.

How the hell did this all go so wrong?  I could not get into this story to save the life of me.  I found the characters incredibly underwhelming - the Captain was kind of boring and I flat-out hated his actor's performance. Queen Xanxia, who feels like a crucial part of the plot barely felt like a presence in the story.  The Fourth Doctor had some decent moments but they were few and far between, while I don't know if Romana did much that couldn't have been done by any generic companion.  It is insane to me that Adams worked on this at the same time as Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - because my experience with that classic book and The Pirate Planet could not have been more black and white.  Hitchhiker's is engaging, silly, full of fun characters, and full of little details that make its universe feel a very specific brand of satire you can very rarely experience in many other corners of science-fiction.  The Pirate Planet's world of Zanak wasn't very interesting to me and without any solid characters to back that up, I was left thoroughly disengaged.

I know it isn't just Adams outside his element either, since City of Death is one of my favourites in all of Doctor Who.  I really, really expected to like these episodes more than I did but by the third and fourth part I was just feeling miserable watching it.

Even that robot parrot just looked awful.  I was expecting something that could actually make some noise or talk but that thing barely did anything.

Anyways.  I did enjoy the idea of the Captain shrinking down random planets for trophies.  To be blunt, a better villain could have made more use of that idea in a fun way.  I feel like I'm being harsh here, but I hated this episode on a level comparable to some of the worst moments in all of Doctor Who.  It really took me off guard because I know The Pirate Planet has its fans.  The best I can offer is the notion that I simply am not one of them.

A pretty essential part of Power of the Daleks, at this point.  I really like this animation and how they were able to bring out the quirks and mannerisms of Slyvester Mccoy.  Plus, it's a fun story.  I haven't seen a lot of the other animations yet but I think this does a good job at capturing the spirit of the original with a limited budget.

A free prequel still on Youtube, and now having been there for almost ten years, it's only now in filling in some of these Christmas reviews that I've come around to watching this (up until now I had no idea it even existed).

It's the Paternoster Gang doing Paternoster things. You either love 'em or hate 'em, they are exactly the same here as in the show. I've always found them relatively inoffensive. In small doses they can be fun, and, like anything, really, they can be exhausting if overused. Moffat tends to push the comedy angle of these three to a fault - I like the idea of them, but all to often the joke is just on how silly their mere presence is. It's a difference of having characters be funny, and having them do funny things. I don't think Vastra Investigates succeeds in doing the latter, nor is it really all that funny. If you've seen The Snowmen you've seen the jokes here, and otherwise it is just bare-bones set-up for that story. Still, Jenny and Vastra are well performed as the two actors are perfectly capable of being funny, they just need the material. Our token Victorian character there just to react to Vastra doesn't do much for me though, and thus the entire short falls kind of flat, in my eyes.

I do love the make-up on Strax and Vastra - that's always done pretty consistently well. Sadly, there just isn't worth watching here. Even in a two and a half minute thing, one should be able to slip in at least some humour or some better set-up for the Snowman. Instead, it feels pretty pointless and more like content that just got cut out of the actual episode. I'm not against the idea, as really, this is just a bit of clever marketing. I'd certainly prefer this over say, a trailer that is either misleading or filled with spoilers, but it compares really poorly to legendary prequel shorts like Night of the Doctor, for example.

A trailer for the Season 22 Collectors DVD really could have just been a voiced over, simple trailer of existing footage. Nobody would ave been upset by that. It wouldn't be out of anybody's set of expectations.

And yet, they built a set. They hired an actor. They brought back Peri for a scene and Baker even does a voice over. It's the most impressive ad to a DVD set you'll ever see, especially for a show and season that aired so long ago. It really does a good job at selling this set of DVD stuff as something of substance worth buying. It's a clear demonstration of the production behind this collection actually caring, and wanting to offer a product of value. And that's great. So is Nicola Bryant. She is really special in here and it is just cool seeing her live action so at home with her character of Peri.

Don't expect much of this trailer and it will do nothing but impress you. It really didn't have to be anything of substance but it reeks of an impressive level of effort, sincerity, and care to it that I just can't help but be won over by it, even with mild limitations like stock music and a relatively cheap looking digital camera.

This was surprisingly cute, given it was about Daleks. I like it as a sort of take on Davros before he really became Davros, and a fun little prequel to the Genesis of the Daleks. I think people are taking this way too seriously for what it is. Sure, the Daleks can be a serious villain, but I just was checking out the Chase again, where they are featured alongside a Dracula monster. A little levity for a charity special does no harm to anyone and we got to have a bit more fun with David Tennant as the Doctor. What's there to hate?

I wish I could rate this higher or claim it to be a stronger audio. I was so excited for Fairies at the Bottom of the Garden since it included Missy, who is always delightful, and the surprise return of Caitlin Blackwood to reprise her role as young Amy. Since Blackwood always lived up to that role really well as Karen Gillan's real life, though it is interesting they apparently never met before they were originally cast.

Either way, the familiar resemblence went a long way to help the plausibility of these two being the same character. Now that Blackwood is a little older, it makes sense she can bridge the gap between younger and older Amy a little bit, so I'm really excited to see if she comes back one day.

As for the story itself, the parts where Missy is working as therapist to Amy is all really great. That character struggle Amy is going through after being abandoned, nobody believing her about the Doctor, and her life quietly and subtly falling apart thanks to that crack in the universe - it's all present in the writing here and in my opinion was done really well.

What I don't care for were the fairies. Now I'm not against fairies as a plot concept. Supernatural (the show) did a great job of using fairy folklore while still keeping the tone of their show intact - even if the fairy episode was played for laughs a little bit. Doctor Who, on the other hand, feels like it really struggles with making this content blend well with its franchise. I feel like we have the exact same problem with them as we do in the Torchwood episode Small Worlds. The effects in that and here aren't great around such content, and it doesn't add anything to the story or the character's situation.

It's also so unnecessary here. The story between Amy and Missy was interesting enough and plenty of story that the fairies simply don't have to be here. Missy trying to meddle with a companion before the Doctor even met Amy is a cool idea and more than sufficient to drive an audio special like this. So, I really wished they pushed for that instead of forcing this fairy content is. The fact that it does blend well with the fairy-tale nature of the Eleventh Doctor in the show isn't even enough to save this one. I really wish I liked it more than I did.

I quite enjoyed this story. It definitely drops you in the middle of things without much explanation, but it is easy enough to follow if you have a sense of Romana, Leela, and the Gallifrey series.

It's fun to have a story that is pretty much entirely politicking and bickering, the exact climate the Doctor likely fled from decades ago and the exact sort of stagnation I feel could lead to the corruption we see by the time of the Last Great Time War. Darkel in particular really stands out here. Love the subtle shift of her from a sense of authority, power, and justice into one much more desperate, greedy, and dangerous. When we finally get around to the "Mindbomb" stuff, I feel it was well handled as a threatening prospect with some fun twists and turns along the way.

It's good fun and I would definitely recommend, but, like I suspect the bulk of this series, it really is only going to appeal to a fan already deep into Doctor Who lore and content.

I don't really get it.  If the Mechanoids were just going to attack right away why did they let what they thought were the last two Daleks just leave back to Skaro?  It felt like forced writing just to have the final episode take place their.  It took me out of the story a bit and blunted the excitement for this final battle quite a bit.  Plus, the animation was just barely okay for something this big and ambitious.  It probably looks better than if they tried something like this in live-action, but only just barely so.  It doesn't feel that satisfying, nor does it seem that tied into the Time Lord Victorious stuff.  It is really just setting up another story just at the end and otherwise only kind of vaguely incorporating other ideas into this story.  So Daleks! doesn't really work on its own nor does it really work as part of something bigger, as far as I can tell.

There are advantages to being one or another, but doing either made me feel that this doesn't even seem thematically relevant and I just struggle to get excited about something like that when the story as it stands alone, isn't all that great to begin with at the end of the day.  The first episode looked promising but the rest of the series just doesn't quite live up to that, and I don't think I would recomment this thing, even if it had so much potential.  This is likely my favourite take on a Dalek Emperor and the Strategist and Executioner were also both top-tier.  I wish the story and animation could have led up to the potential of their designs and characters because those and the Mechanoids were pretty entertaining.  I found this ending very underwhelming in practice, though.

The Dalek Strategist and Emperor really carry this series.  With their cool designs and actually well-written consistent personalities, these two stand out among a race that is all too often homogeneous and sometimes even a little boring.  They are pretty refreshing though, even if the story itself kind of feels like it is winding down, rather than building to a climax.  The Entity was kind of unremarkable as the Dalek's enemy, but at least the Mechanoids remain fun.  I didn't realize they'd be sticking out but they two have a couple of good characters in the Blue Queen and Red Scientist.

I've been up and down with this series so far, and it's definitely not what I expected, but it has to be said that the return of the Mechanoids was nothing short of delightful.  I'm back to enjoying the animation again even if parts of it are still pretty choppy. I do think it is thanks to not having the light of the desert washing everything out like in episode 2.  Whatever the case, this episode looked great more than it didn't and was pretty interesting again story-wise.  These Dalek characters remain interesting compared to the average unit, although I fear the Executioner is gone, at least for now.  A big rebound for me after episode two.

The animation of the Dalek Strategist scooting around the desert was genuinely awful.  I have to say, the story really diverts here from some of the fun stuff set up in the first episode.  I can't say I'm a fan of that choice.  The whole thing with this hidden army and this droid making the strategist an Emperor, but I do appreciate the droid getting betrayed even if that end animation battle leaves a little bit to be desired.  It feels like shifting the setting from space to a desert planet was a bad choice because it makes the animation way worse.  Overall it had some cool moments but rough animation bits and the story is losing me quickly.

This was pretty cool, to be honest.  Yeah, the animation was a little cheap, but I love the design of the three main Daleks we focus on here.  Usually it is hard to get much character out of these guys but I think they do a pretty good job at having a distinct sense of three slightly different versions of the character - the power-hungry Emperor, the ancient advisor the kind of sounds like Davros, and the crazy kill-happy executioner.  As much as the animation feels cheap, the production also clearly puts a lot of time and effort into bringing comic book Daleks to life, all the while telling a pretty neat introduction for a Time Lord Victorius thing.  And it does all of that in like 10 minutes while making the Daleks feel pretty creepy and dangerous.  I'm intrigued how the rest of the series goes now so I think this first episode did a good job overall.

Though slightly awkward at parts, this is a fun poem with a lot of creativity by Vanessa Bishop. It's a goofy little affair where Eight incarnations of the Doctor get together for Christmas dinner. Lots of little references and jokes are all you can really ask of something like this, and Bishop does that without overstaying the story's welcome. Something like this works as a short, simple little thing - the kind of fun that sparks the imagination without getting too weird with any of the characters. Bravo!

I guess I was just left weirdly indifferent to Project: Twilight, even with the surprising amount of violence.  As the start of something I know will be followed up on later and does have its fans, I certainly expected more.  It's a weird choice for Evelyn to be in a story like this and I am baffled they didn't focus on her in more historical stories, even if we do get into a lot of world building through it.  I can definitely appreciate aspects of the story through that.  There's moments I really like where Evelyn is reflecting on her travels with the Doctor but there is a certain tone and sense to the story that a person wouldn't really enjoy the experience either if this was the sort of thing they were stuck experiencing.  I suppose I'd rather Big Finish experiment with darker ideas than just do the same bland thing over and over again so even though I didn't really enjoy this story much, I can't begrudge it's stranger choices.

Yeah, I don't get it.  I went into these episodes knowing they were a bit of a fan-favourite and people really like Sil, but this just didn't click for me.  It's a side of Doctor Who I'm never a fan of and does show up in both New Who and Old, where we get this chaotic, unfocused mess.   I wasn't the biggest fan of Attack of the Cybermen but at least there I could appreciate its relative berevity and at least some neat ideas.  Here though, even two episodes felt too long and dragged out to get through comfortably.  I just couldn't bring myself to care about this alien world.  It all felt to low-budget and artificially put together to get me invested in the setting.  Sorry, Vengeance on Varos fans, I am not in your camp.

I loved The Cannabalists and found it a very impressive audio on the whole.

The Cannabalists themselves are absolutely brutal in how they dispatch their victims and I found it very striking. It feels like the Doctor and Lucie have a lot less to do here than in your average Doctor Who story, but thanks to excellent sound design in the Cannabalists, this is an audio I won't be forgetting any time soon. It really feels like the robot victims are being torn up while alive and experiencing every moment of it with a degree of discomfort comparable to a human victim. It took me off guard but I think it was pretty great in giving the story a strong sense of stakes.

With other memorable aspects to The Cannabalists like the poetic robot, and even just how weird and quirky the whole thing is as a plot completely focused on robots. I think it worked well enough with the story's ending and there were some creative elements to it, but this is where it wore a bit thinner for me. Still, I had a very memorable time and did enjoy myself. It works really well as a nice, standalone Eighth Doctor story built around a specific theme, and I think it largely worked with that.

I guess I'm off the average here because I just didn't connect with this audio at all.  I was expecting a glum little adventure during World War I, but in execution it just felt like a long, drawn out introduction.  I guess that's the point - we're just at the start of this big, long, sprawling adventure - but I haven't gotten into all of that yet, and unlike other companion introduction stories or stories that introduce series-long plot threads, there isn't enough of a complete story to The Great War for it to really stand on it's own.  I guess that sort of storytelling is acceptable but I found it needlessly drawn out and would have preferred a little more focus to the present situation than all these characters and ideas going forward.  It leaves me not enthusiastic about Molly even though she is a rare historical companion and I normally always like those.  I don't think it was a great sign I had to look stuff up to fully grapple with what I had just listened to.  I know I'm in the minority here and maybe my opinion will change with the rest of Dark Eyes, but for now I'm not sold.

I didn't think an audio could pull off following up on Chimes of Midnight effectively, but Seasons of Fear is almost as entertaining and spooky, even if it isn't quite as polished.  There's a lot to like here, including the way the Doctor meets Grail out of order.  I don't love when we get to Nimon near the end, but everything else including jumping around time a bit in the beginning figuring out Grail, to that blockbuster of an ending where... something obliterates a couple of characters as a final little gut punch and hint at things to come, there's so much that Seasons of Fear has to offer.  It feels like a real adventure that makes good use of the Doctor and Charley.  I would definitely recommend this early run of Eighth Doctor stories.  They aren't all perfect, but there's a consistent thread of quality here that really feels like a polished and memorable equivalent to the best of the Doctor Who shows.  It is just so great this kind of content exists for the Eighth Doctor where it otherwise wouldn't.

Wow, wow, wow.  Just a sublime, perfect, engaging audio experience overall.  What an exquisite way for the now final appearance of Murray Melvin as Bilis Manger who sadly passed away before this audio was released.  Everything I've touched of the War Master series has just been so fun so far.  I just adore how the Master is immediately put on the back foot by Bilis' appearance.  We get a better sense of what this mysterious Bilis character is and how the Time Lords view his, while enjoying the cat-and-mouse game that begins as War Master is incessantly followed by Manger after accidentally unleashing him on this world.  The setting has a lot of detail to that that adds to the stakes while the pacing and atmosphere fill The Sublime Porte with a lot of tension.  I really, really like how this story treats both War Master and Bilis' character overall.  James Goss was the perfect choice for this script as he really has a handle on both of these characters and Big Finish was more than ready to live up to the script he created.  I highly recommend this one.  It stuck with me in a big way.

I just loved this audio.  Easily my favourite Nicolas Briggs script I've encountered so far.  I love the sense of atmosphere and dread Embrace the Darkness carefully builds up over the course of the story.  I also really like how it turns out nobody is really all that villainous in the story - the dark beings and sun aliens all are just trying to exist and it is really touching when the two beings are reunited at the end of the story.

This one is awesome and a little underrated. I've seen in other reviews this is just the Sixth Doctor's version of Paradise Towers, but even if that is true, it is a far superior version of that episode. Mel really gets to shine here, like how she communicates with the Doctor in clever ways through high scores on this little gamepad they find, which also allows Colin Baker to really shine in a fun and memorable way.  She also showed a lot of clever traits throughout that feel really lacking from her show appearances. Some of the ultimate plot details near the ending with the whole monsters thing were a little rough in their reveal, and even some of the sound effects were a bit over-done, but I had a phenomenal time with this audio story nevertheless.

So, one shouldn't expect the world out of this comic book story.  It is only four pages long, and it really is only covering the most basic elements of a story given such a short length.  We learn of a sailor that washes up on an island after his ship is attacked by pirates.  He is saved by a Sea Devil, until they are attacked by pirates.  They wind up accidentally summoning a monster, and everyone but the sailor dies.  It's the kind of story that probably wouldn't work - writer John Peel, of Timewyrm infamy - does a decent job, but there's so little substance normally I'd take away nothing from this experience.  Yet it is so natural - a Sea Devil existing in a pirate story even completely absent from the Doctor feels so right this very basic story absolutely works as it should.  Most importantly, David Lloyd's art absolutely carries this short comic.  Every panel is vivid and full of details.  A number of them are truly impressive works of art, namely when the sea monster shows up, and I really enjoyed the brief read that is this comic.  I'd highly recommend this one - while insubstantial, it was a lot of fun.  Plus it is part of a cool collection of stories in the Black Sun Rising graphic novel, which is full of weird little gems like this.

I quite like Horror of Fang Rock overall, with a fun sense of characters in a distinct setting, and a very strong sense of atmosphere.  I'd rate it higher but it really feels like we are giving similar plot beats to another season premiere story, Terror of the Zygons, and I much prefer the earlier version with Sarah and Harry over Leela.  I don't have anything against Louise Jameson or her character, she just feels a little more awkward here compared to most other Fourth Doctor companions.  I find the whole bit around changing her eye colours weirdly distracting for something so trivial.  I don't know.  I enjoyed this one overall but can see how this was a start of a bit of a weird season in Doctor Who history.

It's fine, I guess.  I enjoyed having a story focused on Nyssa and the Doctor along with the dark and lonely ambience the story easily established.  Part of that is owed to Sarah Sutton's great narration.  I think the problem is a little deeper though.  The story itself felt a little bland and predictable.  It really didn't stick with me in any meaningful way.  So it feels like a competently made and written Short Trip, one that was a very easy listen, but one that also didn't quite leave much of an impression on me one way or another.

I enjoyed The Devouring overall, but definitely acknowledge it has faults. It's not the most complicated story and some of the dialogue felt a bit over the top for my tastes. And the villain is very simple and uncomplicated. I do think it works well enough to introduce a companion I'm pretty excited for overall.

Little things hold it back a bit. I'm not sure why Audacity's husband couldn't come along if she had to leave forever in the TARDIS, for example. What's worse is the character writing around Audacity herself. It does this thing where Audacity verbally explains her independence and strong sense of will rather than demonstrates it. This feels like a show, don't tell moment - amusing because, yes, this is an audio only production, but there are lots of easy ways to demonstrate Audacity kind of marches to her own drum beat without her having to outright announce it as such. It's not even hard given it's the Victorian era to convey that she would be quite scandalous - her interest in science, having a telescope, it's already clearly there in the script. Everything else is just overkill - I feel like we, as an audience, learn almost everything we need to know about Audacity right away and the rest of the episode is just beating us over the head with that knowledge. The only thing we do learn that isn't immediately apparent is some of the intricacies about her relationship with Ignatius, and that whole dynamic was definitely a highlight for me.  Like I said, the husband could have been a good companion too, and we don't often get married companions.  It could have been interesting is all.

Still, it's salvaged by just being an easy listen. I liked both of the Montagues and I liked some of the other characters in the setting. It was fun and pleasant in a way that reminds me a lot of the other companion introductions - focused on the new companion more than anything else. The Doctor doesn't feel like a huge presence in the story for that reason, feeling more like a supporting character. This is Audacity's story and Montague feels like a character with a lot of potential. Jaye Griffiths absolutely elevates the material for me and is a huge part of why I'm sold on her and even, to a degree, the Devouring.

I can see why some fans might have quite a bit of affection for this one.  It's certainly cool to see the short-lived Curator return from his brief cameo in Day of the Doctor.   I certainly enjoy the sense of him and UNIT running around using the Under Gallery against the Eleven.  However, there was something somewhat mid about this story that I found held it back for me.  It isn't even bad, it just didn't quite land anywhere that left me excited.  I guess for all the fanfare and big names, I couldn't quite connect with the story, plot, or characters in a way that left me feeling enthusiastic about the audio.  It's a satisfying enough adventure and conclusion to this set with the Eleven, but I can't point to any moments that really stuck with me other than the whole idea of the Under Gallery itself, having fun features like a bottomless pit and really feeling like the sort of home a being like the Curator would have.  There's stuff to like here, but I really wish I felt there was a little more heart to The Curator's Gambit.

You know, it wasn't perfect, but it had a lot of heart and energy to it.  I don't dislike the laid-back fun of the story.  Borusa and the conflict feels second fiddle to all the opportunities for good nostalgia and seeing some characters interact together that hadn't before.  A must-watch for any Classic Who fan.

It stinks.  It is pay-off to all the build-up of Flux in the weakest way possible.  Once again Chibnall ends a big story by vomiting out some exposition and farting out a conclusion to the conflict in the most hand-wavy means possible.  Flux as a whole is a colossal failure.  A catastrophe of undelivered potential.  Is half the universe gone?  Have our characters changed or really been challenged at all?  It will take another show-runner to answer that and even show a hint of the Doctor grieving.  I like looking back on this now a bit more since the franchise has moved on a bit.  Flux is not much more than a bad memory now and I prefer it that way.

A strong culmination of everything that had come out of the RTD era of Doctor Who.  I do love the energy of this episode and the Stolen Earth.  With Turn Left coming before it, this makes it really feel like we had been building up to this throughout all of Series 4 nicely.

Sure, it can get a little cheesy near the end and the whole DoctorDonna thing can be a little over-the-top, but the story more than makes up for it.  Sometimes it is nice to join in on a party, and that's exactly what Journey's End feels like to me.  A big celebration of Doctor Who, Torchwood, and the Sarah Jane Adventures.  It is really hard to object to that on any meaningful level.

Identity Check is a pleasant enough adventure for Rose and the Ninth Doctor. It isn't exceptional but has Jacob Dudman narrating so you can't go wrong with that. It reminds me a lot of the Window and the Moor, a similar story also taking place early on in this duo's adventures together, and a similar feeling of it being just okay, if not exactly exceptional, either.

However, unlike that Chronicle, Identity Check does have some unique character beats to it. The Ninth Doctor encounters a being he relates to a bit, getting into his mindset around redemption and how one can make amends after doing the unforgivable. It's clear-cut content that fits the nature of New Who, and while it never reaches exceptional territory, in my opinion, it certainly was a pleasant listen overall. This feels like it would fit in easily with Series One of the show, right in line with the kind of quality we might expect out of something like Father's Day. And you could do a lot worse than that. It's also cool this writer is a Short Trips winner. I think Eugenie Pusenjak did a pretty good job here.

Given that Let's Kill Hitler is a pretty solid follow-up to A Good Man Goes to War and does it with such an audacious and provocative title, you'd think I'd like this episode or at least that it would be more memorable.  It's a real disappointment though.  I find the title and really the whole Third Reich winds up being a background detail to the much bigger focus on River and the funny robot piloted by shrunken down soldiers.  These things and the whole Hitler angle leads to a lot of fun jokes and good little moments, but the episode feels more like a delivery vessel for Moffat's writing more than a cohesive or coherent narrative.  It's alright - carried by its outstanding cast as all our main characters get to shine here and the little moments.  It's weird, for example, that a childhood friend of Amy's is actually River's previous body, but it could have been interesting.  I feel the consequences and effect this has on Amy is pretty minimal, though.  This episode is really just about the River and the Doctor, and though it is weighed down by all the weird stuff with the robot, it is neat how River is kind of the one off-foot in this story, and knows far less than the Doctor this time around.  It leads to a great shift in their relationship that helps define an episode that all-too often lacked direction.  So, yeah, just like A Good Man Goes to War, this had a lot of potential, but wasn't quite fully realized.

After the last few audios with the Eighth Doctor kind of went over gangbusters with me, this one in comparison felt a little lacking.  It's still pretty good - I like how we are clearly building to something with Charley and the Doctor, while it also stands alone nicely as a Shakespeare-themed Dalek story.  I feel like this sort of thing could have gotten gimmicky very quickly but I found the experience mostly entertaining, even if the idea felt a little overdone by the end.  It doesn't help matters that the idea of Daleks posing as false saviours feels a bit done to death at this point, but, to Time of the Daleks' credit, this is a relatively early example of that type of story.  It worked for me more than it didn't and I would recommend this one even if it feels like a step down from the last few entries in the main range.

Gosh, I just loved the Box of Terrors. This is a very... we'll say fan-friendly story, featuring two Doctors, two Sarah Janes, Omega, the Eleven, the Rocketmen, AND two Masters, this is the sort of story that basically wouldn't work outside of the form of an audio novel. There's so much going long that if it were any shorter, the story would surely feel overwhelming, but I feel overall a good amount of justice is done for all the aforementioned characters and more, including a couple of other Time Lords that stood out a bit in the story for me.

The most impressive aspect of this has to be Jon Culshaw. I knew he could do a good Third Doctor, but had no idea how effective he could be as the Fourth Doctor, Omega, and even the Geoffrey Beevers Master. He really brings the characters and story to life through his narration and it is nothing short of exceptional, however, I do feel the impressions he is good at are so strong that when it comes to characters he doesn't really have a good voice for - namely Sarah Jane or other female characters - come across as comparatively much weaker.

Honestly though, the minor quibbles I have about this audio here and there are just that - minor. By and large, this story was thoroughly entertaining and I just loved it. This works as a great pseudo-sequel to the Three Doctors while also introducing an interesting new setting of this strange, hellish prison planet of sorts called the Sand Box. It brings in enough Big Finish ideas that it does feel a little niche, but if you know what the story is talking about and going for this is fabulously entertaining. For a 60th anniversary project, it feels very appropriate, too. We've seen many Doctor crossovers by now but this one feels fun and fresh. The Third and Fourth Doctors are fun together but also have a lot of good moments with the two Sarah Janes - and I think the latter is really interesting of an idea - with one character more mature than the other, and listening to them puzzle through this and eventually working together was great. Sarah launching around in a jet pack felt quite fitting for her. Aspects of all this are a little clunky and the ending feels slightly underwhelming because of continuity needs to basically reset most of the characters, but the journey to get to this ending makes it more than worth it.

I definitely enjoyed the audio and would recommend it as a purchase, especially if you can get it for a good price!

I just loved The Maltese Penguin. While nothing overly substantial in terms of story, it was a pitch perfect homage to film noir. Frobisher is also just such a fun idea for a character, too. I wish we got more of him or other weird aliens travelling with the doctor, especially in alternative media from television where this sort of thing can be explored more in the future.

I really liked how the lady turned out to be Francine, Frobisher's ex-wife. That was a funny little part of the mystery, and I liked all the characters in this story. The idea of this world being hostile to an original idea and the whole economy collapses in the face of it was entertaining, too. There's just enough details and ideas here to make it easy to follow the audio from start to finish. Robert Shearman remains a rock-solid writer in just about anything with his name attached to it that I come across.

I found this to be a thoroughly middling experience.  It's a neat couple of episodes absolutely worth watching for any Doctor Who fan, but that is because it does a lot to establish certain aspects of the TARDIS very early on in the franchise's history.  It's neat seeing such an early take on the Doctor's vessel and even just an early bottle episode.  All of this makes for a pretty fun experience overall, but when you get down to the actual execution, it is a bit underwhelming.  Ian tries to kill everyone and acts "weird" - which basically translates to a blank and wide eyed expression - and I kind of feel nothing.  If you aren't interested in the aspects of this show's own history, Edge of Destruction doesn't really offer a lot on its own.  Still, the cast is always entertaining and it does leave me feeling I could follow this TARDIS crew into just about any kind of adventure and have a decent time of it.

For a story with a lot of potential, Miracle Day kind of goes out with more of a whimper than a bang.  It's fun enough.  It's good enough.  It wraps up the plot thread with enough competence.  But after 10 episodes, I definitely expected something a little more.  It feels like the big consequence of this story is Rex getting Jack's powers, but that never even seems to come up in Big Finish.  So, I don't really care much about what is going on or what is happening in this episode.  There's like one kind of memorable set piece with the crazy blood ritual and everything else felt flat and disappointing.  After all of Miracle Day my primary emotion watching this always winds up being fatigue.  Miracle Day could have been the best of Torchwood if they had just cut it down to five episodes like Children of the Earth.  They could have still done five more episodes on another story, and then we could have explored the new characters a little more.  If they had done that, Miracle Day could have been perfect.  Instead it just kind of sucks, it is full of this unnecessary bloat that feels like we are wasting time between plot developments.  I wouldn't recommend the whole season, really.  It doesn't really add much to the Torchwood experience.

This is a cool episode, not just because it is the first regeneration (although that sequence is quite interesting).  What really stands out here is how well and realized the Cybermen are.  Sure, they come across as a bit goofy, but they are also brought along with a certain sense of dread, and they nicely do the sci-fi thing of exemplifying fears and concerns about humans elective-surgery-ing themselves into monsters.  I found it pretty fascinating overall, even in things did get a little shouty near the end.  It's a bittersweet kind of story in that it is sad so see Hartnell go, but you can tell his health problems were getting to him and you can't help but mourn him a bit while watching these episodes.  An easy story to identify as much-watch in the world of Doctor Who, even if the last episode is tragically missing.

Everything all just came perfectly together.  The writing knows to give out just the right amount of information to make the story engaging but not so much information that it isn't scary or mysterious.  The acting is incredible and truly top-notch.  Speaking in perfect sync like that must have been so hard but the actors make it seem natural and easy.  The effects aren't overwhelmingly good or anything but that just makes Midnight all the more impressive - it's clearly an episode with a limited budget and basically 2 sets, yet production does so much with so little.  Easily one of my favourite stories in all of Doctor Who.

After enjoying The World Tree rather thoroughly, I checked out The Lichyrwick Abomination not long after the former had come out in an eager move to see if these other memorial shorts were as strong. The answer being, at least in this case, no, this particular audio is not nearly as good as The World Tree, but still pretty worthwhile and impressive. It's a great example of how mood and tone can go a long way. I enjoyed the thoughtful take on this horror/monster story overall, even if I don't think it quite stands out as a story beyond being a decent take on a character and a bit of a fun with spookiness.

Some people really responded to this one but I found it pretty clunky, and hard to connect with, to be honest.  It's a bit of a curiosity more than anything.  I can appreciate how grim the whole episode feels but I also can't say I was very invested in my watch experience compared to the average Doctor Who story.  I think part of it is that the Daleks aren't really enough connective tissue to feel like a Doctor Who story.  It reminds me a bit of the Dalek Empire Big Finish audios which I have also been struggling with.

Yeah, this was alright. I definitely enjoyed this more than some other recent Iris Wildthyme audios I've tried out recently. Panda having a distinct voice compared to the audiobooks makes a huge difference in a positive way. The whole plot winds up on hinging on the little bear's heroism and I quite liked that part.

The story itself of a being coming for Iris' dreams and memories was quite well done, and I liked the whole bit with Iris travelling around with Robin Hood. It certainly worked a bit better than the Robot of Sherwood. I also liked Tom and his weird relationship with his publisher. It felt very self-referential - not much in Iris Wildthyme isn't - and it borders on self-indulgent, but it wasn't a terrible listen and most of the comedy was at least gently amusing. Tom's tension with Iris over his writing stories about his past adventures with her was good too, I liked how she had always accepted his writings and was more caught up in her own business to care about it. Tom's sexuality also felt well done - just a background detail that helped inform his character a bit. Ortis Daley did a great job with the role.

I'm just getting around to these Once and Future specials, but so far they really seem like something else.  Just a real trip for fans.  Sure, I understand the critique that Big Finish is a little guilty of just bashing together existing characters for stories like this.  I can't say it bothers me much, though.  Whatever Doylist philosophy one might feel about the matter, at the end of the day this is an audio with Peter Davison and Georgia Tennant playing father and daughter in-universe for Doctor Who - you can't tell me that isn't something.  I couldn't help but be one over by this story through that dynamic alone.

Then you have all these little bonuses.  It's delightful having Colin Baker as a future incarnation of the Curator.  The implications are fascinating as is the story at hand.  The whole idea that every world the Curator creates something on being destroyed was intriguing enough, and then it wound up being this pretty sophisticated story criticizing capitalism, the value of art, and even the nature of the universe.  The far future near the end of the universe is a neat time period we only ever occasionally touch on in Doctor Who, and it's great when we explore that idea a bit like we do here.  This was pretty great overall.  It wasn't the most moving or deep thing in the world, but it had a decent amount of depth for an anniversary special like this.  I would definitely recommend it.

I was really excited for this one. Perhaps too much so, as a short audio like this can only do so much. It feels like an interesting companion of "The Haunting of Villa Diodati" even if they don't quite blend with each other.

Still, there's so much fun to be had I can't be too hard on it. Mary Shelley, Byron, and most of all Eight are all excellent in this. There's some fun ideas with a Frankenstein Doctor and a regenerating TARDIS being tossed around. And a new, very cool idea for a companion joins the team. I'm a bit irked her time with the Doctor runs so short, but I still have to check those other audios out so we will have to see. It feels relevant to mention that though, since a lot of Mary's Story is kind of set-up for that future with the Doctor, and I'll be curious how I feel about this audio after listening to the rest of Shelley's adventures.

I certainly agree with critical consensus on this site that this is the weakest among The Company of Friends, but I'd go a little farther to say it is so by a wide mile.

I get that this is supposed to be light-hearted, goofy Doctor Who fun, but the key word in that is fun. I did not have fun. I found the jokes and silliness kind of lame and a little too over-the-top for my tastes, and some of the jokes about girls in comics or the nature of the evil comic book company all felt really old hat to me. I did like Izzy though, and the way she just wanted to learn about the last issue in a comic series is an adorable hook for a Doctor Who adventure.

Her and Eight are great here, but I found the voices of a lot of the other characters pretty grating at times if not awful in their delivery. Just chewing the scenery in the worst way possible. I did not enjoy this one.

I feel like this episode has a terrible reputation but it's just mediocre more than terrible.  The ship doesn't look half bad as a set, although the ghost thing is pretty goofy looking.  Our characters also feel a little more annoying here than the usual sort of endearing tone the Moffat era could take.  Like the whole Rory dying thing already felt way played out and just silly at this point.  It's where the story started to lose me because it feels like we are just going by the Eleventh Doctor formula with episodes like this, not offering anything unique even though it's a pirate story - that should be a certain brand of fun I just found missing here.  In comparison, I feel like the show made a better use of the Western trope in Series 7 compared to here.  The Curse of the Black Spot's story isn't remarkable but it is a very easy one to sit through.  Not my favourite but not unbearably bad, either.

This was an interesting one. I really like the idea of Company of Friends and it seems like a great way to showcase some literary characters.

It's a bit of a shame then, that Fitz comes off pretty off-putting here. It leaves me curious if he's like this in the books or if there's more to him there, but not overly excited for it, either. Here, Fitz, though performed fine, comes across as a bit of a standard, roguish archetype. I'm not against that in a companion, but it would have been nice to have been given a reasoning as to why the Doctor would want to travel with someone like him.

What I adore about this audio is the special effects. The fake ads and funny little TV stuff they do in this short audio adventure makes it largely worth listening to on its own. I really enjoyed that aspect of it and the story itself worked given the relative small scale of the story.

You know, I haven't really connected with the Jody Hauser Doctor Who Comics out of the ones I've read so far.  I still have a number to check out so hopefully that will change, but at least I can say I largely enjoyed Empire of the Wolf.  So far all of Hauser's comics have a Dan Abnett style problem of featuring excellent set-up and world-building but struggling with endings and pay-off, with the effect much more prominent in the Hauser-written Missy and Fugitive Doctor comics.  Empire of the Wolf is very much suffering from this too - the Sontaran army that threatens to be an antagonist is easily hand-waved away in the last issue and never actually sees combat or conflict of any kind.  But I credit this story for not relying on that conflict - it feels more like a detail than the main thrust of the story.  The focus is on the characters like these two versions of Rose, the Eleventh Doctor, and the Eighth Doctor, all of which get their moments to shine.  It's fun getting a glimpse of what Rose and the Meta-Crisis Doctor are up to and I really thought that part was well realized.  I'm glad I read this and I think Doctor Who fans of all sorts would appreciate this one on some level, even if it is just to see 11 chastise Rose for bringing 8, who he refers to as a "child."  That was great and it's a good example of how Jody had a solid handle on all these characters.  It's fun to see them all in a story like this, even if it is relatively simple and crowd pleasing, it's at least creative and builds on the world as much as it is living in it and bringing all these different characters together.

This was a fun story and my introduction to Bernice Summerfield. Like a lot of the reviews I see here, I too really enjoyed her chemistry with the Eighth Doctor. The story itself is straightforward enough, perhaps to a fault, but I enjoyed the experience and the story was more inoffensive than bad. The idea of a cultist having beliefs around the Time Lords and TARDIS was a pretty cool one, and Venhella manages to stand out just enough given how short this story is. I would definitely recommend this as an introduction for Bernice Summerfield, as this story left me eager for pursuing more stories with this character.

I really enjoyed this one overall.  It's delightfully fun and The Trouble with Drax understands it is a bemusing heist story, which it plays into well.  Ray Brooks as Drax kind of steals the show here.  I certainly saw a few of the twists coming as we went along, as, after a while I could kind of see what writer John Dorney was going for, but I still thoroughly enjoyed every step of that journey.  I would absolutely recommend this one and it feels right on the level of a top-tier, "Doctor and Romana II with Douglas Adams as script supervisor era" Doctor Who story.  You can't do much better than that!

This was a pretty remarkable audio I quite enjoyed and would recommend. The Dalek Occupation of Winter does a lot of plot threads from other Doctor Who stories, especially Victory of the Daleks, Blood of the Daleks, and even Daleks in Manhattan, but I think is more polished than any of those other stories. With a lot more focus, and an excellent performances from the likes of Peter Perves, Robert Daws, and Sara Powell, this was a great audio I think definitely worth anyone's time.

What I like most about it is that the Dalek Occupation of Winter feels like it could be on the level of something like classic serials such as The Daleks or The Chase, but the Dalek Occupation of Winter manages to stand out in little ways that it works as a great additional story - not a remake of any previous Dalek work, exactly, but something nice and standalone that works really well if you are familiar with the classic Dalek adventures of the original series. This informs stuff like the Doctor, Steven, and Vicki's individual reactions when seeing the Daleks, all of which I think is done well.

The Daleks themselves are really creepy and awful in this tale. They remind me a lot of their horror-heavy earlier appearances. You get a sense of their brutality not just in the dread our main characters experience at just the sight of them, but they also do some fun stuff with their mutant forms along the way. Still, it does feel a little like we've done a lot of this content before - we've seen these characters even in the guests, who fall into a lot of what I'm recognizing more as Big Finish tropes, especially around Majorian's character, and there are little things along the way that feel a little pointless, like Vicki's part of the story here which is a little shallow and goes for long periods of time without much development.

Still, I enjoyed myself more than I didn't. Winter the colony was a great setting, a little island of human life on the edge of reality, so cold it can barely support life. I get why things seem desperate here, and there is a sense that these people just aren't kind or warm. It's a great story thematic to the season of winter, to be sure, and a lot of little details like that go to making this audio play pretty special, even if it does have a few limitations.

Following up on events depicted in the Bernice Summerfield Adventure Death and the Daleks, Benny is working hard to rebuild a ruined world while mourning for the dead.

It is in this climate that the Eighth Doctor arrives, with Benny furious at his absence. It's been something touched on before, but I do like when we explore why the Doctor doesn't always appear in crisis stories affecting spin-off media. Everyone has a couple of touching moments, The Doctor gets his brother some socks, and on the whole this was a pretty welcome experience.

It does make sense that "...Be Forgot" features Benny since she was created by Paul Cornell, the editor of this book, but he does not write this short, Cavan Scott & Mark Wright do. They do a pretty good job, but it does stretch things a bit when Benny is just getting angrier and angrier before the Doctor shows up.

Wolves of Winter brings a return of The Flood while documenting their origins during the time of Vikings, and then even going on to also be a sort-of prequel to the Wolves of Fenric, essentially marrying that serial with the Waters of Mars episode from the new series. That really could have been cool but then we get to the story - the panel-to-panel dialogue and the execution of the plot - and it is a bit of a mess. This is a rare example of Doctor Who in prose where I just don't think the writer gave us a good sense of the characters and their voices.

Normally, a lot of Doctor Who writing that I've read really does a good job at replicating certain Doctors and the mannerisms each actor brought to their incarnation, but I really didn't get a sense of Capaldi out of this Doctor, more just this more generic, simplified version of the character. A lot of the dialogue and transition between scenes is just clunky. And then we spend too much time with stuff like Bill trying to find some Ice Warriors (cause yeah, they're here too, providing valuable backstory for the Flood and doing little else) only for her to go back to the TARDIS, regroup with the Doctor, and then just try again.

We waste a lot of time in Wolves of Winter even though it is only three issues long and barely has enough time to actually explore it's more interesting ideas. It's a disaster, really. The artwork varies quite a bit too. Brian Williamson and Hi-Fi do most of it, and they do a decent job. Hi-Fi really brings a lot of life to the comics with his colouring and making a lot of characters pop and stand out in a way they aren't serviced by the writing. Williamson is a bit more inconsistent and his work feels a little rushed. Some panels are beautiful images of the TARDIS floating in space, a massive volcanic eruption, or even something simple like the Doctor pulling a lever in a way that was creatively drawn. Others look terrible, especially around facial expression, which, in all three issues, often dip into the uncanny valley territory. By issue three, Williamson doesn't even do all the artwork, and the consistency to the quality of the artwork takes a viscous nosedive with it, leading me to suspect even more this comic was a bit rushed and made on a budget.

The worst of the artwork (I rate this under special effects by the way) is how the Flood is depicted. Gone are the terrifying version of the monsters from Waters of Mars, we just see a couple of Ice Warriors and Vikings drooling and dripping a little bit. You can barely ever see the characteristic black cracks around their bodies or anything intimidating like that. Outside of a pretty cool introduction to them, they are barely used at all in this story as the focus very quickly shifts over to Fenric. The Ice Warriors are basically forgotten, too.

Lego Dimensions was a cute enough idea, but part of that questionable toys-to-life trend a few games attempted back in the day. That makes this content difficult to revisit and kind of in this weird place for the franchise's history.

That aside, the game itself is pretty fun. If you've played a Lego game you can know what to expect. It is very generic, simple, and accessible. It's just fine, really, much like the story, which feels like a standard DLC tie-in for the game. What is cool is how authentic a number of Doctor Who things are recreated in Lego form, with lots of great voice acting, audio from the show, and even Murray Gold music to enhance it heavily. It all showcases how much of a missed opportunity Doctor Who video games feel like. There is a lot of potential for a great Doctor Who game, I'm just not sure it exists anywhere. This one is at least competently made, and it is fun having the Doctor meet Batman and Gandalf, I guess, but that is heavily diminished by the voice actors used for these non-Who characters and the lacklustre story, which doesn't even really focus on Doctor Who characters much at all.

"Special snowflakes we all might be, but there really are giants of art," is a line used so well in the context of The Arts in Space. That was nothing but an exception read. I've been putting off reading these comics so this was a great story to return to.

There's so much I love about this story. Specifically it feels like what Doctor Who should be more often, like when Gabby first sets out on an alien planet and is moved to tears by the experience. Or the way the story is framed around her diary and experiences travelling with the Doctor for the first time. It's all really good stuff and really showcases what is great about Gabby.

Her identity as an artist is used thoroughly here and comics are such a great medium to explore a character like this. She might be one of my favourite companions I've encountered so far, though I've really only seen her in a few stories. The way she is able to bond with the artists she meets in this story is so cool, plus I loved the references to Logopolis. It fit with this whole idea of this artist named Zhe who is able to sort of create sculptures entirely through singing math. It's a concept that works well with Doctor Who and I really enjoyed this comic because of that stuff.

Little things hold this back from a 10/10 from me. Gabby's initial reaction to her first trip off of Earth is initially very realistic and well paced, but then she kind of just doesn't react as much when monsters start chasing her and she is isolated from the Doctor. These monsters are pretty scary shapeshifters so it is a little odd she is so unperturbed when she is attacked. Still, I love how they ulitmately resolve that conflict that is drawing on core parts of Gabby's identity to do so. I think that's a really good touch in the writing.

The only other downside is that I don't love this book's lettering. It felt unnecessarily hard to read for some of the diary parts that had a handwritten feel to them. There are two credited letterers from The Arts in Space which I found weird, so I'm not sure what was going on there. Either way, these minor faults only just barely detract from the overall experience. It's a **9/10** for me on the cusp of a full 10/10.

Maybe it is because this has a trash reputation I was very familiar with, leading me to put off ever actually watching it until now, but I didn't have a bad time now that I've finally gotten around to it. Dimensions in Time is actually pretty decent, even.  There's so many fun cameos and encounters between Doctors and Companions that we don't really get to see anywhere else!  Sure, it is silly, but it is also clearly constructed to be what it is - a satirical short story aimed for children for the sake of raising money for charity.  None of this is a bad thing, and I find pinning this as the worst of Doctor Who, a particular low point, or deserving of overly deep analysis both false and a little dishonest.  This was a lot like the Five(ish) Doctors Reboot - both fun little sets of cameo clearly not made to take seriously.

I understand this is probably weighed down by being a rare production in the Wilderness Years and can see how that would be disappointing for fans at the time.  Looking back on it now though, it is hard not to view this as just another goofy little thing like Time Crash.  So, yeah, it's not made that well - the effects are peak low-budget 90s cheese with computer effects that look like they were rendered by a calculator, and somebody on production loved to film the cast while the camera spun around them to the point of distraction, but at its core it feels like a love letter to Doctor Who and most especially the JNT era.  As many faults as there are to said era, it's hard to begrudge something that is clearly of the mind to be fun, make jokes, and raise money for little British children, or whatever.  I've seen a lot worse in this franchise that wasn't made for the benefit of the vulnerable, so what exactly about this short experience am I supposed to be miserable about?

This was a very cozy sort of listen, which is definitely not what I expected going into an alternate universe Doctor Who story. I think it was a brilliant choice for the first story in this range since it stands alone nicely and is easily accessible, especially if you are familiar with even the most basic concepts of Doctor Who. It is almost to simple in that it does feel like a relatively underwhelming experience, but I still really enjoyed the performances, especially of Carole Ann Ford and Geoffery Bayldon, who both leave this story with a strong impression.

It's a fun idea, too, exploring a Doctor falling into a much more traditional Gallifreyan life. I like the idea but having him remembering and fretting over the original Doctor's story is less compelling than him being involved in Gallifreyan politics or military instead, for example. I have a feeling the rest of the series will explore that, so it's understandable, but Auld Mortality only goes so far because of it. Still absolutely worth the listen, though.

This short is interesting, and brought up some mixed feelings in me. As somebody who has spent a good amount of time working with people on the spectrum, I do appreciate Lily and the attempt to formally talk about this stuff a bit within the Doctor Who universe.

Mental illness has a mixed legacy within this franchise. The Doctor is basically an excellent depiction of a neuroatypical character. The Doctor has been openly speculated to be autistic himself in another Big Finish story and there is no incarnation of the character that doesn't behave in a way that is fundamentally different not just from humans but virtually every other Time Lord we encounter. Meanwhile, the Master tends to fall into trope city, using "madness" as a catch-all way to explain his erratic behaviour while infrequently acknowledging the more nuanced reality of mental health.

So when we have a story like this, where the Fifth Doctor visits Sarah Jane Smith who is looking after her granddaughter Lily, who has autism spectrum disorder (ASD), this is a prime opportunity to engage with the material a little bit and develop on some of these earlier ideas. And I do appreciate how the story manages to avoid some tropes around neurodivergent characters - Lily doesn't have magical powers, nor is she harmful, dangerous, or evil. She's just a happy little girl that likes snow and music.

That's great, but I don't love how Lily the story treats Lily the character. On numerous occasions, Sarah openly admits to the Doctor how "difficult" Lily is, how much of a burden the girl is on her parents, thinks of her as a shapeshifting alien, and even hints that nobody in the family really understands symptoms like cold intolerance. That's painful to read. The Doctor basically has to remind Sarah that Lily is a happy little girl. She's just a little different.

Now, I get it. Parents are put in a unique and often unfair position when it comes to children with ASD. They all too frequently are not given the resources they need to raise a child like this, and the feeling of burnout is very understandable. It just definitely feels like the story is written by the perspective of a parent of somebody with ASD over a person with ASD. That experience is valid, but in a franchise that has maybe mentioned autism a handful of times in sixty years, I hope people might understand why I find it a little frustrating that this is the perspective we are taking.

But, it's not a wrong perspective, either. This is how parents would feel at this time in human history. That the Doctor understands it better makes sense, because, while Who has never outright said it, though Big Finish has hinted at it, The Doctor himself, sometimes viewed as dangerous, difficult to work with, and weird, very much meets the criteria of being on the spectrum himself. And that's the key takeaway from all of this, in my opinion. Sarah always had a level of understanding when working with the Doctor because just like Lily, these people are of remarkable value equal to any other being and have a lot of positive energy and ideas they can bring into the universe.

This was alright.  A passable attempt at telling the origins of the Daleks, before Davros and that version of the story was originally conceived.  The art is well done enough but the story is wholly unsatisfying and feels largely empty.  The Daleks are a war-like race that mutate and build their original casing in an attempt to defeat the Thals.   An utterly unremarkable take on these classic monsters.

This was a pretty clean and fun adventure for the First Doctor. I liked the content around Napoleon and the Shape-Shifter. It all feels right in line with the tone of the First Doctor era, perhaps to a fault such that it feels a little average. Still, I had fun listening. I probably wouldn't be eager to revisit any time soon, but Peter Purves is able to carry the story nicely with his narration enough that it was definitely worth listening to at least once (especially because I got this one through the library).

Oof, what an absolute letdown that absolutely soured me on the whole Excelis Saga. After all the neat ideas of this planet, that even get elaborated on here with some clever ideas, instead these interesting plot points around the Excelis world are told through godawful, mind-numbing exposition, well, all of it feels like it got flushed down the toilet.

Everything was lining up for this to be great. Grayvorn having planned out and figured out the Doctor over these three encounters, turning Excelis into a totalitarian nightmare, and even a pretty ballsy ending - these are all ingredients that could have come together into something truly special. Instead, I found the plot very meandering and the acting even worse. I was excited for Yee Jee Tso to return since I really liked him in the Doctor Who movie, he felt really stiff and awkward. Even Anthony Stewart Head felt like he was struggling with the material a bit. It is so disappointing and so unfortunate, with way too much of the plot being conveyed to exposition. Another character played a young man and he seemed kind of fake to me as well.

It's a real shame, too. I really liked Sylvester McCoy here, especially at the end. He has to make a tough choice and the destruction is beyond enormous, which I think was conveyed well through the special effects. I also did appreciate how each Excelis story had its own sense of music and mood to it, I just wish this one lived up to the dark atmosphere it had created. A lot of these plot points felt severely underdeveloped. There is a gem of an anti-fascism theme I think could have worked well for this audio, but it quite simply did not come together well at all. All told, Excelis hardly feels like it would have been ideal for the main range, yet alone a special side series.

For me this was a huge step back from a somewhat promising first entry.  The ideas in Invasion of the Daleks are pretty naturally expanded on in The Human Factor, but I found my interest in said ideas quickly diminishing.  It's cool seeing a different side of the Daleks and what a conquered race might look like suffering under their rule.  But the whole propoganda machine being run by Suz felt flat, the characters felt a little flat - I had to look up Suz's name which is never a good sign - and I just wasn't intrigued by the whole rebellion angle, either.  There's just nothing in the audio that really won me over.

I wasn't sure what to expect out of this. A story focused on the Daleks along without the Doctor or other previously known protagonists is likely to wind up a pretty grim affair, and that side of the audio, in my opinion, is pretty well done. It really feels like as we start this story, we are witnessing a planet being crushed by the Daleks, and it is just one of many they have conquered. I think that fits well with what we know of these characters and what they've come to represent. A lot of that is done through the behind the scenes crew, who do a great job conveying the onslaught of the Daleks and they do such a solid job of depicting that, even if the audio can get a little overwhelming at times because of it.

The humans nicely balance out the story, though I feel that's where things falter a bit. Some of these characters are really well done, but this focus on giving humans hope, wanting the humans to be productive for their slave labour, and using Susan to achieve that goal feels a little off to me. I think I would have either liked more of a focus on the suffering and brutality of the Daleks, or at least that being better explored here, or a less human-focused story in something that is supposed to be more about the Daleks. I get it, though, they aren't the most compelling characters, and who wants to follow the Nazis when we can see the Nazis being fought against? It's why I personally don't know if this audio series is as compelling as it can be. The Daleks are one thing, and they cannot really change or grow. If they do, they are being bad Daleks and need to be exterminated. That can make them interesting antagonists at times but it makes them a hard candidate for being protagonists, unless they are some sort of Renegade Dalek or something like Rusty.

Qualms and random thoughts aside, this audio was entertaining enough, and not too long to overstay its welcome. In spite of my skepticism towards the series I am intrigued enough to want to check out more.

Erimem gets a pretty solid introduction here. I'm excited to see what her adventures might be like give her nature as a historical character. We don't get enough companions like this and I haven't listened to any of her other audios yet.

I found the story pretty weak, though. A very standard and straightforward villain that felt a little over the top to me. I didn't really feel the Egypt setting as much as I would like either. The audio didn't leave me with a strong impression of the setting, especially compared to the last main range outing with Five, Loups-Garoux.

Exodus definitely stands out in an otherwise pretty mediocre DWM 108. Frobisher is here and that's always a plus. The story is simple and there isn't much to it, but it is fun enough as it involves some aliens appearing on and taking refuge in the TARDIS, which is pretty memorable given such a thing should be impossible. Most significantly, John Ridgway's art is really impressive and striking here. Heavy use of inks really make our main characters stand out and pop. By far, the art (rated as special effects here) raises the quality of the overall piece, pretty much making it worth checking out by impressive visuals alone.

Honestly, a pretty impressive comic given I didn't have a lot of expectations of it at first.  In this short comic adventure, the TARDIS is picked up by some scrap hunters.  Among their junk is a supposedly defunct Cyberman, who immediately revives and attacks the crew.  The Doctor must stop the Cybermen from reviving their destroyed fleet.  It is all a very standard story, but it is enhanced by some beautiful art by Mike McMahon and Adolfo Buylla.  I don't know if I've ever seen the original version of the Cybermen drawn so well.  They are intimidating, clunky, and seriously cool looking in this comic.  That alone makes the comic worth checking out, even if the story is underwhelming.  The characters are a bit off too, as it seems to me Doctor Who Magazine loved having wacky, kid-friendly characters in these early comics and it really doesn't work that well for me.

All Our Christmases is a pretty polished short story, though it takes a good long while to get going.

It has a big problem in relying on the character Richard's dialogue, that sort of ruins Steve Lyons otherwise fine prose. Still, the First Doctor has a very interesting conversation with him, featuring some neat ideas about a sort of paradox in time travel. I quite enjoyed it, even if it was only loosely Christmas themed.

A pretty solid start overall to this comic book series. I checked this out since Prisoners of Time has some interesting bits of continuity and gets a lot of references in the wiki and the like for many different characters. So far, it is pretty good. I like how each story focuses on a different Doctor, yet the connections between each story feel stronger than something like Destiny of the Doctor where that connective tissue is threadbare at best. There's actually something concrete going on here, and though I am already privvy to the surprises in store with regards to the larger plot of Prisoners in Time, I am so far enjoying this journey.

Unnatural Selection is a pretty fun story in and of itself. It had a nice cozy feeling to it and an unusually pleasant experience for our TARDIS crew, to the extent it really sold me on just how great it would be for anyone to go back in time to 1868 and hear a lecture from Thomas Huxley. That stuff was really well done, and I even enjoyed when the plot took a turn into this whole adventure with the Zarbi back from the Web Planet television story. Without all those annoying sound effects, the Zarbi stand out as very interesting aliens distinct in not just the First Doctor Era but the franchise as a whole, so they were pretty fun to see. That being said, it quickly devolves into a rehash of Web Planet's original story, bringing back the Animus and putting the Zarbi right back in their enslaved state. That was a lot less fun to see, but watching Ian ram a frigging train right into the Animus at the end of the comic was a fun as hell turn that really made up for any shortcoming with the Animus coming back.

The one thing that holds this comic back - and it is a big problem if you ask me - is Simon Fraser's art. Now Fraser is far from an unknown artist and he has been working in comics for a long time, but I just did not enjoy his particular style personally at all. These are some of the most impressionistic facial expressions I have ever seen, and because of that, everyone looks very distorted and ill-defined as characters. Ian, Barbara, and Vicki all barely resemble their show selves. It's a real shame too because Ian is dressed as in a top hat here and we never get a good look at him dressed so dapper! This art really holds the comic back, so you can imagine I was tremendously relieved to see that Fraser does not do the art for all of Prisoners in Time. That's cool because each issue should have its own distinct feel to it appropriate to each incarnation, but in this case Unnatural Selection's art just doesn't mix well with the story at hand. It definitely affects my overall impression of the comic, but I still think this one is at least worth reading and it works well as a point to start with and kick off the rest of the comic book series.

A pretty delightful experience overall.  I really enjoyed all the major elements of this audio, from the exciting start showing off the degeneration to the ultimate focus on the schemes of the Monk going up against the Fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane, and UNIT.  I get how some people might object to the "fan service" nature of this audio, featuring a number of cool cameos and performances throughout, but I, as a fan enjoying something built mostly just for fans anyways, enjoyed this story nonetheless.  The Black Archive and its history with the curator was a neat little background detail.  Where the story is weakest is actually around the villains, who are kind of putting the Monk up to his scheme.  These aliens are pretty boring and have a pretty generic voice.  I don't really love them or their angle of being monsters from an until-now unmentioned story.  It just didn't really work for me.

Everything else did though.  This version of the Doctor meeting Kate, Oswald meeting Sarah Jane, yeah, sure, why not?  I had a good time, I was entertained, I was interested, and that's all that really matters.

I quite enjoyed this audio.  It's a fun and breezy take on the atmosphere around both War of the Worlds and the famous audio broadcast of the radio play.  There isn't anything too outstanding or memorable here, and maybe the story meanders a bit at first.  It all kind of works out, though, and becomes quite entertaining.  In hindsight there's some decent set-up for the next few adventures with Charley and the Doctor, while I think they did a good job conveying the vibe of Orson Welles and War of the Worlds.  Really paid it off nicely in the end, too, and actually felt like a story set in America.

This was an adequate comic. The old west setting was appealing, but when you have a story that is also about a malevolent Wendigo spirit, AND is all about Destri's character, it's going for a lot and doesn't feel like it has quite time for anything in five short parts.

The art was well done but it is hard to get past the story. The writing of the indigenous Americans was done respectfully but clearly from an outsiders perspective. It feels a little dated - similar to how other comics like Marvel's X-Force covered such material at the time, but in stark contrast to more modern comics or even television shows like Reservation Dogs or Marvel's Echo. I think I could have really liked this story more if it were a bit better balanced or longer - because there's some interesting ideas here and Destri's ending with her uncle was quite something. It's also interesting to see a comic so late in the Eighth Doctor's run in DWM, and does feel like we are getting into the endgame of these stories nicely.

This was really solid, overall. It's not the most complex story and some of the dialogue felt simplistic but I just loved how much character there was to the TARDIS crew. All four felt much more like people compared to the Chibnall era, and combined with creative set pieces and a fun story (at least so in the part), I really enjoyed this take on the Thirteenth Doctor. Roberta Ingrantanta and Enrica Eren Angiolini both really deliver some solid art for this comic. Everything looks beautiful and it really helps make it feel like we are travelling along in space on the TARDIS. I also like the look of "Mr. Henderson" and his nutcracker underlings. They have a lot of personality in their design that makes them stand out really nicely as armed goons. Solid stuff overall and I was left looking forward to part two.

In hindsight though, after reading part two, I can't say this comic and story really went anywhere, which makes this issue a little more pointless.  Issue two is definitely a lot weaker than issue one. I like the artwork still but it is used less creatively, while the writing also has more dialogue that just felt silly and really not that funny. The story just kind of piddles out after some pretty good build-up across the two issues. It's nice the 13th Doctor has a proper Christmas story, at least.

Scorpius was one of the earlier attempts of mine to get into Big Finish Doctor Who stories after a few false starts. To its credit, this was part of the audios that did ultimately make me an ongoing Big Finish listener.

I think where this audio suffers though is people, myself included, probably go into this series expecting a horror show. The Cybermen are supposed to be creepy. They are supposed to be a nasty monster created in a cauldron of human suffering. They are a means, just like in any good science fiction, to explore ideas of morality and technology through a fictional lens. More than anything, I think the Cybermen at their best should make you deeply uncomfortable. That they are being chopped up humans put through factory processing is what most compels me about these villains.

So, when Scorpius kind of plays out as a slow burn, with mostly introductory content to the rest of the series and, in my opinion, not nearly enough Cybermen in this Cyberman story, well, yeah, I can't help but look back on this as a pretty intense sense of disappointment. I never got engaged with any of these characters and while I did appreciate the more quite and subtle aspects of horror we are going for here, I definitely did not find myself hooked like I would have preferred, or would have left me eager to pursue the rest of this series. While it wasn't terrible, I would struggle to recommend this one. We'll have to see if the rest of the series changes my views on the Cybermen range, but for now I'm not exactly excited to do that nor do I plan on pursuing this plan in the immediate future. You never know, though.

This was my first look at a "Quick Read" and it wasn't terrible, to be honest.  I was expecting something entirely geared towards kids and instead I got a short story about a new fuel source discovered in Antarctica, featuring Sea Devils, Mykra, and the Silurians all going up against the American Navy.  It is quite the adventure with a lot of ideas packed into a very short word count and in spite of that, I still found parts a little too boring, other parts a little too simplistic, and lots of elements left undeveloped.

The characters have potential.  The villain of the story really is a character named Pelham, a sort of standard business guy that really seems to regret his actions after his assistant is killed late in the story.  That's pretty interesting in the wide world of Doctor Who villains but we really barely scratch the surface with him, the Silurians, or even the one-off companion Lizzie that works with the Doctor here.  You would think that the unique setting of the South Pole would be a creative challenge for the Silurian faction, given their weakness to cold, but it really comes across as trivial because, like everything else, these ideas are largely left unexplored.

It's alright.  I don't think I'd recommend it, but hey, at least it's not the worst Silurian story!

The Galois Group made me nervous on initial listen as I was unfamiliar with stories featuring Valarie and the Eleventh Doctor at this time, and didn't know this was a Valarie story until I started listening.

It does largely stand on its own, though one might be better off being more familiar with the Eleventh Doctor Chronicles and the Valarie character with some clear references to past events. Still, I understood the plot and ideas of The Galois Group just fine. This is a strange little story where our characters are creating paradoxes and ghost copies of one another from different timelines. It is the sort of story that could get out of control quickly but I think Felicia Barker manages to strike a balance with this nicely. It was a pretty fun and touching Short Trip thanks to some deft writing and good characters. I found the content around Galois himself pretty touching, especially in The Galois Group's sentimental ending. There's some neat touches to it.

The Doctor is pretty interesting too. Valarie is the source of all this story's conflict and she nearly creates some very serious issues with the timeline. Yet I feel unlike something such as Father's Day, the Doctor treats her a bit more gently here. Sure there are arguments and some pretty hefty consequences to Val's actions, but it all, at least to me, felt like it was done in a way where the Doctor was never presented as overly cruel, or even his usual over-goofy Eleventh self, and the end result was that much better.

The only part of the story that holds itself back is the nature of the production. This isn't a story flush with memorable music or sound effects, and it all feels pretty standard in terms of its direction and editing. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is enough to keep Galois Group from being exceptional. Instead I would just say it was pretty good. Listenable but not anything that stuck with me as much as a story like this could have. I'm glad I listened to it but I am not exactly eager to revisit it, either. It wasn't long or painful to get through but it was not exactly unforgettable, must-see content, either. All that being said, Safiyya Ingar was great. I can see why her Valarie has become popular in the Eleventh Chronicles, and will definitely have to check those out. In that regard, one could argue Galois Group did a good job at advertising that range a little bit, which isn't a bad thing by any means.

So after a pretty middling experience out of these early UNIT stories at first, outside of The Coup, The Longest Night really took me by surprise. It's dark as all hell and reminds me of Children of Earth's sharp left turn that is firmly out of traditional Doctor Who tone. I'm not against these types of stories - clearly, based on this rating, but it does feel a little out of place with what we had gotten so far out of these audios.

Still, I like this audio. A woman commits suicide live on national television. It's dark and messed up, coupled with some pretty compelling political intrigue drawn from earlier plot points in the series. In hindsight, it gives a little bit of breathing room for Time Heals and Snakehead to feel like build-up to this, and collectively Longest Night and The Wasting do a lot to make this series worth listening to.

I really like this story's particular take on early 2000s politics. It felt novel and done in a non-specific enough way that it doesn't feel that dated, either. A firm recommendation from me, and I will have to check out some more of Joe Lidster's other works because the two I've stumbled on so far have both been pretty great and engaging. The production also did a great job at giving the audio weight and making it really feel like we were listening to a bunch of real broadcasts.

A very solid ending to the first Big Finish UNIT series, if you ask me. These early UNIT stories suffer a bit, largely what I assume is the result of Big Finish's early growing pains, but The Wasting and The Longest Night really stand out to me. Both episodes represent some pretty solid political thriller content that to me successfully presents a more adult take on the Doctor Who universe than what we usually get in the franchise, without feeling unnecessarily edgy. It reminded me a lot of what the Torchwood show was supposed to be but all too rarely actually was.

There's a lot one can take away from this and use to talk about British politics but also just xenophobia and fascism in general. I think it is a pretty coherent message. I also love how it really feels like it is Chaudhry against the world for a while. With so many of her allies gone, and things looking particularly bleak, it really feels like a struggle here. Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart is good at being one of the few sources of support in all of this, too. David Tennant is a lot of fun even if he gets a little hammy with his villain roles pre-Tenth Doctor.

Overall a pretty good ending to the series that closes out some plot points nicely. I wouldn't be against more Chaundry content in the future but it looks like that was mostly relegated to a few Short Trips stories in Big Finish's old book line, which is a bit of a shame. The Wasting is pretty good set-up for future content in that regard.

I have mixed feelings on this novel.  It is easily the best experience I had reading any of the Timewyrm books, but that isn't saying much.  These four books were a tough and slow read compared to pretty much anything Doctor Who I've read before.  Each were like this for different reasons, and in the case of Revelation I found the book a bit dense and meandering, to say the least.  I basically had to force myself through a huge chunk of the middle, and I think that is explicitly because the nature of this story is so vague and esoteric.  Here we travel into the mind of the Doctor, and while there are lots of interesting details to this, I had a very hard time dealing with a story this surreal and untethered to anything resembling reality.  It's hard to have an emotional investment for something kind of just going on entirely in the Doctor's imagination.

Still, this book does have moments.  There's a scene where the Timewyrm has apparently created the embodiment of Death itself, a Grim Reaper that enjoys a dance with the Doctor, killing him in the process.  It's captivating and a little unforgettable, but then it never really comes up again.  Stuff like that are what both works and doesn't work about the book.  The three dead companions - Adric, Sara, and Katarina show up as terrifying demons that haunt the Doctor as figures of guilt.  So a big part of this story becomes about the Doctor reconciling with these things and learning to accept what happened to those he has lost along the way.  That's good, and a part of the novel that really works, but we don't actually end up dealing with the Doctor's feelings much along the way.  It ends up being expressed as Ace freeing a mental picture of the Fifth Doctor, who plants a flower and everything kind of starts to fix itself over time.

There are a ton of other plot points going on here.  Other past incarnations of the Doctor show up, there's a sentient church that gets moved to the moon, and a particularly creepy sequence where a village of people ambush the Doctor, led by a returned Hemmings (a character from the Timewyrm: Exodus novel).  And Ace really gets to shine here.  We delve into her past, contemplate her future, and she digs deep in a way few if any other companions manage to.  Even that rings as a bit flawed, though, as Ace spends a lot of time angry at the Doctor in this novel for reasons that feel forced and unnecessary.  A lot of this stuff I did enjoy, but it felt like a long road to get there with a lot of plot points that took forever to explain themselves.  We don't actually learn we are in the Doctor's head until very near the end of the story, and I think that doesn't help matters as the mystery makes everything we see up until that point feel like a lot of confused nonsense.  All told, I definitely wouldn't recommend the Timewyrm series overall.  Two of the books were outright bad reads and the other two were just barely passable.

This is definitely the best comic to feature the Silurians, at least going by what's currently on TARDIS guide.  It's a great, albeit short, little take on the origins of the Silurians, looking into how and why they chose to go into a deep slumber millennia ago.  Aside from three brief panels of narration by the Doctor, he is otherwise absent from the story entirely focused on what the Silurians were.  We're often told of their greatness but it is so cool to actually see it on display with some very creative artwork overall evoking a race with advanced technology.  They really feel like a society with good and bad people right and wrong about a number of critical matters, both factually and morally, and it is cool seeing these characters debate such things and figure out what to do as a horrible disaster approaches Earth.  My only complaint it is that it is a little short and insubstantial.  There's enough going on here that's it is entertaining given it is only in two short parts, but it is not much more complicated than a sort of alternate version of the Planet of the Apes film, which seemed to inspire a lot of the content here.  I liked it and would absolutely recommend it, though, for sure.  This is one of the better Silurian stories I have encountered thus far.

This was a genuinely great read.  I loved this take on the Silurians as we see an alternate Earth where the Sea Devils, Silurian, and human races have all united and are living peacefully.  But all is not well, as the Doctor of this universe has been assassinated and monsters are brutally attacking all over.  So the Seventh Doctor of the Prime Universe, Ace, and Benny all come to this alternate reality to investigate.  I love the creativity of this setting and it is realized visually by a tremendous artist named Colin Andrew.  It would be almost perfect, but the villain and confrontation around him was definitely underwhelming, while some of the dialogue and pacing were a little off.  Still an outstanding read and definitely worth anyone's time just because of how fun an idea it is and how cool Ace gets to be in the first couple parts of the story.

A decent comic, notable only for a few quirks.  One is that Gary Russell wrote this, and he did a decent job.  Along with artist Vincent Danks they are great at giving the Silurians a sense of life and definitely the sort of intimidating presence the original series was going for but lacked the budget.  Unconstrained by a camera, City of Devils is able to really give the Silurians the look and feel I always imagined.  Here they are a powerful and intimidating race, but also a reasonable one that can be negotiated with.  This comic is also notable for being an adaptation of K9 and Company, which is a neat quirk.  Though I didn't really enjoy that original pilot, City of Devils actually adapts the series in a fun way and I enjoyed watching Sarah and K9 travel on this short little adventure.  It wasn't exceptional, but this is far from the worst Silurian story I've ever encountered.

This is an audio definitely only for those familiar with Zoe and War Games, I feel, with lots of references to the Second Doctor era throughout.

In this story, Zoe, Jaime, and the Doctor encounter a villain named Atrika, the Daleks eventually show up, and then the scientist realizes siding with them was a big mistake. All pretty standard stuff and a very slow burn to get to the more entertaining aspects of Fear of the Daleks. Near the end of the audio, Nicholas Briggs does get to have some fun with Daleks possessed by Atrika, but I get why people don't like this one.

They do a decent job at making Fear of the Daleks feel very much like a Second Doctor story, but I would argue to a fault. Repetitive audio cues and music were not things to preserve from that era, leading to an audio I didn't really hate, but would never want to touch again. Definitely one of the weaker Companion Chronicles I've encountered thus far, and based on the reviews of this range, quite possibly one of the worst of the series out there.

A really interesting concept now sadly closed. With little attempt to really preserve it much beyond some promotional material newer fans can now only really glean what it was like. I do appreciate how much continuity was used for the interactive experience but that does seem to be done to a fault - I doubt every fan is going to get all the references and it seems a mismatch with the more family friendly aspects of this attraction. I do feel as though there are a lot of cool things to do in London, though, and while this was a bit of a novelty I don't see most local visitors enjoying repeated visits, while I as a tourist wouldn't exactly be clamouring to drag my partner to something like this compared to what the rest of the city has to offer. Those sets were really cool and creative though, and I do feel something should be made out of all that specially recorded footage.

I'm gonna be a bit blunt and say this game is a bit overrated here on Timescales. First of all, it is crazy to me how I basically couldn't get the game on PC at all. It was delisted on Steam so you basically have to buy a used PS3 copy.

Yet another example of BBC not maintaining their own franchise well aside, the game is very middling. The story is very generic and just seems to involve as many villains from the Eleventh Doctor era as they could manage. The Eternity Clock refers to the Macguffin of the story and it just seems to be a thing causing issues with the time vortex. It's not very engaging as a story, and the dialogue often feels like it falls very short of the show's quality in even its worse episodes.

Alex Kingston and Matt Smith both reprise their roles for this video game and they do a good job. It's not easy to transition from live action to voice acting, but both of them do a really good job. I feel it is all but inevitable that one day Matt Smith will be available enough for Big Finish and I expect we'll get some good performances out of that based on what I see here. The developers also did a good job at incorporating the voices of various monsters such as the Daleks and the Silence. Some of the other actors are more mediocre, though. It is also kind of funny seeing the New Paradigm Daleks showing up here as just a little amusing detail in Doctor Who history. They don't look much better here than they did in the show.

The Silence in particular feel quite well done, though. They're creepy and sound dangerous throughout their appearances in the game. Eternity Clock even tries to incorporate their nature of causing one to forget things into the game play, which is cool as a concept. The game also makes excellent use of Murray Gold's music, and show you can spend hours listening to it without it getting annoying (unlike some of the repetitive dialogue from various monsters when you are completing levels).

In execution the game leaves a lot to be desired. As a 2D platformer I found the controls a little finicky. Most of the gameplay in the platformer involves puzzles that aren't so much difficult to solve - the difficulty lies in getting the game to do what you want it to do. It can be a bit frustrating trying to play through and that's where things can wear me down a bit. For example, with the Silence - it's neat that if you lose sight of them, you have to start over on some puzzles. In practice though I find that mechanic will arbitrarily kick in sometimes if the Silence are off screen for a second, while other times they give you a bit of a grace period to find one again. That inconsistency makes the game feel a little more random than practical.

In between the platforming, you have these more complex puzzles that were a little more fun and a lot more creative visually. The game is alright in that regard, for a PS3 era game, and a licensed one at that, it looks pretty cool and some of the visuals for the puzzles are pretty well done.

The game doesn't really have the feel of what I'd want out of a Doctor Who game, though. The lack of traditional combat through most of the game feels right for the Doctor and River has some pretty fun moments, but I'd rather something that leaned onto a good story more or involved making some decisions within the story. They make some neat ideas with time travel apparent by visiting the same area in multiple time periods. That's cool as an idea but in practice I found the levels pretty boring and repetitive because of that. A lot of it looks and feels like a generic game with the Doctor Who franchise slapped on to it.

Anyways, the game didn't do very well commercially and winds up ending on a cliffhanger that was never resolved. It's not a very satisfying experience overall. I would love for a more full fledged video game with Doctor Who but this sadly doesn't live up to that concept very well.

One of the more substantial stories from what I know of the 2011 run of IDW Doctor Who comics, As Time Goes By has some stuff working for it and other content more lacking.  I like Matthew Dow Smith's art off and on.  Sometimes it feels like a lot of the other arc in this series - a bit rushed and low on detail.  Other panels really stand out and capture the vibes this comic is going for - which I guess is Casablanca but with Doctor Who and Silurians.

I'm not against the idea.  It's weird, but in a good way.  This story has a different writer than the other previous IDW 11th Doctor comics, but it didn't change much for me.  Once again they aren't quite able to capture that distinct voice of the Eleventh Doctor and instead he's kind of cringey, which I'm starting to appreciate is really easy to do with this particular Doctor without careful writing.  Weirdly the character IDW seems to have the best handle on is Rory, as there is a good sense of his comedy but it never goes so far where he is made into a joke for a character.  He is genuinely shaken by some events in the first half of this story and it's decently well done.

I guess the biggest struggle I have with As Time Goes By is intention.  The Silurians are led by a Captain who kidnaps Amy and wants to make her the Empress of the new Silurian Empire.  It's not exactly an endearing moment for Amy's character and also reflects something I noticed in IDW's books with her - I don't love the writing around her as it treats her as more of an attractive prop than a person.  Then the Captain reveals he is actually a decent being and doesn't want to enact this plan that would wipe out the human race.  It is all very Silurian and pretty well done, tying into the experience of Casablanca in 1941 to nicely drive home this point.  But then The Captain's underlings betray him and try to kill all the humans.  All this takes place over a single issue, and it's very messy - meandering, inconsistently interesting, and not very focused in its plot or ideas.  It all comes to head with an ending I honestly had to look up on the wiki to understand what they were trying to convey happened.  I can't abide or recommend something this confusing.

Also, in the last issue the Doctor literally uses Amy and Rory as bait and it's really out of character.  He really endangers both their lives here in a way that seems a lot more obvious and reckless compared to your average story.  Overall, As Time Goes By was not a great way to spend four issues on something.

Well, after really struggling through Spam Filtered, I am very pleased to say Ripper's Curse ~ Part 1 is a massive improvement on just about every count.

A Doctor Who story set during the time of Jack the Ripper, Tony Lee and a few artists really bring the era to life with a moody comic book. The colouring by Phil Elliott really gives this comic a nice feeling of dread and melancholy. While not every panel is perfect - some have no background at all while others still have very awkward facial expressions, the book does a great job at drawing you in and making the Whitechapel area feel dynamic and alive. There are other police, a very clever Inspector Frederick Abberline who amusingly blows through Rory's cover story in about an instant, and even press sniffing around, yet the story manages to balance all these characters and competing interests nicely in a way that doesn't feel chaotic even though all of this is going on in a single comic book issue.

On the whole it is very impressive even with the occasional line from the Doctor that just felt like we were force quoting Eleven from the television series. Ripper's Curse ~ Part 1 feels like the kind of story that feels missing from the Eleventh Doctor era in a really positive way. Moffat was never great at historical so something like this is always pretty welcome for Eleven, Rory, and Amy, but more significantly is stuff like Rory and Amy getting to take more direct agency over the story, or even a little moment like the Doctor asking for Rory's opinion on a medical matter knowing that Rory is a nurse with a more active experience dealing with human medicine. It's the sort of thing I always wished the Moffat era did more of with this TARDIS crew, so seeing it in this comic is very welcome indeed.

Part 2 of Ripper's Curse falters a bit in my eyes. Both the art and the writing do have interesting moments here and there, but otherwise it feels like we are scrambling to follow up on all of our interesting ideas in these comics. On the one hand, I do like some of the ideas present in here, and there is some good fun to be had along the way, as the whole story starts to involve some alien politics.

But, there is something uncomfortable about how alien we make the story of Jack the Ripper here. This is a real human that murdered real people, and an early example of a documented, traditional serial killer in human history. It throws me off here, while the most interesting aspect of this comic - Amy trying to save one of Jack's victims - is a very human dilemma. It really feels like Ripper's Curse could have been a pure historical or at least let the sci-fi content take a back seat, and been oh so more effective. Especially with Tim Hamilton's art. While not on point equally in every panel, Hamilton does an excellent job at consistently keeping a tense mood and atmosphere.

Ripper's Curse comes to a somewhat satisfying end. There's a certain level of quality to the artwork that is mostly consistent throughout the book, but still feels cheap or maybe a little rushed at times like the rest of this comic book trilogy.

There are creative elements to Part 3's story and on the whole I found it a pretty satisfying resolution. Amy is slated to be the next victim of Jack the Ripper, but instead of just being something the Doctor and Rory have to rescue she ends up doing that on her own, which I appreciated. Rory also got a good laugh out of me when he admitted to not being a real detective to Abberline, to his palatable relief.

All told Ripper's Curse is a big step up from Spam Filtered, but so far, as I kind of remember it, these IDW Doctor Who books, at least for 2011, were only ever just alright, and that memory is largely holding up.

Note I have a background in reviewing comics so my opinions may be slightly skewed with higher-than-normal standards, but really, I'm just reviewing it like any Doctor Who story.

My issue with Spam Filtered is how dated it feels. The TARDIS gets inundated with spam ads in holographic form. The humour really didn't work for me, though. Clippy, regurgitating real-world phishing ads, making fun of people falling for online scams, it's really nothing new under the sun, here. The Scroungers are kind of making fun of vulnerable people who are spammed online. We now know that these types of content are deliberately designed to weed out people with critical thinking and preying on those more easily tricked and gullible. I don't find the situation very fun, or at least I have gotten tired of these jokes in the twenty or so years they've been around.

I'm also really not a fan of the art by Andrew Currie. He does an okay job at making Amy, Rory, and the Doctor look semi-realistic, but often has them in poses and facial expressions that are very odd and don't fit the panel in question.

It will be interesting to revisit DW11. I had the Worlds Collide graphic novel for years and it was my first Doctor Who comic. Will this series hold up? So far, it doesn't look good.

This is an important audio in that it is great for establishing some character to our UNIT crew before things go nuts in the following audio, The Longest Night. On its own, though, I found it a very standard story that didn't quite stick with me the way some of the later UNIT audios do in this particular range. I just found the Southend characters pretty standard in terms of what we might expect out of Big Finish, and I really didn't get much out of the conflict of the story, either. Still worth listening to even if it is just to get the full UNIT experience of these early Big Finish audios, and that's a good thing, even if on balance, I found this to be the weakest of these early Big Finish UNIT stories. It definitely feels like over time, the company was able to take the UNIT brand into a more distinct direction.

Also, as an aside, you absolutely should be more familiar with UNIT in general in addition to listening to both the Coup and Time Heals before seeking out Snake Head.

I think, taking this story for what it is, this is a quite strong (and free) introduction to the original new series. As a story itself, for a prequel short, I think it is quite strong. The Coup is all about UNIT sort of changing over some power, and ends up being this being summary statement on the organization itself with a bit of a hopeful message to it. The Brigadier's performance definitely carries this audio, but he carries it well and I quite enjoyed what I got. You just can't go in expecting the world out of this story. I, personally, had quite a good time with it.

I just listened to this the first time recently, and it might be my favourite out of the initial main range's first 25 audios or so. What particularly works for me about it is that not only is it just a solid Silurian story, it has a lot of fun ideas marrying these lizardmen to Charles Darwin’s work as a scientist. It is really, really cool and in my opinion well done how the Silurians cause a crisis of faith within Darwin and that becomes the emotional centre of the whole audio.

The stuff with the Silurians creating humans was a little wonky and underdeveloped as an idea that feels like it should be a bigger deal.  It didn't feel like the best decision for continuity, but not so much it ruined the experience for me.  It's a strange choice, but not a prohibitive one.

This is a fun enough if not somewhat empty audio short. It doesn't ask a lot and never really strives beyond its ambitions, but it is fun. The Doctor loses his coat on a planet with shell-based aliens. It's the sort of weirdness that works well for audio as it lets your imagination have some fun, and Colin Baker nails the delivery here as he so often does with Big Finish. It's just this cute little story and that really feels like enough to me for what it is, and that's pretty good overall.

I have mixed feelings on Frostfire, but have come around to it a bit. This is not a great audio series for people getting into Big Finish early on. When I first listened to it, I kind of tuned things out, and couldn't really grapple with the content.

It was only after becoming more familiar with the dynamics of early era Doctor Who featuring the First Doctor, Vicki, and Steven. After getting to know these character better, and getting more used to the style of Big Finish, I really enjoyed my second pass on this story. I always had a lot of love for Vicki and her time in the TARDIS, and I quite enjoyed her character here. The tragedy of her story and existence post-Doctor Who is really well done, especially knowing she did eventually seem to find happiness according to The Storyteller webcast.

Maureen O'Brien was pretty great here reprising her role as Vicki and doing the narration. Keith Drinkel's take on The Cinder less so, impacting my overall thoughts on the story and performances. I also think this story and The Cinder feels a little too similar to the X-Men's Phoenix, but the story and experience of Frostfire is fun enough it didn't bother me all that much. I do also think this story is a great introduction to the Companion Chronicles and it sets the tone for the series while giving the audience a sense of what they can expect out of these stories going forward.

I wish I could say I enjoyed Ghost Light more, or that I could rate it higher than its current average, rather than pushing it lower. Unfortunately, this is a limited storyline for Who. On the one hand, it has exceptional production in its sets and design. They do a lot with clearly a limited budget. There's some great ideas in here but it is definitely cram packed full of plot, clearly truncated on some level and all the worse for it. The weird ghost wanting to catalogue everything and being obsessed with evolution was interesting, but I'm not sure how well it squared with the excellent character work around Ace.

There's some great moments here kind of unforgettable to Who, but it is held back in little ways and odd little beats of acting here and there.

It's fine.  Better than some of the older annuals I've read, which is nice.  Some pretty memorable prose setting up the atmosphere and nice, striking visuals accompany this short story, but the story itself is a pretty basic thing.  It does have the feel of a Fourth Doctor and Romana story, it just doesn't really go anywhere, introducing a sentient being of energy and quickly defeating it without much fanfare or difficulty implied on the Doctor's part.  Kind of boring, but at least boring with a little bit of style to it.

I really loved this one. Excellent performances by a pretty big cast, a fun and creative plot, and some great moments that look into not just the Sixth Doctor but his entire character history. It was a lot of fun seeing the Valeyard staging all the Doctor's deaths in a play and I though that was so different from a usual story leading up to a Doctor's regeneration.

Chronologically, this is one of the Sixth Doctor's final stories, and it isn't some big action piece or adventure, but relatively low-key, dialogue heavy, and entirely about the Doctor and his emotional state. Jago and Litefoot are delightful but it is Flip who really gets to shine here.

Not at all accessible to new viewers, this is still great fun for seasoned fans and highly recommended for them. I was little surprised to learn this one is a bit polarizing, but I personally adore it.

I really liked this audio overall.  It's nice to have a strong Liz Shaw story when her role in the Doctor Who franchise is otherwise quite limited.

This story isn't just a good one featuring Liz Shaw, though, it is one that digs into her past, has full segments devoted entirely to her doing stuff, and has a lot of fun ideas for her character.  It really feels like we get a proper sense of backstory here.

The story itself is really fun, too.  We're dealing with espionage, arms trading, and alien technology in a pretty well done thriller.  It definitely meanders a bit in the second half compared to the much more tightly and carefully written first half, but overall it was a good story.  I really liked the angle of this Colonel Matthews charging Liz with treason, and it leads to some very unique interrogation scenes.  At one point, Matthews and Shaw literally switch places mid-conversation, and that was cool to listen to how well they executed this content.

The downside is the ultimate villain and plot are a lot less endearing to me.  It's the same old alien stuff just with some neat added details and layers.  When we're dealing with UNIT, it's relationship with the rest of the government, and that sort of stuff, I was a lot more compelled.  The alien angle felt unwelcome as the story lost a lot the more we got into that content.  Still I enjoyed this overall and would recommend prospective listeners pick this up when it goes on sale.  Aside from little things like being able to tell Keith Wickham did a lot of the back-up vocals, this is well acted and Tim Treloar, Daisy Ashford, and Jon Culshaw all did a great job impersonating The Doctor, Liz Shaw, and the Brigadier.  Culshaw in particular does a great impression of Nicholas Courtney to the point it felt pratically unmistakable.

I absolutely loved Kaleidescope and I think this is a bit underrated.

I had so much fun with this extra-long audio adventure. In spite of being seven parts long, I found it thoroughly entertaining from start to finish. There was so much to like here. Kaleidescope the character along with reporter Jenny Nettles were great as "replacements" for the Doctor and Sarah Jane, even getting their own faux theme song. I found that fake theme song so catchy and it was stuck in my head for days after listening to this audio.

I think the audio design of Kaleidescope in general is really well done, too, constantly evoking the energy of the Third Doctor era, while adding lots of flair of James Bond to give it a real sense of unique identity to it. This gave the audio a great sense of pace, which is good for something so long, and even better sound effects at times, such as when the Doctor and Sarah are trapped in Siberia.

All told, I had a great time. All the performers are pretty outstanding, but Keeth Hazel, played by Stephen Noonan, was absolutely memorable, even more so than the theme song. He was so great for what really could have been a small nothing of a guest role. However, the nanobots he also plays feel almost completely unnecessary and tacked on in comparison. This story is interesting when it is about Soviet intrigue and the mystery of Kaleidescope's identity. It's full of great homages to Bond, 70s television, culture, and music. Once we start getting into nanotechnology, I feel like writer Alan Barnes has kind of lost sight of the purpose of this audio to begin with, and that diminishes it more than I would prefer.

Still, it's worth it for Noonan and the excellent production value alone. They put so much thought into the editing and direction of Kaleidescope and the effort really shows. This experience is further enhanced by the performances of the Doctor, Brigadier, and Sarah Jane, at least in my opinion. Our core cast of characters are all well cast and I do love the Brigadier in this story. You can feel the tremendous relief he experiences not having to constantly supervise the Doctor and is able to boss around Kaleidescope a lot more, which I found really funny. I found a lot of Kaleidescope funny, actually, and all of it intentional, too. I would definitely recommend this one if you can get it for a good price.

It’s a Lovely Day Tomorrow is one of the most pointless Short Trips I've encountered to date. The Fourth Doctor and Leela encounter some World War II soldiers and leave. This just meanders til it decides the story is over. A disappointing use of both major characters, while the soldiers are pretty boring.

The other stories with the Fourth Doctor and Romana are comparatively far better and more in line with the Christmas theme of this treasury, too.

I can see why this story has some fans, as it does have some potential, but I definitely lean more towards it somehow being a pretty mediocre experience - in spite of us watching a civilization literally Rise and Fall in the narrative. It just seems a little too simple and short to really get anything out of me. There are some thoughtful enough moments to the audio, but I didn't really engage in Russell's narration like I have in other audios.

Goodwill Towards Men is a great short story. Featuring the Second Doctor, Zoe, and Jaime, they all go to a homeless shelter and help some people out. Like Perfect Present, it gains a certain sense of elegance in its simplicity. It's neat that this was written by Shaun Lyon, as the earlier review talks about.

It's nice enough, but not so much heartwarming as it is just a good character piece. Like in Last Minute Shopping and Every Day, it is really cool to see Jaime and Zoe visit earth in more modern times. Both are incredulous at seeing homeless people in Los Angeles in the late 20th century, but for very different reasons. Jaime is baffled that the local authorities don't take in wayward children like they would in his time, while to Zoe, these problems were long eliminated in her time.

A lot of interesting thoughts on poverty, charity, and human progress. Some good stuff overall.

I liked it, but there were definitely some problems. The setting of a devastated Amazon was very interesting and I think the country of Brazil was used well in the audio. I liked the werewolves and enjoyed their rich backstory that dominated much of the audio. The idea of them messing around with human perception was interesting and went a ways into explaining why werewolves would remain a myth in human consciousness, even into the future that this story takes place in.  Characters like Anton and Ileana were also well-written and entertaining.

On the other hand, Pieter and Rosa were very underwhelming as characters. I didn’t like their performers and really didn’t like the cultural appropriation going on with Rosa’s character. She had a charming story and chemistry going on with Turlough but some of that writing and her accent were just painful to listen to.

Overall it wasn’t bad, and I really enjoyed having an entertaining Turlough story, as it feels he really got to shine here. He and the Doctor were great overall and a big part of what makes this audio work for me. Turlough felt intimately involved in the story and I love the scenes where the werewolves were messing around with him. The Doctor also had a really compelling relationship with Ileana and had a lot of solid moments. I rate it an 8/10 for these reasons, in spite of the audio’s issues.

This one is... complicated. At a hefty length and with a lot of complex, moving parts to the story, there are some really strong and weak aspects to this audio adventure I feel I need to unpack.

On the one hand, I like this complex, sophisticated story. There's a lot of different plot lines and timelines going on, our TARDIS team of the Fifth Doctor, Tegan, Turlough, and Nyssa all have interesting moments in the sun, and the story is both a sequel and prequel to The Talons of Weng-Chiang, which feels very Doctor Who. It's weighty and even kind of stands alone, but between its ties to Talons of Weng-Chiang and the heavy reliance on the already established TARDIS team to drive the story, it really feels like this one is particularly prohibitive to newcomers.

I, with enough background knowledge that I should have been able to get through it no problem, still struggled with this at times. Taking place in the far future of Earth, The Butcher of Brisbane is full of great ideas and cool concepts, perhaps to a fault. It is trying to do a lot and ends up often giving some of these ideas too little attention. A car with a human brain in it, a war-torn Earth struggling through an Ice Age, or Greel being this infamous dictator are all cool concepts that I feel suffer from being underplayed a bit at times.

Other aspects of Butcher of Brisbane, like Tegan and Nyssa's roles in the story, I think fall a little short. Nyssa marries Greel while acting as a spy with Turlough, but she also has some sympathy for him even though it feels like she really should know better. Tegan feels like she falls into old habits with the character where she is there to whine more than do things, and even the Doctor feels like he frustratingly lacks agency in the story more than he should, which mutes Davison's performance a bit here. I think it is telling that some of the actors in the production interviews felt a little unsure about the story and didn't necessarily follow all of it themselves.

Performances are a bit inconsistent, perhaps as a result. Greel's actor feels like he has the stage presence required for the character, but for whatever reason, I just didn't feel a sense of intimidation from him. It's a real shame too, because while stuff like this collectively holds the story back a bit, the special effects of the production are remarkable. The audio tracks are excellent at establishing ambience and early on got me really excited about this unique setting for the story.

In spite of some severe limitations, I did enjoy Butcher of Brisbane. It's cool to have a full team of a Doctor and three companions, all straight out of the show, and all getting to be a little more active and polished than their time with the Fifth Doctor back in the Classic TV era. One thing that I feel is explored well here is the Doctor's relationship with history, as this audio adventure does a good job at showing how engrossed and present he is across our timeline while also questioning his role in it. That stuff goes a long way in preventing a bad rating, but it is a dense piece with a lot of ups and downs that definitely wouldn't be my first Big Finish recommendation.

This is a fun, top-tier Third Doctor story, really showcasing the strengths of the era. I've talked about this before, but this Doctor was often dismissed when I heard fans talking about it or from what I gleaned from online content. It really has impressed me time and time again though, for its heart, ambition, and energy. The Green Death felt like a great expression of that, while also having a moving outro for Jo. Chronologically, this is the first companion leaving that had a big emotional impact on me. Jo had a very active role with the Third Doctor and the show took a lot of time to show her bonding and connecting with the Doctor. So her leaving was quite moving and I feel the show played up on that well.

Of course, that's not really the focus of The Green Death. The story itself is more about gooey slugs messing around with a mine. It sounds goofy, and it is, but it is also a well filmed episode with a good sense of suspense and the show just manages to pull it off even with dated/low-budget effects. I do wish that Jo leaving was better connected to this story, because it really feels like the overall plot really could have been any old Doctor Who adventure.

Zone 10 was a nice, moody audio that really showcases just how badly the original Torchwood series made of Toshi's character.

Naoko Mori is great here, as is her Russian Torchwood counterpart in the KVI Maxim. That stuff was done well and the dialogue between these characters was very appealing. This audio sets a nice tone, too. The story itself is a bit simple, in that Zone 10 works better as a mysterious signal compared to when we start getting into the details behind this thing. Still, it feels like a distinct entry in the roster of Torchwood audios, and one could do a lot worse in that regard, from what I've heard.

The Committee stuff did feel a little unnecessary though, like we're just forcing it in to build up other stories and it really just worked as a distraction here more than anything.

Jeez, I was not ready for Corpse Day. What I initially mistook as a fun little team-up between Owen and Andy, on an annual day where Torchwood basically indulges the police as a sort of courtesy, gives way to one of the darkest Torchwood stories that might outright exist. And can you blame me? This story starts out really fun and I like the dynamic between a dead Owen and a still new to all this Andy. Then the story takes that nightmare turn and I really struggled with this content.

It's not necessarily a bad story, although it had a lot of bad parts. It is a deeply unpleasant listen about a bunch of traumatized, raped, and brainwashed women. It's so bleak and depressing I really can't give it much of a whole-hearted recommendation. I can't say it is a story without value or anything like that, but the performances were a little underwhelming given the seriousness of the situation from pretty much the entire cast, and I don't really know what the point of the story is, either, other than just kind of going for a lot of shock value. I guess I was shocked, certainly, but not in a way that left me clamouring for anything more. Beyond that though, it's not like this audio is going to change anyone's opinions on kidnapping and torturing women, right? I don't really want to hear about that and I especially don't need to hear about that from a production that appears to be entirely centred around and created by a male perspective. It feels exploitative more than fun.

And this is the story that brought Burn Gorman to Big Finish. Yikes. There were some details around his character that even I, who is most certainly not a fan of Owen, could appreciate, as Owen's in his dead phase here and that adds something to the story, even if that is just a clumsy sort of take on his motivations and opinions around abortion during the story because I guess Corpse Day wasn't edgy enough, it had to uselessly inject a bunch of pro-life buzzwords in, again, I can only surmise for the sake of sounding controversial and provocative.

This is already more than I would like to revisit Corpse Day. I did not feel good listening to this audio, and while it did have my attention, I would struggle to call it entertaining. At least it was well put together.

I had a lot of fun with The Lincolnshire Poacher. Lauren Mooney and Stewart Pringle are able to craft a really interesting script out of the real life number station phenomenon. It was really well done in that regard and Ianto proved to be fun in carrying the story.

Where it loses me a bit is in the performance between him and Greg. David Stewart-Parker was fun enough as this grizzled old veteran of Torchwood trapped in this terrible situation, but "grizzled old man" feels like something Big Finish goes back to a little too regularly for my tastes. So that all felt a little played out to me. Even as things really got tilted against Ianto, it really didn't feel like much of a meaningful sense of stakes - it was just so clear he was inevitably going to escape this situation. These things aren't enough of a trend to have prevented me from enjoying this audio, but they are things that effects stories all over Big Finish's history and it is starting to bother me a bit.

Still, this was good, and deserves a breezy recommendation. It's a fun story and the sort of stuff the original Torchwood TV show could have drawn on more for their stories.

Critical Mass is alright. There's a fun moment talked about in a lot of the other reviews where the Seventh Doctor does get to be a bit manipulative towards the story's villain that was memorable, but the rest of it is pretty mediocre.  Sophie Aldred does a pretty good job here but definitely improves her impression of the Seventh Doctor over time. Comparing this to a more contemporary performance by her like in the Haunting of Bryck Place is like night and day.

I don't think I connected with this one quite as much as others, but I can appreciate the audio for what it is as a little bit of character insight into Ian and Barbara. It's well enough performed and certainly has a quality of being put-together. I don't know if these early Short Trips are worth recommending, though. There just isn't much substance to them, even by the standards of a short form bit of media. In comparison the newer, much longer shorts, and Big Finish's own past literary Short Trips, feel like they can offer a lot more compared to these Short Trips I've checked out in volumes one and two.

I had a great deal of fun with Technophobia. Sure, part of that is just how great it is to hear the Doctor and Donna again, but it is a pretty fun Doctor Who story that feels right in line with Series Four of the reboot series. The Koggnossenti and their means to quietly make humans afraid of technology is a very serviceable plot that works well to showcase the return of a beloved TARDIS crew, and I do love the ending with them. I also like the touches in writing around Donna's character, as she has to act like she isn't in Earth's near distant future. I like how she takes this seriously but also is into the modern tech of the time, pairing neatly with the larger plot of this audio play.

One thing that does bother me a bit is how Big Finish seems to really push the Tenth Doctor, to the point where David Tennant really is pushing his acting more than he ever generally did for the show. I also found the music and sound effects more average than impressive. That sort of stuff holds back Technophobia, but only so slightly to the point I feel like I'm nit picking something I thoroughly enjoyed on the whole.

Yet another episode of Torchwood TV I feel largely lacks any sort of value. After all the interesting stuff Torchwood had been doing for a few episodes, and even showing a side of Owen I finally found a bit of empathy around in Out of Time, we get this ridiculous monster fight club story that I found to be a real slog to get through.

It isn't just that the story is sloppy, or that Owen reverts back to a boring edge lord. Nor that the entire episode gets bogged down relationship melodrama stuff with him, as well as Gwen and Rhys on the side. I also think this episode looks pretty awful and doesn't have a lot of heart in the production of the cage arena or monsters. It all just looks so cheap to me and the Weevils are so boring - both in looks and behaviours. That they became a bit of a recurring thing in Torchwood mythology is not positive in my eyes.

On the whole, while I respect that this episode might have its fans, I am not one of them, and this is yet another example of early Torchwood largely causing me to check out. There's a certainly meanness to Combat that Torchwood too often hit upon with characters like Owen - it feels a lot more cynical and out of sorts with the tone of the larger Doctor Who franchise and it is something I always struggle with. This is especially relevant with a character like Owen who was implied to be a sex pest right from the beginning, and it leaves me really struggling to connect with these characters in content that offers little else in terms of writing or other strengths (which is something they did eventually start to compensate for with stuff like Series 3).

The only positive I can say about reviewing this series is that is has left me appreciating that Big Finish did a great job at getting me to care about this franchise. It is pretty cool that they were able to better develop things and leave us with more than the handful of TV stories that worked, and a graveyard of content like Combat that largely amounts to a whole bunch of nonsense I am not terribly interested in revisiting again in the future.

Out of Time is pretty cool and stands out a bit from Series One Torchwood and this spin-off in general, but it shouldn't be. The story itself makes a lot of sense as a spin-off to a show that features time travel so heavily. While many Torchwood stories might have our main characters travelling through time, this one is neat in that it brings people from another time to the present, which doesn't happen nearly as much in Doctor Who overall.

However, since three characters come through the timeline, we essentially have three stories. Diane is paired with Owen, and this is the first time I found his character more interesting after having such and awful introduction in the series. Jack meets a father that finds his son is all grown up and has Alzheimer's, and that unfolds into a story quite heartbreaking and morose. Then Gwen and Rhys have Emma, and it feels like she is largely used to further the drama between Gwen and her partner as her lies around Torchwood begin to build.

This is where Out of Time loses me a bit. Owen and Jack and their time travellers are all done well, but the whole Gwen/Rhys/Emma dynamic feels comparatively weaker. On the whole, this leaves an experience with Out of Time that is positive overall, but a little uneven. There's a lot of melodrama to Out of Time but for once, this feels earned. Travelling through time like this should be upsetting a traumatic, and Out of Time explores that really well. Still, this pairs nicely with the final third of Series One in Torchwood - more thoughtful, experimental episodes that feel like they all work a lot better as a show compared to what we initially got out of the series with gross messes like Cyberwoman and Day One.

This is certainly a Torchwood episode I didn't hate. Though not exceptional, there is some fun to They Keep Killing Suzie and it, I think, plays up the fun a story like this can have. With a bit of a crime caper combined with what really is Torchwood's recurring villain, the appeal of this comes from Indira Varma and she definitely stands out as a performer enough to carry this episode, but Gwen is pretty great here too. It is a shame Suzie couldn't become a recurring threat like the show runners apparently wanted at one time until she was unavailable for series two. While I have a lot of issues with early era Torchwood, I think this is the version of the show that could have worked a lot better - a show that takes itself a little less seriously can get away with more goofy content like this and my thoughts around They Keep Killing Suzie are far more positive because of it.

Random Shoes is hardly terrible. I had a fun enough time and think the comparisons to Love and Monsters is a little unfair. This episode works a lot better on the whole, and while not overly substantial, it is quite sentimental and I think our actors really carry what could have been a much more mediocre affair on the whole. I think the investigation nicely pairs itself with the outsiders perspective Eugene provides. There's some value in looking at how entities like Torchwood or the Doctor are viewed by the outside world, and this story does a pretty adequate job of exploring that.

Greeks Bearing Gifts is a Tosh focused episode, and I have to say I was largely checked out by the events of this one. The effects don't look great, the plot is meandering, and it not only does Tosh a bit of a disservice but overly playing up her submissiveness while at the cost of making the rest of the cast truly treat her like garbage. The plot doesn't really go anywhere and this episode is easily best forgotten as yet another dud chapter of Torchwood.

This was an alright audio. It does feel a little disappointing after all the build-up of Excelis Dawns, which, in comparison, I think did a better job of drawing me into this world.

The Excelis in this story is one a thousand years forward in time, a neat facet of the story but unfortunately Excelis Rising barely explores it. For reasons I can't really comprehend, writer David A McIntee for some reason confines the entire plot to largely interior scenes in a museum around a sort of murder mystery. The Sixth Doctor and Grayvorn - the latter assuming a new identity after all these years, are pretty entertaining sussing each other out and trying to outwit one another - it is basically all that is holding this story together. Thanks to the talents of Colin Baker and Anthony Stewart Head, Excelis Rising would have been a lot weaker.

The story is pretty unremarkable and the ending is incredibly abrupt, anti-climactic, and unsatisfying as a listener. Outside of a few details, like how seances are a legitimate means of investigation on this planet, and some vaguely interesting but unexplored ideas in terms of how this functions as a sequel to Excelis Dawn, this second part of the audio was pretty mediocre overall. Not bad, but pretty disappointing as I feel a lot was relying on it to successfully follow up and build on the first part of this story. If Rising isn't special, than this whole Excelis trilogy suddenly becomes a lot less worthy of being this seperate, special, pseudo-crossover thing Big Finish was going for here.

Finally, I will mention that the special effects were decent. Though not exceptional, I do like how the music and sound effects cued us to this being a different era of Excelis' history, and instantly gave it a distinct feel from Dawns.

I dove into The Harvest expecting a fun story and a nice introduction to the companion Hex. I feel I got a serviceable audio that largely delivers on both counts, but the end result hardly felt exceptional to me, either. The Cyberman content didn't really stand out and I don't think I was given a lot for Hex's character that left much of an impression on me. Everyone does a pretty good job in the cast, but I think the writing lacks those essential memorable moments that would have made The Harvest a little more special for me. Compared to Evelyn Smythe's introduction, it felt like it left a lot less of an impression on me. I normally like Dan Abnett than this (currently reading a Warhammer 40k novel by him I'm enjoying quite a bit) but he struggles with endings and it shows here a bit. I do like this take on the "near future" of 2021 - now, of course, our past - that's always pretty neat to see in fiction. Really the whole story has some cool ideas, I'm just not sure it comes together into something I found all that satisfying, and more just average in comparison.

I had a lot of fun with this audio, even if it is a little rough around the edges. Anthony Stewart Head is great to listen to as a Buffy fan. It's not the most remarkable story but is certainly elevated by stellar performances by the cast all around. Katy Manning really impressed me here. Overall definitely worth checking out and something that left me curious about the rest of Excelis.

For a series I ultimately did not connect much with, the Plague Herds of Excelis worked really well for me.
First I really liked Iris Wildthyme's return. Not only did it enhance the connective tissue of this story to Excelis Dawns, but I feel like her character worked really well as a foil to Benny. I think Iris is kind of at her best when she has a less-comedic established protagonist like the Doctor or Summerfield, and it left both leading ladies with some great moments here. I only wish we got a little more of their dynamic as they are apart for a huge chunk of the audio, which feels like a bit of a waste.

Still, I found the Plague Herds of Excelis worked quite well as a sequel to the Excelis series. Most of these stories felt largely disconnected to each other, so having a story featuring the direct fallout of Excelis Decays with a lot of plot elements finally resolving a number of what I thought were pretty loose threads from Excelis Dawns, this felt more like the actual sort of building follow-through I wanted from the original Excelis trilogy. The setting was pretty well done in my opinion, making good use of a post-apocalypse Excelis, with a raging plague and roaming barbarians heavily featured throughout the audio. Snyper was a pretty fun villain that had a decent story in him, as part of those ties to Excelis Dawns. I also like how the story gives the vague glimmer of hope to life going on the world of Artaris without compromising the grim ending of Excelis Decays.

A barely serviceable story and one of the least memorable set of Doctor Who episodes I've encountered, especially when it comes to the Third Doctor Era. There's nothing specifically bad about it, their just isn't a lot of great content to grapple with. It very much feels like a boring rehash of past Dalek stories, particularly "The Daleks." The stuff with the Thals really just bored me this time around more than anything, while something just felt off with the scenes and the sets. It just all felt cheaper and more phoned in compared to stronger Dalek adventures and really just comes across as lacking against what I've come to expect with this Doctor and this production team at their best. Also missing some of that more essential character work, or at least delivered in a way that doesn't leave a mark like even other, Third Doctor stories. Jo really feels like she could have been any female companion, when that wasn't what I've liked about her up until this point. The chemistry between Jo and Latep really wasn't there for me and in comparison to how Manning normally bounces off the Doctor this was kind of hard to get through. Even some other weaker ones do this a lot better than Planet of the Daleks, in my opinion. I think in some ways this story is worse than some other more spectacularly bad Doctor Who content out there - at least that stuff sticks in your memory and leaves you with some kind of emotional reaction. Planet of the Daleks just felt like nothing.

Harvest of the Sycorax is a bit of a shame. The Sycorax aliens are a pretty cool design visually and had some neat aspects to them showcased in The Christmas Invasion.

Unfortunately, I feel like this audio tries way too hard to essentially duplicate the same circumstances and structure of The Christmas Invasion. Copying the very cool translation bit from the original television story feels repetitive more than a treat for fans. Giles Watling is fun as the Sycorax Chief but the Seventh Doctor never really has a chance to shine here since following the set-up and structure of Christmas Invasion puts the Doctor in the backseat of too much of this story.

All told, it doesn't really work at all, which sucks because at the very least our actors are competent as are the sound effects and music, they just aren't really in service of anything all that meaningful or memorable. The idea of a different setting and the Sycorax taking advantage of blood-based treatments could have been very cool and does have moments of intrigue to it, I just wished it was better used for something more original.

It's easy to underestimate The Sontaran Ordeal, and it definitely is held back in little ways, not the least of which that the Sontarans simply aren't a new monster - at best, this is the re-imagined version of the classic monster going up against a semi-classic Doctor, also bringing in Time War content, which arguably is the new monster, but again, we have the Eighth Doctor interacting with this story, so it remains dubious in how well it fits with the idea of this set.

Still, minor quibbles about this story's identity aside, it is a pretty entertaining affair on the whole. The Sontarans and Eighth Doctor is fun, and I love the idea of this world being victim to the Time War. We heard a lot about stuff like this in passing from the new series, that many worlds and peoples suffered under the Time War and even the fact that Sontarans were largely excluded from the conflict, and it all leads to a very natural story following the consequences of all this. I had a lot of fun with this story but yeah, it's pretty one and done (and also is worth noting it took a couple of tries for me to get through it). Still, worth listening to, at least once. The stuff with Sarana was pretty good at putting a face to the suffering caused by the Time War, which I think was really well conveyed through the special effects at the start of this audio. That was very compelling stuff, even if I think aspects of it could have been better explored here.

I was thoroughly impressed by Frontier in Space, a pleasant surprise after barely sitting through the vaguely similar Colony in Space. This was a lot of fun with a bunch of memorable characters and set pieces. What really stands out about Frontier to me is that each episode feels like its own thing. There's one where the doctor is stuck in a prison on the moon, another on a cargo ship, another on Draconia - they all feel really distinct and helped keep the serial interesting to me. I also like the characters, especially on the Draconian side as they felt like well-developed individuals to me (and even the humans weren't too bad).  The dynamic of Jo and the Doctor getting stuck between these two competing forces worked well for me too. The fun doesn't change when the Master shows up, and Delgado's final appearance before he tragically died makes this story special in its own little way.

Some of the Draconian costumes were a little sweaty but looked good, as did most of the sets. The Daleks feel a little unnecessary given they are about to get their own story, but I guess we are leading into that a bit. Little choices like that hold back an otherwise near-perfect experience, but overall I had a great time and would absolutely recommend this one.

Definitely the weakest episode of Class I've encountered so far, and by a pretty wide margin, and even then, it's not that bad.  I just haven't connected to April's character like I have the other main characters, and the whole story with Corakinus and the shadow aliens just wasn't that compelling to me.  It seems like all the other main characters have a specific role and something that had me hooked with the first few episodes, and April is kind of coming across as the odd one out for me.  She's not bad, but it isn't quite the same level of engaging as the others.  The whole alien flower side story also didn't offer much, in my opinion, either.

Though there are still an absurd amount of Fifth Doctor stories I have yet to encounter, so this statement is far from definitive, this is to date my favourite Fifth Doctor story. It reminds me a lot of the Chimes of Midnight in that both do horror really, really well. This sort of thing is subjective but for me, my favourite type of spooky is done through atmosphere and tension, which I think Iterations of I pulls off expertly. There's a foreboding sense to the whole setting with a creepy island where someone died just after a house was built there and a cult has mysteriously disappeared. That, coupled with Nyssa suddenly and inconspicuously repeating the word "I" leaves you feeling like something is just plain wrong. You want the Doctor and his companions to escape but the TARDIS falls off a cliff so they can't. It's plot convenient but adds to the sense something is very wrong with this island. You know they are in danger, even if the danger isn't all that obvious or present. It's so good.

Then they also get into some really interesting notions of numerology and math. As a fan of such things, this audio was practically tailor-made for me and I just love Iterations of I because of it. I recognize that these particulars aren't going to appeal to everyone, but as someone already familiar with the strange notion of i as an imaginary integer, I was just hooked the second they started getting into such concepts. The Doctor talking about how numbers are sort of imaginary concepts rather than concrete things is not only true but fascinating, and to me is a great little bit of science fiction at its best. It makes the monster and this story wonderfully unique and a real gem of a Doctor Who experience.

All the characters are pretty great too. Our TARDIS crew has a lot of solid scenes, even if there is slightly less for Tegan to do compared to Adric and Nyssa. They run into a group investigating the island and each character adds a little something to the story while also giving us a potential body count to show what could happen to our main characters. Meanwhile, we listen to recordings of someone named Imogen who was investigating these numbers before she disappeared. Her recordings add a lot of suspense and build up on the growing sense of dread and doom that permeates much of the audio. There's something interesting going on with Adric, too. I guess we are setting this character up for Earthshock a bit, which works pretty well here in a tragic way. You can see how a story like this might put him in the head space he was in for that television story nicely. You can definitely tell Waterhouse is much older at this point in making this recording but it hardly matters and he, along with the rest of the cast, all do a great job.

Sure, the plot kind of gets hand waved away at the end and little things do blemish the script slightly - but the positives of the audio to me vastly outweigh the negatives to the point I don't really feel they really hold Iterations of I back. The ending might be a little rushed, sure, but it's interesting, positing a whole little world of beings - some of which are malicious, and others far less so. I heartily recommend this one. It might not be for every one but if these sorts of concepts interest you or if one wants a good story this is a great experience overall.

I wish I could say I enjoyed this one more. I deliberately sought it out to learn a bit more about Nyssa and while technically it did help with that, I feel we get bogged down too much in Trakan politics. I think that's a shame because on paper there's a lot to like about this outing - the basic premise of Nyssa being sick and this being the culmination of her psychic stuff could have been compelling on its own, just like the idea of visiting an ancient Trakan. Seeing an alien world and its culture and how that might change over many, many years is a cool idea.

Unfortunately, things kind of fall on their face pretty quickly as it devolves into a real villain-of-the-month kind of story and only ever barely recover. Kwundaar's actor and Davison aren't bad, but they and others get a little hammy in a way I don't feel adds to the story. Still, it has its moments. For whatever reason I found part three pretty compelling and I did enjoy some dialogue with the Doctor throughout. I wish Nyssa's perspective on things was explored a little more as it sort of feels downplayed near the end. Still, I did enjoy the idea of gods and other powerful entities being unleashed following this confrontation with Kwundaar. That's good and clean bait for future stories I can appreciate.

Colditz is a lot of fun and has a lot of interesting facets to it. David Tennant as Kurtz is memorable and he really conveys this sense of being an unhinged lunatic. It's hard to not to hear the Tenth Doctor in his performance but I think it's just because we're so familiar with him as a performer, because I think if anything he elevates the role past the more limited secondary villain content that was in the script. Ace is outstanding in this story, showing her uniqueness as a companion by being a consistent cog in the gear of the Third Reich. Sophie Aldred is so good here. The setting is well done and feels like, in spite of being a dark period, it is done justice.

I only have a couple of critiques. First, though a lot of people seem to like Klein, I found her a bit off-putting. I didn't quite enjoy her performance and found her storyline interesting but the execution ever so slightly lacking - not quite living up to her potential. Still, it was enough to leave me curious about the future of her character and I look forward to hearing those audios, too. And the Seventh Doctor, while a delight, was a little hard to understand around the music and effects. I had trouble hearing him a few times and even a couple other characters which kind of stinks because otherwise Colditz is fantastic, full of great ideas, and absolutely worth any Who fan's time. The effects and music are good too, they just can't ever get in the way of the dialogue during a listening experience.

Likely (and easily) my favourite episode of Series One. Captain Jack Harkness is an effective use of Jack's character and age, a good story with a compelling sense of urgency and action to it, and a fun time travel story. It definitely thinks like this and a couple of the other stronger first series episodes make a better case for Torchwood than anything in the first two thirds of the season. Even Tosh gets to shine here, in my opinion for the first in the show, a feat that would sadly be replicated very few times in Torchwood TV.

I love the production design and effort put in taking us to 1941. Given the limited budget, I think they did an exceptional job at this. A really good episode that might be my favourite of Torchwood pre-Children of Earth. I also think it works as a good companion to Out of Time, taking us from Torchwood receiving time travellers to them journeying through time. The stuff between Owen and Ianto was a little overplayed but it still worked in heightening the sense of urgency to Captain Jack Harkness as an episode. All told, it remains an impressive episode that definitely stands out a bit in memory.

Perfect Present is about as outstanding of a Christmas story as I have seen for Doctor Who. It's short and simple in the best way possible, with the Doctor and Romana exchanging gifts. That's it, that's all they do in the TARDIS together. They give each other Time Lord gifts which are creative and full of interesting details - so alien and different from what a normal gift between humans looks like. Then they hug, and my heart warms. It's so lovely. As powerful as Never Seen Cairo, but without that story's sense of tragedy, Perfect Present is nothing but sincere and life-affirming. I am so impressed with Ian Potter's work here, even if there is only so much "story" to Perfect Present.

I found this a pleasant enough listen. Maybe I can't quite muster up the same level of glowing reviews I've seen afforded to Letting Go, but it wasn't terrible either. I just didn't take away much from it as I expected I would have. I really like the idea of the Doctor and Charly visiting the family of someone who died saving them, but the whole Charley being in love with the Doctor thing definitely worked a lot less, in my opinion. It really feels like something that should have existed in a more concrete way in the main range as opposed to a side project like this, so I just think of this audio as kind of weird more than anything.  Still, to its credit, it stands out quite a bit from the rest of the Short Trips volume and was hardly terrible.

Perhaps my lack of warmth to this has to do with the fact that I feel by now Big Finish has done a few Short Trips like this and I like the others of this more sombre tone, like The World Tree or The Galois Group a little better.

I had a good time with the Wormery, having gone into the audio without knowing much about the story itself. This wound up being an early Iris Wildthyme story for me, and I'm glad it was so. Katy Manning does a good job and she is pretty funny, even if some of her lines are a little cringey. It's not the most remarkable audio in the world, but I found it entertaining and nicely paced out in such a way it was easy to follow and enjoy. I wish they had done more with the setting. The bar and the loungey feeling of the first half pretty quickly gives way to a more standard Doctor Who style adventure. I do like how Baker's Doctor was still coming to grips over his trial, though, and he bounced off of Manning well as a partner when they were in scenes together. Not much more to say for this one, other than that it starts out so solid only to gradually descend into a bit of a chore to get through. Colin Baker is just so reliable as the Doctor in these Big Finish audios.

I didn't seem to take to this one as much as others, but I still very much enjoyed it and had a bit of fun along the way. It's certainly the best Doctor Who pirate story I've stumbled upon and has some good moments here and there. I do love the creativity and boldness of this one, though, and hardly hated my time listening. I'm just not sure it was quite my cup of tea. I do enjoy the sixth doctor here and it really sold me on him in the early days, so I will always appreciate that about Doctor Who and the Pirates.

There's certainly some entertaining aspects to The Empire Man, and definitely parts I like of this audio. Because we are essentially getting three different stories, it does wax and wane in quality a bit across the different parts of the story. I found, for example, Castingham a bit more engaging than the parts with the Prime Minister or the Queen. Still, it was entertaining enough. A fun combination of Christmas and horror, and a new potential direction for the Torchwood series I think offers a lot of potential. That side of this makes the story most interesting and I'm definitely interested in seeing more of this side of Torchwood, so I credit the audio with leaving me feeling that way, but it is an otherwise limited audio in terms of how much I enjoyed it, for sure. Not sure it is worth the listed price though. Definitely one of those audios one would want to get in a bundle or on sale, to be sure. Also, the effects and music sometimes were great in establishing the feel of the audio, but other times felt very over the top, to the point of nearly being distracting.

Torchwood's big first series finale, I definitely appreciate it a little more in idea than execution. I love the ties to the Beast from the Satan Pit and Impossible Planet. It feels much closer to what I sort of expected going into Torchwood as a spin-off of Doctor Who, and it is something I feel the television series very rarely achieved.

So I have a bit of a soft spot for End of Days, even if it is a little uneven and filled with over-the-top drama and acting. It's *enough* fun - just enough to be an easy watch, easy to get through, and put at least a decent bow on the very inconsistent first season of Torchwood. I also like how this is a direct consequence of the previous episode. It feels good to have our heroes not able to resolve the last problem without their being consequences of a larger villainous plan going on, that stuff and the appearance of Bilis is pretty interesting. On the other hand, Owen's troubles and the stuff with Rhys feels way overplayed and drags this story down a bit. Still, it is at least worth watching and has some cool ideas.

I can see why Carnival of Monsters has its fans, but I found it more tolerable than anything astounding. The effects are a little dated compared to other episodes of this era, and Vorg's costume is just ridiculous to me. I enjoyed the story and mystery around the SS Bernice, and it is always fun to just have the Third Doctor and Jo in any old adventure. Yet, the other side of this story with the Minorians and Vorg far less fun and endearing. Still the idea and dynamics around the Doctor and Jo being shrunken down in this machine were interesting, there are solid moments of callbacks to other monsters that I think shows good resourcefulness from the producers, and it is an easy enough story to get through. It's not bad, it was hardly a chore to watch, and I definitely think it manages to use its unique plot and setting effectively in a way that makes it very memorable and stick out a bit among Third Doctor stories in a positive way.

It also is a nice follow-up to the Three Doctors, paying off this idea that Jo and the Doctor no longer have to be Earthbound pretty well, and setting up a new series of stories a lot more free in their potential going forward. It wouldn't always pay off and there is a bit of a delay on the TARDIS being used effectively again, at least not fully in my opinion, but Carnival of Monsters felt like a good start and had me excited for the rest of the Third Doctor era.

The Mutants reminds me a lot of Colony in Space. Both are very dry, boring stories that should be more exciting as we have the Third Doctor finally able to leave Earth. This serial just doesn't work for me, between the lame-looking sets and costumes and the even goofier story, I just did not get much out of these episodes. Even the Doctor and Jo just don't get any of their usual fun character moments here. It's just a sweaty, messy chapter in Doctor Who history I'd rather not revisit any time soon.

The TV movie, to me, finds itself in a fascinating place in the fandom.

I feel like up until watching the film, I had only really known it by a somewhat infamous reputation. People get so up in arms over the half-human thing they tend to downplay the movie's strengths, so I was pretty surprised to find the movie not that bad of an experience.

Paul McGann and Eric Roberts are both excellent as the Doctor and Master respectively. Their success in Big Finish I think nicely reflects that the two were well cast, even if maybe they weren't well used. While the Master himself was done well, his alien snake CGI effects do not hold up to the effects of time. There's a lot of stuff in the movie like that, much of which feels predictive of the New Who series (like romantic tension between Doctor and Companion along with a new TARDIS desktop theme) - yet in equal part just as dated.

The Doctor losing his memories and the whole business around his potential humanity are real problems. It would be one thing if these were random bits of the movie but rather they are very integral to the plot and hard to ignore. It's not that something like this couldn't work, it is that it isn't used for any benefit to the story. Nothing is gained by the Doctor being partially human in this story, or, as far as I know, any other, so the whole idea is kind of pointless. This twist also doesn't fit with what we know of the Doctor nor what I find most appealing about the character.

It is very cool how they brought back McCoy, but I think it derails the story in a way that is prohibitive to new fans and not a great idea for a new potential era of Doctor Who. It probably would have been fine on its own, but coupled with the other weird decisions I mentioned in the last paragraph make this a very meandering, unfocused story.

It's neat seeing a more "Americanized" production but I definitely think that works as a one-off curiosity more than a long-term choice for a TV series as was planned as a possibility with the movie. In some ways, I am glad things worked out the way they did, but I do feel remorseful this is all we got of a gorgeous TARDIS set with a lot of potential to it and some real value in the production that had been lacking in the 1980s. So, yeah, all things considered, the movie is definitely worth watching at least once for Doctor Who fans and yeah, I didn't have a bad time with it.

I was largely impressed by The Wrath of the Iceni. I think it was a refreshing take on a historical stories. Whether Boudica deserves the treatment any more than any number of historical figures covered in past Doctor Who stories is irrelevant to me - it's more of the thoughtful take on the history itself and the futility of warfare against the heartbreaking effects of colonialism really works in this audio's favour. It's an interesting companion to the short story Good Queen, Bad Queen, I Queen, You Queen - and they still kind of work together in an intriguing way, at least in my opinion.

I really like the writing around this audio. It feels thoughtful and pronounced in its execution and really left an impression on me. The only thing I found a little underwhelming, surprisingly, was Tom Baker, who feels relegated to largely just shouting Leela's name over and over again over some battle sound effects (however impressive those effects may have been). All told this was fun and quite impressive even if it wasn't perfect.

I had a pretty good time with The Enemy Beyond. For better or worse, this wound up being my first taste of The Eleven. I think it largely worked but only because I was already at least familiar with the character. Still, I think there was good build-up here and the Eleven is a sinister presence. Kate Stewart was well used here and I love the scene where she deduces she is facing a Time Lord and talks about her experiences with them.

It's good stuff and outside of some pretty straightforward SFX/music, I had a good time with The Enemy Beyond and would recommend it. A good start to the Nemesis range and if it is indeed focused on The Eleven as it seems to be, I am here for it.

Yeah, the first true audio of UNIT was pretty disappointing in my eyes. I did appreciate the time and attention put into introducing us to the new UNIT crew, and it is very clear they are giving this a feeling of passing the torch from the Brigadier to these new characters. That makes sense, even if it isn't the most exciting use of the Brigadier.

The story itself could be interesting as experiments by two men named Meade and Kelly begin causing havok through a number of strange phenomenon. The audio does a good job showcasing it here and there, but also has references to events I had trouble picturing, like an oil tanker appearing in a retirement home and exploding. It's just weird, and the special effects are barely able to live up to such shenanigans. Worse still, I found the music very dry and repetitive, even if it was clearly evoking the Third Doctor era.

Still, I enjoyed the new UNIT characters enough. It really feels like someone missing without that outsider rebel role that usually the Doctor fills. The political officer Emily Chaudhry is pretty good as she doesn't really fit in with the normal sense of rank and file - willing to talk back to her new superior officer - but this only goes so far in knocking off this persistent feeling I have that this is such a pro-authoritarianism show compared to the usual Doctor Who content, even back when the Doctor was firmly working with UNIT, that it is hard to ignore that side of things. Our characters at one point shoot in the air to disperse a crowd and are pretty thoroughly militarized. They aren't bad characters, but not really the type I'd be eager to permanently follow, either.

While the Brigadier is always a treat, he doesn't have a lot to do here. I also found the dialogue and character work around Kelly and Meade really lacking. Some of their scenes were just so painful to get through. All told, while it wasn't a terrible experience, it was hardly great either. I can see why this take of the UNIT series didn't really have much longevity besides this initial series as best as I can tell, though these characters wouldn't exactly be unwelcome in future stories and cameos, either. They have moments to them, like at the very end when Dalton first starts reading UNIT files and learns about the events of Inferno and The Web of Fear. That was really cool and a great starting point for his character.

I was initially a little more optimistic about this series with The Coup, but after listening to Time Heals I'm a lot less enthusiastic. I will have to see how I feel about the rest of the series as this is entirely new territory for me.

This was pretty good, but a little disappointing. Liz Shaw definitely feels severely underused (or maybe even just misused) from her time in the show. So it feels right to revisit her character for the Companion Chronicles. It's also cool because this is a Cyberman story with the Third Doctor.

I also didn't hate the structure of this plot, with sinister overtones around the dentist feeling very appropriate and taking advantage of the vulnerability inherent to such a situation. It seems creepy to me that a person could be infected that way and one could really play it up once Liz was infected for some real horror. Sadly, the story just doesn't quite feel like The Blue Tooth lives up to all these exciting aspects to it. The whole thing felt a little flat to me.

Caroline John did a decent job bringing the Third Doctor to life, though. It is always nice to hear her come back. The cybermats fit really well into the Third Doctor era, which is cool too. Otherwise though, it feels like it doesn't quite live up to what we were going for. There's no effort to really give any sense of closure to Liz Shaw's character and there's a certain lack of finality to it all, and I'm not a huge fan of how we end things as it is told through exposition, leading to a Chibnall-style smattering of our main character's agency.

On the whole, The Blue Tooth was fun but could have been a lot better.

I think The Curse of Peladon is a spectacular outing for the Doctor and exactly the sort of thing I was hoping for after the Doctor was no longer stranded on Earth in then contemporary times. It's full of aliens but also continuity - using the Ice Warriors in a then new and creative way to show a great side to the aliens that would persist in the years to come, while also introducing us to important new characters like Alpha Centauri and even the setting of Peladon itself.

I really like the story and it felt very Doctor Who to me. More about politics and diplomacy than adventure or action. It was great, and better yet I never really found myself bored or at a loss for something to enjoy. The Curse of Peladon is full of cool effect and it feels like they were throwing every trick in the filmmaker's tool kit available to them at the time - lots of green screen, miniatures, and prosthetic are used here to remarkable effect. Sure, not all of it looks totally amazing and the music can be a bit generic, but the serial is full of a feeling of effort to it that I very much appreciate overall.

I will say, The Curse of Peladon does lack a lot for Jo's character to do, and it feels like she doesn't get any of the character moments I found other Third Doctor stories would ensure she got in lesser serials. It's a pretty clear weakness to me of an otherwise pretty outstanding piece of Doctor Who fiction. This is definitely one of the more impressive Third Doctor stories I've encountered to date and a clear candidate for a personal favourite of mine, right up there with stuff like The Sea Devils or Kaleidoscope.

Perfect Present is a lovely story exploring the idea of a "Lost Companion" haunting a house during Christmas. It is a pretty great Seventh Doctor short with some real sincerity and thoughtfulness. Definitely one of the stand-outs among the stronger stories in the uneven first half that is Christmas Treasury.

Another wonderful tale featuring Fourth Doctor, Romana and K9. The Doctor goes to get an autograph from a bunch of celebrities doing a Christmas recording, only to find a refuge from space.

This leads to an amusing series of confrontations where more and more people from different time periods show up to try and either save or kill the refuge. It's the kind of gag I've seen in American Dad and Rick and Morty, but it makes sense in a show like Doctor Who with so much time travel that there would be a situation like this happening.

In the end, the Doctor solves things in a way that was fun. It's all very light, perhaps too much so. The complete lack of any named celebrity in the real world, along with the way that certain other details are sort of just brushed aside, hold back The Clanging Chimes of Doom, but only by a bit. I do also like how it forms a loose trilogy with The Little Things and Present Tense, with little references across all three short stories in the Christmas Treasury.

Our second UNIT Christmas Party in the Treasury, this is a really fun romp. Though everyone came together the year before for a fun party, this time nobody is quite feeling the spirits, and the Doctor and Brigadier find themselves at odds with each other. Meanwhile, a VIP is coming to visit UNIT.

The twist to all this I could see coming as it was being revealed, but it is still good fun. The Doctor has a really touching moment with the VIP and it reminds me of where these characters were and their future together. I don't want to get into spoilers too much, although my recommendations will probably give it away, but it is nice, solid character work we don't often get with the characters in question. It makes sense that Terrance Dicks wrote this as it has a certain sense of authority to it - where the author clearly has a sense of all things Doctor Who.

The Time Monster is a bit of a strange one. I love some of the ideas behind this serial and even some of the effects and make-up are pretty impressive, and some of the sets and costumes look pretty good. I don't even hate the new if very short-lived TARDIS interior. At least compared to what we had before, it works a lot better with colour.

Other camera tricks and effects feel a lot weaker and more amateurish; cheap even by the standards of this time period. It is very odd to me that we introduce and dispose of Atlantis so quickly, and quite a bit of a waste in hindsight. This is not my favourite Third Doctor story, but it definitely holds some weight relative to other lower-ranked serials like Colony in Space or The Mutants. The Master, Doctor, and even Yates all have some fun moments in this story, but a lot of awkward material to navigate through, too. I don't like how this story treats Jo much, either. The ending also felt incredibly abrupt, out of nowhere, and left me with a disappointing feeling on the whole, even if I can definitely recognize the spots of The Time Monster that is really interesting.

Oxygen has a lot of great ideas and elements that make for solid science fiction.  The premise is simple enough but feels all too plausible in a fundamentally capitalist space-faring society.  The story gets a little weak and self-indulgent in a way only Moffat can be at the end, with the Doctor almost brushing aside capitalism with a few simple moves and suddenly going blind.  That stuff feels a little forced and silly in an otherwise tight and menacing experience.  Either way, in spite of some faults this was a solid experience and a great example of Doctor Who using politics pretty well - Capaldi gets to be a real punk-rock badass in this story and Bill really goes through it here.

This was pretty solid, overall. It was my first taste of Stephen Noonan as the First Doctor. It was pretty good - a little off-putting at first, but after a while, I really got into it. It didn't really feel like a good impression to me, but it did achieve the spirit of William Hartnell's original performance. Plus, it really blended nicely with Lauren Cornelius' Dodo. Dodo, who didn't really have much of a presence in the original show, is always welcome in Big Finish since it makes her more of a character and gives said character the opportunity to be in better stories.

The story itself is decent. There's this whole evacuated town after a ship tried to track down the TARDIS. Set in a post-war England with a military man recovering from PTSD, there's a lot to like about the audio and it felt like a cozy listen even with some of the dark themes about war and justice. What's a little weaker is the villain, who kind of comes across as a little cartoonish even if Sanderson's motivations aren't entirely evil. Still, The Incherton Incident isn't a bad listen and has some solid ideas to it that I feel, overall, make it worth a listen if you can get it for a good price.

I definitely think Flip-Flop is a little underrated but I do understand its limitations.

The design and clever use of time travel is a major highlight of the audio, to the extent I would consider this a pretty much must-listen for Doctor Who fans. The cool structure of the audio is really novel even among a long-running franchise with lots of crazy time travel, non-linear stories. It reminded me of the Big Bang in a good way, or a much, much better version of Ravagers. This is among one of the better ones, even if the story itself doesn't have much of a point, per se. It's a bit of a paradox that doesn't really get much of a satisfying resolution. This world the Doctor and Mel visit is essentially facing two versions of doom, and no matter what they do, they are basically screwed.

That feels mostly on the Slithergee, who essentially weaponize playing victim against the humans in such a way they are able to decimate the world of Puxatornee no matter what happens. All this and more I found really clever. Mel also gets to really shine here.

Where the audio is limited is more around some of the other characters. Mitchell and especially President Bailey felt way more off in their writing, with Bailey's whole affair feeling very silly both times around. Stewart and Reed were also more annoying than anything else.

I also agree with PalindromeRose, who, by the way, is one of my favourite Doctor Who reviewers, where the story could at the very least be interpreted as having some pretty heavy right-wing themes to it. This is something I definitely noticed, and it even has that particular flavour of modern conservatism that feels deeply rooted in a macabre sense of cynicism I kind of despise, but, I don't know. I didn't feel it was part of the authorial intent and didn't particularly get the sense that this was supposed to have politics meant to be taken that seriously. The Slithergee felt menacing more than a political statement.

So, overall, an imperfect but kind of legendary audio. The Christmas connection was threadbare, though, to the point I'm not really sure why they bothered.

I quite enjoyed Fanfare for the Common Men. The whole concept is quite brilliant as not only does it make sense in the story that the Common Men would sound Beatles-adjacent, but not actually the expensive Beatles music. It worked really well and made this audio extremely pleasant and easy to listen to for the whole run. It makes this story very unique among Doctor Who stories and really stuck with me in a positive way.

The story does jump around a lot and the pacing is odd sometimes but it is a lot of fun. The voices behind Mark, James and Korky were a lot of fun. Lenny was a bit over-the-top as a villain and not overly serious as a character, but there was a sense of intimidation in the air as history was so clearly being rewritten. It felt like good stakes for the Doctor but separating him from Nyssa kind of led to some pointless time jumping in the story while not really doing either character many favours in the process.

Plot aside, this story had a really strong sense of setting to it I really liked. The music is a big part of that but even the sense of culture shift brought on by the Beatles missing from history was really well done. It had a lot of good details to it like the draft in the UK being still in effect, for example. As a 50th anniversary project, this works well too given the timing of Doctor Who's origins, coupled with a pretty clever reference to the pilot episode. All told I would absolutely recommend Fanfare for the Common Men. It wasn't for me, but feels like a great jumping on point for new listeners.

Sock Pig is a cute little Short Trip. It's nothing remarkable, but it knows what it is going for and is fun enough along the way because of it. Peter Davison does a good job of bringing the story to life a little bit but doesn't overly enhance the material either. It's just fine. Once you know what they're going for, that Sock Pig is just this Anima. this woman feels the need to protect, well, I get the instinct in her character and it carries the story to its end well enough, but that ending is pretty abrupt and not really all that satisfying, either.

The Colour of Terror may get overshadowed by the brilliance that is Red Darkness, but not only is it kind of an important foundation for that story anyways, I found this audio to be pretty brilliant, too.

The big thing here for me is characters. We get a small cast running around dealing with everything red turning evil in a thrift shop and neighbouring cafe, and each one of them feel quite realized and brought to life by this stellar cast. I got a sense about what each was about, and what their strengths and weaknesses were. The monsters were pretty fun, even if they don't feel totally original outside of their colour gimmick, but I did find the corrupted shopkeeper a little over the top.

Still, I had a fun time and would absolutely recommend this one, even if it isn't quite at Red Darkness levels. It's still a great feature of this audio set. I think the Ninth Doctor does well with these sorts of monster stories. He really helped carry this thing and Eccleston brings that extra bit of prestige I think a story like this needs to not come across as silly.

The Destination Wars is quite a bit of fun and something I would recommend. It's a good, clean story in how it executes a very early interaction between the Master and the Doctor. Ian and Barbara getting manipulated by the Master was quite a memorable moment. This was my first taste of this cast doing a Big Finish production, and they were pretty good overall, but I definitely didn't enjoy Jamie Glover as Ian as much as I do with Russels. Barbara and Susan don't sound all that great to me either and it can be distracting. David Bradley, however, is pretty spot on and it was delightful to hear him just being the First Doctor like this.

I don't care for Dreyfus' political views to say the least but he was entertaining as the Master here. All told, this audio is probably worth listening to for the novelty of it but it kind of piddles out story-wise after a while.

Yeah, I really just didn't get anything out of this particular short trip. It was overly simple and not very satisfying, feeling more like a sitcom than something out of the main line of Doctor Who content. Sarah Jane asking what trouble the Doctor has gotten into and the Fourth Doctor's offer of Jelly Belly is what I particularly have in mind. It's just as if we're playing the hits of the Fourth Doctor without giving a lot of thought to what made these characters charming. Lisa Bowerman's narration was comparatively weaker compared to her usual abilities.

The story itself is a bit forgettable as while a fun idea of the Doctor just sort of hanging around a security guard making observations and doing little things, I really didn't get any traction with the events and found myself thoroughly disengaged by this particular bit of content.

The Little Things definitely stuck with me more than these other Shorts I read in between family stuff during the holidays.

Featuring the Fourth Doctor, Romana, and K9, our heroes encounter a letter accidentally inserted into the TARDIS from before the events of An Unearthly Child. The rest of The Little Things is really about just finding a way to send the letter at an appropriate day and time so it arrives as intended.

Thematically, this fits with the idea of The Little Things - that something as small as a letter can make a big, big difference. Romana and the Doctor never learn the fate of the letter, but Paul Beardsley wisely shares with us what happens, and it really sits with me. Bittersweet and wholesome as hell, this was a proper Christmas story, even if it was a little clunky at times. This is one of my favourites of Short Trips 11, currently only topped by Never Seen Cairo.

Evergreen is an interesting read and a nice way to close out the Christmas Treasury on a mark of thoughtfulness and a sombre tone. It's an Eighth Doctor story from his hanging out on Earth phase, living with a woman named Connie.

Connie's perspective is interesting as she is ostracized by the superstitious community she lives in. This all comes to a head when a mysterious naked girl shows up in town one day, who disturbs Connie while intriguing the Doctor. It's a fair enough read, well written, and interesting enough. The backwards nature of the town makes them a bit frustrating (in a realistic way), but I like how the Doctor still encourages Connie to engage with her community since they do all share the same values, she is largely just a victim of tragedy and being treated unfairly. This is a story about grief, belonging, loneliness, and forgiveness, and it is impressive how Stephen Cole does all that in a short page count.

And with some short prose by Paul Cornell in an Epilogue, the Christmas Treasury comes to an end.

This is it for me (by and large) for Christmas reviews this year, which is a bit of a relief. I had fun with some of the Big Finish stuff and catching up on some of the holiday episodes, but it is nice to be done with the Christmas Treasury. Unlike Quality of Leadership, my first Short Trips book, the Treasury I found to be a lot less consistent and bit more of a chore to get through. It wasn't bad, in fact I really appreciated the more thoughtful stories like Last Christmas, The Little Things, and Present Tense, but there were a lot of stories that were just so pointless in my eyes, such as Spookasm, It's a Lovely Day Tomorrow, and A Yuletide Tale. Quality of Leadership, though the shorts varied in quality, comparatively didn't have stories quite so... disappointing as some of the stuff in the Treasury.

Still, there are some valuable holiday things to take out of this. Things like The Feast of Seven... Eight (and Nine) or Perfect Present feel almost unique in the larger franchise, so I am glad the anthology is out there and the better reviewed shorts are absolutely worth reading.

I was a little miffed to find the third UNIT Christmas Party switches us from the Third Doctor to the Fourth. The Fourth Doctor, while I understand his popularity, kind of dominates much of the Christmas Treasury. It felt right that the Third Doctor was given these UNIT Parties since he has little else in the Treasury, while the Fourth Doctor has many memorable stories already in Short Trips 11.

Still, it wasn't hard to enjoy Ships That Pass. An alien ship crashes into UNIT headquarters, and the Fourth Doctor must save Harry and Sarah Jane from being crushed by the resulting disaster. It's quite the shift from the past UNIT Parties, but it is all deliberate and leads to some good moments. My particular favourite is how Harry and Sarah shared stories of their worst Christmases to keep their minds occupied while trapped in a terrifying situation. Writer Karen Dunn does a good job overall.

A truly awful experience on the whole, I struggled to get through Colony in Space and can definitely see why it has a rough reputation.

This should be an exciting story as the Third Doctor gets his first foray off of Earth, and instead it is a bit of a mess. I found the story boring and we spend way too much time focused on a dirty, tired man wrapped in a blanket, who just seems like he doesn't want to be here - something I found relatable as I watched this slogfest.

Pertwee can be an excellent Doctor but I think handles the more physical stuff a lot better in his head than what we get on screen. This is definitely a serial that shows his more awkward side compared to what I like about him as a performer in this role. The TARDIS interior also definitely experiences a very rough transition to colour, to say the least.

And, once again, the Master shows up at last minute, really just a source of amusement at this point for this season where he appears every story. We then have some slightly interesting ideas about politics and colonialism come to a head, and the story just sort of ends after that. Jo doesn't really have much to do here, but than again, who does? It's a shame, but you can do a lot better for stories of this era and with these characters, so it is hard to express any enthusiasm for Colony in Space.

Adam is one of those stories that works really well but does rely on science fiction tropes pretty heavily. Reviewers from earlier have mentioned how Doctor Who has even covered this idea of an outsider messing with people's memories and getting everyone to think they've always been there, but the sticking point for me is that two other franchises have done this idea really well before and since. In the 90s, Star Trek: TNG called Conundrum, which explores this idea really well and frankly, better than Torchwood. Rick and Morty also took this idea to the extreme in their episode Total Rickall, which took this concept to the extreme and had a lot of fun with the idea using "memory parasites."

Torchwood has Adam, which isn't very original in its basic premise but does get creative in making it that particular brand of Torchwood tragic. It's not just sad events, but sad events that feel like they just pile on to our characters. Adam himself is pretty boring but they do have fun with his effect on the main cast like Tosh and Gwen. The big show-stopper is Jack, who has to compromise away his scant happy memories of his early family life. It underlies the tragedy of his immortality - the longer he goes, the more and more those early life memories (and other key parts of him) are likely to be compromised away.

All told I consider this episode largely impressive and well done. A good example of Series Two of Torchwood having a stronger repertoire of episodes, and fewer (if any) outright abominations. Also a good episode for carrying the larger story arc of this series, building out hints of Gray and what might be coming quite nicely.

I can't say Meat is a stand-out favourite of mine, but it is characteristic of Series 2 for Torchwood being a bit more dynamic in the storytelling compared to the more static nature of Series 1. Rhys knowing about Torchwood is in my opinion the first true shift of status quo for the show and it feels pleasant. The show is definitely at its best when it is swinging for the fences or being a bit more experimental. Unfortunately, Meat to me is only barely qualifying as that. The character stuff and the novelty of the episode to me wears pretty thin and we end up with more typical sci-fi content as the episode goes on that I largely started checking out of. It's not bad, just fine. Barely acceptable in its ambition and budgeted special effects, I view it as more watchable and average than anything special.

Last Man Standing, or whatever it wants to be called, reminds me a lot of Out of Time, but with slightly more focus. I'm not sure that extra focus on Tosh and her temporary love interest really pays off here, even though it should. Tosh *absolutely* would benefit from more character development at this point in the series, but I find this episode really results in something very, very generic.

The World War One soldier and his situation does stand out a little bit, but otherwise this felt like boring romantic nonsense that doesn't really go anywhere, but sure gave the production a lot of excuses to just really stretch everything out here. Ultimatley, I'm not a fan, but it does fit in with the larger trend against Series One, which had its moments but also some truly awful content to it, Series Two also has its moments of strength but otherwise just fields a lot of boring content. Say what you will about Series One, but I rarely went into episodes not remembering anything about them, for better or worse. For Series Two, it's practically the norm that I don't remember anything about these episodes that aren't part of the larger narrative arc and have to revisit it all over again.

I think I like the idea of Sleeper far more than the execution. It's a neat enough idea that could have been used to make something really original, but instead I don't feel like our plot was fully fleshed out.

Instead the effects feel a bit corny with the arm thing and bad CGI morphing effects. The choice to focus on one woman in particular is okay in and of itself but it winds up taking a lot of tension out of Sleeper, rather than giving us a great new perspective or something different from other content like Random Shoes. Finally, the episode's ending, while somewhat well done, felt a little unsatisfying and forgettable to me. So it's not a terrible episode - miles above Torchwood's worst, it also doesn't feel exceptional to me. Which is a shame, because I feel it really could have been something more substantial.

I've never really connected to Torchwood much outside of Children of Earth.

This show had a lot of promise to be something distinct from Doctor Who - darker, more sinister, and where main characters could very well suddenly die.

Unfortunately, it feels like the series very rarely lived up to that premise. Reset does, kind of, but relies on sci-fi tropes pretty heavily to do that. I had a lot of excitement to Martha's arrival and at first her presence is very much welcome, but after a while, the episode just kind of fizzles out into not much of anything, at least in my opinion. It's perfectly fine and stands out a bit in Torchwood history, but even then, I don't really see myself revisiting Reset or thinking about it much at all post-viewing.

I think it is telling that if you don't like, care about, or know about Martha, you aren't likely to enjoy this story. I was happy to see here and that goes a long way to making this episode something worthwhile, but otherwise I find it extremely disposable, even though, given the story, it should have more significance than it does. Still, that ending did mark a beginning for a major shift in the direction of things going forward in this series of Torchwood episodes, and I do applaud the ambition of killing off so much of the main cast during Series 2. A lot of that has its most impact here with Owen's death, which is impressive.

I checked this comic out for the introduction of Frobisher and I can't say I was disappointed.

The artwork really stands out thanks to the creativity of out titular Shape-Shifter's many forms. His introduction is handled well and there are some fun moments with the Doctor. However, I don't really understand why Frobisher made a deal with the Doctor to begin with. His motivations aren't really explained here for why he wants to join the Doctor or split some bounty money with him when the alien could just have kept it for himself.

Still, you have to give credit to this comic for introducing Frobisher who would go on to be one of the more stand-out companions in Who history. I also liked how this, a Marvel comic, made fun of Disney and copyright law. In retrospect, that is a very ironic little moment.

I didn't enjoy The Daemons as much as others seem to have. On the one hand, there is some fun storytelling to this serial and good world-building in regards to how Doctor Who does and would handle the supernatural (broadly speaking at least) going forward. The Master gets to play cult leader and has some pretty fun moments. The Doctor, Yates, and Jo all get plenty of fun scenes together and Yates in particular feels like a very welcome presence in growing the sense of there being a staff to UNIT.

On the other hand, I hate some of the effects in this serial. Even by Third Doctor era standards, some of these cheesy green screen shots and awful make-up for the Azal. Azal's defeat isn't terribly exciting or impressive, either, just kind of noisy.

What I do like are the quirky characters like Bert the Landlord and Miss Hawthorne, who are both pretty fun, and what I love even more is the actual ending to the Daemons, where everyone dances around the maypole while the Brigadier goes to the pub. That was really fun and cute, and a very nice way to cap off this "Master Season."

Inferno might have suffered from its reputation for me a bit. It comes highly recommended, widely considered one of the best Third Doctor stories of the original show run (if not the best Third Doctor story like this). Even before I had ever even heard of Time Scales, or checked out the Third Doctor's era for myself, I had heard of Inferno and how good it was. So I came into it with pretty high expectations, and enough rough knowledge of the story to be pretty excited about it.

Unfortunately, I don't think this is my personal favourite when it comes to the Third Doctor. There are quite a few serials out there I quite enjoyed more and felt were more tightly produced than Inferno, which is a little bloated at seven parts. For example, in Part 1, we get a pretty solid set-up of everything, get a sense of the stakes, our main characters, and the central drama unfolding. Then, Part 2 pretty much reiterates the whole thing again.

Inferno gets a little repetitive around these things and I can't tell you how sick I got of watching the Doctor wrassle with a Primord in the same outdoor industrial set. It's very tiring, but also important to remember that this story is doing a lot of novel things, is assuming you are watching it week-to-week, and is extremely ahead of its time in terms of ideas like alternate universes and travelling between them

That stuff with the alternate Earth is fantastic and by far the most memorable aspect of Inferno. Watching it all go so wrong on another world does wonders for the sense of urgency in the Doctor's actions. It's also really fun seeing everyone much more militaristic and fashy. The Brigadier is great and Nicholas Courtney is clearly having a blast with this part. Liz Shaw on the other hand, once again not only feels wasted but is a lot more awkward around this material. I also found some of the scientists a little underwhelming, and Petra's actor was a little awkward with the dual roles as well, at least in my opinion.

Still, there is some very interesting underlying politics that makes Inferno quite compelling. Doctor Who has always explored these ideas of fascism throughout its history and as early as the first appearance of the Daleks. To see it all so clearly expressed in something like Inferno makes it feel very essential to this era and the general history of the franchise.

I also was not a fan of some of the special effects. With bad green screen, goofy camera effects to indicate switching dimensions, and silly looking make-up in our monsters, I just really got taken out of this story time and time again. This was especially true with the big ending and monster transformation.

Still, in spite of my criticisms, I am really only defending a relatively low score. It should speak very highly of Inferno that I'm rating it fairly well and feel like this is a scathing criticism. It's not. I just found it a more flawed and average story than I would have expected. I certainly have found stuff like Spearhead from Space, Terror of the Autons, and The Sea Devils more fun, but they are also less thoughtful than Inferno. This serial definitely had cool ideas and I absolutely would recommend it. In spite of its limitations it is a great expression of the Third Doctor era in a lot of ways, and the general politics of Doctor Who.

The Ambassadors of Death was a very strange serial to me. I had a decent time of it, reminding me of a combination of the Silence of the Library monsters and a bit of the tone taken with the Impossible Astronaut two-parter, both from the modern age.

This story, however, meanders a lot more in comparison to the New Who stories. I found it very watchable and easy to get through, but not to much purpose. The story is pretty standard and while I found there was a lot of creativity in the production early on (including some fun with Bessie and the astronauts looking pretty creepy) that sort of fizzled out after a while as we got more and more confined to a handful of contained sets.

One thing I do admire about Ambassadors of Death is how they take advantage of the then current status quo of Doctor Who. With the Third Doctor confined to Earth, him going up to space does actually become a big deal. It's a good use of the situation that helps salvage this story and let it take on a somewhat unique tone. But the other characters are just kind of there. It is nice Liz Shaw gets to be a scientist a bit more here, but her character really just winds up being a hostage and making confused/grumpy/annoyed faces. The others aren't much better, although the Brigadier stands out as always. Even the Doctor is a bit flat here, in my opinion.

All told, I didn't have a bad time with this serial, but am not left overly eager to revisit this one any time soon, either.

I had a decent enough time with The Space Museum. It's hardly exceptional - while I find it a pretty fun set-up and an interesting exploration of time travel ideas the series would be exploring for a very long time, and I found the setting fun, too, it does lose steam after a bit. I definitely find part one is a great start while the rest largely flounders and struggles to live up to that, but nothing about the rest of the parts are entirely objectionable, either.

Yeah, this isn't a particularly good comic. Featuring the First Doctor and his grandchildren Gillian and John (always an amusing facet of the franchise), the earliest comic book TARDIS crew encounters some robots called Gyros that are keeping some sick people away from food. They spend most of the comic investigating what the robots are doing with said food, only to find it is a sort of quarantine situation. The Gyros capture Gillian and so the Doctor and John go to some sort of volcanic region where they rescue her. There really isn't a lot compelling to the story, even though it feels as though it could have been an early take on pandemics and how an advanced race might get stuck in a situation where they have to control it, like in the Girl Who Waited but done in the style of the Daleks. Instead it feels more like Galaxy 4 - interesting ideas and some creative visuals, but failing to realize its potential.

I don't think these TV comics were equipped for that sort of thing though. These stories are told two pages at a time, so the pacing is fragmented as the story basically has to constantly reset itself across an already short 8 pages total. That probably explains why these stories aren't rated all that well.

I wanted to check out this Titan comic to get a bit more of a sense out of the Celestial Toymaker, knowing he's going to be a bit of a thing this year, by all accounts. This story didn't disappoint in that the Toymaker is featured quite well, and the whole comic is heavily enhanced by the gorgeous artwork of Mario Laclaustra and vivid colouring of Carlos Cabrera. They do an excellent job at really giving this comic energy and life. Laclaustra in particular crafts a beautiful comic full of really creative pages, panels, and ideas. I suppose some of those ideas have to come from writers George Mann and Cavan Scott, who have a pretty good story at hand, but also some awful dialogue.

The dialogue of 12 and Clara in particular is so bad is almost ruins the entire experience.

I wish it could have been better, since the art is so good, and the idea of this being a story relatively early in the Toymaker's history, but relatively late in a character like Clara (or really, just the Doctor compared to his first incarnation) - that was interesting, and could have been great, but ultimately feels severely underplayed. I had a lot more fun with the other Relative Dimensions. Oddly enough, even though both projects are very different, they have quite a few similarities, as both stories are Christmas themed and even feature Susan in some capacity. It's all really cool. I wish they did more with these ideas.

I had actually been recommended Paradise Towers rather warmly by a few that disagree with the more common sentiment around these episodes, and I have to say, after finally seeing these myself after putting it off for some time, yeah, this was just alright. I can see how it is a bit polarizing in the ratings and the story definitely stretches credulity and even the patience of viewers, but I had fun with this for what it is.

This is a very goofy series of adventures, but I found the quirky cast really live up to the nature of the setting and was never really put off by anything. The effects weren't great but you can tell that people were having fun making this. It's interesting that JNT was apparently unhappy with Richard Briers' performance, but I would argue that it is a good example of the actor kind of understanding this material didn't work taken seriously. The cannibal ladies were a riot but they are never going to be a serious menace, so you might as well have fun with something like Paradise Towers and yeah, I think they more or less achieved just that.

I could have done without the girl gangs though, and little decisions in the production along with some pretty clear budget issues very much hold back what could have been McCoy's first great story. The monster was clearly tacked on and it is a shame because the story could have been more original and distinct without the rather underwhelming cleaners. You can definitely tell, especially with how they talk about things behind the scenes, that the crew was quickly adapting to the Seventh Doctor, which would lead to the greatness to come with this character; for that reason, I do struggle to fully fault Paradise Towers. It's one of those things worth watching at least once and it does have its moments. There's a clear and obvious sense of improvement over Time and the Rani.

I really enjoyed this one. I think it is great pay-off to the mysteries around what the Doctor was planning for Ace, even if it is strange for her to be a candidate for the Time Lord Academy. But Ace was always a strange companion, bizarre but firmly audacious about it in a charming way that only someone like Sophie Aldred can bring about. She is a treasure and I just love her in pretty much every story I've ever seen, and I think she really gets to shine here (all while Seven manipulates like crazy). Even her forgiving the Doctor for all this makes sense to me. An average companion would certainly (and perhaps rightfully) be leaving in a story like this (or not long after). Nothing about Ace is average though, and never has been, so her forgiveness feels right, especially considering how thoroughly aware she has been shown to be about the Doctor's manipulations. That and the stuff with the Ice Warriors kept me plenty entertained from start to finish, with excellent music and acting I really appreciated all around. Aldred and Slyvestor McCoy are always so good, but I found Beth Chalmers slow transformation into an Ice Warrior a lot of fun, too. A very enjoyable audio I found quite satisfying. It really feels like it brings a sort of closure to a lot of the dangling elements of late-era Classic Doctor Who and feels very much in the spirit of that content. So I can see it not being for everyone as there were pretty big plans with the Cartmel Masterplan that would have shaken the identity of Doctor Who up quite a bit, but this Lost Story, in my eye, works well in giving us a taste of that without going too far. I really liked this one and would recommend it to any fan of the McCoy era, though, one's mileage may vary quite a bit as it is clear from these other reviews this one is a bit polarizing.