The Devil's Chord isn't perfect.  It is practically begging to have writes to Beatles music production simply could never reasonably afford.  It's story is pretty simple and straightforward, perhaps to a fault.  And I do have to admit the last song at the end wasn't exactly impressive.

Yet I've always been quite deferential to this episode.  I had fun from pretty much start to finish.  Maestro was the most fun with a villain I've had in Doctor Who since pretty much we've last seen Missy.  Jinkx Monsoon did a great job embracing a very camp villain that absolutely lives up to the energy of such villainy from the Classic Who era.  Sure, the episode is missing some of the Beatles actual music, but there are a lot of musical moments I really like.  The Doctor and Ruby bringing the city back to life with their song early on in the episode, Maestro confronting the two and menacing the TARDIS, and John and Paul finding the special chord - all these moments build up on each other and got me invested in the story. It's my favourite aspect of this season - each story feels like a big adventure, with all the weight and length of a movie more than a standard television episode.  And yes, while there are flaws to the Devil's Chord, I really enjoyed that journey.

Look, I'm not going to have a lot of nice things to say about Nest Cottage Chronicles overall, but its first foray isn't that bad.  When they are new and novel, the wasp creatures are interesting and they make for an intimidating presence overall at Nest Cottage in this first story.  They have possessed all these taxidermied animals and I find the idea very creepy, unsettling, and well done in The Stuff of Nightmares.  I found the energy around this adventure really good - there's a strong sense of tension and dread as Mike Yates reunites with the Doctor and learns what has happened here at the cottage.  Tom Baker does a great job with his performance and there's good sound mixing and audio work for a non-Big Finish production.  It's definitely worth checking out, even if I find the rest of the series pretty underwhelming so far.

There's a lot of aspects to The Bleeding Heart I found quite memorable. The idea of this planet where people are forced to feel peace on a spa is interesting enough, and has some layers to it I quite enjoyed. This felt like the right kind of sophisticated for Doctor Who - full of weird alien nonsense but also a lot of fun ideas, creativity, and different alien races.

I am mixed about the story ultimately being a thing with the Time War. On the one hand, it's nice to have fallout stories like this and what was done more recently with the Ten & Classic Companion set. However, I feel like it blunts the mystery of Adrianna slightly, who remains a pretty fun and great one-off companion.

Where it is weaker is in performances. Claire Wyatt's Adrianna elevates things a bit, but Briggs as the Ninth Doctor is pretty rough. I didn't mind it as much with The Other Side, maybe Briggs refines his impression slightly over time or just works with the presence of someone like Bruno Langley from the original show returning, but either way I found Nicholas Briggs much less reliable here as the driving force of narration. I better see why people aren't so keep on it.

Still, I enjoyed the story more than I didn't. The writing salvages what could have been a pretty rough experience, especially since some of the sound effects were a little much for me and didn't add things in what I would consider a positive way. A very average experience overall.

Very impressive animation overall, and a pretty solid story.  I like how the 1950s was portrayed pretty honestly - with some time spent on the period's gross flaws around segregation, but also acknowledging these people are human and still care for one another.  Mr. Ring-A-Ding was impressive as a villain in how he looked, but also in how production made him both silly and scary.  I love the scene where he was talking about how learning about perspective is slowing him down as he has to climb what are now giant steps to him - this episode is full of humour and ideas like that and it really works well.  I maybe didn't respond as strongly to this one as others, but I still very much enjoyed it and had a good time.

I like how RTD is still featuring godly characters for the Doctor to go up against.  They are fun villains who add a new dynamic with the Doctor we don't often see.  However, it does feel like RTD has no means of ending these kind of stories in any satisfying way.  The Toymaker, Maestro, and Sutekh all had pretty disappointing endings, and Lux hits that trend hard.  He literally just floats away in space at the end of the story and that's that.  It's a deeply and profoundly lame way to end an otherwise fun and fine story.

Still, along the way we get a lot of good character work with Belinda and 15, which makes a big difference in a positive way.  I really like the scene where our protagonists become a 2D, simple animation, and have to "give themselves depth."  That's some really fun and memorable writing which definitely helps make up for that lame ending.

Overall I had quite a bit of fun with The Robot Revolution.  Belinda gets a great introduction even if the dynamics around her mystery feel very familiar to Clara.  I love the look of the Robots and their alien world feels very fleshed out and well realized through production.  The story felt a little too simple and over-explained.  I didn't hate the idea of an incel taking over this world and obsessing over Belinda - it wasn't a bad idea for a story - but I definitely didn't need the story to explain itself so explicitly.  By outright saying they were riffing on the incel online phenomenon, I feel like production instantly dated their own episode and it isn't going to age the story well or give it a timeless feel to it.  Still it was a lot of fun overall and definitely left me excited for the rest of the season.  As a companion introduction story it is very, very successful in that regard.

I do also love how Who stories in the RTD2 era feel so big and expansive.  Every story really feels like it has these layers to it.  The Doctor spending all this time on this world building up a revolution gave the setting a lot more weight than it would have as a one-off location otherwise.  I love the implied relationship he had with Sasha 55.  It reminds me of a few plot lines from the Invincible comics, as well as the energy and what I liked about Joy to the World.  Every adventure with the 15th Doctor feels big and significant because we really take our time getting to know our setting and how our main characters are responding to it, which is something that gives each episode a lot of weight and significance to it that feels much more rare in pretty much every other era of Doctor Who - even compared to most Classic Who stories.

It's alright.  I really wish that the story wasn't so in your face about its message, because it feels kind of tired pretty quickly and doesn't hold up well on re-watch because of that.  I get it, the Doctor and the Almost-Doctor are both being of value, and there's definitely something worth exploring here but the show doesn't really engage with the idea at all.  It feels a bit silly that we kind of undermine the main theme of this episode with the ending.  It's a decent twist, but then the Doctor destroys Almost-Amy and the show kind of moves on - as if she doesn't have value and isn't important compared to the real Amy.  It's all a bit silly, even if the twists around these character's identities aren't bad.  The problem is that this is all surrounding by a story that isn't much of a pleasant watch.

The characters at the factory and their dopplegangers aren't significant enough to leave an impression, so it just becomes a kind of loud base under siege episode without any big moments to make it meaningfully distinct in any big way.  It's an episode I didn't really think much of but the more I've seen and thought of it, the less I like it.  The banter between the two Doctors felt annoying more than fun and none of the other characters feel fun or meaningful here, even Rory and Amy.  This and The Rebel Flesh feel like something that could have been decent as a single episode, but by dragging things out into two parts, everything moves way too slowly for the better twists around the Doctor and Amy to be worth it.

It's pretty insubstantial overall.  I really like the artwork here, though.  The Daleks are really rendered in an interesting way visually here.  Richard Jennings does an impressive job with this comic's art.  He has a good opportunity to express his creativity, too, as the story depicts the Daleks attacking various installations across the solar system.

The story that unfolds around our main human characters beyond that is pretty boring and run-of-the-mill, though.  Nothing too substantial, other than clearly setting up some more of the comic stories going forward.

There's no real story here, but I really like the artwork and found it quite vivid.  It's striking and a great start to the Dalek Book, which features some pretty impressive art overall from what I've seen so far.

Don't let my spoilery review ruin this for you, Red Darkness is best approached fresh, and is easy enough to follow so long as you listen to the whole Shades of Fear box set and are familiar with the rebooted TV series up to the Eleventh Doctor.

Oh, I'm with the majority on this one. Red Darkness is something special. I love the talking dog character, that feels like he is an easy sell but I also feel he is just well written compared to other talking dogs in fiction. Doyle felt like a vocalization of the thoughts a border collie might have, and I say that having grown up with a border myself.

I think the plot structure was a stroke of genius. The Vashta Nerada were a brilliant choice for a threat to go up against the Ninth Doctor. That alone was exciting, but then the story is built like the film Pitch Black and it just works so well at getting you invested in the story. That's not the end of how impressive it is, though. I was so skeptical when I realized a second villain was involved, and was essentially teaming up with the Vashta Nerada like they were two Spider-Man villains. It seemed like a recipe for disaster to me, and I was a little worried that all the positive reviews for Red Darkness were undeserved.

But I would argue instead that these two monsters actually blended really well together. Both the Verimine and Vasta Nerada each get new abilities and resources by working together. It makes their return here purposeful, adding a new dynamic to their abilities and the nature of their threat while showing a new side to both beings we hadn't seen before. It reminded me a lot of the Angels first return, right down to the monster crawling into people's eyes.

I just loved it. Like everyone else, I hope so much that Doyle and Callen return. Big Finish and writer Roy Gill (shaping up to be one of my favourite Who writers at this point) gave us every reason to care about these two and I'm so invested in these new characters. They could basically travel with the Ninth Doctor indefinitely looking for a new home without it even affecting canon too much. To the Doctor, this is him fulfilling a promise just as much as it is getting two new companions so it doesn't feel like this should affect Rose's story with the Doctor, and both Doyle and Callen are fun characters that I think could bring out a lot of great moments in future Doctor Who stories. They already bring out an interesting side to the Doctor in this story, with discussions of life expectancy, the loyalty of Doyle, and Callen's youth all being excellent topics available for future adventures.

It all just works so well, Big Finish would be stupid not to at least try and make it happen.

Quantum of Axos like the rest of this range teaming up the Tenth Doctor and classic companions, follows a certain pattern and handful of traits common to all three of these audio plays.

The story does some interesting stuff with K9 and has a fun enough time overall, but yes, these audio stories are definitely a little mediocre. Once you have the first one down, you definitely know what to expect out of the others.

Still, Sophie Aldred is SO good, while Leeson and Tennant are a treasure to the franchise. Stuff like that makes Quantum of Axos feel a little special where otherwise the audio would be overwhelmingly average.