An episode of class which actually feels a bit more like and episode of Doctor Who than Class.

The two couples in the series: Charlie / Mateusz, and April / Ram are trying to have a bit of fun at a local bowling alley when Charlie upsets Ram and they all end up walking home. Somehow, on the way they find themselves in a kind of pocket world populated by green skinned aliens. Unlike most Class stories, this seems to be nothing to do with the "tears in reality" which seem to infest Coal Hill Academy, but instead some sort of reference to the history of the Shoreditch area where the school is located. Of course, nothing is ever simple, and they have to deal with not only finding a way home, but also surviving a kind of deadly maze.

This was easy enough to listen to but somehow lacked the edge of the TV episodes or even some of the earlier Class audios. The emphasis was clearly on the social dynamic between the couples, to the extent that for much of the story the two pairs are separated on two sides of a competition. To avoid the need to duplicate all the exposition, the point of view hops, skips, and jumps between the two sides, sometimes mid sentence but this can't disguise the fact that there is a lot of exposition in this story. To my mind the story also lacks jeopardy. Somehow it never really felt as if there was any danger of anything changing. This is a shame, as one of the things which I enjoyed about the Class TV series was that, like Torchwood in its turn, the writers were not afraid to make big changes which affect the nature of future episodes and this added a real feeling of risk and danger.

Ultimately, I don't think anyone in the Class world would notice if this story had never happened.

Well, I guess it had to happen for Class, just as it has happened for all the Doctor Who spin-offs. The "fan service" episode which wallows in memories of a beloved historical episode. In this case the historical episode in question is the 7th Doctor and Ace TV story "Remembrance of the Daleks". That's not really a spoiler given the title of this one, though. To add extra nostalgic gooeyness, that TV episode was itself a  chunk of fan-service, bringing back the Daleks and the iconic Coal Hill School setting of the very first episode. Given that Class is set in a twenty-first century version of that same school, the connection was pretty inevitable.

Having said all that, this episode is not done too badly. Wisely they chose not to involve any of the Doctors. I think that would have overshadowed the joy of the story, which is the interaction between Dorothy "Ace" McShane and Miss Quill. They are similar in so many ways, but with very different attitudes, and their bickering is great fun. Sure, there's some stuff for Charlie to do while Ace and Quill stomp around the school disagreeing with each other, and a few 'meeting out of order' gags, but it all feels like it's only there to give Quill and Ace a reason to meet.

If you're a Nick Briggs fan then you get plenty of him in this story. He does the Daleks, obviously, but also has a slightly cringey turn as a baffled soldier. That soldier does get to give Charlie a clip round the ear for being smug and entitled. though, something I reckon many in the audience will think was long overdue ;)

In summary, one of the best of this run of Class audio stories so far, which doesn't take itself too seriously and leans in to the nostalgia.

I find it intriguing how this audio series is taking the opportunity to explore in more detail the relationships between characters who never got much time together in the original TV series. This one spends a lot of time with Mateusz and Tanya, two characters who followed completely different storylines on TV. In this story, Tanya is more than just the "tin dog" who knows science stuff and can hack into computers. Mateusz is more than just Charlie's love interest. Together they make an interesting investigative team. I particularly liked the awkwardness of these two essentially nice characters trying to be angry and violent towards each other in order to provoke the "monster of the week".

As far as the story goes it was another easily guessable mystery, but that's not really what it was about. It's more an exploration of an ugly side of school life, with a sprinkling of the alien rift stuff, because it's Class.

So this is effectively the Class take on Adam from Torchwood. With added teenage angst. I enjoyed it but there really wasn't anything surprising about the story. Once the setup was introduced, the rest of it followed as if on rails. Even the final resolution was foreshadowed pretty heavily. This story is set during season 1 of Class, so anyone who has seen that series could tell that April would not suddenly go to Switzerland.

It's still a solid story which does well with the Class characters, but I felt it lacked some of the emotional punch of the TV episodes.

it's been a long time since I have listened to an audio drama which plays into the audio medium as much as this. Although it is set in and around Coal Hill School, it could really be anywhere. The story is all in the dialogue, which co-incidentally digs into the connected relationships between Charlie, Matteusz, and Quill. I felt echoes of "Whispers of Terror" and "Midnight".

It was nice to listen to an episode of Class which felt a bit more like a classic story from the Doctor Who universe. Realistically this story could have worked just as well with almost any of the Doctor Who universe teams, but the central conceit of "work experience" was fun.

I have knocked my score down a little because I did get a bit confused as to who was who and who was still alive by the end.

This was the first of the Big Finish Class audios that I have listened to. I had held off getting these, as I was in two minds about the original Class TV series, but I am glad I did. This first story steps away from the Rhodian and Shadowkin storylines which took over so much of the TV series and explores some of the characters as they get involved in a more local mystery, this time with echoes of the fay. I enjoyed it and I am now looking forward to working though the rest of the series.

The presentation of this short trip is good, with a strong feel of the era of 4 and Leela, but unfortunately I did not find the story itself very satisfying. It sets up a mystery, presents a diversion with an interesting twist, but then never properly resolves the original mystery. I was left feeling that there were many things that the Doctor could have done to better deal with both the historical diversion and the outer mystery. All in all a story which never quite got going.

A lot of people seem to be dismissive of this version of the original Big Finish Doctor Who audio story "Sirens of Time", but I found that I liked it a lot. The structure is much more dynamic and a lot of the murky sound landscape has been cleaned up and it feels overall much more like the modern Big Finish output. The retrospective interviews are fun, too.

These interludes are such a mixed bunch. This one attempts to embroil 6 and Mel into a series of imaginary death-traps based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe but ultimately only provided a pale pastiche with none of the depth of the original writing.

There were one or two mildly clever gags in it (Edgar Alien Poe, for example) , but they were largely wasted.

Ultimately, I was left disappointed and with the feeling that somewhere in the universe there must be a much better tale of Poe's mysterious final days.