This story truly captures the tone of 4 and Romana — and what a relationship for a TARDIS team to have. Romana is neither starstruck now bamboozled by the Doctor's intelligence or eccentricity. Watching, or reading about, the two of them bouncing off each other as equally competent and absurd time-traveling aliens is always a fun ride. If you like this mini-adventure, I'd highly recommend Jonathan Morris's Festival of Death, which features this pair (plus K-9) in a zany, absurdist but darkly dangerous thrill ride.

One thing I'll add about the Target Storybook in general is that you really need to be familiar with the characters and eras they're using. I'm going to be skipping the next two stories for now as they probably bounce off events I haven't seen.

Writing and characterization were really enjoyable but I loved the misdirect (a being that is many but one, at war with itself and seeking the Doctor's help as mediator) much more than the reveal (the hive-mind is yet another mwah-ha-ha universe-conquering villain), which hurt my overall opinion of this story. We need to see more sci-fi that's about weird things gone astray and less about cartoonish evil needing countered.

Brilliantly written, atmospheric, and inventive. Impossible to describe just how well this audio adventure portrays a visual horror. At one point, the sound (or lack thereof) becomes a stand-in for what characters are seeing (or not). This happens seamlessly, naturally, because this story is firing on all cylinders. If this site allowed 5.5 or 6 star rankings, this story would earn it. Maybe the best hour of audio Big Finish has ever produced. Certainly the best I have ever heard.

The Eighth Doctor Adventures really are some of the best things Big Finish has ever produced.

The writing, sound design and acting behind the character of the Eleven is peak — an excellent fusion of Whoniverse lore and the unique strengths of audio storytelling. A Time Lord experiencing all of their regenerations at once? Brilliant. How would we depict that on screen? We don't have to. We can hear the voices of this villain's previous lives as if they were in our head not his. Creepy. Threatening. And oddly sympathetic given how much the condition makes him suffer.

Liv, the Doctor and their supporting cast are electric, too. I've listened to Doom Coalition once before but a long time ago. Ecstatic to dive back in.

The artwork is repulsive (compliment). The subject matter is miserable (compliment). Grotesque and grim, The Weeping Angels of Mons asks us to consider the possible, personal futures wasted by war and how we make peace with our lot in life — whether that's finding ourselves in a senseless war, or in an unfamiliar time.

My ultimate opinion of this episode will depend on how well or poorly the creatives land the train in part two.

But what a beautiful queer idea that disabled folks, because they are cast out from the norm, can see through the bullshit. And what a beautiful ode to "doubt" as an antidote to an oppressive cultural hegemony.

I don’t think I’m the only one to be thinking of Gaza and other colonized places watching this episode. I think that’s intentional. Helia is very much not Gaza. Nor is it any other specific place and that’s good. Sci-fi and fantasy shouldn’t present us with exact one-to-ones. (In Andor, it is important that Ghorman feels like both France during Nazi occupation and Algeria during French occupation, as Roxana Hadadi wrote in Vulture, because this gets us to deeper truths about power and violence.) But we are asked to think about specifics from our own world because this episode is set at the Interstellar Eurovision.

You have underpowered, marginalized people resorting to terrorism to strike back at the hegemon that ruined their world. Their plan will involve the deaths of innocent civilians. Their target is a live entertainment event. In this light, I wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking of October 7. And if this is meant to be Oct. 7, then of course, the creatives cannot and should not come down on the side of “yeah, that makes sense, do it” however much the episode aims to humanize helions and grapple with their mistreatment.

But here’s where it goes off the rails. Because we are no longer sitting on Oct. 8, pondering the unspeakable violence of the day before. We have seen sustained, indiscriminate violence, justified in Oct. 7’s name, achieve unimaginable death tolls.

By making Helia’s response the outsized response, we have flipped the script. Yes, Helia was burned by capitalist forces. But now the survivors are threatening, effectively, the entire galaxy. We see Helia burning, yes, but we do not see Helians burning. We do not see Helian houses, with entire families inside, reduced to rubble as the song contest promoters cheerfully ask why everyone can’t just get along. While its defenders ask the galaxy not to make it political by mentioning the burning home over there. Violence against Helia is made abstract, while the violence of Helians is made visceral. All those people floating out into space is a horrifying image. We are given no such image of people suffering when it comes to Helia.

Still, there’s more the episode is straining to say here than simply: “You have two options, and you should make change within the system instead of doing a terrorism.” There are shades of gray that could really make this a five-star episode if they were allowed to sit in their ambiguity and discomfort. The Doctor tortures our Helian terrorist. If Helia’s response to their destruction cannot be excused, why is the Doctor’s choice to lash out with violence? If war-crimey violence is not acceptable when a corporation kills your family and you feel alone, why is it acceptable when a terrorist kills your friend and you feel alone? The Doctor should be in handcuffs too. Or neither of them should.

But ultimately, these are the politics of the episode we are given. Not as heinous as Kerblam!, which looks at the camera to say, “Stop complaining about Amazon,” because this episode does want to grapple with the issues it raises. But it ultimately needs a happy, neat ending and isn’t ready to stand in the gray that its subject matter demands.

Surprisingly dark. Good characterization for the entire fam, despite the story's short length.

It's not a mind-blowing story but it is a lovely surprising, adding texture to the world we'll soon get to see. Doctor Who prose often feels divorced from other media. Sometimes that's to its strength (the 8th Doctor books have some real fun going their own direction), but it would be nice to see more crossover like we have here. Especially with the abbreviated seasons we have these days, which don't give us time for two-parters. Prequel, sequel, or addendum stories could really serve to flesh out what we get on screen.

What a mixed bag. Now halfway through McCoy's era on my first ever watch-through, I feel I understand its vibe a little better than I had simply absorbing the 7th Doctor through other media.

This season continues to outdo McCoy's first season even when it stumbles. Though I can't even truly say whether Silver Nemesis is a stumble. I find myself asking: What does it all mean?

For example, our opening shot and a decent amount of the plotting involve a neo-Nazi group from South America pursuing this powerful weapon. But why Nazis? Two stories ago, we got a Nazi-lite far-right group getting mixed up with Daleks in a way that intentionally drew parallels between the two. Here, the Nazis seem to be nothing more than a recognizable, definable and evil faction included because we can reliably count on them to pursue the MacGuffin du jour and expect our heroes to oppose them, Indiana Jones-style. There are definite themes you can pull out of a Nazi/Cyberman crossover. This adventure very nearly does that in Episode 2, when the Nazi leader speaks of supermen and superiority. But I kept expecting and hoping it would amount to more.

Relatedly, there's a level of confusion that pervades this era. Maybe I'm not as media literate as I need to be to understand these plots better, but basically every 7 story to this point has left me asking, at multiple points, why characters are doing what they're doing. Why are things happening? Why are characters going where they're going? Saying things the way they're saying them? Taking a step back, the plots make sense from a distance. But actually watching them leaves me with the feeling that there are steps missing. This is mirrored in the geography of some scenes. The clunkiness of yelling out chess moves as the Doctor and Ace twirl around Cybermen is definitely something that looked good on paper and absolutely falls apart as it starts happening on screen.

All of this said, I do appreciate what this episode does well. The characters are fun and better defined than in some other McCoy serials. I love an episode where we hop between different times. It makes the Whoniverse, and the concept of time-travel, feel very alive and less like a device to drop our protagonists in Pompeii or wherever.

Other reviewers have pointed our that this adventure adds little to the mystery of who the Doctor is, and I would agree and add it seems to be mysterious for mystery's sake, which is always annoying. But it is interesting to me, someone who came to DW through NuWho, how well the dialogue here gels with the Timeless Child revelations.

The Missy writers and performers continue to nail the balance between really quick-witted humor and really dark material. It's incredible that we get continually invested in the machinations of an objectively awful creature like Missy. Making the Monk a brain in a bag is the sort of inspired fun that works better in audio than anywhere else.

In the interviews that follow this episode, Goss talks about Michelle Gomez taking a script and running with it. You can hear that here in every line delivery, ever aside, every retort. What a gifted, dedicated actor that I hope we see more of in audio and on screen.

This episode also leans in. Yes, we have Missy plotting and the Monk suffering, but once it settles into its third act war games, nothing could be better than hearing how they one up each other. And we really hear it. The sound design here is brilliant — especially considering how many unique weapons and beings it has to depict.

A tense and at times terrifying episode shot through with an undeniable sense of dread. Dread because we know some of these characters are doomed. Dread because we know we will not be allowed to understand the Midnight creature.

I appreciated the brief but necessary levity on the TARDIS and into the mission. Because the rest was heavy. Belinda has seen the death that follows the Doctor. Now she has seen the cosmic horror he meets with joy. “You’re dangerous,” she said in The Robot Revolution. What could she be thinking now?

I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts once I’ve sat with the episode

The best of the season and yet not very good. It starts strong, with characters and humor a step above anything we've seen this season, but episodes 2 and 3 just feel off.

It goes for a humor it can't quite achieve. The bit with the guard could have landed so much better if it bore any resemblance to a real, informed conversation. Yes, it's funny for the guard to know philosophy, but the joke fails because he actually doesn't. I don't have a degree in philosophy but even I know enough to know the conversation is complete gibberish, which really diminishes the joke because you're left wondering: Does the Doctor literally not know what an existentialist is?

It goes for emotional beats it can't quite achieve. I want to care about the human drama. The first episode was so promising. But then it just gets stupid. It's difficult to explain — maybe it's poor acting, maybe it's poor direction — but every story this season felt off. Like you're constantly thinking: Oh my god, these people are just saying their lines. Obviously actors are always saying their lines in every TV show but you usually can't feel it. You can feel it here.

Why does Mel leave? Why does the Doctor react that way? Why does he invite Ace to travel with him? These things just happen with no emotional reasoning behind them. I started watching Remembrance of the Daleks before coming here to write this and it's already clear the next season will be much, much better. I'm excited to perhaps start enjoying the Seventh Doctor's era.

It's interesting to see McCormack try out a concept she will later nail in Caged (with the 15th Doctor). It's clear that she likes to think up a good alien species with a unique world and outlook. But it just works so much better in her later book. Contrasting the two demonstrates why.

In Caged, just as in Molten Heart, we start with the main character. In both cases, an adventurous young girl somewhat at odds with her small community by dint of her adventurousness. But in Molten Heart, we stay with this character for just one short prologue chapter before the Fam arrives. In Caged, it's a good chunk of the book. We get a real feel for our heroine. We are rooting for her and care about her before the Doctor and their companion(s) arrive. There is no such feeling in Molten Heart.

The emotional beats hit harder in Caged. It gives us the confusion of an alien abduction and the doubts of the abductor and we feel both. Molten Heart gives us only what we can see coming a mile away.

This makes Molten Heart fascinating, because in it we can see the rough draft of some ideas that are better realized in McCormack's later, excellent book. I'm an Una stan and it's cool to see her improve from this book, which I didn't care for, to the other book, which is among my top DW novels.

Separately, this book once again underlines a problem with the Fam. The TARDIS has too many people and they never get interesting development. This book should have sidelined two — and I mean really sidelined; have them left at home on the TARDIS playing a game that we cut back to for ten pages total — and focus on just 13 and Ryan or just 13 and Yaz. I would love a larger TARDIS team that played with this and if it won't happen in the show, maybe it ought to happen in these spinoff novels.

I don't hate any Missy adventure, but this is a weak close to an otherwise excellent boxset. We know from the beginning that neither Missy nor the Monk will fall to the Ogrons. While other audios with similarly predictable outcomes manage to build tension, this one does not.

Perhaps the Ogrons do not work in audio. They are the opposite of the Daleks, who are made scarier in audio because their disembodied voice is scarier than the same voice embodied in a trash can. The Ogrons have a stupid voice, but the visual of a great, hulking monster-mercenary gives them weight. Here we don't have the visuals. We just have line-reads that take forever.

I appreciated dema1020's comparison to Pitch Black. I hadn't thought of that. To me, it's giving Fallout 4. A lovable dog on a desolate, scary world. Excellent characters. I, too, hope they stick around and we get to see them find a new home. I could look it up but I'll leave that as a mystery until I hit play on the third series.

The fact that this is not my favorite 9DA is a statement to the strength of the series and not an insult to the strength of this episode. I'm in awe of how creative, inclusive, thrilling and clever just about every 9th Doctor audio has been to this point. I expected to like the series because I like 9, the way I like the 10DA's because I like 10. I didn't expect it to be my favorite run, rivaling some of 8's. The child in me, who was devastated that they only got one season with Eccleston on TV, would be so delighted to know I've gotten another 24 just-as-great adventures with the same incarnation, with another 24 published or planned on the horizon. This is going beyond Red Darkness now, but I hope we can see longer arcs and character growth because that is the one thing holding this series back from being as great as Eccleston's run on television. I know that's hard given that we have to find him broken in Rose, and the plotting from Rose until his death is pretty tight. But maybe there are other directions in which he can grow, less related to his war trauma. Idk. I'm not a Big Finish writer. If we continue to get episodes this excellent, I really can't complain.

A lovely life-affirming tale. Another stellar entry in the 9DA.

I think the other reviews are too rough on this one. It's lovely that our heroine(?) simply wants so cross-dress and that they're accepted and loved by Toby. It is not a failure of the story that they are not trans, but a celebration of individuality. We know that 9 — and all Doctors — are allies. If we didn't have Tania a few episodes ago, maybe this would feel like a cop out. But we did and it doesn't.

Tone, character and biting commentary launch the new season

A steady start possibly foreshadowing a darker season. The Doctor's first adventures with Ruby felt so light they carried no weight. Here, we have robots who vaporize a cat and who very much kill people, including those we name and those the Doctor cares for. These are ultimately little touches given the overall plot, but they give the entire package a much darker feeling.

Belinda is sharp, driven and brave. I feel as though we already know quite a bit about her (despite knowing nothing of her family) and I'm excited to see where she goes in her (presumed) eight episodes. If anything, I would have liked to see more of her life before, especially her doomed relationship with Allen, so that his reappearance later could have hit harder.

In addition to going darker and giving us better defined characters, it also looks like we're thankfully in for a more explicitly political season. We saw a little bit of this spice in the Christmas special with its limited commentary on lockdown. In the Robot Revolution, we have automated villains, but they themselves are not evil. The problem is not the tech. It's the incels designing it, putting their own capricious, misogynist nature into machines which would otherwise be helpful. The reveal that the "AI Generator" is actually just the bad idea of a creepy dude is perfect in this moment.

I have high hopes for this season. Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go.

Truly, the anti-Kerblam. Really wonderful, clever plotting from John Dorney here making the system the villain. The system corrupts everyone inside of it and it is the system itself which must be defeated. The antagonists are only those who we know to be good who have been corrupted by the system.

"Master-led murder mystery" is such a good idea I wish there were a boxset dedicated to it, a new mystery each episode. That said, the Clockwork Swan leans into social commentary without fully delivering on all it sets up. Mirroring Knives Out in the way it chooses to play with relevant, real-world issues, it would be nice if the conclusion had just 20% more to say about the inhumanity of media corporations creating and utilizing AI likenesses. As it stands, the episode is caught between, on the one hand, letting that possibility stand as a horrifying reality and, on the other hand, needing its AI-resurrected characters to feel real and human.

Sacha Dhawan is excellent as always. He feels like he is still inventing and reinventing this character. It works within the plots we're given in this boxset (and matches the running theme of self-discovery). It will be interesting to see if he lands on a definite version of the character somewhere down the line. That would be exciting. He, like the other actors in the Chibnall era, missed out on the writing that I hope Big Finish will now give them.

Wasn't for me but I did appreciate that this series seems willing to grapple with the Master's post-Missy resurrection and the apparent regression that entails. Having the Spymaster adrift, unsure of who he is, is a compelling start — even if this first outing feels meandering.

Great concept. Careful, nonobvious dialogue. Excellent characterizations for theRoses and Doctors.

Shockingly dark. I love the deranged tone, and the deranged lead performance, of this entire series so far.

In the crowded field of excellent actors who have taken up the mantle of The Master, Michelle Gomez manages to stand out and bring something unforgettable to the role. There’s a strange terror embedded in not knowing how Gomez will perform the next line. It’s an unpredictably that just feels evil.

I love a good time-hopping adventure. It makes this world of time-travelers feel alive and it makes Time Lords feel powerful. Here are the Doctor and the Master jumping through time (or living through stretches of it) to catch up with each other and continue the fight. It would be terrifying to be a mortal in this world. Ada Lovelace and Noor Inayat Khan are great additions. A real strength of this era is that it brought us to corners of history the franchise had ignored until then.

It's wild that we got a Winston Churchill audio boxset before meeting Noor, but Doctor Who is finally righting that. It's great to see, and if you're going to grab two people from different points in time, these two (the first programmer and an anti-fascist spy) feel especially on theme for an adventure about a modern-day tech company and its connection with a scheme to kill the world's spies. That said, I would have liked the writing and plot to do a little more with this. I feel like a stronger show would have woven their personal stories throughout the episode, giving them time to be proper fleshed-out characters who help save the day with their unique skills and outlooks. They help the Doctor, to be sure, but the episode would have been stronger if it had leaned in.

Now, for a few issues.

Yaz and Ryan are not handled well in these episodes, but they seldom are. I just never feel like they are going anywhere or doing anything interesting. They are simply not given enough to do and yet they are always around. If 13 was going to travel with three companions, the show should have done a better job of really making each episode focus on one of them. Maybe one of them really goes through some intense growth while the other two have a comic relief-y B-plot. Give us an episode where Yaz goes 80% and Ryan and Graham share a 20% on some light hijinks. Then switch it up. Instead we get everyone at 33% and nothing ever feels meaty enough. In Spyfall, Yaz was seemingly traumatized by her trip to the Kassavin realm. This is resolved by Ryan saying he'll protect her. What? That's not the issue. And why doesn't 13 seem to care? 13 should care. 13 is her girlfriend.

Reintroducing the Master was a choice. I totally think it's fine to bring the Master back, and they cast a wonderful actor to take on the role, but it was way too soon. Yes, the Master is constantly killed and brought back. But never before have we seen a Master redemption arc like we had with Missy. That should have sat untouched for a while and only brought off the shelf with good purpose.

Destroying Gallifrey AGAIN was an even bigger choice. We start NuWho with Gallifrey extinct and that gives the first few New Doctors a distinct flavor. Then we find out it actually wasn't destroyed. Woah. But then, the Doctor has to find it and after two seasons, he does. He doesn't really mess with Gallifrey or the Time Lords again until he regenerates but it doesn't feel like a glaring omission. He hates them and he's got other things to do. And then, with no further adventures on Gallifrey, we destroy it again. Because the Master was mad? Because he was lied to? The way everyone else was lied to? About something that's just kind of interesting in the same sci-fi way everything else is?

Why didn't we at least get a season (or a few) of Gallifrey being a threat or annoyance to the Doctor? I'd love to see our hero Time Lord chafe against a tyrannical, feudal time empire. How much more interesting would the Timeless Child arc be if it played out against this backdrop? The Time Lords are manipulating the Doctor all while lying about who she is. That would be great. That would feel like a story.

An astounding story of excellent characters, shockingly mature themes, and impeccable 90s-vamp vibes.

Almost didn't read this, but Dave Rudden's Wintertime Paradox piqued my interest in Faction Paradox, which sent me to Alien Bodies, which piqued my interest in the Eighth Doctor Adventures — and now here I am, about to read way too many entires in this 73-book series picking up the plot of a failed TV movie from 30 years ago.

It's difficult to overstate just how hard Vampire Science goes. The writing and the characterization of the Doctor pick up on the zaniness of the Classic series, but also do something new with the old formula, somehow giving us a preview of NuWho — and its more attractive, romantic, brooding hero — years before NuWho was a thing. Little details sell us on this new incarnation — like how the Doctor casually grabs coins from behind people's ears, not because he's showing off or doing a bit but simply because, as his attitude suggests, that's just where coins are. Maybe that's impossible to explain here. It really works in the prose though.

The other characters are excellent as well. Carolyn. Shackle. Joanna. Sam. Kramer. We take a spin in each of their heads and while we're there, we can feel how right they are. Shackle is growing disillusioned, and when we're in his head, we see he's right to be. But when we see him from the Doctor's eyes, we also understand that he's wrong. We go back to Shackle and he's in the right again. That's powerful character work. And because we have powerful character work, we have a fascinating clash of ideas.

I won't spoil it here by butchering what I think the book's message is (you really should read this thing), but it ruminates on death and nihilism in a way that genuinely shocked me. I did not understand Doctor Who was capable of these depths outside of really rare entries like Heaven Sent. The depiction of Sam's trauma is handled similarly well.

On top of all of this, the book digs into a really fun corner of lore that I'm eager to learn more about: the Founding Conflict, the Dark Times, the ancient history where we'll later place the Timeless Child, etc. I know the inclusion of straight-up vampires into this universe was controversial but it somehow really really works.

Read Vampire Science. If you like Doctor Who and don't like this book, I honestly don't know what you like about Doctor Who.