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.