An idea that works to slightly greater affect in For The Girl Who Has Everything - prose allows for far more interesting means to illustrate the artefacts hanging around UNIT's vault than audio recordings - but it prods at this greater variety keenly, pointing out how ephemeral these stories can be, which is scarcely to their detriment. A hyper-functional story, that opens the floor for more explorative rummages through the Black Archive.

In the interviews on the production of Valentine's Fast Times, the writer of the Fugitive Doctor's premier story in her own range recounts calling Chris Chibnall to discuss the character, and the crucial detail that her creator spoke of her in a hypothetical, spitballing light; Chibnall "thinks," instead of knows, that his own creation is X, Y, and/or Z. This approach I would have previously turned my nose up at, believing it points toward a lack of focus, but here, it's intensely respectable as an almost post-modern fanbrain, theorising the ambiguous nature of your creation alongside your audience. Such is incredibly opportune for writers, and Valentine indubitably takes this in his stride. The Fugitive Doctor is a cog in the works of Doctor Who's aesthetic and stylistic continuity, attracting caricatures and locations directly lifted from late-20th century comics, sixties Daleks and their surrounding sensibilities, and the dense mythology of the revival, all of these epicentral to her; Fast Times picks up Coda's leftovers and makes a deliberate, three-course meal of them. Most refreshing about the character is how reined in she is from the grandeur mythos surrounding her origins, and the Doctor's more omnipotent depicted tendencies. As much as she is a fugitive by name and nature, she is also the ultimate tourist - a welcomely earnest, sobering portrayal - and likewise, is not afraid to be petty (the 'Colonel Runaway' scene from A Good Man Goes to War would look positively infantile compared to the jabs Martin perfectly delivers). In this respect, a dialogue is opened with Fugitive's on-screen contemporary, as her seclusion and unwillingness to meditate on matters imitates those of the Thirteenth Doctor's, albeit delivered in a delightfully more blunt fashion. The sprawling nature of Fast Times complements the grounded characteristic of Martin's incarnation, which progressively grows on me the more I listen to. An utterly eclectic seizure of the open floor its Doctor presents in her conceit, Fast Times is a thoroughly enjoyable listen which ought to be treated as a touchstone for everything with this Doctor coming forward.

How much do you, personally, relate to the historical Queen Victoria? How empathetic would you deem the monarch to be, in her own lifetime? Accounting for her frequent characterisation as resilient and having fortitude, grieving of her long-deceased husband, advocacy for exponential industrial growth and prescience over Britain's grisly colonial empire? The Victorian Age, conveniently, elects to indulge in the former two of her above qualities, propelling a characterisation forward which attempts to make light of Victoria as a snappy, sarcastic and strong-willed one of the people. It is no coincidence that this story follows More Than This, both seeing an authority figure, who must facilitate Torchwood's continued existence, being swept away on a revelatory, life-endangering adventure by one of the organisation's members that changes them irrevocably. This is an appreciated trope - the "Peladon" serials use these recurring scenarios and roles throughout history to great, decidedly sharp affect - except More Than This features the mild-mannered, well-meaning, inherently more levelled councillor Pugh. Here, the figure who assumes that role, designed to be empathetic (and also, in grieving) is Queen Victoria. Said brutal aspects of Victoria's historical reign and authority are left as asterisks or recurring jokes about just how ludicrously long her title is. The story puts immense value on this spirited, witty, stiff upper-lipped characterisation above all else, insofar that the plot suffers to orbit Victoria, the rising action and locations being contingent on how much of a reaction they can elicit out of the monarch, which massively impacts how long we spend there. Side characters are merited purely by their fleeting interactions with her despite their various, far more endearing eccentricities - decisively, this includes an anti-monarchist, rallying support against Victoria only to quieten down, comically, out of fear from her sudden arrival. Its monster is, perhaps, the most opportune and distinctly Torchwood concept, vampirically siphoning the youth of its victims. The story makes a point to use Victoria's desire for youth as a plucky parallel to Jack's immortality, and the weight it bears on his person; later, when Jack is used as bait for the monster, why not have it kill him in its vampiric nature so often, that it becomes young insofar as to undo its own existence? Instead, the strange sentimentality this franchise has for the monarch is put to the fore, at the sacrifice of something worthwhile.

CONTENT WARNING: S**cide ideation, mental health issues

More Than This is archetypical Torchwood, more specifically, the archetypical Series 1 or 2 episode, but this is otherwise the most Torchwood media to ever Torchwood. Situating sci-fi of varying extents of high concept within the local, microsociological, using its small scale to endow it with a distinct pathos and humanity; saying it aloud, Torchwood even at its base invites a vivacious storytelling unlike anything else in the wider genre. More Than This starts with Fall to Earth's modus operandi, quickly moving on from the 'isn't bureaucracy just kind of tiring?' to a fissile story structure, that still does not dismiss the immediate intimacy of the premise. Nichols' Pugh could be an auxiliary Torchwood member, his life being immediately broadened on the journey he takes, taking so many pulpy turns before he finally comes down. The way in which the story levels with his suicide ideation is not half as nuanced as Twice Upon a Time - nihilism is analogised to a cosmic horror that could not be more dissonant from the human experienced, as to depict its inherent misanthropy - but indubitably enters a similar calibre of stories in that niche. A thoroughly enjoyable listen, proving just how good Torchwood is at its fundamentals.

Uncanny Valley, in an unanticipated way, takes further jabs at conspiracy culture like Llewellyn's prior instalment to the range, this time the typically inductive nature that conspiracy theorists practice to make their hypotheses more convincing, and to induce a binding sense of factionalism; it is easier to propose that the world comprises of 'us versus them' if the 'them' is described as broadly as possible. When Wilson gives his tell-all accounts of the Committee in The Conspiracy - crucially under the pretence that he is trying to convince his audience of something he himself does not believe - they are surmised in the vein of the archetypical cabal of hyper-rich socialites, heavily connected to military-industrial complexes. The follow-up presented here may sacrifice some class consciousness in posing Cree's Redmond, a billionaire software engineer for every warmonger you can conceive, as 'one of the good ones' being manipulated by the Committee, his earnest insecurities about body image and his autonomy emphasising such. For this, as well as the complete sincerity with which it plays the notion of 'a man is cuckolded by a robot duplicate of himself, who can see through the eyes of on a whim,' absent of any comedic intonation, I would not consider Uncanny Valley an all too self-aware story, but it nevertheless maintains a dialectic pretence in how it broaches its continued critique of conspiracy culture at large in portraying Redmond with any foothold on his humanity.

This review would hardly be the first to suggest that there is not much to separate Yvonne from Barry in One Rule. The eponymous rule is simply their class backgrounds, and how it leads them to present themselves, ultimately a hair's breadth between their staunch nationalism. When this ellipses in the conclusion over their mutual interests, the only thing preventing it from being an assertion of workplace hierarchy is the fact that this is Torchwood, with all of its flairs for the dramatic. Speaking of which, this is easily the most stylised story in the range so far, no less down to the motifs of Joseph Lidster; the sole reason as to why the monster attacks people when they are alone is to elicit as many scenarios as possible where two characters can sit down, in one location, for an extended conversation, a blissful recurring motif of his. Even when we do see the creature attack Ryan in isolation, his conversation over the phone brings a world of revelations, only for him to appear for but a minute. The nameless, superficially unimportant immediate antagonist perfectly lends itself to its style. It says a lot in One Rule's favour that its earnest, down-to-earth presentation of ideology boiling in the pot post-Rose left me wanting of Series 1.

To be momentarily anecdotal; I've been reading Edward Ashton's Mickey 7 and it's a fine book (the arrogance of all of the cast so effectively written it's been encouraging me to put it off of my own irritability), but its greatest strength is that it bakes its stance on a popular debate in science fiction into its premise insofar that it puts it to rest. This debate, based off of Star Trek's Transporter, asks if, upon using a teleporter that operates by displacing your atoms on entry and reconstitutes you - otherwise unchanged - on the receiving end with new atoms, you would still assertively be you. Mickey 7 assertively quells the, perhaps not bioessentialist but instead, atomiessentialist arguments such a debate would raise in having its eponymous protagonist die and be resurrected repeatedly, via perfect clones of himself (hence the number in the title) that retain all of his memories. The problem of his individual person's integrity only arises when more than one clone is alive at a time, but that is beside the point of why a story like Forgotten Lives was so effective on me. We are all the sums of our memories, they are what utterly defines us and thus, conditions that lead us to forget like Alzheimer's and dementia are perhaps the greatest fear any one person could have. Quite literally within the narrative, via the Evolved, we see characters become entirely different people, their minds swapped in a visceral kind of body horror that the Evolved treat not just as a fact of life, but as something to be proud of. The story broaches the inhumanity of dementia, and the potential misdemeanour of dementia care, with a cutting panache. Myle's performance is staggering; Gwen is placed in a distinctly reactionary position, the only character in the story not to have her mind separated from her, a control as it were to show why humanity is incompatible with the Evolved's sinister "gift." In this tragic horror, no stones are left unturned when it comes to Gwen's relationships, one of the most tragic existing with Jack - who is at his most aspirationally 'Doctorish,' leaving Gwen in suspense for years about his whereabouts, only to be (quite literally) changed upon his return, where he only weaves further tragedy in his wake. It is hardly exempt from any levity, an inevitability when Kai Owen is involved, but the intimate execution of an inexorably horrific conceit places this among one of the all-time greats. The first story in the range which probably requires decent, and very existential, forewarning.

One of those brilliant bottle conceits this franchise seems to dispense at a record rate, Fall to Earth is a thriller with a capital T. Mind, it's inevitable that the comedy emergent from calling an insurance agency will be slightly twee - and was, admittedly, slightly too self-congratulatory to elicit much from me - but this story uses the very same subject matter to make up for it in spades. The welcoming demeanour of the given agent, a persistent politeness upheld here by Zahra's brilliant performance as Zeynep, coincides with an informative, almost blunt vernacular. Zeynep encourages Ianto to open up through that ever-polite, concise and slightly coercive language; what would otherwise be a means to convince him to buy (which he has to do, repeatedly, to stay alive) results in him pouring his heart out, insofar that such is left in the series to his dying breaths. This does wonders for the tension when, later, Ianto becomes suspicious only toward the conclusion, a very earnest tension of perhaps having said too much. Whilst I slightly preferred The Conspiracy as I listen to the monthly range in-order, Fall to Earth solidifies itself as a must-listen among the calibre of bottle stories.

Doctor Who is rife with portrayals of conspiracy theorists, and their surrounding culture, which riskily miss the mark. Not as symptomatic of the franchise specifically as it is science fiction, as works in the genre - which invites all manner of aliens, shady governments, cabals and technology are - run the risk of affirming their beliefs. Giving conspiracy theorists credibility has, in the last decade especially, been exposed for all of its ugliness, and its emergent, sincere damage. As such, the reasonableness and restraint of The Conspiracy is thoroughly refreshing; Session's Wilson engages in with conspiracy culture from a sincere place of class consciousness and dissatisfaction, as so many do, before venturing into the reactionary and salacious. He does not end up being correct through happenstance but is instead, set up, the grounds of his conspiracy supplanted by the people truly in power in the Committee. The Conspiracy is not an inadvertent affirmation of conspiracy movements, but a levelled reckoning with how easy they are to fall into despite good intentions, and does not reinforce their often quite harmful sentiments. A thoroughly enjoyable listen, that I'd heartily recommend starting the range with.