Though I liked the setting of Lost Hearts better, I think in terms of story, Slow Beasts was my favourite from this boxset. I love the gothic, but I felt that Slow Beasts comment on colonialism was a much tighter concept.

The gang arrive on the planet of the 'slow beasts' - monolithic creatures whose hearts beat once every thirteen days. We are then treated to a thrilling tourist ride around the beasts, showing them off as an attraction rather than as a living, breathing species in their own right. Which is the whole point of the episode - the creatures, in fact, were artificially slowed down in order to let the human colonists take advantage of the land.

This is one of the themes of an awful lot of BF stories, but pleasingly this one pulled it off well. The land is returned to the creatures, the humans vanquished, and the Doctor, Liv, and Helen fly off again for more adventures. I am perhaps being a little more flippant than I really feel here - as I say, I did genuinely enjoy this episode, and I thought it hit all the right beats without being overly saccharine, or overly forced.

However, it caps off a rather decent-to-average set with another story that sits well within the status quo. And that's not a bad thing, exactly, but coming from a range that has historically had episodes like Scherzo, To The Death, UNIT Dating - well, it feels safe. And safe is enjoyable. But I can't help wishing for more.

One thing I love about Doctor Who is when they do cults. There have been many, many cults in the history of DW with varying degrees of success (K9 and Company, I love you, but what is that all about...). This episode sees Helen's grandfather, as a student, accidentally getting embroiled in a cult.

Seeing a Sinclair in the cast list, I was very excited to see them dig deep into Helen's family life again as I feel like her family background is something that has more potential than we've really seen so far. However, I confess I found Robert to be underutilised on that front. He was there and we got a little taste of Helen's family, but it was in no way the complicated, messy delve that I was hoping for.

As for the rest of the episode, it was delightfully spooky and gave our cast lots to do, which was appreciated. I enjoyed Liv's attempt at piloting the TARDIS, and the tension of Helen fading away. The episode promised us something ghostly and thrilling, and it did deliver. It very much gave me the vibes of Fairytale of Salzburg, and that is a vibe I love. Certainly, it was one of the more engaging 8DA episodes of recent years.

But - and I hate to say it, because I did like this episode - it felt generic. Was it fun? Yes. Was it spooky? Yes. But was it new? Was it the kind of shake up of the status quo that the 8DA range sorely needs? Did it feel like a real challenge to the characters? Not really. And, unfortunately, I think an explosive change is what this range needs because right now, it's feeling a little bit like going through the motions.

I was quite excited going into this boxset as I always enjoy an outing with Eight and his team. I like Liv and Helen as much as anyone else, and I was pleased at the idea of getting to see more of them. However, I do feel that they, as a team, have not had any real new challenges or developments for a while, and I feel this story suffered for it.

The team show up on this spooky planet with two women who seem to be harbouring secrets and lies, while surrounded by sinister birds. The setting is very well realised, and the sound design of the people turning into birds was very horrible in the best kind of way. It was atmospheric and a little bit spooky. And that's about it.

I found myself zoning out in various places, and though overall I found it to be entertaining enough, it very much felt like a run of the mill, generic story. Nothing overly compelling happened. The monster is defeated. And it ends. It didn't really push the characters forward, and saw Liv and Helen stuck in this little loop of what they usually do which I would love them to break out of.

That said, I did enjoy the conversations about Helen's family - I always like when the 8DAs dig into that, and giving her a space to remember her mother gives her a dimension that she is often not afforded. But while Helen had some nice moments, nothing really happened for Liv. She used her medical skills, and helped save the day. I did like her mention of Tania, though - that, I feel, is a plot that was not used to its full potential. But that is a different review.

Overall, it was fine. But not something I'll be hankering to relisten to.

would love to write a thoughtful review, but honestly all I have to say is that this episode is here. It's fine. It's setting the threads for the rest of the boxset, and it wasn't bad to listen to. I feel like if I had listened to this one straight away after the first, and then plunged right into the third, I would barely remember this one at all. As I say, it's fine, it's just like half an hour of nothingness.

Nyssa tells the Sultan another story of a posh woman and her butler (who have a very strange romance for some reason), and the person trapped upstairs with a 'demon' in their head. And of course, this person turns out to be Nyssa, and the Doctor exorcises the alien being. Who then jumps into the butler's head. And gets exorcised. And then it's buns for tea.

I feel like this story tried to be more mysterious than it really ever could be - it was too generic for the plot beats to be anything except for what they were. Which was fine. It just wasn't anything special.

This episode was, by and large, enjoyable enough. These anthology-type MR boxsets mean, by nature, the individual episodes have to be bitesized, and I thought that, though the story wasn't terribly complicated, it was complete. Which is often an issue the 20min episodes struggle with - they try to pack too much in.

We're introduced to the throughline of the whole boxset, which is Nyssa telling stories to entertain and amuse the Doctor's captor. He promises to release the Doctor if she tells him of the stars, and so she does. Again, it's simple, but it doesn't fail because of that.

Where it got a little shaky, for me, was the 'villain'. Nyssa tells the story of her and the Doctor showing up on a desolate world where one man is keeping another captive and torturing him for crimes he can't remember. And it turns out, that this man is actually one and the same, and that his split personality has turned him insane and evil. Sigh. As with the Eleven, I find this trope to be distasteful at best, and actively unpleasant and almost harmful at worst. It seems a common - albeit, I imagine, unintentional - theme of Big Finish stories that someone's 'insanity' often comes from mental health issues. Fortunately, the resolve of this one is not that the villain is irredemably evil, but that that Doctor believes that, by recombining him into one entity and releasing him after a set, yet secret, amount of time, he can trick the man into believing he is 'good' again.

Could be worse, I suppse. Still, it was entertaining enough. We will see how the rest of this set goes.

This episode as a four part whole was fine.

If there's one thing Big Finish are great at doing, it's taking or making a minor character from one episode and giving them a whole spinoff of their own. I recently finished Graceless for the first time, based on Abby and Zara from the Key 2 Time trilogy, and I really enjoyed that; and I am a huge fan of Counter-Measures which takes the side characters from Remembrance of the Daleks. And this is just two of the many, many, many examples of spinoffs (but really, Big Finish, Narvin spinoff when!?). All this is a preamble to say, I didn't realise that Vienna Salvatori was introduced in the MR at all, let alone in this story. I've only ever been vaguely aware of her spinoff range, and though this episode didn't exactly give me a desire to hunt it down, I can fully appreciate why she is able to hold her own as a main character.

In fact, the side characters are what really make this story. Although I just listened to it, the actual plot of the episode is already slipping away from me - the Seventh Doctor returns to the world of Prince Kylo to find out that his Sixth incarnation's meddling has yet again screwed things up, and the reprogrammed warrior race from The Acheron Pulse are yet again destroying things in the hunt for the Doctor. There's a little bit of scheming, a little bit of timey wimey shenanigans, but for me, the world and characters was the highlight. It felt a lot Star Wars in places, rogue elements and bartering, but that was fun.

Overall, fun is the word I'd choose for this story. By this point, I'm tiring of the Drashani Empire, and especially after not finding the last one too compelling, I can't say I'm sad to say goodbye to this trilogy. And though this story weakened as it went on - really, I'd love to rate it 3.75 but I was generous and rounded up - I was reasonably entertained, and enjoyed the gaggle of characters the Doctor was surrounded by. It was also nice to have a change from McCoy being furious and yelling, and instead just being chaotic and scheming.

I would love to have anything at all to say about this episode, but I really feel like I've just spent the last two hours of my life listening to nothing. That sounds perhaps harsher than I really feel - in truth, this episode elicited little to no response in me for good or for bad, and as I always say, the worst thing a Doctor Who story can be is boring. And this episode, alas, really was.

Colin Baker is, as always, a sparkling presence in this episode, but that's about all that stood out to me. As a direct continuation from The Burning Prince, we return to the Drashani Empire thirty years after the Doctor last came to meddle. It feels, at first, like this episode is going to be a commentary on the Doctor's effect on people, and what happens in the aftermath, and it kind of does. However, it did it in the least compelling way possible. Prince Kylo, now masquerading under the name Tenebris, is hell bent on revenge after the losses he felt in the previous episode. He and the Doctor, and the Empress Cheni - who Kylo is at war against - argue about whether revenge is good or bad, and whether or not they should stop the war.

And that's about all that happens for two hours.

The titular Acheron Pulse was, to me, quite an underwhelming weapon as it zaps people indiscriminately and banishes their souls to the Undervoid, which is a brilliant name for something that is disappointingly non-scary and easy to get out of. The whole episode felt to me to be going round and round in circles and not really saying much. The bottom line is, it was fine, but definitely another victim to the disappointing middle episode trend.

When I see a solo Doctor adventure in the MR, I tend to breathe a sigh - often I find companionless Doctor stories to be tedious at worst and dull at best. Unfortunately, Davison is in no way my favourite Doctor either, so I was gritting my teeth for this to be yet another one I'd have to power through. I was then delightfully surprised to find I actually very much enjoyed it.

On reflection, I should have paid more attention and noticed it was a Dorney script - John Dorney has been know to write duds but they are very few and far between, and this is not one of them. The story to begin seems simple enough; a prince is marrying for the sake of peace between warring factions, but the woman he is to marry has been kidnapped and, because he loves her, he has gone to rescue her.

Though it is perhaps a little obvious by the nature of this kind of story that the princess is inevitably going to be a double agent, only going into the marriage in order to obtain the DNA of the opposition so she can help wipe them out, the twist is still well realised and didn't leave me with the sense of yeah, of course it was her as twists often do. Overall, I had fun listening to this one. The pace was good and I didn't feel bored, and that's about all I ask for from a Main Range episode.

I was a little  uncertain going into this one as I vaguely knew what was going to happen to Hex, and the other two in the trilogy set a high standard. But delightfully, Gods and Monsters did not let me down.

Often, I find stories about gods and all-powerful beings to be kind of dull because you can reach a point where the stakes are so high they become as boring as if there were none. But with Gods and Monsters, I enjoyed the inevitability of it - possibly helped by knowing, ultimately, that Hex was going to die. I enjoyed how the Doctor's schemes unravelled, and how yet again his companions were trapped in the consequences of his meddling.

However Hex did not die. I mean, he kind of did. But not in the way I was expecting. Not only was his farewell to Ace genuinely upsetting to the point that I had to take a walk so as not to cry in the workshop, but hearing him at the end with the gods has me genuinely excited for his return, and to see where this story goes.

I love Big Finish stories when they're a little bit scary - something about scary on audio is thrilling to me. And Protect and Survive isn't exactly a horror story, but it is chilling.

Ace and Hex, trapped in a time loop where they are forced to live out the same nine days of nuclear fallout ovet and over again sounds pretty horrible on paper, and in your ears, it is exactly as spooky as you imagine. Interspersed with the radio giving instructions on what to do in event of nuclear attack, the story unfolds slowly, and the deaths at the end of the loop still managed to affect me even knowing they were coming.

An incredible story, overall, and even as we learn that it's a trap for some Elder Gods rather than a story about some normal people in Yorkshire, it doesn't lose impact. So often, the resolution of an episode like this takes away from the suspense that's been built into it, but this episode blew me away with how chilling it was right to the end.

After Protect and Survive, and as with many of these little connected triplets in the Main Range, Black and White feels a little transitional. Although it was enjoyable in itself, following a corker of an episode like Protect and Survive would always have been hard, and Black and White very much gave me the sense of moving pieces around the board to get all the players in place for the final episode.

And yes, that metaphor was on purpose - this episode sees the return of Fenric, right at the very end. As I say, positioning all the pieces. I was pleased to see the return of Sally Morgan and Lysandra Aristedes (even if I did have to tardis.wiki them as a refresher), but they were both characters I enjoyed earlier in the range. Certainly, this is an episode that requires the background reading and I am glad to have done it.

That said, I didn't 100% follow the Beowulf plot (possibly more due to the fact I was using a belt cutter at the time than the story itself), but I found all the characters in the story to be robust and full - something which sometimes doesn't quite hit for one off characters. I also felt the black/white Tardis resolution to be quite neat, and I liked how you can feel the strings coming together.

Overall, pretty good for a transition episode, but if Gods and Monsters is as good as Protect and Survive, then Black and White will be yet another case of the weak middle episode.

This episode possibly would have had more impact if I either remembered or liked Talons of Weng Chiang, but seeing as I haven't watched it in many years, I'm a little hazy on the details. That said, I still enjoyed this episode well enough.

Often with theee companions, one or more of them get under-served by the story. Here, it is Turlough's turn to take a smaller seat, but I felt the balance of story between all the characters was much better than some other episodes. And, as Tegan is my favourite, I was in no way upset by this being a good episode for her - I always like it when a companion goes home, or has some ties to their past exposed.

Overall, a decent listen while in the shop bashing on some sheet metal, but not one I think I'll revisit.

This is a pretty run of the mill 'war is bad and don't murder people' episode. It's not unenjoyable but I expect it to float out of my memory without much impact in a few days.

It's a busy episode, with many new side characters, which doesn't help on top of the three-companion team, and the plot wants to be more complex than it really is. As I say, I didn't not enjoy it, but I didn't find it overly engaging - the idea of a secret alien species being scapegoated as world destroyers is... interesting, especially when they're supposed to be completely peaceful.

Part one and two did okay by Turlough, and really this whole episode, and indeed this stretch of Fifth Doctor episodes is about Nyssa, so she was treated well by the story, but neither Five nor Tegan get a whole lot to do which was a shame to me.

tl;dr, it was okay. Nothing bad, but nothing special.

The audible 'no!!' I no-ed at the cliffhanger end of this one...

I tend to find the Paternoster Gang stories generally average to enjoyable, but this whole boxset was delightful. Unlike the first two stories in the set, this one is strong throughout, and the clones provided good mystery without being overly confusing using the same voices over and over. As far as a plot goes, it's not vastly complex, but that's not important to me because I often like to get swept up in things without overthinking it.

Big Finish writers tend to have a few themes that they really love to pull on over and over, including pandemic disease, amnesia, and - as is true of this one - criticism of Empire. It's something well suited to a Victorian-era story, and manages to feel relevant to the story in a way that isn't always achieved by some more heavy-handed attempts to decry the idea that Britain should return to its glorious, colonising ways. Here, the key antagonist, Lord Ives, is attempting to create a clone army in order to revitalise the good, British stock of the country and consolidate his power, which of course is not viewed positively in the narrative.

However, one thing that comes from the clone army is some good character work with Strax. Lord Ives is using a Sontaran cloning machine in order to achieve his goal and at one point, melts a batch of his own clones like they are 'disposable'. Too often in Paternoster Gang stories, Strax is treated as the comic relief to the point where his stupidity becomes tiresome, but here he and Jenny share a moment where he is disgusted and almost distraught by the cavalier attitude of Ives towards his clones - he tells Jenny that the clones of Sontar are many things, but that they are not disposable, that they have worth. This is the kind of character beat I wish we got out of Strax more; rather than just shouting and playing with guns, his principles of honour are allowed to shine here.

And, of course, we resolve the cliffhanger of the last boxset by Vastra finally - after just a handful of days - realising that the Jenny in the house is not the true one. I'm glad that they didn't choose to go with a story of Vastra falling for the deception, but rather her putting together the pieces quickly and choosing to act and shoot the false Jenny. However, the real Jenny manages to escape her prison and so the cliffhanger we are left with here is, against which Jenny did Vastra act against?

Naturally, all will turn out to be well as I cannot really believe that they would choose to kill Jenny permanently, but nevertheless, it was - perhaps not a satisfying end to the boxset, but certainly not a poor one.

I was in the (debatably) privileged position of running this game as Games Master at EH Leeds, and my favourite thing of all to do was slip in various funny references to the obscurest of DW lore, mostly to entertain myself, but on occassion I got mega-fans like myself in to play, and they appreciated the clues.

More than anything, this game has left me with a permanent inability to listen to the song Africa by Toto without thinking about it, and the Thirteenth Doctor's opening monologue seared into my brain forever.

As an escape room, it's fine - I feel you definitely get more out of it as a fan as being excited about DW means you can overlook some of the leaps of logic you have to do to solve the puzzles. I have always found the actual story of WC to be lacking, as although the setup of the cybermen and Jodie Whitaker's message are exciting, the puzzles don't really flow into one another as well as they could.

Nevertheless, I always enjoyed running WC, even when it was broken. Doctor Who fans are the best.

Part 1, I enjoyed a lot more than I expected to. Unfortunately, Doctor Who doesn't have the greatest track record with its portrayals of Asian cultures, so seeing a story that was set in Colonial India that seemed to be about a mystical tiger... well, you can see why I went into it with suspicion. However, all four of the TARDIS team managed to have something to do all through this episode, which is something that is so often lacking in stories with three companions. I was also relieved to see that the Indian characters were relatively inoffensive, if somewhat unmemorable (I am writing this up a few weeks after listening, so it is probably telling of how much impact this story had on me that I can't remember much of it).

And then parts 2 - 4 went downhill. Part 1 seemed to offer us a story of a tiger with psychic abilities who both seemed to be the enemy and yet the victim at the same time, which is interesting enough, but then the rest of the episode dragged out into something that seemed to want to riff off The Jungle Book while also still being about aliens, while also becoming an Indiana Jones style chase while also still being about aliens, and for some reason most of it seemed to take place on a train.

By part 4, I was confused. What started out being about a tiger turned into a story about the Power of the Divine Motherly Instinct, which left a pretty bad taste in my mouth. Because, of course, as we all know, the only point of a woman is for her to be gentle and loving and have such a wonderful desire to have children... It is a deeply annoying trope to me and didn't do anything to endear me to a story I was finding average to begin with, and the pastiche of The Jungle Book did nothing to make me any happier about the fact that the lady tiger adopted a human child and loved it while her brothers were big mean men.

But hey, at least it wasn't too drastically racist, right?

One of the most frustrating and compelling parts of Gallifrey is how Leela is treated by every other character. Especially in the early episodes, some of the xenophobia she is exposed to from the Time Lords is utterly vile, though she always proves herself to be more capable and intelligent than the other characters - and on occasion, the narrative - give her credit for. Square One is one of these episodes that I go back on forth on. Certainly, it is compelling. The relationship between Leela and Romana blossoms, and it isn't hard to believe in their friendship at all, and Narvin and Brax continue to be slimy and fascinating in themselves.

But Square One is Leela's episode. She is sent by Romana to a top security peace summit, with Narvin, where they both must navigate the tensions between the temporal powers. However, Leela is sent as an exotic dancer, which leaves little to the imagination as to her objectification. Indeed, the episode paints a rather dire view of politics, about seedy deals and secret meetings, and about the extra-curricular activities of the diplomats. And though the worst offenders of the episode get what is coming to them, I still find myself questioning why Leela is always cast into these roles, and why Romana is the only one who ever sees her utility for her brain. It is more than possible that I have overthought this episode to an incredible degree, because I have listened to it a lot of times, but the question I always get stuck on is, when will Leela be seen for more than the alien who does not belong?

And the answer is, very rarely. But in Square One, despite the objectification and the insults that get slung at her, she is only there because Romana values her intellect. More than anything, it is clear here that this is Romana and Leela's show. And that is when Gallifrey thrives best, when it is about them.

As far as the beginning of a series goes, Weapon of Choice can seem a little long and dense, full of political intrigue and characters who all have their own agendas on a planet famously full of manipulators and tyrants. The very core of this series is the friendship of Leela and Romana, which may seem unlikely, but they form the true heart of Gallifrey. For Leela, Weapon of Choice lays the scene of a woman who, having lost her husband, is desperate to escape a planet on which she does not belong; while for Romana, we find a president who is trying her best to do the right thing, and being foiled at every turn. Adding to this, we create a quintet with smarmy politician Braxiatel (who, knowledge of from Bernice Summerfield is not necessary, but definitely enhances the experience); and Narvin, the stuck-up, cold Coordinator of the CIA, who you will grow to love. Trust me. If you know nothing about Gallifrey during Weapon of Choice, this seems like an insane thing to say, but Narvin has one of the most superb character developments ever written.

And this is why Gallifrey is worth listening to past the beginning. Although Weapon of Choice can feel slow and dense, it also has a totally different feel to any other series in the Whoniverse, and the slow unfolding of the plot is one of its main allures. Weapon of Choice is very much a set up episode, introducing us to concepts that will have ramifications that will still be felt in stories far after it. Certainly, it is an episode that benefits relisten with hindsight, and gets better with every listen as you notice extra details, but it stands on its own as a tense piece of drama, heightened to no end by an incredibly talented cast. It is perhaps not the easiest episode to listen to for the first time, and certainly requires a level of concentration to figure out who you are supposed to trust, and what everyone is up to, but Gallifrey just gets better and better from here.

And this episode really is good. It's easy to see, even from the start, just why Gallifrey has endured as one of Big Finish's most beloved, most long-running series.