MR 042: The Dark Flame

Damn, my mind is in the process of rejecting this thing so I'm going to try to write it down now before I forget it.

This one is bad. And not for the same reasons of Nekromanteia. This isn't written in a bad way. This is just bad for a standard sci fi reason: technobabble. The story is buried in the stuff and makes it completely incomprehensible. That's why I'm immediately forgetting it. If you need two thirds of your story to be technobabble, you've written a bad script and you need to try again.

So as far as I can tell, the story is that there's some sort of experiment going on on a station in orbit around a planet. The Doctor and Ace are going to pick up Bernice from said station. But then she gets attacked and sent down to the planet where there's a guy trying to resurrect a cult that worships this dark flame.

The guy puts the emissary of the dark flame inside of a recently deceased researcher. Ala Fenric. Who then resurrects a skeleton army. And then it gets a bit procedural. Running around and fighting the cultists and skeletons.

I'm not even sure how it gets resolved to be honest. The Doctor goads the emissary into trying to mind control him and it gets burnt in the process. Apparently the dark flame that everyone worships is the last gasp of life from the end of the universe? Something like that? I can't be bothered to be honest.

I'm not terribly invested in Bernice as a character at all either. I don't listen to her series and I don't read Doctor Who books at all, so she's just kind of a random character for me. She was fine here, I guess, but nothing special. Like in Shadow of the Scourge.

Ace gets to be an action hero so that's cool I guess. The Doctor said she fell in with the military which is... weird and extremely out of character for Ace. So definitely not a fan of that one. Seems as out of character as having her work for the Time Lord CIA. It's weird to have Rapture as the last story with her in it before this where she wanted to be called Dorothy and now she's getting on the Doctor for calling her that, insisting on Ace.

I dunno, I feel like the Seventh Doctor just can't catch a W. His comedy story was very fun, but he's not really gotten a decent serious story yet. Colditz is the closest that's managed to get into that A tier range rather than B-D

Yeah, just not a lot to say on this one. Excessive technobabble can absolutely kill a script as we see in this one. If it didn't have that problem, it could get close to feeling like Dark Souls with the dark flame, the cult, the emissary inhabiting a corpse, the mind control. But it's just not interested in being fantasy and insists on maintaining a sci fi aesthetic even though it's clearly not that.

MR 041: Nekromanteia

Is this a joke? Am I a joke to you? Am I being punked? What is this? Why is this? This is an absolute MASTERCLASS in what to do wrong in a Doctor Who story. Everything about this is terrible. It's boring. It's overly complicated for no reason. It's violent, dark and edgy just for the sake of it. It's overly sexualized just for the sake of it. The story is amateurish and basic. The dialogue is badly written and immature. The only thing it needed was a surprise conservative moral like Kerblam to complete the bad Doctor Who tropes list. All this immediately after the excellent Jubilee and the fun Bang-Bang-a-Boom! This felt more like a badly written Ao3 fanfic than an actual professionally produced audio drama with the original cast.

All that to mention that there is a pointless first part as well. The Doctor visits a space station with a friend who helps get him black market parts for the TARDIS, but that is completely irrelevant to the story. They're just suddenly transported into another world out of nowhere. And that's where the story really begins.

There's a large cult of evil witches who most of this story's pointlessly gratuitous content comes from. They're guarding a relic that contains their god. A corporation is after that relic. Ok cool. The corporation sends a ship that gets destroyed by the technologically superior witches who then kill everyone in it and stack up the corpses in a room where the TARDIS lands. There's a scene where the witches are "crawling on the outside of the ship" like they're insects. They of course eat the people they kill, obviously they're cannibals.

The only corporate survivors find the Doctor, mistake Erimem and Peri for witches (knowing this story probably JUST because they're women) and shoot them. Peri gets captured by the witches and then she gets taken to be stripped naked and bathed in oils. Again with the gratuitous sexualization. And then one of the survivors attempts to sexually assault Erimem. Why though? Why is this here? I don't care if you're sexualizing for the sake of it in fanfiction, but the main range is one of the most prominent non-tv Doctor Who spin offs. You NEED to have a reason for doing stuff like this and the story offers no excuse. It just does it just because it can.

Not only that, but the second episode ends with the Doctor GETTING HIS HEAD CUT OFF by the witches. Of all the Doctors, of course it happens to this one. The Fifth Doctor is true to form in this story: getting led around by the plot and taking a passive role. But this takes that character trait to the extreme. I always talk about how easy this Doctor is to bully, but even I feel a little bad for him. Just a tad.

When he dies, he goes into the relic which is one random guy's version of heaven, a cricket game in the Olympics, for some reason. And here we learn that he's been maintaining his afterlife for thousands of years with the witches watching over him, but the corporation is after him. The survivors of the attack steal the relic and then the corporation CEO destroys the ship with the relic on it, all of which potentially is going to cause the system to be destroyed because of the power it takes to maintain it.

The Doctor gets put back into his body by the guy in the relic and now it needs a new person to sustain it so it doesn't get destroyed. The Doctor offers himself, then Erimem, then the cat just randomly jumps up and gets taken as the new god. Huh. Sure, I guess. Poor Andronak.

The only interesting thing here, to me, is when an archeologist gets his tongue and heart cut out by the witches for desecrating the temple (more gratuitous violence), Erimem says that he deserved it for violating a temple. Which makes sense for her as she believes that violating a temple is one of the worst acts you can do. It just hit me when she said it that she is from a VERY different culture and time and it plays into that.

Otherwise, this is just terrible. I don't know why this was commissioned as a script in the first place. Nevermind acted out and edited. Oh yeah and the sound mixing is terrible too, like Loups Garoux. Just talking about the summary, you can tell how awful this was to listen to from start to finish. This one goes into the F tier bin and good riddance. Legend has it that Peter Davison asked that this writer never write for Big Finish again and good thing too.

MR 040: Jubilee

He doesn't miss ladies, gentlemen and others. He doesn't miss. Robert Shearman can do no wrong. He's so good, he wrote the first good Main Range Dalek story.

And boy is it a story. It's not as good as his first two stories: The Holy Terror and The Chimes of Midnight, but it is very good. Like his first two, there's some exploration of narrative structure here, specifically the way in which we view the Doctor and the Daleks. The Daleks are the eternal evil and the Doctor is the eternal good. But you can twist either to suit your own ends.

That is what this story is about. A century ago, the Doctor and Evelyn stopped a Dalek invasion in pre-WW1 UK. The British Empire used that as a rallying point, bolstering national confidence and preventing the British Empire from ever falling. The Nazis presumably didn't come to pass because the British WERE the Nazis. They grew more and more fanatically fascist, seeing the Doctor as this great fascist military war hero who fought off the Daleks. And now the British Empire never fell and has conquered a great deal of the world, including the US. Possibly all the world.

And like any fascist regime that has run out of enemies to fight, they have to invent new enemies. Daleks were the great enemy, but they are few and far between. Now we invent new things to execute people over like contracting your words. There are even whole pretend Daleks ready to be executed to maintain the public hatred of an other.

The real secret is that the British Empire took prisoner a single Dalek and they torture it regularly. They create juice out of its fluid it leaks under torture. They're trying to get it to talk, to say anything, so that they can blow it up in front of the people to maintain that fear of an other.

They market the shit out of Daleks in the media and on products. There's a great comparison here to the way we treat the Nazis in our reality. We often just use them as a fun plaything, a cartoonish super villain without any real thought to the real horrors that they committed.

The direct comparison would be how the people of the British Empire have the Daleks, an evil fascist force, and then they market them and sell them and then end up just like the Daleks. We do the same thing with the Nazis, we market and sell them as this evil force and yet we have literal fascist political movements that are prominent around the world right now, especially in the US. Everyone knows that the Nazis are evil, but we're not Nazis, you say as you believe the same things they did.

The real REAL secret is that they also took the Doctor prisoner as well. The Empire presumably thought that the Doctor would work for them, but he always refused to become their fascist puppet. So he ended up rotting away in the Tower of London, stuck there for half a century after they cut off his legs. Evelyn starved to death right next to him in that very cell. This shit is dark and this is where it goes to the straight up horror that Shearman is so good at writing. The idea of cutting off the Doctor's legs is so effective because it's his thing. What is the Doctor known for? Running. What can't he do without legs? Run.

The story does an effective job of making you think this is Davros as well. The President's wife starts out by saying that he's in a wheelchair and he's been lurking in the dark in the Tower, going mad. That he's responsible for the Daleks being there. And then it does a great second episode turn around cliffhanger when it's actually the Doctor who's been there the whole time. This was horrifying for Evelyn, to discover this Doctor, a hundred years older, trapped here, decayed, a shell of his former self.

Speaking of the President's wife, the story has two very good characters in her and the President himself. The President is quite mad, thinking he wants to be good but that everyone is under mind control and so he has to pretend to be evil. But he's really just using it as justification for his evil. There's a great scene directly illustrating this point when the dwarf who came from America won't fit inside his Dalek casing (since he uses dwarfs to pretend to be Daleks and get killed for the people's continued hatred of the other) and so he cuts the man's hand off, but then immediately says that he's not actually evil, he's just pretending to be evil. The President's wife WANTS to be the anti-feminist fascist barefoot and pregnant house wife who acts silly, wears tons of makeup, gets abused, and follows her husband's orders. But she thinks her husband is TOO WEAK to actually abuse her properly and wants to depose him to get a stronger ruler. They're both quite insane and they're both justifying their actions with their insanity.

The scene that gets people to compare this to Dalek from series 1 is when the Doctor sees the imprisoned Dalek, but this story is very different from that one. There's a similar set up in the Doctor confronting a weak and helpless Dalek who has been tortured as well as his companion being sympathetic to said Dalek, but that's where the comparison ends, really. The people doing it in Dalek are doing it for money and the people doing it in Jubilee are doing it to maintain the fascist regime.

Speaking of the Dalek, there's a fantastic scene where the two fascists who have been torturing it now attach the gun stick back onto it, giving it the ability to kill someone. The one who is used to giving orders orders the Dalek to kill the other one, who is used to following orders. The Dalek reverses it and orders the one used to giviner orders to kill the one used to following orders. But he can't do it. He can't kill with his own hand. He's killed SO many people by ordering others to do it, but he can't do it himself. But the one used to following orders absolutely can and kills the other one. The ones on the top can brainwash other people into following orders and being willing to kill for their cause, but they can't do the same things themselves. As if they don't really believe the bullshit they spew.

The Dalek, itself, is struggling because it doesn't have any orders to follow. Daleks follow orders. Fascists follow orders. But nobody has given it orders in a century. So it goes to the Doctor in the tower, its old enemy, and begs for him to give it orders, but he won't. Colin does a fantastic, hysterical, chilling even laugh at the suggestion before the Dalek kills him, wiping out this timeline. I wasn't sure why he didn't regenerate, but that would rather defeat the point of the sequence I think.

When the actual Jubilee comes, the TARDIS and the Doctor serve as a link between the two times. A century ago and now. They're both stuck in both times at once and so now the Doctor is serving as a conduit to allow the Dalek invasion in 1903 to come through into 2003. The President's wife deposes her husband and wants to marry the Dalek because it will be a stronger ruler, because she's quite mad. But it doesn't matter because they both get killed by the Daleks anyway, fighting over who is the leader. There is also a really good speech from Colin in which he says that he can't tell the difference between the Daleks and the British Empire, which was great. Colin is always good at giving scolding speeches and this was a good one.

The Dalek invasion is stopped, ironically, by the Dalek that his been imprisoned all this time. It has decided that the British Empire tore itself apart. And because the Daleks are so like the British Empire, they have to avoid becoming them and ripping themselves apart. In order to survive, the Daleks must die. To win the Daleks must lose. It's the self-defeating mental gymnastics that fascists have to do to justify their own beliefs. And so the Daleks end up killing themselves. The invasion force from 1903 is destroyed and thus the invasion never happened and thus the timeline returns to normal.

But the Doctor and Evelyn still have echoes of it. In a very Chibnall style "this is the moral" wrap up, the Doctor talks to Evelyn about how the humans are doomed to repeat their fascism. We bury it and try to ignore itand pretend like we're not like that. We could never be like that. But in reality, it comes creeping up and we have to deal with it again and again.

What another triumph for Robert Shearman. This is a knock out of the park. It's dark and edgy (and not just for the sake of it like Project: Twilight) with some really profound things to say on the nature of fascism. It feels like Shearman took a course or read a book about fascists before doing this one because he nails the fascist attitudes spot on. The need for an enemy, the denial and disassociation from the evil you're doing, the inability to believe or act on the horrifying bullshit fascist ideas from the upper leadership, and the deeply submissive nature of fascists, unable to do anything without orders. Shearman took a huge swing with his very direct comparison of Dalek ideals with humans at their worst and creates a story that is not only relevant to the current age, but is also timeless. Fascism always has a chance to creep up from the shadows and take control. We must be ever vigilant to stamp it out.

MR 039: Bang-Bang-a-Boom!

Or the one where Patricia Quinn pushes Sylvester McCoy's face into her bosom.

It's the intergalactic song contest on Dark Space 8! Worlds from across the galaxy are competing, but there's been a murder or two in the background and it's up to our plucky protagonists to stop them before the song contest is ruined!

Yes, this is a sort of spiritual successor to The One Doctor. It's a parody, this time of Star Trek and Eurovision. It's definitely not as good as The One Doctor, though. I am big into Star Trek, but the parody was not as direct as the parody of Doctor Who itself in The One Doctor. It's still VERY good though. It's a shame that we don't do intentionally comedic/ridiculous stories like this anymore.

The Doctor and Mel land on a shuttle carrying the new commander of Dark Space 8, only it blows up just in time for them to get pulled onto the station via transmat. The Doctor gets mistaken for the commander and it goes from there. It's quite entertaining to hear the Doctor playing commander on this Star Trek type space station. He gives orders and talks to the principal crew, the Doctor and the scientist while investigating a series of murders.

The main story here is that two of the competitors in the song contest are Angvia and Gholos, a gestalt entity, two species that have hated each other and fought for years. There's a peace conferance going on, but in the meantime the song contest is a symbol of that peace.

However, there's a little secret. The song contest is actually the REAL peace conference. The arbiter of the song contest is the arbiter of the peace conference, all of it conducted psychically and subconsciously so that the singers don't know that they're negotiating.

It's mostly just a fun little romp with much hijinks and murders along the way. I particularly enjoy the parodies of Star Trek where the commander gets killed in an appropriately Star trek episode fashion, leading to the Doctor becoming the new commander.

The space station scientist and doctor are actually quite incompetent at their jobs even though they look and sound quite profession. In fact the doctor gives stardate logs of what's happening. But she is not very good. She can't revive someone who's just got a bump on the head and doesn't know what smelling salts are. And she says "I feel so helpless" a lot. It turns out that she stowed away and just said she was a doctor because she wanted to live the life of a star trek doctor, running down corridors with a tricorder in hand and saving people. But she actually got a lot of people killed along the way.

As for the scientist, he was drunk the whole time. Whenever anyone asked him something, he just said whatever random crap popped into his head. Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow indeed. He, doubtless got a lot of people killed as well.

As for the eurovision parodies, we get some fun parodies of the announcers and voting when the Ice Warriors cast their vote for Mars' delegation. But the actual performances sure are... something. There's a pop star from Earth named Nicky Newman who has stage freight and has a bomb that goes off when he's stressed inside of him (true story) so the Doctor goes on for him instead. Guess what he plays, and then wins the whole contest with?

The murderer is revealed to be the translator to the gestalt entity trying to sabotage the peace conference. The idea of a translator being the only one who understands what someone is saying and thus manipulating them and lying about what they say is a fun idea.

I also particularly enjoyed the theme starting and then cutting off when Mel says it was too easy to just wrap up. Speaking of which, I find it interesting that both parody/comedic stories use Mel as the companion. Presumably Gareth Roberts thought she contributed well to comedy, which was a good call, she does. Definitely a fun romp, not as good as The One Doctor, but still a good time. And a reminder of what we could have had if they kept up the comedy stories.

MR 038: The Church and the Crown

The Doctor faces his arch nemesis. A cat!

I love how the Fifth Doctor is the most easy to bully Doctor. He not only gets made fun of by Peri, he also gets bullied by a cat in the opening scene. I swear he'd be the Doctor to get shoved in a locker.

The story itself isn't all that interesting though to be honest. It's a pure historical, but I feel like pure historicals themselves aren't all that interesting. It usually comes down to a matter of either:

1. Interfering in history is bad in and of itself or;
2. Our interfering in history is actually A PART of history and so it's totally legit.

And both explanations are pretty dumb obviously. This story goes with option 2. The Doctor seems to think that his interfering to stop an invasion of France is legit because it was always "supposed to" happen. That his interference is actually a "part of history." Which is, unsatisfying as an explanation obviously. But more than that, the obvious question is why? Why is this history where you interfere to stop an invasion of France really "supposed to happen"? According to whom? The Time Lords? Destiny? God? Aren't you an atheist? Don't you disagree with the Time Lords trying to control all of history? Ridiculous. Peri even asks him why he's doing this as if she knows his reasons are complete bs.

Anyway, the actual story here is just that Peri looks like Queen Anne, ala Androids of Tara so she gets kidnapped because they think she's the queen, again ala Androids of Tara. Yadda yadda we've heard all this before. It's just a plot by an English guy to divide France between the Cardinal and the King to weaken it for invasion. Whatever, very exciting.

What's more interesting here is the character interactions. It's Erimem's first trip outside of her time and she's having a great time. She gets to pretend to be a princess and basically bluffs her way into the King's court, which is hilarious. Erimem and Peri prove that they can work together quite well and that they uplift the Fifth Doctor and make him more interesting. Peri gets to prove that she is absolutely the Fifth Doctor's best companion. Her personality just kind of leaps out at you with how quick witted and just fun she is. Way back when I first listened to these stories, the only time I found the Fifth Doctor himself interesting was when he was with Peri and Erimem and we definitely see why here.

The Doctor also gets to introduce the phrase "one for all and all for one" to the musketeers and he's very excited about it. Nicola Bryant also gets to play Queen Anne too which is nice since she looks like her, much like any other doppleganger episode. She's good in the part.

Otherwise it's pretty C tier coded, but there's some nice interactions between the principal cast. And Erimem gets properly invited into the TARDIS at last. As well as her cat who gets one last scene to bully the Doctor at the end.

MR 037: The Sandman

Something something two sides to every story. Or the one where the Sixth Doctor’s coat causes literal physical damage to people's eyes.

There is a legend amongst the reptillion Galyari people of a monster with a rainbow coat who kills children in their beds and weaves their skins into his coat. A bedtime story to scare children into behaving. Except it is absolutely true. Sort of.

The Doctor returns to the Galyari who live on and operate a big fleet. The Doctor uses the term "space gypsies" quite a lot to describe the people who live in the fleet. It actually kind of reminds me of Battlestar Galactica, this massive fleet that sticks together for protection.

When the Doctor meets the Galyari in charge he suddenly starts acting like a comic book super villain and Evelyn is like lol wtf. She's not exactly someone who could be easily fooled by that posturing. She's just annoyed that the Doctor won't get to the point. Which is hilarious and makes sense. Someone older like that doesn't have the patience for that posturing.

The legend is that the Galyari were driven off their homeworld by the Doctor who made this little species of rodent sentient to kick them out because he just hated them in particular.

Naturally, though, the truth was that the Galyari consider every planet they conquer to be their homeworld and the sentient rodents there were the native species. So they were colonizing another world. The Doctor maintained his monster image for thousands of years to try to keep their conquering in check.

Now however we've got a copycat killer on the loose who is emulating the legend and really skinning Galyari alive instead of using the skin of already dead Galyari.

And this is where the story lost me a bit. There was something about the skins of the Galyari being used in a big monument and the copycat killer being able to puppet their skins to attack others? No idea what that was about.

There's also a subplot about a criminal enterprise where one of the rodent species came to offer that monument to the Galyari in exchange for them leaving their homeworld alone this time.

In general though this one was pretty ok. It was cute to see Colin acting like a monster. And because it's the Sixth Doctor you don't know if it's true or not. So that's fun. But it's nothing special, particularly when it starts going into the whole using skins thing and it doesn't make sense.

MR 036: The Rapture

Oh we're getting religious in here now are we? Between that and hearing everyone call Ace "McShane" or "Dorothy" this was a really odd one, but a good one.

Ace is depressed after seeing David Tennant split in two in the TARDIS, understandably so, and insists that everyone call her McShane. And the Doctor wants to take her on a holiday. Enter the Rapture dance club, run by two literal angels where people go to have a religious experience.

Relating dance clubs to religion is interesting. You can get the same feeling from everyone moving and dancing to the music as you can from religious music in a church. Which definitely makes sense.

The club's angels play music that literally puts everyone into a trance so that they don't know what's happening.

The second episode is the best part I think. The entire episode bounces back and forth between three conversations, not cutting between them. One character ends off on a line that another character is saying in their conversation. It's well written, edited, and acted. Ace finds out that she has a long lost brother separated as a toddler. One of the angel DJs gives a drug to someone suffering from bi polar. And the Doctor works out what's happening with an old friend of his.

And can we stop to take a moment and say how bizarre it is that the Doctor has a friend he made fighting in the Spanish civil war? I thought that was changing Earth history. I thought you hated doing that. We learned that in Colditz. Yet for some reason you deemed it acceptable to fight in the Spanish Civil War just as you deemed it acceptable to undo the Nazi timeline in Colditz. Very hypocritical.

That's not important to this story. It's just odd, I'm not used to the Doctor outright fighting fascists on Earth, he always makes some lame excuse not to. Like in Fearmonger.

We find out that the angel DJs are refugees from a war where their peaceful people were attacked. One of them got PTSD from fighting and ended up having his mind scrambled and his brother has somehow convinced him that they're actual, real angels. They plan to conscript all the people in the club with their trance music to fight in their war. Which is a pretty wild plan.

Only the plan goes awry when the brother who genuinely believes he's an angel dies along with the Doctor's friend, who initially sponsored this, but wasn't keen on the conscription part.

There's some arguments here that without a grand enemy to fight or something greater to belong to or believe in, people just slip into depression and "battling themselves" as the Doctor's friend and the one angel argue. Which definitely is slipping into fascist territory, ironically considering they've both fought fascists. That's the exact rhetoric that fascists use to lure people in: the need to belong to something greater than oneself alone.

As revenge, the other angel seeks to take revenge for his brother's death by killing everyone. Which is, uh, a choice. But the Doctor stops him by talking him down and relating his brother relationship with Ace and her long lost brother.

There's definitely some really good character work for Ace here as she struggles to cope with the idea of a long lost brother and a long lost father who left a long time ago. Ace has a tendency to lash out when things get too real for her and she does it here. She yells at him and runs away. It's definitely reminiscent of Fenric when she realizes that the baby she's protecting is her mom and how upset that makes her feel. They do end on good terms with Ace promising to return. She thought about leaving, but she can't. Understandably so.

Overall it's pretty ok. A story with a lot of pathos, especially with sibling relationships. I liked a lot of the editing here as well as the music. They made a cute dance music intro for this story only and it's a nice change of pace.

MR 035: ...ish

Oh dear. Another incompressible one. There definitely was a point where I lost the plot and never got it back. But it was much later into the story than Time of the Daleks at least. Probably around the middle.

There's a linguistic conference with professors who are working to compile literally every single word spoken ever. Which is insane. That's an insane person thing to do. Thus they have created an AI called "Book" to compile the words and define their meanings for them. But one of the professors winds up dead by suicide and some rogue "anti-linguist" (lol wut) is stalking the conference seeking to cause trouble.

The Doctor is in his season 22 rude phase, like with Whispers of Terror. In a way you can kind of call this one a little brother to that one. It had a creature made up of sound and this one has a creature made of words. Only this is not as good and makes less sense. The Doctor is very weirdly obsessed with British language purity, going after Peri for using American English. Which is just bizarre and so petty for the Doctor. Why is he obsessed with saying one country on one planet's version of language is the best one? Aren't you someone who explores all of time and space? What are you on about? It's so colonial for no reason.

That said, this particular Doctor is known to use big words. There's a funny part where he says a bunch of flowery language and one of the linguists says "and again in words with more than one syllable please?"

It turns out the AI Book and the dead professor went to look for the longest word ever spoken, a myth. But they collected a part of it somehow. It's just a part of the word that says "ish" and it makes everyone else say "ish" all the time. For reasons.
There is a cute part mid way through where the Doctor uses something to censor "ish" so every time anyone says it or says a word with "ish" as a suffix it gets bleeped. That's kind of hilarious. There's another cute part where Peri and the Doctor go back and forth with British versus American ways of saying the same thing to confuse the bad guy.

It turns out that the rogue anti-linguist guy is also an AI but it's turned against its creator for some reason. This was past the point I stopped understanding what was happening so. He wants to destroy all language for some stupid reason I'm sure.

Yeah, I'm not a fan as you can tell. There's some cute stuff here, but I'm not a fan of how overly complex it is.

MR 034: Spare Parts

Yes, it's good, despite the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa. It's amazing to me that Marc Platt did the incompressible Ghost Light and then did the incredibly boring Loups Garoux and then somehow pulled this out of his hat. It's pretty wild. I don't know how he did it.

The Doctor ends up on Mondas in its ancient history where Nyssa makes friends with a local family. Modas is Earth's twin, the long lost planet from Earth's solar system. It was knocked out of orbit and set adrift into space when a moon formed between them. The Earth thrived while Mondas died. All the people live underground. Their society faintly resembles Earth except it's more desperate, more based around survival. There's a market for artificial body parts: organs, limbs, anything as people get sick and injuried regularly. Doctors go around harvesting "spare parts" from people to sell as replacements. It's a dark and twisted reflection of humanity and it's good stuff.

It's this world that produces the Cybermen. Some time ago in Mondas's history they executed the royals, French Revolution style. This desperate set of circumstances lays the blatant evil of capitalism and wealth inequality bare when people don't know if they're going to survive from one day to the next. However, the "central committee" that they established is actually 20 people's brains pushed together as a think tank, like Shada. The brains inside their corpses kept alive to make decisions for the planet.

They've established a propulsion system on the surface of the planet to try to control the direction of Mondas's drift through space. But now Mondas is drifting towards a dangerous nebula that threatens to doom its civilization. The surface of the planet is too dangerous for anyone to go out unless they are FULLY converted and processed into the cybermen that we know. And even then they don't live very long. So working on the propulsion system is practically impossible.

The conversion process and the propulsion system are sucking up all the power from the city, especially in the dangerous nebula. People are starting to die. The government is using corpses from the graveyard in its conversions. And there's a lottery for who gets picked to go up to the surface. They don't know that they're going to be converted though. Of course not.

The nebula starts to destroy the cave system. People WILL start dying unless they can fix it. But the Committee decide to convert EVERYONE in order to save everyone. To survive, they become Cybermen.

There's something about the Doctor being the template for the Cybermen, which was odd. Not sure why that was a thing. The Doctor also manages to get Mondas's propulsion system to push it away from the nebule where it begins its journey back to the solar system where it will be destroyed in The Tenth Planet. The Doctor tries to get them to stop converting people, but they do it all the same.

There's a lot of really good stories here. The lottery is not exactly random. There's a job called the "sisterman" who goes around seeing who would be best suited for conversion. It's a pretty f**ked up job for evil people. The sisterman in the story KNOWS what she's doing, but she doesn't care. And in the end she gets converted herself.

As does the doctor who goes around harvesting organs to sell. He bemoans the government selling artificial parts and driving his organic parts out of business. Which is suitably f**ked.

We get to see a lot of the events through the family that Nyssa befriends. The dad is a cybermat catcher, because the cybermats were used as pets but have apparently become pests. The son wants to go to the surface because he thinks it's his patriotic duty, but the sisterman chooses his sister instead. And we get to see the horror in the conversion through her, especially when she comes home and how horrible it is for the family to see her like that. Also, it definitely really threw me off to have a character named Yvonne who isn't, you know, THAT Yvonne.

The cops are also the first to be mostly converted. The cops and their horses. The description is horrible. They're still recognizably human, but only just, cybernetic implants on everything. Of course the police are the first to be mostly converted.

There's some good stuff for the Doctor and Nyssa as well. The Doctor does his usual bullshit of saying that changing history is bad in and of itself, that preventing the rise of the cybermen would be bad for some reason. And Nyssa gets to call him out on it. There's some pathos for me, as the world's only Adric fan, to hear her calling the Doctor out on his not saving Adric when he totally could have.

I'm pretty happy with Nyssa's character development in these audios so far. She's surprised me. She's becoming more of a character who can call the Doctor out on his bs, which is the type of companion I like. For the most part, though, the Doctor and Nyssa are just observers in this story even though he restores power to the city. Which fits this Doctor. They're just struggling to survive like the people on the planet.

Definitely very good. Rare Fifth Doctor w. And rare Marc Platt w, I still don't get how he did it. We're coming out swinging, apparently, after the second Eighth Doctor season that concluded in Neverland. We shall see if we can keep the good stories coming.

MR 033: Neverland

The Doctor is the boy who never grew up. It's such an obvious comparison, I'm surprised the classic show never made it. The Doctor literally ran away from Gallifrey, avoiding any and all responsibility, just to explore the universe. He just happens to have the technology to be able to BE Peter Pan. Unlike everyone else.

Somehow Charley being saved from the R101 has caused a rift in time. Not sure how, but ok. She has become a portal from the universe of time, the universe we know, to a universe of nothing, of anti-time. Again, sure. Most of what happens in this story you just have to accept.

Charley being saved being this huge cataclysmic thing plays into Doctor Who's usual "changing history is bad in and of itself" narrative, which I don't like. I always prefer it when changing history stories tell us WHY changing history is bad. What about this particular event being changed would result in a worse timeline. This story makes it pretty explicitly clear, too, that Charley's death doesn't actually change anything in the timeline. She wouldn't have gone on to do anything significant and nothing really would be different. But somehow she's patient zero to allowing anti-time into the universe. What about all the other people the Doctor has saved throughout... literally all of Doctor Who. "Just this once Rose everybody lives?" All of those people are now breaches in time. It's just bizarre.

Like I said, you just kind of have to accept it. Which is fine. It makes for an interesting story even if the premise itself is faulty. The Time Lords try to lay a trap for the Doctor to get at Charley, but the Doctor wants to run away and he does. But Charley wants to take responsibility for being alive when she "isn't supposed to be" and hits the fast return, going into the Time Lords' trap.
The Time Lords mean to use Charley as the portal into the universe of anti-time to explore it, but there is an ulterior motive. There is a story about Rassilon accidentally creating anti-time and then going into the universe of anti-time to try to destroy it.

So when they get into this universe, they find Rassilon's TARDIS and his casket, contrary to his casket being in the dark tower in The Five Doctors. But CIA coordinator Vansell thinks it's really him. It turns out it's all a trick.

You see, there are these ghosts in this universe of anti-time. They're ghosts of time lords who have been "dispersed." The Time Lords thought this punishment would be to wipe someone out of all of time so that they never existed. It did that, but they ended up in the universe of anti-time instead. This is a pretty wild thing for the Time Lords to have done. And the interesting thing is that they don't ever realize that they've done it. Because once someone is dispersed so they never existed, naturally nobody remembers the dispersal even happened. That's pretty f**ked and a really good idea for the Time Lords, showing them to be a lot more sinister than shown on classic who.

The leader of the ghosts who has taken Charley's form is an even more clever idea. It's a former coordinator of the CIA who ordered hundreds of these dispersals, but had no idea. When they uncovered the truth, they used the dispersal machine on themselves, overcome with guilt, only to be with their victims in the anti-time universe.

Now the ghosts mean to use Rassilon's fake casket to disperse anti-time into the universe and thus escape, but the anti-time will destroy all of time and all of history, everywhere. So the Doctor and President Romana work to try to stop them.
The Doctor gets a visit from Rassilon, somehow, but sure. This visit from Rassilon to both the Doctor and Romana is particularly odd when we learn, in this story, that he was the one who created the dispersal punishment in the first place and thus caused this. Seems odd to revere him then, but sure.

The Doctor materializes his TARDIS around the time station with the anit-time bomb on it and manages to get it to explode entirely in his TARDIS, thus saving the universe from it. But in the process, the anti-time is trapped entirely within himself even as the paradox of Charley is also somehow resolved. Unfortunately, the Doctor becomes the very embodiment of anti-time. The mythological figure who is a being of pure anti-time. "I am ZAGREUS!!!!!!!" A cliffhanger that we'll have to wait to resolve until story number 50.

Does the plot make sense? No not at all. Are the vibes nice? Yeah for sure, when you can comprehend what's happening. When people say things like "Warrior's Gate feels like a BF script before BF," this is the script they're referring to. Well, this and Zagreus itself when we get to that. Incomprehensible gibberish.

That said, it's more comprehensible than Time of the Daleks, so I'll give it that. And, more importantly, there a lot of really interesting ideas here. Time Lord lore and emotional pay offs. Not only do you have the moment with Charley hitting the fast return, you also have the moment with Charley begging the Doctor to kill her so that the anti-time ghosts can't escape their universe. Good stuff.

On the whole, it's a bit of a mixed bag in that sense. Incompressible but with some good ideas and pathos. We shall look forward to when we basically get the very same vibes in the four hour epic at number 50: Zagreus!!!!!!!

MR 032: The Time of the Daleks

Incomprehensible. Thank you. Next. Next.

No but seriously. There was a point in the story where I completely lost the plot and never picked it back up again, probably about halfway through part 1. Yet again, early BF demonstrating that they can't really handle the Daleks very well. Every one of the four Dalek stories so far has been a flop.

Uh... something about a Dalek time ship that crashed, causing a fracture in time, a fascist dictator experimenting in time travel because Shakespeare has disappeared from history, and magic time travel mirrors. For some reason all mirrors everywhere allow time travel. People can just step through the mirror and end up in another time. Like Alice in Wonderland. Because sure, why not, I guess.

The Daleks have apparently changed history so that they've always been the masters of Earth, somehow using these mirrors and deleting Shakespeare. Because Shakespeare is apparently the most important person in history. I guess. And that's the story?

Look, I gave up trying to understand what was happening a long time ago. It genuinely sounds like the ravings of a mad man. Even trying to read the summary of the story doesn't make any sense. Ah well. One more on this season of Eighth Doctor. Just like with the first season of Eighth Doctor stories, it gets gradually worse, but this season started out on a much better footing with Invaders and Chimes. We'll see if Neverland can wrap it up well enough.

MR 031: Embrace the Darkness

I guess "proceedural" is a great word for this one as well? Just like Sword of Orion, most of the interesting stuff happens at the end. And just like Sword of Orion, it could have benefited from being cut down to an hour episode. This is where the classic who format of four episodes hurts the story.

The Doctor is curious about a solar system whose sun disappeared and is immersed in total darkness. There's a station in that system already with people on it working towards creating an artificial sun, but the natives of this system who nobody knew existed, the Cimmerians, are unhappy with that and seem to be attacking.

The Doctor gets wrapped up with a very belligerant army of robots who are trying to rescue the crew while the Cimmerians extract the crew's eyes in an effort to put out the light. "Embrace the Darkness."

The Cimmerians are actually great healers who have psychic abilities for healing. They can take away and restore sight and probably other things. They are extremely sensitive to the light.

In their ancient past, a group called the Solarians sought out their help because of a devestating plague. The Cimmerians' tried to help as many people as they could but their telekenetic abilities for healing nearly killed them all so they fled. The plague victims tried to follow and beg for help, but the Cimmerians literally blotted out the sun so that the Solarian solar sail ships couldn't follow. Which is insane. And now the Solarians are coming back as archeologists and are suprised to find anyone living here.

Other than this mildly interesting story, at the end, most of the story involves the standard running around in corridors, misunderstandings, ect ect. The most interesting part to me is the robots contiued belligerance. I wonder if there's anything to that. If they are being programmed to be unhelpful.
But yeah, not a generally interesting episode. Though there was a sequence I enjoyed with Charley calling the Doctor out on his penchant for noble self-sacrifice after he makes a mistake. She's not content to just sit while he goes off and gets himself killed. "You brought me here and you're going to leave me with these people I don't know in god knows what century for what?" Good stuff. All in all though, definitely very C tier coded.

Oh. Written by Nick Briggs. And nobody at all was shocked.

MR 030: Seasons of Fear

"Do they have orgies?
CHARLOTTE POLLARD!
I went to an orgy once.... I didn't stay."

I could have sworn I heard Daleks at some point in this story. So Nimon huh? That's one of those monsters that I never would have thought would see a return, yet here we are. Horns of Nimon doesn't exactly have the best reputation from a less than stellar season. And looking at their list of appearances, yeah, they didn't make a return appearance any other time. Nobody's out here clamoring for the return of the Nimon in the 2020s?

Fortunately, though, that's not really the main focus of this story. The main focus is on one individual who has been granted immortality by his mysterious masters from beyond the stars, the Nimon, and his attempts at bringing them into the world over time and being foiled by the Doctor.

We meet Sebastian Grayle for the first time, for the last time in Singapore when the Doctor finally brings Charley there for her rendevous with her friend. He says that he's already killed the Doctor. It's an intriguing set up. A character that's battled the Doctor throughout time, but he's taken the long way round, living all this time, while the Doctor has jumped between points in history.

We get stories set in three different time periods. In the first, in ancient rome, we see Grayle in a cult to Mithras as a priest, but he doesn't believe in it anymore because of his connection to his alien masters, who he sees as gods. There's an interesting thread of faith through this story as we see Grayle's relationship to religion all throughout it.

We see him again in pre-unification Britain where he's a priest, but of course he doesn't really believe. He's extracted uranium and created plutonium to allow his masters to come through, but again the Doctor foils him, destroying his rudimentary transmat. I enjoyed the rulers in this one, they were clever and clearly enjoyed each other's company even though the king (and maybe queen) was gay.
And finally we see Grayle in the early 19th century as a wealthy businessman who runs the hellfire club (even just reminding me of Minuet in Hell... ugh, thankfully it's not as bad as that). He has no religion at all and only believes in himself: that the world exists to serve him. He continues to believe that his alien masters will grant him the world. The Nimon manage to make it through this time, but the Doctor flings himself and the nimon into the time vortex where they end up back in ancient Rome. There he gets the cult to Mithras to attack the Nimon and he convinces the younger Grayle to back down because of an encounter with his future self.

I definitely enjoy scenes like this where a character is horrified by what they will become. And Grayle shoots his future self when his future self tries to kill the Doctor.

There's a couple of interesting ending scenes for arc maintenance, Moffat style, here. The Doctor seems to be explaining what's happening to someone. He's been narrating the whole time. And then two of the characters from the third story get apparently eaten by something that seems to look and sound like Charley. Not sure what that's about. I'm sure we'll find out in the next few stories.

Yes, overall I quite enjoyed this one. I love the relationship between the Doctor and Charley now. They're needling each other as friends do and they're very clearly familiar and comfortable around each other. Charley even calls the Doctor her best friend. I liked when she said:

"You even did that thing where you pretend to be an idiot to get people to tell you their plans.

I do that?

I always thought you did."
It's a really satisfying narrative to follow this one person throughout time and see how he gets increasingly more and more lost in the sauce and convinced of his own superiority. Because he keeps living while everyone else dies so he believes he's the only one that matters. That's why I really love seeing the confrontation between his younger self and the person he will become in the end. Grayle has some great speeches here too about why he does what he does, how he's convinced himself he's the only god, ect ect. And all throughout he thinks that his alien masters will give him control of the Earth.

Just a really fun and really meaty script to chew on. I also quite enjoy how scrappy this script is. The Doctor even talks about "the bitchiness of time lord society" which is hilarious. I never would have imagined hearing the word "bitchiness" come from the Doctor's mouth, but here we are. Great story all around and excited to see how the rest of the arc goes.

MR 029: The Chimes of Midnight

TW: discussion of suicide

It's a damn classic for good reason right? Rob Shearman can cook. The Holy Terror was already the best audio so far and now Rob has surpassed himself with this all time classic. This is incredibly nostalgic for me. I remember at the time, years and years ago, thinking that Shearman was my favorite Doctor Who writer... EVER, and being disappointed that he hadn't done any Doctor Who in a long time and probably won't ever again. Sad.

Anyway, this audio is well loved so everyone knows what happens. But for the sake of it:

The Doctor and Charley land downstairs in an old Victorian manor. It seems to be frozen in time and there's some excellent scenes of things unhappening after the Doctor and Charley cause them to happen. As Charley says, something seems to be preventing them from making any impression. That is, until the chime of 10 PM when they get drawn into the world. This is where things go insane.

The staff of the house are people you'd expect: the cook, the chauffer, the butler, and the lady's maid. But they're all particularly mean towards one person in particular: the scullary maid: Edith Thompson. They way they're mean to her in particular is strange. The cook disapproves of her saying something that everyone else and she herself says. The meme line! Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without my plum pudding!

The staff behave very oddly in general. They seem to be in their own little story and, without missing a beat, they adapt the Doctor and Charley into their story.
This is where Rob Shearman's interest in deconstructing tropes and narrative comes into play, as he did with The Holy Terror. The story plays out like a little murder mystery. First Edith gets murdered and then the cook. The other people see the Doctor and Charley as detectives here to solve the murders, but their answers to basic questions are bizarre. The butler continues to insist the murders are suicide as well. Their answers seem almost like talking to an AI. It's eager to get back on script and to repeat the same lines over and over again in different formats in ways that don't seem quite human. It's amazing that Shearman captures that feeling of talking to an AI decades before that technology existed. It makes everything seem bizarre and dream like. They're doing this strange story over and over again, sinking into their roles as it goes on. The chauffer and lady's maid killed the cook to get her out of the way because she plans to turn them in for their love affair. No actually they're not in love because the lady's maid is now the scullery maid since Edith doesn't exist and a chauffer can't be in love with a scullery maid. Now it's the chauffer who's been killed, and the lady's maid is crying over it but just kidding she's just a scullery maid so obviously they were never in love to begin with.

The murders are always bizzare, as the Doctor says, parodies of death. The cook is stuffed with her own plum pudding. Edith drowns in the dish water and then suffocates from a plunger on her face. The chauffer gets run over by a car in the middle of the parlor. Always something to do with their job.
Some force is running this little farce over and over and over again killing them one at a time, each time the clock resetting at the chime of midnight and starting over again at 10PM with someone being killed and then someone else being killed at 11 PM. The mysterious force works Charley into it as well, making her into a lady of the house and the Doctor into a detective. It prevents the Doctor from leaving the house, going outside or going upstairs. In a particularly funny bit, the Doctor tries to go upstairs and talks to the mysterious force, saying he's going upstairs and that it needs to stop him, waiting for someone to come along until the butler comes along with a gun on him.

In the meantime, as Charley is being integrated into the story as a member of the upstairs household, she's been getting bizarre visions from Edith talking about how she's died. The Doctor even gets scared and tries to run away, but he can't. The TARDIS interior changes dramatically back into the scullery, the force integrating the TARDIS into the story too. It all culminates when they realize the house is alive. It's been controlling everyone and killing them over and over again, becoming more alive with each death. It's going to maintain that thread of life that it has as much as it can.
It was given life by, as it turns out, Charley. Edith Thompson was cook in Charley's house when she was a little girl. Charley doesn't really remember her, but Edith remembers Charley as her best friend, which is so sad. Nobody was ever kind to Edith, not when she was a scullery maid and not when she was a cook, so when Charley apparently died in the R101 crash, she took her own life, overwhelmed with grief that the one person who had ever been nice to her died. It's so depressing that this person was never shown kindness at all except from one child who smiled at her. And that was it. When the Doctor and Charley landed in this house and saw Edith before she was a cook, they created a paradox. Charley is now in this timeline alive and dead. And so Edith is now alive and dead. She both did and didn't take her own life. This paradox gives the house life and allows it to create this little time and space loop for itself, giving itself life.

Charley can feel her death. She can feel the flames and hear the screams as the R101 crashes with no escape. But she also is still alive. Edith encourages Charley to die with her, as they should have. But Charley and Edith both choose life, which destroys the entire loop and the house's attempt at life.

That whole sequence: the Doctor appealing to Charley that he needs her and she needs him, that they're a team, literally had me in tears. It's the reason we watch Doctor Who. I live vicariously through Doctor Who and so it meant a lot to me as someone who doesn't really have any friends, this is just what I do, I listen to and watch Doctor Who. The Doctor is my friend and I go on adventures with him. It's saved me from killing myself multiple times. So hearing him appeal to that made me ugly cry.

Not to mention the very end when the loop is destroyed and they see Edith as a scullery maid. Charley tells her that she's not nobody and not no-one. She's special as she is.
This story truly is something special and it's deeply nostalgic for me. It takes me right back to that time when I was in college listening to Doctor Who for the first time and being entranced by the possibility of what these stories could be. It's crafted with care by someone who deeply understands and loves Doctor Who. It also really shows Shearman's love for exploring narrative and tropes. Like The Holy Terror, it starts out comic in its explorations of the absurd nature of these narratives and then turns out extremely dark and tragic. Like I said, his dialogue when he's still in comic mode feels like an AI repeating the same phrases and trying to get the listener on track with the story. And then the shift into dark tragedy feels so natural and so real. The house's voice seems like it could be silly in any other story, but it actually does feel threatening here juxtaposed with Edith talking about killing herself.

And who else could have pulled off a story like this but the Eighth Doctor and Charley? Charley is intimately involved with this story in a way that most companions in classic aren't. This woman whose death sparked the story killed herself BECAUSE of Charley. It's this darkly gothic feeling, of the clock ticking over, of the death that caused all this, of the bizzare way the staff talk and act, all of it feels very Eighth Doctor in his romantic period. Like a weird dream that you can't quite escape. A dream that pulls you into it and makes you part of it.
There's so many fantastic visuals in this story. From the very beginning when time rewinds and things unhappen, Charley being pulled to talk to Edith in another weird reality, the house itself, the weird deaths, the TARDIS changing into the scullery the second hand on the clock whirring forwards, the resets. This would make a really fantastic filmed story, of all audio stories. I don't know if it would ever be as good as the version we all have in our heads, but it would be interesting to see how it would get adapted to screen.

This is the peak of what Doctor Who audio can be as far as I'm concerned. I love audio dramas quite a lot. I'm more of a Doctor Who audio fan than tv show fan. I enjoy most audio stories I've heard. But I don't think any of them have ever surpassed Chimes of Midnight, and I don't think any ever will. This is not only the greatest Doctor Who audio drama, this might be the greatest Doctor Who story ever made. All from one of the most talented writers we've ever seen.

MR 028: Invaders from Mars

Another comedy huh? And more silly voices? Yet it's actually pretty decent.

Yes, it's BF's second attempt at silly American accents. But unlike Minuet in Hell, it's not completely miserable. The fact that it doesn't take itself seriously definitely is a huge reason for that.

Orson Wells is doing his famous broadcast of War of the Worlds that made people think it was real. But at the same time there is a real alien invasion happening and a lot of mobster drama and violence. A professor from Russia had found alien artifacts and is working on them while agents for the CIA, the Soviets, and the Nazis all try to track him down and take the alien artifacts for themselves. Meanwhile the Doctor gets to play at being a private detective.

The real aliens are trying to make it seems like there's an invasion and then do a protection racket. Similar to the last story actually with the Doctor imposter. But Orson Wells' broadcast tricks them into thinking the planet is already being invaded by bigger, badder aliens and they need to run away.

This one is pretty cute. Not as strong as The One Doctor, but still a fun time. The actors are on point here with their comedic timing and the stereotypical mob silliness that you'd expect. Of course because the War of the Worlds broadcast was on radio, you have to do an audio drama about it at some point, and they choose sooner rather than later.

Looking forward to the next one and this "season" of Eight/Charley, hopefully it's better than the last. But anything would be better than Minuet in Hell. That's for sure.

MR 027: The One Doctor

Mwhahaha, I control everything. You must surrender to my will. I own Park Place ANNNNDD Boardwalk. That'll be 2354 pounds rent please.

Oh my god, what is this and why do I love it so much. I absolutely remember adoring this one and with good reason. This is the second one I explicitly remember from when I listened to all of these years ago, after The Holy Terror. While that one was a comedy AND a tragedy, this one is JUST a comedy. And a very good one at that. It makes fun of the Doctor Who formula quite well, and specifically multi-Doctor stories.

The Doctor and Mel land in the system of... ehem... Generios where an invasion of the evil Skelloids has just taken place. It turns out, though, that that invasion has been coordinated and manipulated by a certain couple of con artists posing as the Doctor and his companion. Banto Zame and Sally-Anne.They're just here for the money. And they're madly in love. Naturally.

But there's a real invasion afoot as a giant cylinder in space (which I imagine looks very like the whale probe from Star Trek 4) demands the three treasures of Generios.

The treasures involve an infinite shelf that exists in multiple dimensions with instructions that you can never quite finish, a quiz bot that knows absolutely everything in the entire universe by sending versions of himself back in time playing the Weakest Link for all of eternity, and an incredibly valuable diamond guarded by a single celled organism called The Jelloid who signed a fifty million year contract to defend it. And has currently been waiting one and a half million years for his television set to arrive. They put him on hold for fourty three thousand years and then gave him a two million year window in which to have it delivered, you see.
Seriously, the jokes here are fantastic. Absolutely everyone is on perfect form with their timings. Colin, Bonnie, and the guest actors who play the imposters. It's also notable for having a pre-Nardole Matt Lucas and he's also quite hilarious.

There are all kinds of running jokes here making fun of Doctor Who in general. I almost don't want to ruin them and just encourage everyone to listen to it yourself.

Whenever I saw that it was written by Gareth Roberts I was a little worried that it was just going to be conservative all the way through. There was a little bit of that with the Doctor bemoaning people not being able to save themselves, followed by the people of Generios saying they were useless in the invasion of the Skelloids, but for the most part it wasn't conservative, it was just making fun of Doctor Who in general.

I whole heartedly recommend this one. This is amazing. If you're invested in Doctor Who at all you need to hear it. It's a joy from start to finish. Not to mention the six minutes of quiz show questions at the end.

MR 026: Primeval

All hail Kwundaar, our living god, I guess. Something something Traken will rise again? Return to Traken? Traken 2: Source Harder?

The Doctor takes Nyssa to Traken in the ancient past because she's sick and only her people can cure her. Not sure why he took her to the ancient past, but sure. Seems like taking someone to a leach specialist to cure your humors.

The ancient past Trakenites are extremely superstitious and have a vague spirituality. The Source, which is this big energy source from the original Keeper of Traken story, is the source of all good in the world and it banishes evil. It's part of their mythology and history. Therefore Nyssa is sick because she's come into contact with evil and being near the source will wipe out that evil. Again, Doctor, what the hell. You took Nyssa to a leach doctor.

There is another power hanging around. A group of pirate ships commanded by Kwundaar, a living god. He's made himself a little cult on these ships. The pirates worship him and follow his law.

Speaking of which, a little interesting bit I remembered: the Doctor says the conservative thing: the best way to help someone is to help themselves and not foster dependancy. Give a man to fish, feed him for a day, teach a man to fish, teach him for a lifetime. And then a little later in the story, the pirates have a commandment from Kwundaar that is similar: Kwundaar helps those who help themselves. I.e., no dependancy.

Anyway, the Doctor and a Traken Doctor tries to go to Kwundaar to see if he can heal Nyssa, which turns out disasterous. Kwundaar wants the Doctor's help in exchange for curing her and then he falls right into Kwundaar's trap. He goes into the room with the Source and increases the shield around it for... reasons. That allows Kwundaar to approach the planet and invade, normally he would be burned out by it.
As it turns out, Kwundaar used to be the original Traken god, but when the Trakenites invented the source, they abandoned their religion for science and used the Source to kick Kwundaar out. Reminiscent of what the Doctor said about every paradise having its snake. They exiled the snake from paradise instead of getting exiled from it themselves. Kwundaar means to unite with the Source, safe from its power against him now and use it to call in his old god buddies from before time. He reads a code from Nyssa's mind that gives the Source's power to the Doctor. The Doctor then destroys Kwundaar and gives the power over to one of the council, creating the first Keeper of Traken, in control of the source.

It's... ok. Nothing special I don't think. A lot of it is just strange and hard to follow. I don't think I have too much to say on it. It's pretty instantly forgettable and expendable. It's just an interesting idea for a prequel to Keeper, but I don't know if anyone was clambering for that. The Fifth Doctor and Nyssa are still pretty boring, unfortunately. That's to be expected, though. 🤷‍♂️

MR 025: Colditz

You shot my friend! Oh hey it's David Tennant. You shot my friend! First appearance of Klein, nice, I remember her. YOU SHOT MY FRIEND!

Well this one was quite good. There's some very interesting ideas about time travel here which I'll go into in a second. The Nazi stuff makes for some very interesting backdrop for the arrival of a mysterious woman named Klein who may not be what she claims to be. Also, a pre-Tenth Doctor David Tennant playing a creepy/sleezy Nazi guard! He orders Ace to take her clothes off and implies sexual favors from her. Tennant is always good at playing the villain and he's good at it here too.

The TARDIS makes a landing right outside of Colditz Castle, a famous Nazi prison. The Doctor and Ace quickly get captured. Ace tries to escape while the Doctor gets taken by Klein. Klein gives the Doctor's TARDIS to the prison's commander and then takes off. But it turns out her method of transport is gone. This is where it gets interesting.

Klein, it turns out, is from a timeline where the Nazis won. She's from the 60s in the UK in that timeline and is working on a government project studying the TARDIS. In this original timeline, Ace gets shot trying to escape Colditz and the Doctor leaves in his TARDIS, only to come back a decade later and get captured and shot when the Nazis won. They were able to use the technology in Ace's CD walkman to win the war, using lasers.

However, it turns out Klein has been tricked by a future version of the Doctor into coming back in time and changing history. She works with a future Doctor who convinces her to go back and capture the Doctor. She tampers with her own timeline and her intervention is what prevents Ace from being shot and prevents the TARDIS from falling into Nazi hands and prevents them from winning. Hence the trick. The future Doctor has been clever, seeing how her interference would wipe out her timeline.
The discussion between the Doctor and Klein is very interesting as well. The Doctor argues for his usual "changing history is bad in and of itself" bullshit. And Klein rightfully calls him out on it. Yes, it is absolutely good to change history here so that the Allies win, but there are plenty more times when changing history would be good as well. Why stop at changing history so my timeline doesn't exist anymore? Why not go back and save the people colonized by the British? Or the people who died in the numerous wars before WW2? The Doctor's going after her "paradise built on the back of genocide" rings holo when he's not willing to stop any other genocide. Only because in the history that he's familiar with, the Allies won WW2 so that's the only genocide he's willing to stop. It makes me look forward to Klein's further appearances if she calls the Doctor out on his hypocrisy even though, you know, she's a literal Nazi.

Ace's B plot is definitely less interesting as it's just her planning an escape attempt and getting ratted out by one of the other prisoners. And getting harrassed by David Tennant. It's not bad at all, just not as interesting as the meat of the time travel discussion.

Ultimately they end up leaving Klein in the 1940s, which could potentially have devestating effects. It's interesting that, when her timeline gets aborted, she doesn't cease to exist. She's a person from a timeline that no longer exists living in a time before her time. That could potentially be dangerous to to the war effort as well. Maybe if she positions herself well enough, she could help the Nazis win. Or maybe she could just get herself shot. We don't know. I'm sure we'll find out later when she's brought back.

MR 024: The Eye of the Scorpion

Huh. Who knew that it would take a Fifth Doctor audio to bring us out of this slump of bad audios. He doesn't get many W's. Savour the moment.

The Doctor and Peri change history by saving a Pharaoh to be's life accidentally. A Pharaoh that the Doctor doesn't recognize and he knows all the Pharaohs, so he says. They then save her life again in the next twenty minutes. This starts an epic historical complete with political intrigue and some light sci fi elements thrown in. I'm a little disappointed it wasn't a pure historical, but that's fine.

The assassin who tried to kill Erimem, the Pharaoh to be, said that there was another heir. Which sparks a whole debate amongst the council of priests as to whether she is legitimate. Erimem, the Doctor, and Peri uncover a whole conspiracy to dethrone her and allow a mercenary army to come in and take control of the capital of Thebes. Followed by a large chase and battle sequence that is quite fun as the forces in Thebes go to unite with the forces of Giza and stand a better chance.

The sci fi element here is that the mercenaries are subject to a gestalt telepathic entity that has taken over the minds of anyone it touches. It's inside of Peri as well and uses her as a spy. And she gets to ask a bunch of fun questions about military defenses and such. The entity wants to take the Doctor's TARDIS and escape off world. The Doctor eventually defeats it when it tries to go into one entity to take over the Doctor and gets taken down when the Doctor and Erimem question everyone the gestalt has taken over. And it ends up inside of a cat. True story. The Doctor can get his revenge on cats after nearly shooting on in Resurrection of the Daleks.

Erimem ultimately doesn't want to become Pharaoh and leaves with the Doctor and Peri. And good thing too because she's a fun character.
There's a lot of fun stuff here. Peri and Erimem already have fantastic chemistry. I see why I remember enjoying them so much. And why I remember only enjoying the Fifth Doctor when he's with these two. They're great. There's a fun little sequence where the Doctor blots out the sun to convince the priests that Erimem is indeed the true Pharaoh. The battle sequence is very fun. Just everything is a great time honestly. Not the best, but certainly an A tier easily. I enjoyed it immensely.

Like I said, the Fifth Doctor doesn't get many W's, so I'll give him this one. It really is a shame that they don't do audios with him and Peri anymore because they have great chemistry. And Erimem is good for their dynamic as well. I'm looking forward to more with them. Unfortunate that Erimem doesn't have that many audios and that they abandoned this Five/Peri TARDIS team, but what can you do.

MR 023: Project: Twilight

Uh... not sure how I feel about this one. Doctor Who's edgy emo phase I guess. Even edgier than Shalka.

During WW1, the British Empire somehow figured out how to create vampires. Of the State of Decay variety. Those vampires are now in the middle of London in 2001 trying to spread the vampire virus to all of humanity. For... some reason. The lead vampire says it's to "save humanity," but I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean. Immortality I guess? They're hunted by a man named Nimrod, the scientist responsible for creating them in the first place during WW1. He became a vampire himself to stay alive and is now a vampire hunter. The Doctor is tricked in the stupidest way possible into helping them create their virus and then helps Nimrod stop them.

What I have to assume is the most important part here is that they turn a woman named Cassie into a vampire who works at their front casino. Since she's rescued and dropped off in scandinavia to hang out. Presumably to be a recurring character.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan. It's just edgy for the sake of it. Very 80s Doctor Who. Blood and guts and gratuitous violence just cause. And just like State of Decay (where vampires first originate) everyone is trying WAAAYYY too hard to act edgy. They're saying edgy one liners and trying to act all jaded and sarcastic as they saw off limbs or watch people explode or inject people with the vampire virus. Like I said, it's giving very emo. Very Hot Topic circa 2005.

That's really all there is to it. Oh and the Doctor is an idiot for falling for the vampire ruse. Dumb. I'm surprised that this audio got sequels at all. 2001 really was a different time huh?

MR 022: Bloodtide

The thing I remembered most from this audio is the way that lady says "Devils." Still pretty B tier coded, but at least Colin and Evelyn are here so that's pretty nice. It's also the first use of the Silurians. Unfortunately, it's pretty standard as far as Silurian stories go, especially classic who Silurian stories.

The Beagle is doing its tour of the Galapagos Islands with Charles Darwin, yes, that Darwin. They end up uncovering some Silurians that have been woken up from their slumber and are working on killing all of humanity with a plague. Again. That's really all there is to it. The thing that makes it pretty standard and definitely too long, like a classic who story, is that it has the Doctor get captured... and then Evelyn goes after him with Darwin and they get captured. And then the Doctor escapes and he goes after them. It's just a waste of time. It could have easily been cut down to an hour, again, like a lot of classic who.

That said, there's some good ideas here. I particularly liked Darwin in the middle of having an existential and religious crisis of faith in the middle of being captured by the Silurians. Indeed, juxtaposing Darwin himself with the Silurians is a great idea. The story does the correct thing in comparing natural selection with artificial selection or animal breeding. Darwin talks about the way that animals are domesticated, becoming more calm because of human intervention. And he compares that to the finches becoming more afraid of humans over time by their presence on the islands.

It's particularly interesting because the story says that humans used to be the Silurians' food and that one Silurian decided to advance their evolution and give them intelligence. So humans themselves are a product of artificial selection, breeding by Silurians. That would absolutely send Darwin into a crisis of faith.
I also found the myrka pretty hilarious considering, you know, Warriors. Just don't drop kick it. They do manage to make it feel threatening as an actual giant sea monster rather than two guys in a panto horse costume. It just is pretty superfluous.

The Doctor gets to make some fun jabs at humanity. How can humans be intelligent when they enslave each other ect ect. How is eating humans any different than eating cattle. Stuff you'd expect of Six, which I'm here for. I enjoyed the outraged ship captain trying to come up with reasons to justify why eating humans is wrong and eating cows is ok. It is so good to finally have Colin back. It's been EIGHT audios since we had him. And not coincidentally Holy Terror was the last truly good one. And yes, I do like Paul McGann quite a lot, who doesn't, but his first four audios here left a lot to be desired.

MR 021: Dust Breeding

Well this was a rather odd story. I'm not sure what to make of it to be honest.

There's an ancient powerful entity hidden in the Scream painting. The Master is trying to lure it out by using its ancient enemy it was created to fight as bait. Hijinks ensue. There's an artist who gives this planet of psychic dust to the entity and then theres a battle of psychic wills for it between the Doctor and Master.

I'm not sure if it's good or not? I guess it's pretty ok. But ok is a huge improvement over the last run of audios. I'll take ok over terrible accents, over exposed audio, and boring, messy, and procedural scripts.

It is definitely nice to see Geoffrey Beevers' first BF audio. He's fantastic as always. He's one of my favorite Masters for a reason. I find it interesting that the story gives a definitive end to the Ainley Master here. His Trakken body got burned up by the entity in the painting when he tried to unsuccessfully control it. I'm also not sure who Bev is, I have to assume that she's from a VNA.

I also like the opening where the Doctor has an art gallery in the TARDIS where he steals works that are destroyed according to history. That's pretty hilarious.

But yeah, overall pretty ok. Pretty B tier coded. Nothing super special. I'm super excited about the return of my favorite Doctor next. Colin save me from this run of bad audios.

MR 020: Loups-Garoux

Why is the audio mixing so terrible? Literally everyone's audio is clipping like crazy. I feel like my ears are bleeding. The audio mixing was terrible in Minuet in Hell, but for a very different reason: the terrible accents and immediate cutting between scenes.

Literally the entire summary is: the Doctor and Turlough hang out with a werewolf clan for two hours and twenty minutes. Yes, there really is that little story to this thing. The werewolf clan has a lady in charge whose son is sick and is getting cured by an asian doctor who wants to cure lycanthropy in general. And there's an evil werewolf that's the original werewolf that wants to mate with her. Aaaannnnddd that's about it. 😴 🛌 💤

This audio could definitely have benefited from being cut down to a single hour long episode. But even then there might not have been enough story to sustain it honestly. And that god awful audio mixing, what the hell. If it wasn't for that, this would be pretty average, but the audio drags it down.

Mr 019: Minuet in Hell

What an apt title. This was miserable from start to finish.

I don't super care about the summary. So something something the Doctor got his mind scrambled with Nick Briggs and is in an insane asylum for most of the story. Charley gets kidnapped by a Hellfire club and is forced to wear sexy clothes and a corset. Where she meets someone with literally demon fighting magic powers from a medieval knight group who has a grandfather who is a senator who gets possessed by a demon who is literal Yosemite Sam and makes my ears bleed every time he talks. The head of the Hellfire Club is trying to start a new state, become governor, and then president while projecting a Christian image. All while summoning a literal demon. The Brig is here investigating just cause.

And most importantly, everyone, and I mean everyone, had a terrible accent that makes me hate my life. Like if every single character was Milo from the Space Pirates. Oh my God.

This story robs the Doctor and Charley of their agency and definitely is a waste of the brig. And is just painful. Not only in the terrible accents, but the terrible script and story as well. I don't know who green lit this piece of crap but they need to be fired immediately. It's incredible how the first block of Eighth Doctor stories get progressively worse. Storm Warning is pretty ok. Sword of Orion boring and procedural. Stones of Venice a messy script with no focus. And Minuet in Hell an assault on the ears. Here's hoping the next block is better. Back to our regularly scheduled Doctors.

MR 018: The Stones of Venice

Uh... it's a Doctor Who story and stuff happens I guess. Really, these first few Eighth Doctor stories aren't that interesting.

The city of Venice is sinking into the ground in the future. But there's a whole legend around the Duke, who is 100 years old, having been cursed by his lover to die when the city sinks. Because he "lost her in a card game," which is a giant lol wut to me. This is your lover, not a car. And he gives no reason for it either which is bizarre. Surely that's not legal unless the 23rd century has legal slavery. This entire premise is bizarre.

A cult has formed to worship the lover and has her tomb deep underground. But her tomb is empty because she was never dead. She is an alien of some kind who used her jewels to amplify her hatred of the Duke and curse the city to die. But to save the city something has to die in return so she forgives the Duke and they die together.

Which is so weird. Why would she forgive him for "losing her in a game of cards," which I reiterate, makes no sense. And why would she choose to die with him, throwing herself on the funeral pyre style.

The Doctor talks about how humans make up legends and stories. But this REALLY IS a legend and story come to life. She did curse the Duke and the city to live for another hundred years and then die. There really is no reason for the cult to not worship her when she can destroy the entire city. There's also some paintings that she brought with her from space.

And an underclass of fish people who drive the gondolas. They're both supported and condemned by the story. Revolution of the underclass who force Charley into trying to fool the Duke that he is his long lost lover.

Yeah, the writing just feels all over the place here. That's the main problem. It's very unfocused and it ends up feeling like a mess of underbaked ideas.

MR 017: Sword of Orion

First use of the Cybermen... yaaaayyyyy..... Yeah, this one is fairly procedural. If you've ever seen a classic who Cyberman story, you've seen this. It's like Apocalypse Element and Genocide Machine, just standard Dalek faire that I checked out of. No surprise that Nick Briggs wrote both this and Mutant Phase, which was also pretty boring.

The Doctor and Charley go to a space station bazaar, which is definitely the most interesting sequence in the whole story... only to accidentally go onto a scrap ship that runs into a Cyberman ship. It turns out the captain of the scrap ship is a double agent in the Orion war between the humans and androids, who are trying to be treated as equals. The captain is secretly an android in disguise, looking to steal Cyberman conversion secrets to convert humans they capture in war.

It's not as interesting as it sounds. All of that comes out in the last twenty minutes. The rest of it is just by the books. There's a cybermat infiltrator and then there's a mutiny against the captain and then the Cybermen convert and mind control people ect ect ect. The bits that would make for an interesting story are not until the end, but by that point we no longer care.

It's a shame too because the idea of an android war is interesting. Like if Data from Star Trek inspired a revolution rather than tried to work legally for android rights. Ah well.

I do like seeing Charley adapting so well and so immediately to travel, though. Charley is from the early 20th century and here she is on a space station and space ship and she rides in a hovercar and she doesn't miss a beat. She adapts incredibly well, even arguing for android rights for a hot minute at the end. That's a great characterization for her as this person who has such a wanderlust that she's willing to just accept whatever. That's why we love her.

MR 016: Storm Warning

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Oh, um, excuse me. That's just me fangirling. Enter Paul McGann and India Fisher! This was so nostalgic, oh my god. This is BF's main line, current era team and it's amazing to hear it. The Eighth Doctor was such a blank slate in the tv movie that now BF basically gets to invent his personality and what a great personality it is. Yes, BF have already invented a new companion character in Evelyn and she is amazing, but this is the first time BF basically get to invent a new Doctor.

And what a Doctor he is. Paul McGann is a legend for a reason. His banter and sharp witted responses are hilarious even here. As are his scatter brained responses when he first meets Charley, which I will post below, another legendary first meeting like Six and Evelyn. His lust for life is evident even in this first story and Charley is the perfect companion for him. She, too, has a lust for life. She boards the R101 disguised as a steward just because she can, because she wants to see the world. I'm so excited to hear all their adventures again, I'm pretty sure I was starting to tear up with how nostalgic this was for me.
Now the actual story. The R101, an airship that historically crashed tragically is on its way to India, but it is on a secret mission. To return a crashed alien pilot and possibly steal the spaceship that the alien is from. The aliens turn out to have divided their personalities into logic, instinct, and free will. The engineers, the uncreators, and the lawgiver. There is only one lawgiver that has lived for a very long time and has dictated what the engineers and uncreators do, but it is dying and it needs a replacement. The man who brought the R101 here to steal the alien ship stays as the new uncreators are free from the lawgiver's dictates, but are scared off by everyone roaring because they've never seen a predator before. One of the people from the R101 steals an alien gun and in an act to keep it accidentally destroys the gas bags holding up the airship which then crashes tragically.

The Doctor and Charley then fly off on a vortisaur, a predator that lives in the time vortex, back to where the TARDIS has crash landed. There's an interesting hook, here, for BF's ongoing series with Charley. She's a time anomaly of some sort. The Doctor considers putting her back onto the R101 and letting her die because history is going to change with her alive, which would be horrible. Does he know who he is? But he can't do it. Just as he can't not let Charley keep the Vortisaur, which Charley names Ramsey.

It's a cute story, but it's an especially amazing one. The real strength in this story is hearing Paul McGann's first real story outside of the tv movie, of course, and seeing Charley's first story. They already work so well together and have fantastic chemistry. I remember adoring these two and I can't wait to hear more of them. Which, of course, I will because the Eighth Doctor stories in the early main range are in blocks, so the next three will all be Eighth Doctor. Look forward to that!

MR 015: The Mutant Phase

😴 😴 🛌 💤

Wha... what was that? Oh there was an audio here? Oh right. Uh... Daleks have a mutation that makes them into scary flying killers. More than they already are anyway. The Daleks and Thals are working together to try to stop the mutation at its source which turns out to be a wasp stinging a badly damaged Dalek during the Dalek Invasion of Earth.

It's wild to me, though, that this audio is the follow up to Holy Terror, the BEST audio so far, an absolute masterpiece. And then this one comes along and is dull as hell. The Fifth Doctor and Nyssa continue to be pretty boring here. Nyssa retains some of her combative personality with the Doctor from her previous audios, which is nice, but it's all so bland and formulaic.

The mutant phase itself is an interesting concept, but it quickly gets subverted in favor of a "changing time bad" story which then changes into a "paradox" story. The Doctor says "fate, never heard of it," which is a cool line... except for the fact that he constantly argues in favor of maintaining history as he remembers it in history books. So he absolutely does believe in fate.

The paradox is just as uninteresting as the rest of the plot around it. The Dalek Emperor went back in time with them to stop the mutant phase, but his using the pesticide to kill the wasp is what triggers the mutation. Because the Daleks had already identified it and were going to get rid of it themselves. Or something. Honestly, I checked out a long time ago.

I think, at this point, BF is kind of floundering with both the Fifth Doctor and the Daleks. The Fifth Doctor himself is hard to make interesting, clearly. They had an interesting story in Winter for the Adept, but not becasue of the Doctor or Nyssa. And their Dalek stories thus far have been pretty dull and formulaic. They don't really know yet what to do with them, I think. They don't have the Time War to play with either. We'll see if that trend continues.

MR 014: The Holy Terror

For real, this is a f**king masterpiece from beginning to end. What the hell. Robert Shearman does a masterful job going between comedy and tragedy and wrotes both expertly. This is simultaneously one of the funniest audios so far and one of the most horrifying audios so far. The previous audio, Shadow of the Scourge, was horrifying in a much more direct way. This is horrifying in a more psychological way, although there certainly is a fair bit of gore.

This one, definitely, requires a spoiler tag. Please don't read if you haven't listened to it, thank you.

The TARDIS lands in a castle where a highly ritualised society is appointing its next god emperor. Every time the god emperor dies, they start a new religion with the new god emperor and the scribe has to write down everything the new god emperor does in the holy bible of the new religion. A lot of the humor comes from the idea that the rituals are all completely ridiculous and tropey. The previous empresses gets executed as a heretic. The emperor to be is always unsure of himself and thinks he's not a god. The emperor to be's wife is always bitter and angry that he isn't sure of himself. The younger bastard son always plots against him with the high priest and emperor to be's wife. There's always a ritualistic assassination attempt directly after the coronation. These characters are tropey and silly BECAUSE THEY'RE MEANT TO BE THAT WAY.

Compounded to this silliness is that the Doctor's companion is a talking penguin. Or, more accurately, a shapeshifter who likes to look like a penguin. Frobisher gets named as the new god when the emperor to be gets cold feet and renounces his godship. Frobisher then tries to enact democratic reforms which don't go super well (the people would like to know which candidate you'd like them to pick).
Things start to go off script when the younger bastard son has his own son locked in the deepest depths of the dungeons. This five year old child is all powerful and proceeds to start murdering everyone in the castle in pretty horrific ways. It murders and destroys everything as the Doctor realizes what it is. What it's been all along. The child is a device meant to torture the scribe. The scribe built this place and created these characters and this society to torture himself for pointlessly murdering his own son. The child appears when the society no longer makes sense, he kills it, and then the whole thing gets reset. Only this time he's going to break the cycle, destroy the world forever.

This horrific twist is what gives such pathos to the story. The rituals were silly BECAUSE THEY WERE WRITTEN THAT WAY so that the scribe, Tacitus, could get lost in the fantasy and forget his horrific crime. The one dimensional characters get such fantastic emotional dialogue with each other. The empress who is supposed to always hate her son finally figures out that maybe she doesn't hate him after all. The evil high priest tries to not be evil for once. The guards figure out that Frobisher is not really a god when he can't help them survive. It's all fantastic stuff and very well played by everyone involved, ESPECIALLY the person playing Tacitus who plays the child and himself as the child kills him instead of him killing the child, ending the cycle and destroying the prison forever.
The final emotional stinger comes when Frobisher, who had created a digital fish at the beginning of the story, relates the suffering of the fish being hunted to the suffering of the people in the castle. They weren't real. They were holograms created to help Tacitus escape what he'd done. But they felt real. They had lives and emotions of their own. The fact that they weren't real didn't matter to them.

This story is a masterpiece, as you should expect from Robert Shearman. It's a masterclass in comedy and a masterclass in tragedy and a masterclass in how to flip that comedy into a tragedy in a believable and impactful way. All of the actors, too, were fantastic. This is the first Main Range I actually fully remember from when I heard it over a decade ago and there's a very good reason for that. Easily the best story so far and I can't wait to hear the other Robert Shearman stories in the main range again.

MR 013: The Shadow of the Scourge

Well that was horrifying. This is definitely the first real horror story in the main range and it works very well.

An eight dimensional army of beings called the Scourge emerge from another universe and feed on the fear of humans. What makes this story really horrifying is what they can do. They're so far beyond humanity that they can force humans to kill themselves or each other just by speaking to them. They come through into this universe by inhabiting and transforming the bodies of humans, preying on their fears and insecurities to push their way in. So you've got body transformation and mind control horror.

The Doctor has a plan to deal with them, but that plan fails and halfway through the story he gets transformed himself in a pretty horrific second episode cliff hanger. It's wild to see this Doctor, the one who plans and lays traps and always seems like he's in control, very much so NOT in control. We get to see the Scourge playing on the Doctor's insecurities. I love the characterization here of this Doctor being someone who constantly tests his companions to see if they'll leave because they always inevitably leave him anyway. So he pushes them away before they have a chance to hurt him. I relate to that so much cause I do the same thing.
Ace does something rather insane here. She has someone bash her ears in and thus ruin her eardrums so she can't hear the Scourge's commands. Which is certainly one way around the mind control if you can't deal with the insecurities that they cause. It's pretty wild. We get to hear her shouting and not hearing anything for most of the backhalf of the story.

Bernice also says things like "by the goddess" a lot, I assume she's from a world where they worship a goddess.

The story also starts off in a very interesting way with three different conventions going on. A mystic conference to the great god Om (which is the spark to let the Scourge in), a time travel demonstration, and a cross stitch convention. I don't know about the characterization of cross stitchers being desperate and depressed but sure. It works for what they're going for here.

In the end, the Doctor pushes back by crawling to the top of the Scourge hive mind after he's been transformed. And when he's about to succumb to the Scourge entirely, Bernice comes back for him and pulls him out of it. They get the humans to push back, to not be afraid, to admit their insecurities and failures and not be afraid of hiding them anymore. It's a great ending to a great story.

Also, this cover does not in any way do the Scourge justice. Not sure what they were thinking with preying mantis people. Does this scream "the embodiment of human fear and insecurity and the conception of hell" to you? No. No it doesn't. Nice shades for Ace though. Still, great audio, easily the Seventh Doctor's best so far.

MR 012: The Fires of Vulcan

Now this is more like it Mr. Seventh Doctor. This one covers on a lot of topics I find interesting about Doctor Who. The idea that your fate is set in stone by having foreknowledge of events. The idea of changing history and what that might mean. And just a really interesting setting.

Not to mention this is the first appearance of Mel in a BF audio! That's very exciting. Mel gets to be in a story that isn't a panto for once! And she does a fantastic job here. She's every bit as friendly and full of life as I know her to be just with 100% less top of the lungs shrieking.

The TARDIS gets found at the site of Pompeii in the 1980s while the Doctor and Mel land in Pompeii where the Doctor thinks he's just met his fate. It's an interesting idea that foreknowledge of events will lead to a different event in the future. If the Doctor just immediately leaves then he won't know that the TARDIS is found here in the future and thus won't immediately leave, leading to the TARDIS being buried here. It implies that time is constantly happening over and over and over again and would create a double time loop. It changes into something different each loop. Instead the Doctor creates a single loop by letting the events play out.

This itself is an interesting idea because the Doctor often does this: he makes sure to avoid as much foreknowledge as possible. It means that time travellers should NEVER study history either. Because when they go to that time period they can't change anything because they'll create the double time loops.
Speaking of which, this audio only lightly touches on the idea that we can't save people involved in historical events. Which, to me, always felt arbitrary. The Doctor is a time traveller and so there's no reason why he wouldn't have foreknowledge of, say, the Margaret Thatcher government in The Happiness Patrol or not have foreknowledge of Pompeii. These are just events to the Doctor, equally part of history, but because the audience knows about one and doesn't know about others, we can't alter one of them. It's really less so the time traveller having foreknowledge and more the audience having foreknowledge of historical events that makes them unalterable.

I quite enjoyed the setting as well. The idea of the Doctor and Mel being messengers of Isis was said at the beginning, but it has drastic political implications throughout the story. Isis is a foreign goddess to Pompeii, and the Roman priestess sees this as a heretical religion. So you have the priestess wielding her influence in trying to discredit Isis and thus attacking the Doctor and Mel. It then comes out to look like Isis is punishing Pompeii when the Doctor and Mel get arrested and attacked because they are supposed to be her messengers.

There's also another plot thread where the Doctor is constantly getting challenged by a gladiator after the gladiator loses to him at dice which is kind of hilarious. Again, making it look like the goddess Isis is smiting the city for her messengers being attacked. McCoy gets some good stuff here as well when he's yelling at the gladiator about how it won't matter because they'll all be dead soon anyway.

I like that, in the end, we don't actually see the fate of any of the characters. We don't know if they've managed to evacuate or if they've died. And that's better, I should think. It does make me wonder, though, how much history could bend, just a little, if the city was evacuated before the eruption. Hmm...

MR 011: The Apocalypse Element

The Daleks enact a rather overly complicated plan to cement their own powerbase in this overly long epic. Oh dear. I figured that not all Six and Evelyn audios would be good, but I didn't expect it to drop off so soon when all the Sixth Doctor audios so far have been bangers.

The problem is that the story is just too complicated for its own good and that's because the Daleks' plan is too complicated. Not to mention the usual Time Lord stuff is too complicated.

The Daleks piloted a planet (The Dalek Invasion of Earth!?) into another universe or some such and dumped hundreds of the people who were on that planet as dead bodies on another planet. So there's a conference of time travelling empires to determine what happened.

It turns out the Daleks wanted this planet because it has a rare element, more on that later. It also turns out that Romana II, on official business as the new President of Gallifrey, was on the planet when it disappeared and has been a slave to the Daleks for twenty years. As far as I know, this is the first time Romana has ever been seen to be President or as having left E Space. It's also her first appearance on audio. So that's exciting.

The Daleks steal a bunch of time travel secrets from the delegates at this conference and then crash their stolen planet into the planet on which the conference is taking place, killing everyone.

That's the first half. Yeah. The Second half involves the Daleks tricking Vansell, an agent of the CIA, into letting them onto Gallifrey by pretending to be refugees from the conference. And Vansell, being from the CIA, wants to steal the refugees' time travel secrets. Kind of the most obvious trick in the book, but sure.
The last hour and a half consists of running around while the Daleks invade Gallfrey and enact their final phase of the plan. They have a giant weapon, the Apocalypse Element, which they detonate to destroy a galaxy. It will extend to destroy the entire universe if it isn't contained and they believe the Time Lords have the ability to contain it.

Only it was a trick. It's not a general purpose weapon. Obviously they don't want to destroy themselves. They want to destroy and remake an entire galaxy leaving it easy and ripe for Dalek invasion, building up their own galactic power base right on Gallifrey's doorstep.

The thing is that for most of this plot I had to read the wiki's summary to understand what was happening because it's overly complicated as it is nevermind the writing. It makes sense as the writer of this one also wrote The Land of the Dead which had an overly complicated monster for no reason.

That said, all the key figures here get interesting things to do. The Doctor gets to shout. Evelyn gets to act as a key when the Doctor uses her eyes as the only retinal scan that will open any doors on Gallifrey. Vansell gets to be all sneaky. The President gets to have his moment of trusting the Doctor and then getting double crossed. It's just... not very interesting. I'm sorry, I just don't think Gallifrey is very interesting as a setting. It's a boring and stuffy place and the Doctor left it for a reason.

MR 010: Winter for the Adept

Well I did say for the Fifth and Seventh Doctors to get their act together. And it seems they did. This one is quite good. I also have been known to say that Doctor Who can be dropped into any story and it can work. This is a great example of that. This is a straight up ghost story. There's a psychic, a telekinetic, poltergeist activity, and a REAL ghost.

An evil alien from another dimension has been opening up a portal for an invasion fleet with the use of human psychics and a human ghost. Yes. That's the summary. And it's not super important.

The important thing is that the atmosphere is quite well done here. The haunting music, the sound effects of things moving about, the piano playing on its own. It sounds like a haunted house. And what a great setting for a haunted house too: a super expensive finishing school in the middle of the Swiss Alps in a blizzard. Totally isolated. A lot of it reminded me of Luigi's Mansion because that was one of my favorite games as a kid.

This story also features India Fisher in a pre-Charley role, which was wild. Her voice is so recognizeable that I was thrown off for a second. This is also probably the first time I've ever had Nyssa in a story and felt like she had a personality. She's actually on the Doctor's ass. Constantly berating him for accidentally teleporting her here and being sarcastic about his failures.

I'm also, hopefully, kind of starting to understand the appeal of the Fifth Doctor as well. He mumbles a lot, he's very easy to push around, he seems very unsure of himself, and he stutters a lot. Maybe that's the appeal? He's someone you want to protect? Regardless, this was a very fun story. Definitely the best Fifth Doctor story so far and the best non-Sixth Doctor story so far easily.

MR 009: The Spectre of Lanyon Moor

Kind of wild how all the good stories so far are Sixth Doctor stories. Coincidence? I think not! Am I saying that the Sixth Doctor is the best Doctor? Well yes, obviously. That's just an objective fact. But am I saying the only good Doctor Who stories are Sixth Doctor stories? I feel like we'll just have to let history decide that one.

Speaking of history, this story has a real sense of it. An alien that looks like an imp of some sort has been stranded on earth by his shipmate for 18,000 years, well outside of human recorded history. It can't really do anything because its ship has gone and it draws its psychic power from its ship. The most it can do is cause manifestations of itself and use those to influence people. Which it does.

This is just a fantastic little adventure. I don't normally like the Brigadier, especially not on the show, but here he's fine. He gets a nice little "get off my world" moment at the end when he fights the alien. And I'm glad he got a story with the Sixth Doctor.
There's a really interesting cast of characters here as well. An archeologist digging up the moor and getting more than he bargained for. An eccentric rich guy funding the dig who is more than he seems. The archeologist's assisstant who is secretly working for the rich guy. The assisstant to the dig who has been influenced by the alien. And all of these characters have their own backstories and quirks and are really enjoyable to listen to and digest their stories. Not to mention that Evelyn herself is ridiculously comfy to listen to.

I particularly enjoy the rich guy's arc here. He thinks he can harness the alien's power and use it to take over the world. But the alien kills him with a thought for daring to try to use his power. The alien does the same thing with the woman who he's influenced to help him.

In the end it turns out that the alien accidentally shot his shipmate instead of the shipmate having left him. So he decides to take out his revenge on the Earth for having been trapped there for so long. But that's when the Brigadier tricks him.

It's genuinely a fantastically engaging story from start to finish. This is the first story that really FEELS like a classic who serial in the way it's presented. Wandering around the Moor. The mad rich guy. The archeology dig. The alien manifestations. I could see this on the classic show easily. Definitely not during Colin's actual seasons, probably more during Tom's early seasons. Great story all around everyone. It's wild how this is Nicholas Pegg's ONLY writing credit for BF considering how good it is. Pull him off operating Daleks and have him write some more please and thank you. It makes me more than excited to continue to hear Six and Evelyn. Come on Five and Seven get your act together. lol

MR 008: Red Dawn

A fairly straightforward story of humans coming into contact with the last ice warriors on Mars. A corporation funds an expedition to Mars with NASA. Naturally, of course, the corporation has other motives than just putting a human on Mars for the first time.

This is also the first time we're getting a Five/Peri story! That's actually pretty exciting. I think Peri makes Five more interesting. Much like he is most of the time, the Fifth Doctor is very passive in this story. He's led around by the nose, observing what's happening while other people do things and then ultimately getting kidnapped. It's Peri who actively participates in the plot. And she's a queen. She takes control of the situation when she's kidnapped by the evil corporation rep. She helps land a shuttle. She negotiates with the Ice Warriors.

The corporation is here because they've already found evidence of alien habitation on Mars and they want even more. They ideally want an alien to bring back and dissect with the ultimate goal of making Human/Ice Warrior hybrids. Like with a lot of Ice Warrior stories, the Ice Warriors themselves are not at fault here.

It ends up being an average "humans suck" story, and I'm generally here for those kinds of stories, particularly when the human that sucks is doing it for a corporation. He kidnaps one of the Ice Warriors and then when that doesn't work he plants a bomb on the remains of a warrior that the other Ice Warriors are guarding.
He gets away with hostages and agrees to a hostage swap with the Ice Warrior commander. The other Warriors will not fire to kill their commander and so the commander sacrifices himself in the "Red Dawn." The atmosphere is too thin to protect from UV radiation which kills him as soon as the sun comes up. Thus leaving the warriors open to attacking the shuttle. It's a nice ending and fitting for Ice Warriors.

There's also an Ice Warrior/Human hybrid already that had been cloned in a lab. The corporation brought her as insurance for when they needed to use the Ice Warrior technology. She decides to stay as an ambassador to humanity, which is also a nice ending.

Despite it being fairly straightforward and average, I still liked it. Just a nice little tale about human greed running headfirst into the honor of the Ice Warriors.

MR 007: The Genocide Machine

This one was pretty meh. I'll be honest, I kind of checked out about halfway through it. This is BF's first Doctor Who use of the Daleks though! So that's exciting I guess.

There's a library with all the knowledge of the universe in it and the Daleks are after it. They want to assimilate all of that knowledge into one single test subject Dalek. That said, most of this story is just standard Dalek faire.

I did enjoy the inclusion of an Ace duplicate so we get to hear Sophie Aldred playing her evil clone. I wasn't too sure what the point of the theives trying to steal the zigguarat that the Daleks came out of was. Just to have other people in the story to get killed off I suppose.

There were a couple actually interesting things here. Firstly, when the test subject Dalek actually comes out, having assimilated all knowledge in the universe it comes to the opposite conclusion of the Daleks' fascist philosophy. It believes that all life must be preserved. I like this a lot. It has a real "reality has a liberal bias" feel to it.

The other thing I liked was that the librarian has been systematically genociding an entire species of natives to this planet the entire time the library has existed. It created aqueous storage facilities for knowledge, but every drop of water is a sentient being. The library has been erasing their minds and using them to store data without knowing or caring that they were sentient. That's wild.That means that these beings are inherently nomadic. They have to be with the water cycle. Goodness knows what happens if you drink water on this planet.

Definitely not the greatest Dalek story of all time, but it's pretty ok. I liked McCoy's reaction to finding out about the water people genocide and how he chastises the librarian.

MR 006: The Marian Conspiracy

Oh wow, this is more like it. This is genuinely fantastic, the first I would call a classic. Jacqueline Rayner is the goat, as we all know. I don't think I've met a story from her that I disliked. It's amazing how the quality has jumped so dramatically from the first five. Is it any coincidence that the first really good one is the Sixth Doctor? No, no it isn't. The first halfway decent story was also a Sixth Doctor story: Whispers of Terror.

And what a companion Evelyn makes as well. I always considered her my favorite companion, and in her first story we immediately see why. A college professor with a no nonsense attitude: she's on top of everything the Sixth Doctor is doing. She doesn't let him go on ranting, she's just as belligerent and sarcastic as him, she can rant just as much as him when she gets on her history subject. She's great.

And what a great story to start her out on. There's apparently something wrong with time where Evelyn is starting to fade out because her distant ancestor, an advisor to Queen Elizabeth, doesn't exist. The Doctor figures out what's going on and then Evelyn insists on going with him, packing a bag before he even has a chance to say no.

The twist, though, is that this story is about Queen Mary and not Queen Elizabeth. Evelyn accidentally praises Elizabeth, which is treason in Mary's England and gets wrapped up in a potential plot. While the Doctor gets invested in the court of Mary and gets to know her.

The whole point of the story is that the protestants and the catholics both wanted to burn the heretics, but that we see Elizabeth as good and Mary as bad because England was never Catholic again after Elizabeth became queen.
It turns out that Evelyn's ancestors were involved in the plot to assassinate Mary and that the Doctor and Evelyn beg for the mother's life, thereby saving the child, Evelyn's ancestor.

The ending has a Fires of Pompeii feel to it where the Doctor says they can't save everyone, but Evelyn gets him to save just the two Protestants she met. And their families.

Just as before, Evelyn forces her way into the TARDIS as a proper companion as well. They have a good talk at the end where the Doctor says he's caused people to die, but not intentionally trying to kill them and he isn't sure if that's the same thing. Evelyn is glad to hear that he doesn't intentionally cause people to die or she wouldn't want to keep travelling with him. Which the Doctor is surprised to hear because he didn't invite her in, but Evelyn will not be moved. She is going with him. And she'll find a good place to get coco and make her chocolate cake.

This is definitely the first banger in the MR and the first I'd recommend to other people, even if they didn't know anything about Doctor Who. It's that good. And that's because Evelyn is that good. She's the first of the BF original companions, but certainly not the last. She started a fantastic trend and I can't wait to keep hearing her stories.

Oh. Oh no, this is just sad. There's a monster that causes fear on the loose inhabiting a fascist politician. And an assassination attempt against said politician. Rather topical in today's world, wouldn't you say?

I thought that it was going to be a deconstruction on how right wing politics cause fear and loathing of the other. Instead, it was a South Park style "both sides are bad" argument. It sets up a radio shock jock and a terrorist group in OPPOSITION to the fascists, which is not how reality works. Both of these elements are overwhelmingly right wing in nature in reality.

After having invented the threat of a left wing terrorist group, the story then proceeds to condemn both sides as causing fear and loathing in the other side. The Doctor even says to the would be assassin that he was too afraid of the fascist politician to see that maybe she wasn't a monster after all:

DOCTOR: You were already scared of Harper, even before you heard the voice, and then you were willing to kill her, to kill lots of people to get at her. If someone like that told you they were hearing voices, what would you think?

WALTER: No! It was real.

DOCTOR: You don't really want to think about being wrong, do you. If she wasn’t a monster, then you weren't justified, and maybe you’re not all right. Maybe you do need help.

The story even ends with a member of this left wing terrorist group having collaborated with a high ranking member of the fascist party. Very "both sides are bad" indeed.

It's pretty cowardly, I have to say, especially for the Seventh Doctor and Ace, revolutionaries on tv. The Doctor even goes out of his way to say that he's not going to bring down the fascist government/candidate for no real reason at all despite saying he's taken down fascist governments before. It's the type of thing that could only have been made at the time with liberal centrism as the primary ideology. Today it would be looked at as feckless and naive. And it is.

Well this... uh... certainly was a serial of Doctor Who. There's a primordial creature made out of bones awakening from the dawn of time and turning everything into amalgamations. Sounds interesting right? Not really. It's all a pretty straightforward base under seige story with an overly complicated monster for no reason.

It's a shame, too, because the first part was quite atmospheric. The concept of this house built with different Alaskan environments inside of it was quite interesting. As were some of the characters, although one of them becomes a Native American stereotype pretty quickly.

Five gets some nice stuff to do at least, he's muttering a lot less. He mostly takes charge of the situation and goes on with Nyssa about the history of Alaska, which is fun. The psuedo companion they give him is interesting, talking about her phases in a crisis. It's a bit different than his normal passivity. He gets a nice line when the owner of the house says "Aren't you being a bit proprietary with my property?" And he says "Aren't I just?" before moving on. He's still quite boring, though most of the time.

As is Nyssa. Nyssa's voice is just as monotone and lifeless as the Doctor's. I talked about it when I watched Classic, but Nyssa has the most interesting potential of all the companions and not much is ever used. In this audio there's a bit about her relating to one of the characters by saying she lost her father and her world, but that's it.

Also rude that Five gets a second audio before Seven even gets his first.

Well I'm surprised it took them this long. I know it's only the third story, but I feel like they would have gone for an audio based monster immediately, considering this is the audio medium. The setting is quite good as well. It's an audio museum with a curator who is aptly blind. They're collecting the speeches of a recently dead politician. But the speeches seem to be altered somehow. His presumptive nominee for VP is coming to broadcast the speeches in tribute.

Naturally, though, all is not as it seems. The speeches have been altered to praise the VP pick. And the recording of the politician's death was indeed altered to make it seem like he killed himself. In actuality the VP had him assassinated. Because, naturally, she is a fascist and the politician she had killed was a liberal.

This is all makes for a thrilling story particularly because the politician survived being assassinated by uploading his consciousness into sound. He exists as a sound pattern and alters the museum's sound pieces to communicate. He works against the VP and alters the speeches to what he originally intended, denouncing her and bringing her down.

This one is good, and not just because it's the Sixth Doctor. The Doctor here is still squarely in his season 22 pedantic asshole phase before he mellows out. Crucially, though, Peri gets some jibes in at him and he doesn't seem like he's constantly on the verge of murdering her. Peri seems a lot less scared that she's going to die at any moment than she did in season 22. And she's not simpering as much. That's progress I guess? He's still dismissive and arrogant towards the villain, as he should, and he's taking baby steps towards being better. I see why, though, that the next Six audio they did was with Evelyn, just the companion he needed to mellow out.

Well we're not off to an amazing start after Sirens. I wasn't particularly impressed with it. It's a Mark Gatiss script and it shows.

The plot is a very basic one of an alien warlord kidnapping people off the street in 18th century London to escape the Earth. There's nothing super interesting about it except for another alien who is both a highwayman and a lady servant in an antiquarian's house.

Peter Davison gets his first real audio but I wasn't super impressed. He has a tendency to mutter his lines a lot and it makes him hard to hear. I'm not sure if that's purposeful or not. He's still a very passive Doctor, letting the plot happen to him and waiting to see what happens before jumping into action. He does trick the villain into touching his own playing card which links his biodata to the system which is cute. In the first audio he was being tricksy as well so maybe that's what they're going for with him? I do like how he gets very interested in the antiquarian's collection when they land.

It's interesting that they went with Turlough as the first companion from the show. Maybe he was just the only one they could get. But he doesn't really have his usual mischievous/trouble making personality here. No "Face it Tegan he's drowned!" to be found here.

Also, I don't know if I'm racist against white men or the 18th century period accents through me off or what because it's kind of hard to keep track of which character is which. I'm also surprised the villain wasn't the Master. It feels like he was meant to be.

It's kind of wild that BF built an empire on the back of this story. It's mostly just a showcase for the three Doctors, but curiously Seven has the least interesting story and personality out of all three little mini adventures. Usually I think of Five as the most personality-less but here we are. Five actually gets a fun little time trying to pretend to be a German spy and then distract the siren. Six gets to solve the plot at the end, of course, saying that he's the most practical of his incarnations when he condemns a giant time whale to eternal torment to fight the sirens (something the time whale asks him to do). He even gets to be a little rude and confrontational, though he's already massively toned down from his TV episodes.

This also functions well as an actual argument for why changing time is bad. Instead of just "laws of time" or "fixed point" there's actual consequences that are felt by the Doctor's accidental changes. That's how "changing time bad" stories SHOULD function but often it comes off as lazy to not give a real reason. I also find it interesting that the pseudo companion the story gives them all is the same person every time but also the villain.

Even though it's about changing timelines, it's a relatively simple little story about the Doctor accidentally changing history so that the Time Lords get destroyed. Not bad, just not great. Still, a decent little start. Makes me look forward to the great stories I know that are to come.

I find it interesting that Paul Cornell brought this sirens that eat changes in time back for Father's Day. In that episode there's no real reason why saving Rose's father is bad other than the sirens will eat them. But here there's actual reasons given and the sirens are incidental, manipulating bad changes in time, which I like.

Also, I just find it funny that they use the "contact contact" sound effect from The Three Doctors. I didn't expect it and it made me laugh.