The Ninth Doctor and Rose adventures continue on with the third and hopefully final visit to the Powell Estate (this was clearly supposed to be a three episode boxset…) which sees the classic idea of a “children’s game come to life” as an imp-like creature begins to make people do and say things they think to themselves but otherwise would never do, which starts off as innocent pranks but soon becomes something far more sinister. Let’s take a look!
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Finishing off the Causeway boxset is “The Time You Never Had”, which ramps up the Causeway story arc / buzzword that I’ll be honest didn’t know was a thing until it was brought up. Still, this is once again a good story but also once again has its faults and has an ending that felt a little bit like having your cake and eating it too. Still, I think more good than bad at least! Let’s take a look…
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The first of two Eighth Doctor boxsets within a month of each other, “Causeway” features the new Charley and Audacity combo of companions and certainly puts the latter through the wringer across both stories! “Lost Among The Stars” is a really fun story, full of a creepy soundscape, interesting world building and a good “how will they get out of this one?” twist, but sadly the end and predictability makes it fall short of something truly great. Let’s take a look!
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“The Thirteenth Doctor finally gets a Christmas Special!” was the cry as this story was announced, but honestly this doesn’t have a lot of Christmas in it, and instead is a weird mix of light-hearted banter and a look at grief and having to try and get over that major loss, two story beats at the literal opposite ends of each other. Does this blend work? Well…
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“Merlin’s Trap” was the big draw for this Halloween set as it’s the debut of Jon Culshaw’s Twelfth Doctor impersonation, and thankfully while not as perfect as his Brig it’s miles better than Jacob Dudman’s attempt, so I’ll happily take it given the Twelfth Doctor era is a personal favourite of mine. Ignoring that aspect though, is the story any good? It’s… fine, doesn’t break any new ground etc but I will say at least they got the horror aspect a bit more involved here. Let’s take a look!
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The next story in the Halloween boxset (skipping over Doctor-less spin-offs for my wallet’s sake) is an Eighth Doctor / Audacity story that focuses on the classic “children’s folklore comes to life” idea but with the folklore of an alien tree-like species instead. It’s a perfectly good one-hour story but once again it feels more sci-fi than horror, which given the whole idea of this Halloween boxset was “spooky stories for Halloween” is a bit of a disappointment. Anyway, lets take a closer look…
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Kicking off a Halloween-themed boxset of stories (in January, if you needed a tip off as to how behind on Big Finish audio reviews I am…) is “Sea Smoke”, my first full experience of the recast First Doctor / Dodo combination, and I have to say… it didn’t do much to convince me to jump in. I mean, at the best of times I’m not all that interested in Hartnell era audios as I’m not all that interested in a fair few of the Hartnell era TV stories, but having some of the poorer recasts at the centre doesn’t help much. Anyway, let’s take a look at “Sea Smoke” on its own merits…
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The Third Doctor Adventures press on with a rather odd story that tries to blend classic pulpy sci-fi with World War II drama and ends up weakening both tried-and-true Who staples. That’s not to say “Operation: Vengeance” isn’t without merit, it has some great scenes with the Brigadier and The Doctor, but at six parts there is more dull than interesting… Let’s take a look!
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The “Wicked!” boxset’s second and third story sadly aren’t much better than the first one, which given the interesting premise of the boxset is a bit of a downer. Each story looks at the young Ace from a different perspective, which is a good thing to do with the box’s premise, but they don’t offer any interesting plot on top of it which makes them just dull stories that happen to feature a young Ace in them. Oh well, let’s take a look!
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“Backwards and in Heels” is the first story in the “Wicked!” boxset that takes place directly after Ace’s debut TV story “Dragonfire”, which is weird that it’s taken this long to get around to it when you think how long they’ve been doing Seventh Doctor audios… Anyway, the story being the first in the set means this is Ace’s first ever adventure and for that we get a very odd and not particularly exciting story. Let’s take a look…
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Hogan Reviews 