The second half of the Sullivan and Cross: AWOL box sees the “has met the Daleks” box ticked for Naomi as the classic deadly pepper pots once again cross paths with The Doctor. There is a bit more of an interesting twist but really it’s a rather flat two-parter, making for something of a rather flat boxset overall. Let’s take a look!

This is a strange boxset. It sees the Seventh Doctor come across Harry Sullivan and a female UNIT member called Naomi Cross in the near-present day because the Fourth Doctor dropped them off in the wrong time. What makes this weird is that story hasn’t been released yet due to the nature of how far in advance Tom Baker’s stories are so this is picking up from a cliffhanger we’ve yet to hear! Thankfully a conversation between the two catch us up pretty quick anyway. As for the story itself? A bit too fantasy for my liking, something that’s becoming something of a theme for Big Finish Who releases recently… Let’s take a look!

Flatpack is a weird story because it has the Ninth Doctor encounter some old companions but in this case its Liv and Tania from the Eighth Doctor audio range, a situation where we know Liv left The Doctor to live with Tania but also had adventures before then that are still being released. That makes this feel less like The Doctor meeting old companions and more like some sort of crossover. Still though, key question: is it good? The answer is yes! While I had some problems with it the two returning companions worked really well with Christopher Eccleston, so let’s take a look.

So after heading to Earth and then Outer Space, what could The Doctor possibly do next in this third box in the Ninth Doctor’s second “season”? Well… a mix of both, in other words like all Doctor Who seasons. Anyway, enough of making fun of the boxset naming this was a fun double bill but neither story particularly stood out as memorable, which is a shame because its always nice to “see” the Sea Devils pop up… Let’s take a look!

The most interesting thing about “The Dalby Spook” is finding out that it’s based on an actual thing! Apparently on the Isle of Man in the 30s there was a hot rumour of a talking mongoose called Gef that attracted paranormal specialists and skeptics like Harry Price to debunk it. How bizarre! What’s that? The story? … It’s alright. After “Paradox of the Daleks” it was certainly more straight forward and low key, that’s for sure! Let’s take a look…

Paradox of the Daleks is kicking off a new period for the Eighth Doctor (I hesitate to say “new era” since it has the same two companions he’s had for years now) free of an over-arching storyline with a linked title and frankly it had me with “Paradox” and “written by John Dorney”, as he is not only a great writer in general but has done great time bending stories in the past. Is Paradox of the Daleks chief among them? Well, no, but it’s still really fun! Let’s take a closer look…

The third story in the “what can we do with who we have during the pandemic” set of  “Tenth Doctor, Classic Companions” sees The Doctor meet up with Ace during her now-established “A Charitable Earth” days and also features the return of Axos, which as a big Third Doctor fan always brings a smile to my face (even if its ability to escape its own quantum lock is getting a little silly now…) Generally the story works due to delivering the promise of the set and just giving us a simple story of The Tenth Doctor meeting Ace rather than trying to be too clever and ending up not really landing the premise. Let’s take a look!!

While less “Tenth Doctor, Classic Companions” and more “David Tennant and whoever else is available with recording equipment because it’s the pandemic” this boxset still appealed to me, I do like it when “Classic Who” meets “New Who”, but I have to say these two stories did not live up to expectations. “Splinters” had a fun twist that I saw coming and generally felt a bit too close to some other recent stories, and “The Stuntman” was just plain weird, and not in a good way. Oh well! Let’s take a look…