The Sixth Series of the Diary of River Song is based around our titular character arriving in the middle of some classic adventures from the first four Doctors, with these first two being set just before the very first episode, and during the Second Doctor’s TV classic “The Web of Fear” respectively. Let’s see if this different format gets off to a good start or not, shall we?
Emissary of the Daleks promised to be a bit more of an interesting look at the rather tired Dalek occupation storyline, focusing on the idea of an Emissary leading the planet instead of the Daleks full-force, but sadly within the first episode a Dalek ship arrives with a Dalek Supreme and a bunch of Daleks on it, and it spends the whole run time being nothing but predictable Dalek stuff. Dalek stuff done well, don’t get me wrong, but original it’s not! Let’s take a closer look…
“The War Valeyard? Now you’re just being stupid!” was my initial reaction to this boxset, but then I thought about it, and with The Doctor not fighting the war, of course the Time Lords would be happy with an evil version of The Doctor, so the more I thought about it, the more I actually looked forward to the story seen here at the end of the set, and thankfully it didn’t disappoint! Let’s take a look!
The Eighth Doctor is still avoiding the Time War as we reach Series 3 of the titular range, and we finally (I guess?) get a good look at the backstory for his companion, Bliss. That being said, the highlight of this double bill is the second episode, away from her muddled continuity…
It’s been a long time since we got a new story featuring the Sixth Doctor and Peri (especially the “as seen on TV” versions) so if nothing else this story felt both fresh, in a way, and nostalgic. The central premise of punishing someone for crimes he can no longer remember is a genuinely interesting idea that was only partially explored, sadly. So let’s have a look at the story overall, shall we?
To celebrate 20 years of making Doctor Who audios, Big Finish released a special, roughly six-hour story titled “The Legacy of Time”, and now I’ve finally found the time to finish it, I can say it was a fun collection of stories, but was definitely just that. There wasn’t much of an over-arching plot, which is fine, it’s just different to what I was expecting. Let’s take a closer look!
The second half of the Further Adventures of Lucie Miller sees a bit more stability with an average first part and a fun finale seeing the return of a familiar enemy (much like a lot of “finales” from the Eighth / Lucie era!) and may well have set a new record for longest blog title! Let’s take a look!
Lucie Miller is back in the first many releases this month, but the first half of this boxset is split between a bit of a train wreck of a first story, and a good second one. Let’s take a closer look then, shall we?
The first two stories in this “Mags Trilogy” scored a three, then a two. Does story number three hold up any better? Well… no, not really. After the disaster that has been the Ace/Mel stories, these have sadly continued the trend of poor Seventh Doctor audios, which is a shame because that particular Doctor used to be the highlight of the Main Range. Well, let’s take a look at this one, anyway…
Bernice Summerfield has finally reached Legion, and … once again we get a boxset of mostly completely stand-alone episodes, one of which ended up being a backdoor pilot for a different audio series all together. It’s not a bad thing to have single stories from time to time, but after a box of them stalling time for Benny to get to Legion, it was an odd choice… Let’s take a look if they still stand well on their own, anyway!
Hogan Reviews 