I was really looking forward to this release. As you may know from previous reviews here, I love The Eleven, he’s always good fun, and to see how he got captured before the opening to Doom Coalition was exciting. Then they throw in an older Ace, which is an interesting new string to the Doctor Who bow, and man… Really excited. *sigh*… A shame really…
After the sad passing of Paul Darrow, the full-cast Blake’s 7 audios got put on hold while they re-wrote the scripts and such. Seemingly though, that must have been mostly for Part 3 as this boxset was full to the prim of wonderfully snide and sarcastic Avon! Hooray! All four stories were really good, and one was straight up great, so let’s take a deeper look, shall we?
Let’s try and catch up with the Big Finish audio releases from the past few months, shall we? Starting with December’s offering of the final War Master box set (… for now) titled Anti-Genesis: it’s your standard “altering history causes the timeline to go all crazy” story, but it has some great ideas and performances at its core. Let’s take a closer look!
So this was a surprise a few months ago, especially as it was announced that all six episodes were being animated, given Episodes 1 and 3 still exist. Still, surprise? Yes. Bad news? Nope! One more “complete” Troughton story to watch, and with three ways to watch it depending on your preference (All six episodes full-colour animation, the existing episodes with Black and White animation for the missing ones, and a straight up photo recon) there was no reason to complain… What about the story itself though? Well…
Well… That was something! Who would have thought that Chris Chibnall, someone whose first series of Doctor Who had practically no connections to the show’s past, would suddenly drop a massive continuity bomb that would shake the very foundation of Who history forever? Not me! Plus underneath the major continuity shaking and another great performance by Sacha Dhawan as The Master is a really good Cybermen story, with a great new redesign to boot! So let’s take a look at this breath-taking double bill, shall we?
So this past Sunday’s new Doctor Who was the first half of a two-parter, so … here’s a new Doctor Who review anyway! Yes, Season 26 was released on Blu-Ray a few weeks ago and so it’s time to review a story from the set, in this case: The Curse of Fenric. Set during WWII, with priests, soviet soldiers, weird vampires and Lovecraftian all-powerful ancient beings (and tentacled ones, too!) it’s quite the story. Somehow though, it all comes together in the end! Let’s take a look!
So, the Haunting of Villa Diodati does take place at the same time as a classic Big Finish story and makes it… unable to fit, while at the same time taking ideas from nearby stories as well. No doubt, not denying it. It’s also a really good story, so enjoyable that I don’t mind at all that history has been altered, as it tends to do a lot. So why is the story good? Well, it’s funny you should ask, because I was just about to write a review of it!
It wasn’t my original plan to have these reviews go up the same day as the next episode, I swear! Anyway, Can You Hear Me? was a good episode, with the rarely-if-ever-used in the revived series idea of a God-like immortal villain walking around and hamming it up a bit, plus a look at mental health that while not as good as a certain past episode that tackled the subject, was still handled well. What’s my overall view? Read on!
Really behind at the moment thanks to work, but I refuse to let a Doctor Who review go up after the next episode has aired! I’m cutting it close this time, though! Praxeus was one of those in between episodes you get in the more arc heavy series, one that exists in its own little bubble and is perfectly fine, but you won’t really remember it a few weeks after it airs. So let’s review it!
Well, that was a bit crazy, wasn’t it? Fugitive of the Judoon on paper sounded like a pretty normal story with a returning alien race and turned out to be quite the mind bender. Since this is pre-spoiler warning, I’ll just say this: I didn’t see THAT coming, and I’ve watched, listened to and read a LOT of Doctor Who over the years! Let’s take a closer look then…
Hogan Reviews 