Finishing off this two story boxset, “Red For Danger!” is set in a particularly bad boarding school where not only is there regular bullying and hazing going on but aliens make up the faculty and a lot of the bullies too. It’s a… mildly interesting concept, but sadly the story doesn’t really climb out of mildly interesting, mostly due to setting being a naturally dull one and a “big twist” that wasn’t as fun to follow as the writer I assume hoped it would… Let’s take a look!
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The latest Sixth Doctor boxset is neatly split into two three parters, but sadly neither were all that memorable. Not bad, not great, just… average. Oh well, let’s take a look at the first one then, that being “Saoirse of the Seven Seas”, which features an Irish female pirate called Saoirse O’Grady taking on not just the greedy British fleets but aliens, too…
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The final two stories in the “Cosmos and Mrs. Clarke” release couldn’t be more different. “The Key to Many Worlds” sees both the return of Marco Polo and Iris Wildthyme and has a strong line of comedy running through it (as you’d imagine!) while “Inconstancy” is a rather dull affair featuring clones and lots of past-tense narration. Ah well, how well and poorly do these things effect their stories? Read on and find out!
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Kicking off the latest Sixth Doctor audio boxset is “The Story Demon”, which promises a Dalek telling kids stories, which is a weird concept but also a fun idea. A lot of the rest of the story feels appropriately straight for a popular children’s book, with a few more grizzly exceptions, overall leading to a pleasant hour’s listen. Let’s take a look…
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“The Trials of a Time Lord” is the latest in a run of overly-long boxsets where to celebrate a milestone since a Doctor’s first TV appearance Big Finish decided to throw literally everything into a blender and see what happens, and once again it’s just not very good. It’s thankfully better than the Seventh Doctor’s “Last Day” duo but that’s damning with faint praise if I’ve ever heard it. Featuring the Cybermen, Davros, Daleks, Androgums (yes, Androgums!) and The Master, with a plot that’s basically just Vengeance on Varos again it could have been a fun ride in expert hands, maybe, but instead it’s just a “remember him?/them?” fest with little going for it… So, let’s take a closer look! Yay?
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The Quin Dilemma, as well as being one letter away from an entirely different and rather ruder dilemma, is a celebration of forty years since the Sixth Doctor made his debut, which you could probably guess given the title is also a play on his first story, which was frankly awful but at least this was really good! It’s set out with a framing device episode, then a single part story, then a two part story, then another single part story before everything comes together for the sixth and final part, but it’s all so strongly connected that it didn’t make sense to break this into four or five reviews, so… let’s take a look!
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The next story in the latest “Classic Doctors, New Monsters” box is our second of three new Sixth Doctor releases this month and in this case features the duo of The Doctor and Mel coming up against the Clockwork Droids, so much like the previous one not super-exciting on the surface but even more than the last one writer Jacqueline Rayner took the simple enemy concept and ran with it, creating a genuinely fun and interesting story. Let’s take a look!
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The next Sontarans vs. Rutans story has a lot in common with the first one as it also uses a Doctor / companion combination we haven’t heard from in a long long time, in this case the Sixth Doctor and Charley, back when she thought the Eighth Doctor was dead and ended up travelling with an earlier incarnation. This works out well as she now has prior knowledge of Sontarans and Rutans so the whole “she can’t let on how she knows this stuff” plot works well. How is it in general though? Well, let’s take a look!
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As we near the end of our Multi-Doctor catch-up marathon we’re left with the original three TV serials, with “The Two Doctors” being a bit of the odd one out as it wasn’t to celebrate any kind of anniversary but instead the producers at the time saw how successful “The Five Doctors” had been and decided to do it again! So we have the Second Doctor and Jamie join the Sixth Doctor and Peri in the middle of Season 22 for no real reason, in a story partially filmed on location in Spain, also for no real reason! Plus it’s a three-parter but at a time when each episode was the length of two regular episodes, making this effectively a six-part story which in the 80s was practically unheard of. In other words “The Two Doctors” is a very odd story, but is it a fun story to watch?
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Now, “Dimensions in Time” is a tricky one because technically it doesn’t feature two Doctors interacting but given it has multiple Doctors and companions and its an anniversary story I felt I couldn’t skip over it… plus if I don’t do it now I never will! So for those not aware “Dimensions in Time” was a 1993 Children in Need 3-D charity sketch (spread over two nights) to celebrate the series 30th anniversary, but due to it being off the air for three years all we got was this, which given it also crosses over with forever-popular soap Eastenders and had a phone-in vote to decide what some of the soap’s cast did shows how the show was viewed by the BBC at the time… Let’s take a look anyway, and not worry about if its canon or not!
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Hogan Reviews 