Despite being such a visual enemy the Weeping Angels once again appear in a really good audio story with Albie’s Angels. It puts focus on Helen and her family in a way that’s not embarrassingly out-of-nowhere and heavy handed like in the past and it really works. Now I’m a little late with this review so paradoxically this has already appeared on my “Top 10 Doctor Who Stories of 2022” list so its quality might not come as a surprise, but hey-ho… let’s take a look anyway!

Connections is the latest Eighth Doctor stand-alone Liv & Helen set and it’s a mixed bag, but while the standout story is the next one these two stories are perfectly fine. Here Lies Drax is a fun comedy and Love Vampires is a pretty standard space station under siege story with a bit of an emotional twist. Neither will blow you away with originality, but both will keep you entertained for an hour, so let’s take a bit of a deeper 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…

Getting a new Eight Doctor and Charley story is always special for me, they were the lead duo I loved listening to when I first got into Big Finish Doctor Who audio, but I have to say this next story in “Classic Doctors, New Monsters: The Stuff of Nightmares” was disappointing. I get where they went with it and it was well written and performed but I just didn’t get on with it for most of its runtime… Want to know more? Read on!

The Stranded run of Eighth Doctor stories reaches its conclusion… I was going to put “epic conclusion” but that wouldn’t be right, for better or worse. Without giving too much away the key plot point of Stranded gets resolved in the “The Keys of Baker Street” and what we have for a finale is a rather more tame epilogue that I’ll be honest didn’t really work for me. Want to know more? Read on!

The often divisive Stranded sub-series reaches its final phase and with a set that is no less divisive, though most of that comes in the second half. As for these first two episodes? Well, they continue the time and alternate Earth shenanigans with The Doctor, his companions, his neighbours and a near-immortal time-travelling moody teenager / evil despot named Robin. Let’s take a look!

The second half of the “Further Adventuress” (and boy is that B-Sharps style joke that gets less funny the more you hear it…) is sadly weaker than the first half, but not by much. The combination of the Eighth Doctor and Charley without any overarching … erm, arc is still a very fun and comforting experience, and even Mr. Biggs manages to pull off one of his better stories in recent memory! So let’s take a look…

One of my all-time favourite Doctor-companion combinations have been reunited to celebrate 20 years since their debut appearance, which is weird to think that these audio dramas have been going on for so long! Yes The Eighth Doctor and Charley Pollard have been given four 1-hour stories set early in their run (so less story arc heavy) and these first two have been very fun to listen to, even if their format feels more like the Lucie Miller era of the Eighth Doctor… So let’s take a look!