When I saw the synopsis for “Run” I felt a cold shiver go up my spine as it sounded like another ham-fisted attempt at political satire like “The Salurian Candidate”, and while thankfully it never sank that low it’s still as subtle as a brick to the face and not very clever to boot, so it didn’t make for a good hour’s listen. Oh well, let’s take a look…

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Travel in Hope, the latest Ninth Doctor full cast box set, gets off to a fun start with two well written space-based stand alone stories that may not amaze you but will definitely entertain you, in two very different ways. “Below There” I found the best of the two for creating a good sense of tension and intrigue while “The Butler Did It” was a fun little run-around “whodunnit”. Let’s take a look!

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The second and third stories in the “Pioneers” set are, um, something alright. Not quite sure what happened here but there seemed to be a bet between the two authors as to who can write the duller pseudo-historical as they both cover historical periods / characters but while both are clearly written by people who are genuinely interested in the subjects both are really… not very engaging. Oh well, let’s take a look…

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The Ninth Doctor is back and this time he actually has a continuing storyline he needs to tie up! Yes he’s still travelling with Callen and his talking dog Doyle, looking for a place the two can settle, and would you believe he ends up in a place that’s repeating a mistake from his distant past? What are odds?! Let’s take a look!

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The Shades of Fear set comes to an end with a double whammy of the returning Vashta Nerada and the Vermeen from the start of the set, opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of name value but it oddly works really well. Plus a few actually interesting guest characters and a great use of the audio medium all come together to make one of the better Ninth Doctor stories to come along in a while. Let’s take a deeper look…

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The final set of Ninth Doctor Adventures Series 2 has arrived (though frankly I should probably just start counting them as individual sets at this point, Mr. Eccleston seems to be fully invested now!) and it comes in form of “Shades of Fear”, and while there isn’t a two-part finale like last time the opening story of this box and its final episode are strongly connected… Oh and the one in the middle is a bit crap. Let’s take a look!

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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.

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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!

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The latter two thirds of “Into the Stars” are on opposite ends of the fun scale, though neither are terrible or amazing, more “poor and good”, the contrast is rather stark. “Last of the Zetacene” is far too blunt with its message and has no interesting characters where as “Break The Ice” felt like a script right out of Russell T. Davies’ playbook complete with likable cast being hounded by a fairy-tale like monster on a space station. Want to know more? Click onwards!

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The next set of Ninth Doctor Adventures goes from Earth-based to space-based, putting a title on … well, what Doctor Who does all the time anyway. Salvation Nine is a good example of taking a simple idea of “The Ninth Doctor meets the Sontarans” and giving it a bigger spin than you’d otherwise have to, taking a deeper dive into the clone race than perhaps has ever been taken…

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