Doctor Who: The Ribos Operation Review

When it came to finally reviewing a story from Season 16 I couldn’t bring myself to choose a later serial as the season is one long connective story arc from start to finish, so for this season only (well, and probably Season 23…) I will be reviewing these in order, whenever I swing back round to it again. “The Ribos Operation” isn’t exactly a stellar start, while I do like the concept of the season and Mary Tamm impresses straight away as Romana a lot of the actual core story is, well, dull frankly. Oh well, let’s take a closer look!

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Doctor Who: Horror of Fang Rock Review

Time to tackle another personal favourite of mine with “Horror of Fang Rock”, a classic claustrophobic base under siege (or in this case, lighthouse under siege) story with an eclectic cast of characters slowly being picked off by a mysterious creature. It only features about five sets but everything is written and directed so well that you don’t notice, or if you do, you don’t care. It also introduced the Rutans visually at last in currently their only TV appearance, oddly enough! Let’s take a look.

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Doctor Who: The Masque of Mandragora Review

The next somewhat random Fourth Doctor serial to get reviewed is the “Masque of Mandragora”, another one of those stories I can’t remember the last time I watched due to an overriding feeling of it just being “okay”. It is a rare Fourth Doctor “pseudo historical” and set in Italy’s past no less, but despite sentient time energies, evil cultists and swashbuckling scenes it’s… yeah, still just “okay”. Let’s take a look anyway!

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Doctor Who: The Imposters Review

So… this was a rare one. “The Imposters”, the latest Third Doctor audio adventure, dropped a week or two ago now and got such universal distain from pretty much everywhere that it put me off listening to it straight away. Normally I’m a “I’ll form my own opinion and check what others said afterwards” kind of guy but in the forums I visit this time opinions were unavoidable and oddly one sided, no “I actually liked it…” rebuttals or anything. Having now listened to all six parts I can say this: Yep! It’s pretty dire alright. Let’s take a look…

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Doctor Who: The Seeds of Doom Review

Kicking off this run of Fourth Doctor reviews is one of my all-time favourite Doctor Who stories: “The Seeds of Doom”, which features the plant-based Krynoids and spends one third of the story in Antarctica and the other two-thirds in the British countryside, leading to a fun six parter that doesn’t lose steam like so many of its peers. Let’s take a look!

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Doctor Who: Cloud Eight Review

The latest Ninth Doctor and Rose release, “Cloud Eight”, takes a look at the technological innovations and the slippery road they can lead us down, which is fine though sadly towards the end it felt a little… direct, like a lot of the Fifteenth Doctor TV stories it felt like I was being lectured about something I already agreed with, but unlike those ones the story used to tell the listener for the majority of its runtime was at least well constructed and well written, so let’s take a look!

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Doctor Who: The Potential Daleks Review

After a long wait and a pretty bang-average previous boxset we finally have the next box in the odd Second Doctor post-regeneration story arc and guess what? Once again it’s not great as some of the early parts may as well have not existed and there is a heavy focus on your typical Dalek stuff we get so often in other ranges rather than anything interesting the concept could have given us. Oh well, let’s have a closer look…

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Doctor Who: Cybergene Review

“Cybergene” was one of the more hyped Big Finish boxsets in recent years and much like TV story “Asylum of the Daleks”, which suffered from a fan backlash when it didn’t in fact have “Every Dalek Ever!” in it, this box having loads of different Cybermen on the cover and promising much the same you’ll be unsurprised to hear it had a similar backlash from hardcore fans, made worse by the fact its audio so it’s hard to know which Cybermen featured at all beyond one or two obvious ones. Ignoring all that though, what is the story like by itself? It’s… fine. Basically a decent War Doctor story that happens to feature Cybermen. Let’s take a look…

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Doctor Who: Empty Vessels – Lure of the Zygons Review

The second half of “Empty Vessels”, or the other two-thirds I guess, is “Lure of the Zygons”, a two part/two hour story that similarly deals with a spooky abandoned space craft but throws in some Zygons for some extra flavour. Well… sort of, honestly this felt just like the previous story in being rather bland, thankfully inoffensive, but still just that little bit too predictable and meandering to stand out. Let’s take a look…

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