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…

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The third story in the “what can we do with who we have during the pandemic” set of  “Tenth Doctor, Classic Companions” sees The Doctor meet up with Ace during her now-established “A Charitable Earth” days and also features the return of Axos, which as a big Third Doctor fan always brings a smile to my face (even if its ability to escape its own quantum lock is getting a little silly now…) Generally the story works due to delivering the promise of the set and just giving us a simple story of The Tenth Doctor meeting Ace rather than trying to be too clever and ending up not really landing the premise. Let’s take a look!!

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While less “Tenth Doctor, Classic Companions” and more “David Tennant and whoever else is available with recording equipment because it’s the pandemic” this boxset still appealed to me, I do like it when “Classic Who” meets “New Who”, but I have to say these two stories did not live up to expectations. “Splinters” had a fun twist that I saw coming and generally felt a bit too close to some other recent stories, and “The Stuntman” was just plain weird, and not in a good way. Oh well! Let’s take a look…

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Following on from the original “Forty” boxset is the rather stupidly titled “Forty 2” which makes it sound like it’s called 42 whenever you read it out but I can assure you that it carries on the original box’s plot thread and finishes up the celebration of 40 years of the Fifth Doctor well. That being said it’s all one long story so it really could’ve just been called “The Auton Infinity” but I guess they wanted to make sure people knew it continued from the first one. ANYWAY, enough title talk, is the story good? Thankfully given its runtime, yes. Yes it is. Let’s take a good look, shall we?

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The 2022 “companionless” run of Fourth Doctor stories comes to a close with this bonus two-part story that was stuck on the end of “The Nine” boxset for reasons to do with the price change or boxet format change… something like that. Anyway, what’s it like? Well, that will depend on how familiar you are with Mervyn Peake and his works. I, for one, wasn’t familiar with him at all. Oh well! Thankfully the story is still a fun way to spend an hour, I just felt like there were probably a lot of references that went over my head…

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Shellshock is a bit of a mixed bag as it does a good job of showing how horrible and pointless World War I was on BOTH sides of the trenches but its also full of cliché German accents and a pretty plain alien plotline. Well, let’s delve deeper… which is funny because a key part of the plot is soldiers being pulled underground, you see… *ahem* Anyway…

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The Dreams of Avarice is a fun story that puts The Nine in the spotlight as the central villain, rather than the usual Eleven. As a campy kleptomaniac he certainly brings a different energy to the proceedings, and The Doctor teaming up with a bumbling Detective for the adventure gave it a different vibe as well. Let’s take a closer 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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