The latest and final (for now!) Ninth Doctor boxset has arrived and unusually all three stories are connected by a recurring companion-like character, in this case River Song herself, ticking the Ninth Doctor off of her audio Doctor checklist (which is now pretty much complete!) The first two stories are good, showing a very different kind of relationship between the two, so let’s take a look.

The third and final part of the Eighth Doctor “Echoes” boxset started off really good, it has an interesting world with a unique hook to it that I was interested in seeing how it played out, but sadly the ending was such a non-event that it kind of took all the wind out of my sails… Let’s take a look!

The latest Eighth Doctor audio boxset has arrived and its title of “Echoes” seems to be a reference to the fact that these two stories feel awfully similar to other Eight/Liv/Helen stories in the recent past. They’re both well written, don’t get me wrong, but I couldn’t shake a sense of… I don’t know, I don’t want to saw “boredom” because again, they’re good stories, but maybe “sameness” is the right word. Not just Doctor Who stories (obviously!) but other Helen and Liv stories specifically hitting some very familiar beats to the ones here. Well, let’s take a look anyway!

The second story of the latest Fifth Doctor boxset sees the return of the “Dream Crabs” from the Twelfth Doctor Christmas Special “Last Christmas” as well as a couple of audios a year or two ago, and its safe to say that there really isn’t anything new you can do with them beyond repeating the same story beats from their first appearance. Most returning monsters you can put some sort of spin on but here its more dreams within dreams sequences and fake-outs, with only a little wrinkle in why they are where they are. Still, unoriginal as it may be, what was it like to listen to? Let’s find out!

The latest Fifth Doctor boxset continues the trend of well written genre pieces with “The Merfolk Murders”, a great example of Doctor Who doing the classic “whodunnit?” story, with a 1940 Scottish historical setting to finish it off. In fact this is a full-on historical in that beyond our time travelling protagonists there are no sci-fi elements at all. So let’s take a look at this murder mystery and keep in mind that the spoiler section is perhaps more important than ever in terms of not looking at it if you intend to get the most out of the story!

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!

We cap off the Classic Doctors, New Monsters: Broken Memories boxset with this two-parter that oddly starts with the Eighth Doctor and then concludes with the Seventh, but then when they key monster’s power is to remove themselves from people’s memories whenever they look away it’s not hard to grasp how they’d use the idea! Sadly the story suffers from some extremely cartoony voices that rob a lot of scenes of any drama, but at least they use the “Silents” really well, even including some of the convoluted lore to boot. Let’s take a look!