Doctor Who The TV Movie (The Target Novelisation)

Books  Probably an odd choice of reading given, hands gesticulating, everything.  But between catching up with the Eighth Doctor audios, spending a hundred odd hours playing Star Wars Jedi Survivor, work and life, I've fallen behind on the books.  This felt like a good way to get back in the habit, what with it being a novelisation of a story I only rewatched a couple of weeks ago thanks to the gorgeous 4K restoration and a book I've most read before, albeit over twenty years ago.

Looking back at my first review from back in 2005, originally written for the Behind The Sofa group blog but archived here, it's noticeable how little my writing style has really changed in the ensuing decades, apart from describing them as Time Lords rather than timelords, something which was drilled into me pretty quickly by friend of the blog Graham Kibble-White.  I like the ending of the review although it fails to notice the reference to the last time Doctor Who went off air in 1989.

Most of my opinions still stand although my understanding of how the Seventh Doctor "dies" is clearer thanks to the film itself and this book.  It's not the gunshots which kill him, they remove the bullets which should lead to a relatively straightforward recovery.  It's the surgeons including Grace, misunderstanding the Doctor's anatomy, that his increased heart rate is due to having two hearts, a fact which is explained away in their heads by a double exposure on the x-ray.  It's the probe which Grace pushes into his body which kills him.  I am an idiot.

As Gary Russell says in the new preface, this TARGET edition allowed him to put back in some of the material which his editors in 1996 suggested be removed because this was supposed to be a bold new era for the franchise and embellish in other ways.  We get to enjoy the details of the Doctor's mission to retrieve the Master's remains (the younger version of me is very pleased).  When Chang Lee opens the Eye of Harmony, we're given descriptions of all of the previous Doctors rather than the glossing over from the previous version.  

Not only that, but he's embellished a bit too with concepts which have only become spin-off continuity more recently: It's clearly President Romana who gives the Doctor his mission to retrieve the Master's remains.  When the Doctor considers Ace's fate, A Charitable Earth is mentioned tying it in to the lockdown era continuity around his former companion.  There's plenty more listed on the TARDIS Wikia page although which says they're deviations from the film but seem more like someone's done a line-by-line comparison between the two books.

Between the TV Movie itself and the various novelisations, which is canonical?  All of them, none of them, who's to say?  People have all kinds of fanilisations of how continuity works in Doctor Who, including Gary himself at various points, that the TV series is one universe, the audios another, the books another.  But I'm a completist.  It's all canonical.  But it's also constantly in flux so in some versions of history the Doctor is half-human on his mother's side and in others, as portrayed in this book for example, he's clearly joking.  

Placement: LOL.

We Need To Talk About Kara Zor-El.

Film  Just briefly.  There are typically two indicators that I'm not really enjoying a movie: either (a) I fall asleep, or (b) my film studies brain cells kick in and start looking for flaws. Supergirl (2026) currently has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 57%, which, even given what's about to appear below, still seems like a particularly rough score. It's six percent below The Marvels, a score that should arguably be 73%, given that you generally have to automatically add 10% to any RT aggregate if it's an action feature with a female protagonist, as the predominantly male review corps doesn't tend to like that sort of thing. Ballerina is an 85%, Salt is a 71%, and Cleaner is 61% (which is still too low). This makes Supergirl a 67% picture, which seems about right.

As I suggested on the socials, unlike some other similar releases, it's not one from which I left punching the air. I tried, I wanted to, but as a few reviewers have noted, it begins well yet eventually becomes an unsurprising, generic mess of sci-fi tropes of the kind I usually enjoy but somehow fails to resonate. Perhaps it's the deeply average, one-note villain. Perhaps it's the clichéd approach to the outback universe, where everywhere is a shithole planet full of miscreants. Could it be that in creating a story around a pretty much invincible character, it spends much of the runtime finding ingenious ways of physically de-skilling her when, much like Superman, she has enough mental scars to hold her back? Or is it the sense that we're watching a sub-par Guardians of the Galaxy featuring only Star-Lord?

I think the most damaging aspect, and this is where my analytical side takes over, is that after a while, Supergirl stops being the protagonist of her own movie and lacks agency in many of her scenes leading up to that point. The most obvious examples happen in the flashbacks, particularly the key moment when she lands on Earth and meets her cousin. She can't speak "standard" yet, but the whole scene is played from Clark's POV as he shambles about trying to make her feel welcome. Shouldn't we be seeing her perspective on suddenly being on a planet where she doesn't understand the language or what is happening in general? We shouldn't be able to understand what Superman is saying in these scenes; David Corenswet's dialogue should be gibberish.

However, it's the back half of the film when the structure really becomes unstuck. In the comic that inspired the project, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, much of the story is told from the perspective of a new character, Ruthye Marye Knoll. This is repeated in this loose adaptation, where she fills the role you might find for a Doctor Who companion. On screen, she cuts a very Arya Stark figure, even if she only has one name on her list. Whereas the comic was part of a continuum of Supergirl stories in which stylistic shifts add depth, it's very odd that in Kara's screen debut, they've chosen to distance the audience from her for much of the second half while this other girl's struggles move to the forefront. Supergirl is lying in a cave, waiting for a different coloured sun to rise.

The biggest mistake for me is perhaps in the final shot of the film.  Apparently a reference to the Superman and Lois conversation in Superman (2025), which had the Justice Gang fighting a kaiju in the background, Kara sits opposite Clark and gives him the news that she's remaining on Earth for now, trying to make her home there.  Again, the scene is mostly played from her cousin's perspective and the final beat is Clark running off screen to deal with Krypto and it's he who has the final line.  It's admittedly very funny, because everything Krypto does is funny, but it's extremely odd that we don't then have a close-up of Kara relaxing into her new home, happy that she's completed her journey.  But it feels redolent of a film in which the title character's feelings aren't always at the forefront.

Doctor in Discomfort.

TV  You will have heard the news about Doctor Who going out to tender for  a new production company, with RTD2 and Bad Wolf walking away after cancelling Schrödinger's Christmas Special. The BBC says they "have collectively decided not to go ahead with the previously announced Doctor Who Christmas episode," whereas Russell says via his Insta:

There's no point trying to litigate whether anyone was lying about there being a Christmas Special. With no new Doctor announced or news of a special and a series, it was becoming pretty clear that it was a placeholder in the schedules, just in case, easily filled with another hour of Strictly.

But to the point: I'm pretty positive about the whole thing. The BBC hasn't said they're shutting up shop: no more Doctor Who for now, see you in a couple of decades. They're asking for presentations from other production companies, which will all have their own ideas on a new direction for the show, and it'll be recommissioned like any other series. Perhaps the choice of showrunner and actor will be included in those pitches, alongside the kinds of stories they'll want to tell.

Here are some of the things I hope those pitches will include, and yes, this is a rare occasion when this blog's usual format goes out of the window and I allow bullet headings to darken its door:

• A soft reboot.  Don't ignore what's been seen until now, but don't refer to it either. Make this a proper jumping-on point for new young viewers and those who may not have watched the show recently.

• No major story arcs.  Make it largely standalone again. If there's a throughline, it could be as simple as the developing friendship between the companion and the Time Lord. Make things lower stakes again—no global or intergalactic catastrophe every other hour.

• Longer seasons. Facilitated by a return to the old format of twenty-five-minute episodes and cliffhangers. This will help with the budget because it'll help to amortise costs across multiple episodes.

• None of the previous showrunners. We've had more Prime Ministers in the past twenty-odd years than Doctor Who showrunners, and all of them burned out eventually—some of them before they'd even had an episode produced. Give it to someone younger and perhaps not a white male. Someone with a different perspective. Can someone check if Abi Morgan is still interested?

• Spin-off writers. One of the best decisions RTD1 made right at the beginning was to hire writers who worked on Doctor Who in other media, all of whom, in fact, had helped launch the Eighth Doctor at Big Finish. Do something similar again, with the newer crop who might not have written for TV before but understand how Doctor Who flows.

• A consistent timeslot. Make it the show which kickstarts Saturday evening, and with a shorter individual runtime, it's less likely to interfere with whatever else might be on.

• No iPlayer premieres. That was just asking for trouble.

• Romola Garai as the Doctor. There's still time.

Plus let us not forget, Doctor Who is currently in production for television: 52 x 11-minute episodes over two series for CBeebies, which happened through a similar tendering process to the main show. We don't know what that will look like. Who will voice the Doctor? Their companion? Who's writing the thing? Will it have returning monsters? How much story can you actually tell in ten minutes plus credits? Is it canon?

Rendition (Rutans vs Sontarans)

Audio  Charming. One of the results of listening to a concentrated number of Eighth Doctor stories in the past few weeks, with so many set during the Time War, is forgetting the sheer pleasure of hearing a version of the Time Lord and his companions when there are minimal psychological stakes and the characters are drawn along much simpler lines: a Doctor who shambles about until he doesn't, a naïve but brave Scot, and a haughty but loyal mathematician. Here, they find themselves on a medical ship where a group of Rutan war-wounded are in danger of being obliterated by the Sontaran battlefleet. But, overseen by a nurse who is part Ratched, part Mary Poppins, they find solace in war poetry influenced by Wilfred Owen. Into that tumbles the Eighth Doctor to help Zoe get the engines repaired and distract a Sontaran spy. For most of it, he's in a Tiggerish mode, but he also has the Web of Time on his mind and doesn't want to be discovered in a way which suggests he'll be appearing on a few more covers in this series yet.

Placement:  This and the next two inlays in the series have the Eighth Doctor in his TV Movie costume with the fourth also featuring Charley and C'rizz.  So I'll put this after The Battle of Giant's Causeway in what seems like is going to be a mini-era.  For now.

Ahead of Time (Short Trips Volume 13: Tales from the Vortex)

Audio  At the centre of the story is a killer idea. What if there were a substance the destruction of which sends a person one year into the past, and the way to fix any changes made is to find exactly the same ounce of the metal and destroy it again in the past? What if that happens over and over and over again? As Paul Booth's story proposes, it would probably end up in the breakdown of a society. But what if someone does all of that on purpose? Foreshadowing the destruction witnessed by the Eighth Doctor during the Time War, and echoing the fate of Bliss's planet in Volume 12, Ahead of Time is propulsively told, with some excellent material for Charley—clearly enjoyed by India Fisher—especially one scene which is as good as anything in the mainline audios. It's especially moving when it speaks to memory and trying to recapture what's been lost.

Placement: Though I was somewhat distracted by how much knowledge Charley has about the Time Lords and trying to square that in the timeline, going back and looking at Neverland, she's already pretty knowledgeable of their existence right at the start. The Doctor's already made her very aware of who they are, or she's been reading the TARDIS Databank during some idle moments.  So between Minuet in Hell and Invaders From Mars?

Salvage (Short Trips Volume 12)

Audio  Bliss!  Wiped from existence in the Time War boxsets, an ignominious fate brought about due to Rakhee Thakrar's work schedule prevented her from appearing in the boxset which would ultimately be called Cass, it's an absolute pleasure to hear from her again, albeit in a Short Trip set between previous stories.  Unlike some Short Trips too, this feels like a vital part of her story and goes to the heart of who Bliss is and her origins, another of the Eighth Doctor orphans in time, either due to paradox or as in this case because her entire timeline was destroyed behind her.  Where does all of that lost matter go?  The people?  The places?  The things?  Salvage goes some way to at least explaining what happens to some of it, although it's a story best experienced without much foreknowledge so you won't hear any more of the story from me.  Max Curtis's text captures the era and characters perfectly and it's read extremely well by Adèle Anderson, who digs deep into the heartache of what unfolds.

Placement: Salvage explores the psychological weight of timelines that have been rewritten and people that have been "lost" to the war. This serves as a perfect thematic prologue to Volume 3, which opens with State of Bliss—an episode specifically dedicated to exploring the multiple, shifting timelines of Bliss's existence created by the conflict.

It's a Wonderful War (Christmas: It's a Wonderful War and Other Stories)

Audio  Happy Christmas. Again. One of the results of your blogger catching up on Eighth Doctor stories in a bunch is the number based on special occasions, particularly Christmas. The effect has been much like bingeing through the revival television series with a festive special every two to thirteen episodes (depending on increased production costs at the time and if there was a gap year). This was clearly an extra-special challenge: set a Christmas story during the Time War. Taking inspiration from Frank Capra's magnum opus, Jonathan S Powell's script sees mining foreman Galen Smith dreaming of leaving the planet and making for the stars. But like George Bailey, events continually keep him from leaving, and he even has a guardian angel—but probably not the one you're expecting.

Stunning, and I use the word carefully. The Time War at Big Finish has become a multi-stranded affair with dozens of characters and ongoing storylines, almost its own franchise, so entering a one-off story set within it isn't without some trepidation. Unlike some stories, however, it keeps the focus on an ordinary man in extraordinary times. He serves as our viewpoint character as elements of the wider mythology are delivered to us. I do tend to enjoy war stories that show the effects such conflicts have on the victims rather than generals and politicians vying for power. Although the Eighth Doctor's intervention is rather more complicated than Clarence's in the original text, it still keeps George's—sorry, Galen's—sacrifices in focus. There's also a brilliant twist that causes you to rethink everything you've heard and makes you want to listen again.

Placement:  Feels early.  Perhaps set before the Eighth Doctor's own Time War stories?

Part Three (Dark Gallifrey: Master!)

Audio   Baffled.   In the olden days and actually still in recent days, this would have been released as boxed set so I would have listened to the first two instalments before discovering what the Doctor's involvement is, as was the case with something like Hooklight.  But without an infinite budget, I decided to just buy the episode with Paul McGann on the cover and although this has a "previously on", it's more of a refresher for listeners who're already wearing the t-shirt.  I got the gist though and this has the Bruce Master at his dastardliest, which is the notion of the Dark Gallifrey series, to show some of the greatest villains at their most playful (similar to the Omega/Davros/Master series in 2003).  The Eighth Doctor first appears speaking backward via radio link before revealing the plot to the protagonists of the story then having a sword fight with the Master.  It's quite a cameo.  Few machinas have deus-exed with quite this aplomb.

Placement:  He's in his leathers so perhaps just before Time Lord Victorious just after discovering The Truth About Peladon?

The Force of Death (BBC Audio Exclusive).

Audio  The last of the four BBC Audio Eighth Doctor stories written by Andrew Lane (so far) does not provide the showdown between the Time Lord and the journalist the finale of the last adventure promised, which probably for the best because I don't know what that would look like.  Instead the Doctor is genuinely pleased to see MacFarlane as the two of them investigate the prototypical elements of an alien encounter: mutilated cattle, zombies and a giant mythic sea creature.  But the enemy isn't Zygons or Homo Aqua, it's something even more dangerous.  Dan Starkey's version of the Eighth Doctor has become more Beatles with every reading and now its reached full McCartney, which is honestly perfectly fine, the scouseness of McGann's own interpretations has oscillated subtly over the years anyway.  For the rest of it he's called upon to offer a Fouracresathon of Irish accents which just goes to show how talented he is.

Placement:  What's the perspective the Doctor suggests has caused him to forgive or at least understand what MacFarlane did in the previous story and the suggestion he's going to have to choose a side?  I think that put this squarely in the close to Night of the Doctor territory, just after The Silent Priest.

The Teeth of Ice (BBC Audio Exclusive).

Audio  The third in the annual Andrew Lane-scripted Eighth Doctor stories for BBC Audio sees the regular viewpoint character, the indomitable reporter James MacFarlane, visiting a remote base at the South Pole to interview an explorer, the intimidatingly named Pentius Rochdale. Predictably, all hell breaks loose, with bodies starting to pile up and wild animals as the potential aggressors. So far, so John Carpenter's The Thing. Fortunately for the denizens of this base, the chief of medicine is the Eighth Doctor, and he's typically suspicious of the gap between what seems to be happening and the reality. Produced again by Big Finish veterans Gardner, Darlington, and Ainsworth, the Eighth Doctor—as you'd expect to hear in those rival audios—is present and correct, and well realised by Dan Starkey in his voiceover. At the length of a CD, it gallops along like the team of huskies in a BBC Four slow TV special (which is paradoxically very fast) right through to a pretty dark ending with echoes of Storm Warning and a wedge driven between the Doctor and MacFarlane. The fourth and (so far) final instalment in the series, The Force of Death, feels very ominous indeed.

Placement: The cover has the same photo of Paul McGann as the second, in a smaller circle, but it still feels like there's been a gap between the two. So, let's place this just after the Titan Comics, when his sense of humour is still intact.

Sunset (Planet Krynoid: Nightfall)

Audio  If you'll excuse the blasphemy, Jesus, this is grim. Nick Briggs pops in at the start of each episode to repeat the content warning from the website, "This release contains adult material and may not be suitable for younger listeners"—which you would think wouldn't be required for something on audio where you can't actually see anything, but parts of this are absolutely horrible and would obviously give children nightmares. If the Hinchcliffe era worried Whitehouse, this would have put her in Cromer—sorry, a coma. At one point, I had to stop the tape and walk away for a bit. Congratulations, folks; this is horror Who at its most heinous.

The first episode, Jonathan Morris's Sunlight follows a similar path to parts of the Alien franchise, which it might well do given that they're both about eggs of sorts. One of the Krynoid seed pods is found during the maintenance of the satellites that keep the lamps on at the otherwise dark and cold colony planet of Sunlight. The local representative of this story's equivalent of Weyland-Yutani wants to keep the thing intact in case there's anything they can take advantage of, even though the Governor of the colony says (rightly!) it should be destroyed immediately, with Reece Shearsmith giving this otherwise cowardly individual his most officious voice acting.

Structured like a disaster film, we're introduced to citizens who are affected at all levels. Which means that when the Eighth Doctor arrives in the second instalment, Sunset by Jonathan S Powell, via unconventional means, it's into an already established group of characters. Although he absolutely fulfils the obligations that might usually be expected of him during a colony-under-siege story—explaining who the monsters are, suggesting how the people in charge have fucked things up, and outlining what could potentially be done to save the day—the various families at the heart of the story remain central. Although for most of them, things still don't end well.

During VHS clipshow The Tom Baker Years, the actor behind the teeth and curls infamously misnames The Seeds of Doom as Invasion of the Krynoids or The Krynoid Invasion, which always conjured in my mind seed pods bombarding a planet, with the sentient vegetable biomass overwhelming the population. That is exactly what the final episode, the fittingly titled Darkness by Chris Chapman, gives us, with scenes straight out of John Wyndham. It's during one particular scene here that I needed to take a break. There are Threads levels of hopelessness on display—or rather, on speaker—and although it does end on the potential for hope, a sequel boxset is incoming. Like I said, Jeeeesus.

Placement:  The Eighth Doctor was apparently travelling with Liv when his end of the story kicked off. Given that he's wearing his leathers on the cover, and assuming that Helen isn't chilling somewhere, this intriguingly puts it between Dark Eyes and Doom Coalition. They both appear in the next Planet of the Krynoids boxset, so I'll also see what we learn there and move it if necessary.

Tuesday (Short Trips Rarities)

Audio  Probably, most people listening to this story would just be happy to hear Harry and the Eighth Doctor interacting. But obviously, this human was wondering if any of it would contradict Wolfsbane.  Fortunately, since this is set after Dr Sullivan travelled in the TARDIS and seemingly before the Earth arc in the novels (when this Jac Rayner story is set) when the Eighth Doctor has amnesia anyway, it works perfectly fine. This is aided somewhat by Harry initially forgetting who the Time Lord is, thanks to an alien visit that changes his and everyone else's memories in the south of England, causing them to forget that even Christmas exists. The Harry we meet is a much harsher figure—the person he might have been without the Doctor's influence. But as you might expect, all is right in the end. Beautifully read by Stephen Critchlow, this also has a lovely piano score which made me feel a bit Christmassy in the middle of May.

Placement:  See above.

Death Will Not Part Us (Short Trips Volume 11)

Audio  It is just the sort of experimental story Short Trips were invented for, and on this occasion, one which would have difficulty working as a full-cast audio or even having the same impact on the page. On a planet caught in the middle of the Time War, a victim, Viola Wintersmith, comes into possession of an experimental gun that utilises the user's own time stream as ammunition to alter the timeline elsewhere. On each occasion of its firing, the user finds themselves reliving a key point in their existence, but it changes because of the other moments which are lost in the gunshot residue. It's a time loop story, but—and this is the twist—when the rifle is discharged, the whole story begins again, with the Time War theme music and the narrator, Adele Anderson, introducing the title, author Alfie Shaw, and her own name over and over again. For much of the duration, the Doctor's participation is minimal, although he is ultimately, eventually, the reason why everybody lives. Absolutely scrumptious.

Placement:  Could be any time in the Time War period, but I'll tuck it in the period when he's travelling alone after the boxsets.

Five Hundred Ways to Leave Your Lover (Classic Doctors, New Monsters: Faithful Friends)

Audio  Time to admit something to you, faithful reader: I haven't rewatched most of television Doctor Who since about halfway through Series Eight. I've caught smatterings here and there—the odd Whittaker, a smidge of Gatwa. But most of it has sat on the shelf, sometimes unwrapped since purchase. Much of this has to do with time; the content pipe grows ever larger, and there's a century or so of cinema to catch up with. Some of it is also to do with not enjoying parts of it. There's also the fact that I am so behind with Eighth Doctor material that the 50% of my brain which deals with ridiculous guilt looks at something like the blind Doctor trilogy and wonders if I shouldn't be listening to a five-year-old Short Trip instead, only to end up doing neither.

Five Hundred Ways to Leave Your Lover

Which means going into this story, I had little to no memory of who the Monks were or of their motives. Fortunately, Tim Foley's script fills in enough details: they invade planets by changing the population's perceptions so they believe the Monks have always been there. This attempt is based around utilising a holosuite to gain a foothold on the planet through a computer programmer who, for various reasons, is convinced that he's dating the Doctor. He is trying to break up with him, but the simulated paradises are forever intervening. It's a romance, which, as the director Barnaby Edwards says in the extras, isn't something Big Finish does too often, with the Eighth Doctor being the only one of the old guard who is mostly likely to work in this kind of story.

It's immensely entertaining. We get to hear the Eighth Doctor properly having fun for the first time in a while, which isn't something he's had much of lately across the ranges, and Paul McGann is clearly enjoying the chance to show that side of him. However, rather like a Companion Chronicle or one of those first-person, hour-long audiobooks that BBC Books produced in the 00s (usually written by James Goss), it puts Charlie Condou's Chris front and centre. The action occurs around him, and he mostly reacts until he has to take control of his own destiny (egged on by the Time Lord). The tiny cast also includes Rise of the Cybermen's Andrew Hayden-Smith as the other love interest, alongside the original voice of the Monks, Tim Bentinck.

Placement:  Ah well, spoiler, but as we discover at the very end, this isn't the Eighth Doctor. It's a digital echo of the Eighth Doctor injected into the system by the original to fight the Monks and help Chris—an alternative Eighth Doctor in a similar way to the microscopic versions of the Fourth Doctor and Leela in The Invisible Enemy. On the cover, he's wearing his leathers, so this could have happened at any time in that period, even when he was travelling with friends. But for clarity, I'll put this at the end of the era with some of this era's solo stories.

Empty Vessels.

Audio  Back in the world of stand-alone Eighth Doctor adventures. Like the previous couple of boxsets from this era released back in 2022, there isn't an underlying arc playing through these releases other than the ongoing expectation that at some point, Liv is going to leave the TARDIS to go be with Tania in post-pandemic London (it's wild that COVID-19 has become part of the events of the Whoniverse to the point that it has its own incredibly detailed  TARDIS Wiki entry). This doesn't make them feel less essential: it's refreshing to have the Doctor, Liv, and Helen just along for the ride without being on some mission for the Time Lords or having some existential threat to the universe to cope with.

Eos Falling

In the first story, we meet Jankar, who is characterised as an emergency service for hire—a soldier of fortune, if you will. She listens out for distress signals from populations in need, then rocks up and offers to help the poor unfortunates for a price. She is looked upon with disdain by the TARDIS Team—who, as the next story illustrates, essentially do the same thing pro bono—with Liv describing her as an ambulance chaser, and her portrayal is not sympathetic for the most part. She even threatens to abandon the job because the destruction of the world means she's unlikely to be paid. However, she is also an expression of similar services in the UK and around the world where private ownership of vital services has led to similar outcomes.

Lure of the Zygons

Non-binary actor Maddison Bulleyment plays the similarly non-binary character Wren, and also the Zygon who attempts to copy them, Vorgol. They are a great example of a character who is so fascinating they almost overpower the rest of the story. Roy Gill has clearly enjoyed writing them, as they very much become the fourth companion, gifted agency in a way that isn't often the case in these audios. There are scenes in which Wren and Vorgol must find common ground, which is achieved by their shared experience of having multiple identities. For Zygons, this includes both shapeshifting into other species and, as described in some stories, the way they are born feminine and then become masculine later in life.

Hooklight.

Audio  The audio equivalent of one of those missing adventures or past Doctor novels that head off into directions the TV series couldn't possibly have gone, Tim Foley's Hooklight has the Fifth Doctor and his companions wrapped up in a 12-part story which gives each of them a character progression which will almost certainly be forgotten by the end of the story. So, we have Adric overcoming his nervousness around everyone, Tegan shacking up with a male love interest on some backwater planet for three years, and Nyssa being given the Mara treatment from the titular beastie. Even the Fifth Doctor is emotionally frayed around the edges in a way which he simply wasn't given latitude for on television, even after the teen mathematician died. All four of the regular actors are well up to the challenge, and it's a genuine shame that the practicalities of gap-filling mean that we don't get to see more of these slightly wearier versions of the characters going forward. But arguably the MVP of the whole story is Celia Imrie, who gives one of the best performances from a guest actor Big Finish has ever seen.

The Eighth Doctor's participation is complex and not completely explained by the closing moments. Taking the mantle of the "Oracle", he seems to spend decades, even centuries, on the planet at stake, Morning, nudging events and people in a way which would make his Scottish-accented prrrredecessor prrrrroud. The eye patch might suggest that he's some sinister refugee from an alternate reality, but the injury occurred during a nasty encounter, and, even though he says the Fifth Doctor wouldn't approve of who he's become, this is the real Eighth Doctor. Knowing us completists will have PayPaled our fifty quid for this, they do at least also toss in references to Charley, C'rizz, and Audacity, with a hint that her storyline won't end well either, this Eighth Doctor having already experienced their adventures together. Speaking of which, are we to get future stories featuring him and Davlin Crux (an obvious parody of Captain Jack in the mould of Becky Lee Kowalchik?).

Placement:  Given the references to who the Time Lords are at this point by Eighth, this feels like Hooklight from his perspective happens during the Time War era, and late on when he's in the thick of things.

Branches.

Audio  Yes, I've actually heard a brand new release.  The cover is a bit of a tease, suggesting that this version of Cassie in the Uncharted universe is also some kind of version of the Doctor, what with the velvet jacket, waistcoat, and cravat. Even the sword isn't a dead giveaway, what with the fighting hand in some incarnations. But this Cass or Cassie is a very different creature to both the Time Lord and their friend, much more independent and singular in mission, and certainly wouldn't have taken any of Alex's crap in the last cluster of stories. Alternative versions of companions and friends appear to be another theme which has emerged since the start of the revival, and now it's happened twice in this narrative thread, something the four stories are quick to lampshade.

The Only Girl in the World

Hello there, Doctor. Literally. This is a rare example of the Time Lord breaking the fourth wall and acting as the storyteller, but not—as is sometimes the case—with a later explanation that they're being interrogated or having a fireside chat. He's talking to us. Which is lucky, because writer John Dorney is deploying a similar narrative structure to (500) Days of Summer and 21 Grams, without the benefit of captions that the visual medium provides. There's also the audio equivalent of those occasions when the appearance of a particular race is treated as a complete surprise despite their name being in the title of the adventure. One of the first characters to appear is played by Nicholas Briggs and is called Karl.

False Dawn

Welcome back, Daphne Ashbrook. The Grace actress has been buzzing around Big Finish for a few years, mostly as Capt. Ruth Matheson of UNIT, but beginning as Perfection in The Next Life, the story which ended the Divergent Universe saga. Now here she is in a similarly weird set of stories. She's the latest actor to lend a voice to Hieronyma Friend, who I now realise is taking on the appearance of some of the Eighth Doctor's deep-cut companions, which is why Lizzie Hopley was in for Niky Wardley last time—they were swapping Gemma of all people for Tamsin (also of all people). Anyway, it's a way for Grace to make an appearance without any rights issues (even if the way the character is written doesn't reflect the outer shell).

The Council of Susan

Suddenly Susan. The title might suggest that, like The Council of Wells in the Arrowverse, Carole Ann Ford would be playing dozens of different versions of the Doctor's granddaughter from across the multiverse. Instead, and perhaps more understandably, we find a group of women all calling themselves Susan as a sort of title adopted when joining an order which worships the original. Of course, Jane Asher who plays Mother Susan also appeared in Whatever Happened to Susan Foreman? (the Radio 4 series catching up with fictional characters) as an alternative Susan Foreman, which can't be a coincidence, surely? Similarly, at what point in the scriptwriting did it occur to someone that the twist was very similar to a TV story, necessitating the insertion of a reference to that same TV story?

All Over

A couple of years ago, Reddit user MetalPoo complained, on the occasion of these further Time War stories being announced, that when the original Time War boxset was announced, it seemed it was going to be "Four stories that would lead up to The Night of the Doctor," and "if Big Finish love stories so much they should really know how important endings are," with another user, The Omnivirgin, suggesting that "big finish should start doing some definitive endings" because there's nothing to stop them filling in the gaps later. Neither realises that The Night of the Doctor is the definitive ending, and that these stories are filling in the gaps, albeit much closer to that terminal moment. I might complain about the cost, but on the strength of these four stories, long may they continue.

Pursuit.

Audio  The title above the blog post in these Eighth Doctor Time War releases is really starting to vex me. Pretty much every other release has a single title, with or without a number—for example, Connections or Ravenous 2. That was even the case with the first four in this series: Time War 1, Time War 2, Time War 3, and Time War 4. The next set along was Cass, but on Big Finish's website, it is listed as Time War 5: Cass, even though it seems like it is starting a whole new strand of stories. Okay, fine—even though it only says Cass on the front cover: Time War 5: Cass. This should lead to Time War 6: Reflections and now Time War 7: Pursuit. Instead, we now have Time War – Uncharted 1: Reflections and Time War – Uncharted 2: Pursuit, even though the spine numbers also list them as parts 6 and 7. Anyway, I am just going to stick with the short titles for these stories, if it is all the same to you.

Spoils of War

There are shades of Alien Bodies here, as Alex and Cass become wrapped up in an auction between alien foes over a mystery artifact. Said MacGuffin is rather more abstract than the Doctor's mortal remains, and it is arguable that if this had been a straightforward Doctor Who story, it would have been slightly less interesting. Instead, we have the Doctor's—not exactly great—grandson trying to do things differently than his "old man," even though he inevitably falls into the same patterns. The story does much the same to Cass; she has essentially been kidnapped and should be quite cross about it, but because of the needs of the narrative, she is somewhat forced to fulfill the companion role. Honestly, I found the sniping between the Doctor and Hieronyma—as they try to hold her ship together while pursuing Alex—to be more my cup of tea.

The Tale of Alex

This serves as a complicated synecdoche for the whole conflict, as the Doctor and Alex move backward and forward in time trying to fix an original sin. They remain suspicious of each other's motives, causing a colony to become temporally unstuck as competing causalities fight for supremacy. Finally, the two meet, and it is clear that their irreconcilable difference is down to the betrayal of the Doctor wanting his great-grandson back in the universe, yet keeping Alex's true origins from him. Meanwhile, the Doctor covertly makes Cass aware of her own origins and how her death is in flux. This also presents the intriguing idea that when she and the Eighth Doctor met "for the first time" in The Night of the Doctor, she might have been well aware of what was about to happen—and what needed to happen—which explains why she refused to fly away with him in the TARDIS.

See-Saw

This is superficially similar to Head Over Heels, the 1980s computer game by Ocean Software (or at least the opening part of it), with the competing TARDIS teams on different time tracks solving the same mystery and helping one another. How have they managed to land on Earth, a time-locked world which no one should be able to visit during the war, and what is the significance of the nursery rhymes? This inevitably leads to the same discoveries being made by both groups, which is tricky to do on audio without becoming repetitious, but it mostly happens simultaneously for various reasons; cross-cutting between groups of characters largely prevents annoyance from setting in. Something I only noticed on a second listen (don't ask) is that Hieronyma is recast in this installment, with Lizzie Hopley filling in for Niky Wardley, who plays the character across the other three episodes. Was it a scheduling issue, perhaps, or an illness?

The First Forest

After two stories that hinge on two realities occupying the same space and time, here is a tale about a place where numerous time zones are occurring in the same area—à la Voyager's brilliant "Shattered"—featuring a Tom Bombadil-type character who spends his life trying to avoid bumping into himself (rather like the Doctor). Caught in the middle of all this is Sharon, one of the Time Lord Sontarans, who has found himself lost in the forest; goddamn if Dan Starkey doesn't once again manage to give us yet another very individual example of the clone race, using the same voice as the others but remaining perfectly distinct. I particularly love how, when the Eighth Doctor and Alex finally do (sort of) reconcile, it is like many family members after an argument: calmly saying the things they may have said when bawling at each other, but previously lacked the ability to listen to.

Odeon Rochdale

For The Devil Wears Prada 2.  Originally opened by ABC Cinema is 1998, it was bought by Odeon in 2000 and rebranded.  But most of the decor doesn't seem to have been updated, including the small red dot matrix displays pointing to each of the screens with the titles of the films on them (which in modern Odeons has been replaced by a boring old PC monitor).  Saw the film in Screen One, the largest auditorium I've been to so far outside of Leicester Square and alone, my own private screening room the size of a church.  The screen itself is huge, as big perhaps as the ABC Cinema on Lime Street and so I moved back into the middle of the stalls.  Both the projection and sound quality were perfect, and this was one of the best cinema experiences I've ever had, so much so that at the end I asked to speak to the manager to tell her as much.  She was thrilled, pointing out that most of the time she's only on the receiving end of complaints.  

The Silent Priest (Classic Doctors, New Monsters: Broken Memories)

Audio  The stories in this fourth anthology of this series are all tonally pretty dark, with each incarnation of the Doctor on several backfeet, all of them illustrating Clive Finch's warning to Rose that the Time Lord's constant companion is death.  In the first story by Jonathan Morris, the Fourth Doctor comes face to someone else's face with the Harmony Shoal from The Return of Doctor Mysterio as they possess their way through a human colony.  The second has the Sixth Doctor and Mel defending a castle against the clockwork droids from The Girl in the Fireplace with Jac Raynor's script becomes darker and darker with each passing moment.  Both are, of course, utterly brilliant, and I applauded in my lonely room at the end of both.  But, wow, did I need to give it a day before I launched into the final two instalments.

The Silent Priest/The Silent City

This David K. Barnes two-parter doesn't offer much levity either.  We meet the Eighth Doctor at a point in this incarnation, in the midst of the Time War, in which he is done.  As the Time Lord describes, he thinks he's saved the day, then finds that everything he did has been reversed or worse that the planet on which it happened disappears from existence.  It's got the point where he's visiting a priest on the regular, looking for some kind of mental clarity but as the cover art reveals, said holy person is a member of The Silence, so he doesn't just forget he's met the man; that's why he keeps coming back.  This is the version of the wanderer who's working towards his regeneration, perhaps around the time of Lies in Ruins.  He's a professional actor, of course, and it's his job to know, but I remain impressed by the way that Paul McGann keeps track of which version of this Doctor he's playing, at the beginning, middle, and end of his journey.

The same guest cast continues into the final story with the Seventh Doctor, who's left to cope with his later incarnation's actions in trying to unite the warring factions which are breaking the city apart.  Barnes is very keen to show the different approaches of the two Doctors, the mastermind and the universally challenged, notably by putting Seventh also late in his timeline in the TARDIS, in the days or weeks before San Francisco.  There's a chilling moment when he says off-handedly that he'll shut down a casino he's surveying on behalf of the local constabulary "in the morning" as though it would be nothing for him, the kind of action that the Eighth Doctor has been trying to run away from since The Dying Days.  But like Eighth, he makes a number of catastrophic mistakes and like Eighth, he doesn't remember any of them by the end of the episode.