Charlotte Pollard: The Further Adventuress.

Audio  Now some elements of Audacity make sense.  For personal reasons, this has sat on my shelf for long enough to feel like I'm able to enjoy nice things again although I hadn't realised how long the gap between release (Jan 2022) and now had been.  So when interviewees refer to this being an anniversary release, they're not talking about the franchise's 60th but of the original couple of series featuring this TARDIS duo.  Script Editor Alan Barnes also says although he knows fans would like to know what happened after The Girl Who Never Was, they decided that they'd want to honour what happened all those years ago when I heard Storm Warning and my life changed forever ... sorry when Storm Warning kicked off another epoch in the life of this silly series.

The Mummy Speaks

One of those stories in which the Doctor's benevolence is turned against him.  Although the premise is similar to The Unquiet Dead, this is an incarnation who hasn't yet lived through the Time War and consequently has a moral reaction closer to Rose in that story.  As the title and cover of the whole set indicate, the stories foreground Charley a bit more and The Mummy Speaks is no exception as Alan Barnes returns to re-introduce this crew.  India Fisher is simply magnificent in the role and along with the writing, there's nothing in here to disavow her as my favourite companion of the whole franchise.  Both her and Paul's timing is superb and the whole thing is very worthy of the Pertwee logo from the TV Movie.

Eclipse

Shades of Avatar and The X-Files as the Doctor and Charley visit the woods after dark to discover why there's a governmental cover-up of deaths and why up until that point mostly peaceful native population of giant moths on the planet are attacking the human colonists.  Writer Lisa McMullin really captures the darker instalments of the earlier series in which nefarious people reach some absolutely horrible ends, the sound designer really going to town leaving nothing to the imagination.  It's brilliant.  Worth highlighting is Joe Kraemer's blockbuster score, full orchestral might, a little bit of Bernard Hermann, and a touch of Jerry Goldsmith.

The Slaying of the Writhing Mass

Without looking at the writing credit beforehand, I somehow knew this was Eddie Robson.  As director Ken Bentley says the supplementary features, Eddie can write what would otherwise be quite mundane characters into extraordinary circumstances.  The idea of a bottleneck of time vessels trying to visit the same moment in history is superb and all of the implications are investigated, from the merch sellers to the school coach filled with bored teenagers.  We also enjoy that rare occasion of Eighth being accompanied by a tween and it is charming to hear him patiently speaking to her as an equal in a way that he sometimes neglects with his adult travelling companions.

Heart of Orion

The easy option for Nick Briggs in writing a sequel to his seminal Sword of Orion would have been to trot out a few more Cybermen but this goes in a very different direction and is all the better for it.  The listener is kept on the back foot throughout, as the script twists our expectations, or at least suggests story elements which would be the obvious outcome elsewhere then reminds us that Doctor Who is not like other series because of the attitude of its main character especially one moment which is consistent with more recent incarnations of giving people the agency to make their own decisions, bringing an end a series which lives up to the original series.

Placement: We're told on numerous occasions in the interviews that these are supposed to be set relatively early in their adventures so I'm going to boldly put them after Minuet in Hell.  I'm still not sure about Audacity, so I'll leave that just before Invaders from Mars.  We'll see what happens with the upcoming Christmas releases.