Jamie Revell

When I reviewed the only previous Big Finish release to feature the Kaldor robots, Robophobia, I commented that there isn't much you can do with them beyond having them apparently start killing people. Indeed, that particular story was basically a twist on the classic TV story The Robots of Death albeit one that was well done. Well, with this release, Andrew Smith has found that other thing for them to do, and it opens up possibilities beyond this particular story. If you want to see the robots as more than faux monsters, this one is for you.

The story opens with the Doctor and Leela arriving on a powered-down airship only to discover that it is crewed by robots, directionless without their human supervision. The first half is a mystery as the Doctor tries to uncover what has happened but it turns out that there is something outside trying to get in and, once it does, the story becomes more action-oriented as we also discover that there have been some significant changes on Kaldor since we last saw it.

If there's a flaw, it's that the story ends still leaving one wanting to know “what happens next”. The Doctor, of course, leaves as soon as the initial crisis is resolved but it's clear that the future of Kaldor hangs in an uncertain balance. Normally, I'd put this down to the ideas being too big to fully explore in a 60-minute audio, necessarily leaving some questions unanswered. But I can't help noticing that the robots return again in a BF release later in the year, which leads into an entire 12-episode spin-off series. Assuming that there's a connection (and I'd be surprised if there isn't), this can be more accurately be seen as a teaser or prequel episode setting up events for later.

And, taken in that way, the flaw becomes a strength.

The third and final part of the imagined fifth season of the TV show moves the story back closer to the main plot arc than the second instalment did. Which obviously makes sense, and is what we'd expect in the last few episodes of a modern TV series, although the ending of this is more open than any of the real Torchwood seasons – probably because they were more confident of getting another one to follow. Good to see Orr getting used properly again though, after feeling more like a handy plot device in vol. 2.

• Poker Face – The first episode follows on directly from the cliffhanger ending of the previous volume. The obvious question of why Hartmann isn't dead is barely touched on, and more or less handwaved away when it is, but perhaps it's being saved for something later. Instead, the focus is on her attempts to subvert Torchwood, helped by the fact that Jack is being unnecessarily secretive. Even so, it seems that the rest of the team take her side rather too quickly and much of the episode consists of them bickering. It does at least give a good share of the screen time to all of the characters and mostly treats them well, but it does all feel a little too easy. 4 stars.

• Tagged – The second episode is much stronger as Torchwood takes on a psychically empowered internet meme that feeds on anger. This is a dark tale, although the horror is in how people are twisted and the lengths they will go to to resolve past traumas rather than anything gory. Hartmann is particularly ruthless here, mentally torturing one of the other characters to get what she wants and coming across as almost psychopathic at times. There's also a significant development with the Ng subplot that's been bubbling under for the whole season, creating a complex story that's better at probing its characters' weaknesses than the prior episode's attempt to do the same. 5 stars.

• Escape Room – Gwen, Mr Colchester, and their respective spouses enter an ‘escape room' for an evening's entertainment, only to discover that it's an actual dungeon filled with death traps. While the villain's motivation turns out to be related to the overall plot arc, and teases some of what's to come in the next episode, the story would have worked with a different one, making this feel comparatively standalone. Putting the characters under stress helps show us what they're capable of, and this element works well. The weakness, unfortunately, is that it's not a setup conducive to audio, and there were many occasions where I simply couldn't work what was going on from the character's descriptions of what they were seeing and doing. An interesting idea, somewhat failing in the execution. 3.5 stars.

• Herald of the Dawn – There are a lot of plotlines left to wrap up as we head into the season finale... and so few of them are that this feels more like a mid-season cliffhanger. Which isn't to say that there aren't major developments, including one that will have a long-lasting impact on the show going forward. There's plenty of drama and peril with high-stakes action, and all the main characters get something to do. Furthermore, feeling like a mid-season cliffhanger isn't really a problem when the release schedule means that there's no more gap between this and the start of ‘season six' than there was between any of the instalments within ‘season five'. Just don't expect everything to be resolved just yet. 4.5 stars.

Having met the Eighth, Seventh, and Sixth Doctors (in that order) it's naturally time for River to encounter the Fifth Doctor in this, the third collection in the series. It's essentially a single story, although the first episode, while linked to the others, is comparatively standalone. Although it does tie in to events in the TV series, however, it does not require knowledge of the prior volumes in its own series.

• The Lady in the Lake – River visits a euthanasia clinic where the clients can choose to die while living out a fantasy. The story is not told in strict chronological order, with a number of flashbacks, and a flash-forward as the opening teaser, but it isn't really hard to follow, despite a bit of timey-wimeyness here and there. This helps to build the suspense as we slowly uncover what brought River to this world. That turns out to have a connection to her backstory and involves an interesting depiction of a religious leader driven more by cowardice than faith. 4.5 stars.

• A Requiem for the Doctor – And then we're off to 18th century Vienna where River and the Doctor try to unravel the mystery of why Mozart appears to have completed his Requiem in D Minor when historically, he didn't. They are soon diverted by a locked-room murder mystery that forms the main core of the story. There's also an effective subplot involving the Doctor's teenage companion resenting River's rapport with the Doctor, which leads to a suitably dramatic conclusion leading directly into the next story. 4 stars.

• My Dinner with Andrew – River and the Doctor visit an extra-dimensional restaurant in an effort to resolve the fallout of the previous episode. At which point, they run into an old enemy and things get complicated fast. There's a lot of jumping backward and forward in time, while River struggles to keep the overall timeline consistent, meaning that it's probably not one to listen to casually. There's plenty of humour in amongst the time travel shenanigans, helping to keep this fun, even if the Doctor isn't in it much. 5 stars.

• The Furies – The final part is what really makes this a sequel to the TV story A Good Man Goes to War. After the cliffhanger ending of the previous episode, River returns to her childhood home to see what Madame Kovarian has been up to since. There's even a surprise return for an actor from another episode of Eleven's run, playing a clone of her original character. Oddly, however, I found this one harder to follow than the previous episode, despite its linear narrative, with the motivations of some of the characters a little unclear. But it works as a big dramatic conclusion and does wrap it all up. 3.5 stars.

Two 2-hour stories with, as usual, one in the UNIT era, and one set in space.

• The Rise of the New Humans – The Doctor and Jo investigate a private hospital where the former patients have been turning up dead... and strangely mutated. As is clear from the cover art, this throws an unusual twist on the UNIT stories of the era by having the villain behind it all be not the Master, but the Meddling Monk. The difference in persona between the two renegade Time Lords is played up, resulting in some good exchanges between him and the Doctor. It's also a decent story, moving from straight investigation towards an action-filled finale as things start to get out of control.

The weakness, however, isn't in the Monk but in the Doctor. Treloar has got the hang of the voice by this point (arguably sounding more convincing than Katy Manning does as 20-year-old Jo), but the writing lets him down. Three is at his most arrogant here, and when the Monk accuses him of pomposity it's hard not to end up agreeing. He ignores Jo trying to tell him something significant, insisting that she must just be imagining it, and blusters his way through the story with little indication of any compassion for its victims. It's perhaps not wholly out of character for the TV series of the day but throwing so many of Three's worst qualities into one 2-hour story feels like overdoing it, especially in the modern day. At least Jo is well-written, even if she does fall into her common TV role of hostage at one point. 3 stars.

• The Tyrants of Logic – The villains of this story are also obvious from the cover picture; here, the Doctor is facing Invasion-era cybermen chasing down a mysterious crate that contains something important for their survival. The Third Doctor is, of course, the only Doctor other than Eight not to face the Cybermen on TV and only once before in an audio (and that was a Companion Chronicle). But, largely because of the key role it gives to Jo, it doesn't feel at all out of place here, with references to both Second and Fourth Doctor encounters also being included to place it within continuity.

The story is set on a snowy colony world that has been abandoned to the point that it appears to have a population of just three, all of whom have been shaped in some way by the recent cyber-wars. It's an effective character piece, especially in the way that it emphasises why the Doctor needs companions and puts Jo's devotion centre-stage. There are some good ideas in it, too, with the cybermen employing nanotech (though not actually referred to as such, perhaps in a nod to the ‘70s ambience) and a subplot about the local wildlife. A strong Cyberman story with a better grasp of its lead characters than its predecessor in this volume. 4.5 stars.

Anyone who has read a lot of my reviews will have noticed that I tend to be generous, and may have wondered what on Earth it would take for me to rate something as a single star. This; this is what it would take.

As background, Amazon recommended this to me on the basis of previous purchases, other reviews aren't terrible, it was on super-cheap special offer, and it's really short, so I figured I didn't have much to lose by trying it. I wasn't expecting too much, but, wow, was that an overestimate. The only saving grace is that short length - it's part one of a trilogy that would fit together to make one not very lengthy novel.

Okay, so the plot. A girl (she's about 18, I think) with vaguely Mary Sue powers goes to a school for teens with supernatural abilities, where she discovers that she's destined to save the world - but only if she can persuade five specific people to simultaneously become her boyfriend. Not a great start, conceptually, but still the sort of thing I'd normally end up giving 3 stars to. But there are two big problems, each of which knock something off.

For one, there are actual spelling and grammatical mistakes in it - the sort of word substitution that most spellcheckers won't catch. I mean, blimey, none of us are perfect, but I tend to expect more from a published book. Although maybe that's just me.

More seriously, the characters are flat as pancakes, with even the heroine not coming across as at all well-developed. They might as well all be cyphers, and there isn't much development of the world they inhabit, either. When, at the conclusion of the book, the heroine identifies one of the five people she's looking for and has sex with him, there's no emotional connection at all and no reason for us to be invested. I think they've literally only spoken to each other twice prior to this scene and that was on a completely different subject.

I mean, apparently people like this book, so if the author's making money from it, more power to her. She must be doing something right. But, when it comes to me... seriously, Amazon, you need to improve your recommendation algorithm.

This starts out as an unremarkable story of its type, with the Doctor answering a distress call from what turns out to be an abandoned hulk floating in space. It soon turns out that the hulk is being rebuilt as a hotel and, wouldn't you know it, the aliens hired to do the building work have mysteriously turned homicidal.

So much, so very base-under-siege. There's even an obnoxious billionaire businessman and an egotistical reporter thrown into the mix, with the former being a particularly common trope of the show. A few things, however, managed to nudge this above the average, at least for me. For a start, there are some clever ideas in here, with the killer aliens being politely reluctant and working for an interior designer who is quite an entertaining character (and would look great as a visual, with suitable CGI). The dialogue is often witty, managing to poke fun at a Sixth Doctor who's obviously still in his early, pompous stage - he's often blind to what's going on, but, for once, this just seems to be in character.

The biggest oddity of the story, however, is that it features a previously unseen companion. Apart from not having a sense of humour, there doesn't seem to be much characterisation to him and what do get isn't really interesting. There is, in fact, a reason why this story wouldn't work with a regular companion, although one could wonder if there might not have been other ways of achieving the same thing. This, and some rather slow pacing in the first part, are marks against the story.

The reason that I nudge it up to... well, let's say 3.5 stars because the weaknesses are still visible, is that the story suddenly take a left turn at around the three-quarter mark. At this point, it stops being a base-under-siege and turns into something else as the full details of what's been happening on the spaceship are revealed. The result isn't a true classic, not least because there's a fair chunk of exposition in the final quarter. But it deserves some kudos for trying to twist an established format, even if it takes a while to get round to it.

After the promise of the second volume in this series, things drop off again in this third instalment. The story sees the heroes hired to investigate the sudden loss of contact with a fort of rangers (who sound a bit like the Black Watch of Game of Thrones to me, although that's probably a coincidence). On the way, they are suddenly, and rather inexplicably, captured by a family of hillbilly half-ogres, complete with southern US accents, before facing down the actual threat.

We're back with the wizard providing narration again, as he did in the first release, although not the rather superior second one. It's not too distracting here, and probably helps move things along, at least when he's describing the details of the setting, rather than what the other characters are doing. That setting has a number of nice touches, and some of the dialogue in the early segments adds further atmosphere, even if it doesn't add much to our understanding of the supposed viewpoint characters.

And then, basically, we get a long series of fights, which remain as difficult to follow as ever, and a chatty villain who seems to pop up from nowhere in order to gloat. Of course, it's part of the nature of D&D (or, in this case, its offshoot) that there's always plenty of combat, but it's a pity that here, in a format less suited to that, there doesn't seem to be much else, beyond a conundrum about how to stop a dam bursting. There is, again some backstory about the villain's plans and what happened to the rangers, which almost seems like it would have made a better story - but wouldn't, of course, make sense as a D&D scenario.

The sudden revelation at the end hints at something more to come, but really this is just another step in the adventure, feeling as a means of getting the characters from one place to another without anything much happening in between. The scenes with the half-ogres are the best part, since they're at least amusingly characterised, but the rest is a mixture of confusing fight scenes and traditional fantasy tropes. It may well have worked as a scenario intended to be played out over a few nights, but not so much as a 1-hour audio play.

While this is heavily tied in with the ‘Year of the Villain' arc, this manages to a good job of it and does so by properly focussing on the villains. Much of the story is told from Captain Cold's perspective as we see how his apparent victory changes him to the point that even the other Rogues become wary of how he is behaving. There's some examination of what makes the Rogues tick, and in particular, how they relate to one another and the Flash, although not all of it is as effective as it might be (I mean, is there really much new that's revealed about them?) Plus, the Flash's powers are out of control for much of the story forcing him to rely on some of his usual foes for support. There are some decent scenes here and there, perhaps an attempt at doing something with Golden Glider that doesn't (yet) go anywhere, and it's an entertaining ride that's a notch above much of Williamson's run so far.

The Doctor reluctantly becomes involved with the '80s version of UNIT as both he and they are on the trail of what seems to be an alien distress signal. Unfortunately, while this is not the worst Big Finish story I've ever listened to (that's Nekromanteia) it is certainly the weakest for some time. Hence for the first time in ages, just two stars... and this just after I gave a 1-star review to something else. What is happening to me?

Ahem.

There are no regular companions in this, with the new UNIT medical officer taking on the sidekick role. He's not terribly well-developed as a character, although he is at least a decent person, which is more than can be said for... well, anybody else in the story other than the Doctor. And this really is the main flaw in it; virtually everybody is a complete arse in one way or another. Which is made worse by the fact that, once the villain finally gets round to explaining their motivation, you're supposed to feel sympathy for them and switch your allegiance. Nope; I'm sorry, but there's no excuse for what they've been up to.

It's meant, I think, to be darkly sinister and to be (among other things) a gritty critique of the military mind. Which, fair enough, military types are often antagonists in Doctor Who and I'm okay with the Brigadier's replacement here being a fairly unredeemable gitt. But when everyone else is too, and even the medical officer isn't in a position to really show them where they're wrong there's no moral core to the story and it ends up being a critique without a message.

I could also add that there are some plot holes, not least in how a private citizen with no particular wealth manages to construct a ten-level sub-basement with a state of the art security system and have literally nobody notice. But it's the charmlessness and aimlessness of it that ends up being the real failing.

Torchwood decides to investigate a religious cult that believes humanity's future lies in the stars, and that the government is hiding the existence of aliens from the public. Neither of which, in the Torchwood universe, they're actually wrong about...

But they are up to some decidedly unsavoury practices in the process leading the team to try to find a way to stop them. The story is not fully linear, jumping about between the different characters as they explore different ways of getting information on the cult and, at times, returning to prior events to see them from a different perspective. This does mean that some characters are left out of the story for extended periods. Sometimes, that's noticeable, but funnily enough, it's Jack's absence for almost two-thirds of the story that's least so. For most of this 3-hour tale, it's the other characters who take the fore, and that works particularly well here.

This is, it should be pointed out, a dark story. There's body horror, at least two gruesome deaths, a running gag about alien porn, and a sordid sex scene that's really uncomfortable to listen to. The latter, fortunately, is portrayed as resulting in some obvious emotional trauma, but... well, trigger-warning and all that. The climax of the story is more traditionally action-based, but leads to some of the best parts as the survivors come to terms with what it means to believe deeply in something when those around you don't even care whether you're right or not.

4.5 stars, I think, but I can see why some would find it problematic. Owen, for instance, is well written and portrayed but also comes out of it really, really badly - and not everyone's going to like that.

The pay-off for this sometimes meandering plot arc works better than many of its earlier instalments. The Black Flash is the main antagonist, and away from his (its?) usual role so that things aren't entirely straightforward. Many aspects of the previous episodes finally come together and there's some good use of Zoom in the final few episodes, building up to a satisfying conclusion. Against this, we have the ‘Year of the Villain' subplot, which here sees Kid Flash and Avery rounding up B-list villains, presumably psyching themselves before they face the big guns. Clearly, that's just building things up for Vol. 13, but it does so in an entertaining manner.

This is the first half of a two-part story. This review covers both parts together.

On the off-chance that anyone reading this review is only familiar with the new series, I should explain that Jago and Litefoot are characters that appeared in a single TV story during the 4th Doctor's run, but who proved popular enough to receive their own audio series 40 years later, played by the original actors. While this story makes numerous references to that longer series, it doesn't depend on it for the plot, and is essentially standalone.

This takes the form of two monologues, delivered by the title characters, in which they recount an adventure in which they met both the 10th and 11th Doctors. In all honesty, there isn't very much to the story, which largely consists of them being chased before a final showdown with the monster. But it hardly matters, because it's the interplay between the two narrators and their respective personalities that's the real focus here.

It's not, to my mind, as much fun as the full-cast audios (or the pilot episode for their series, which was also narrated) but it's still an entertaining listen. The pair bouncing off of another as they recount their experiences makes up for the fact that, in the story itself, they spend much of it apart. How effective it would be to someone not already familiar with them, I'm unsure, but for those who are, it's enjoyable to spend time in their company once again, with a number of laughs along the way, and a well-written connection to the new TV series.

We're back to the style of single 4-hour stories with this release, albeit with clear shifts in the narrative at the end of each hour-long episode. The identity of the threat that UNIT is facing this time is also obvious from both the title and the cover. The twist, however, is that here the Cybermen are using something that didn't exist when Kit Pedler created and named them in 1966: cyberspace.

The story starts off where the previous collection ended, following up on what happened to Sam Bishop - who, unusually, is present in all four episodes of this story, rather than just the one as is usual. To begin with, there is no initial connection with the Cybermen, who don't turn up until the halfway mark, and instead, it's a story about VR equipment and video games that features the arc villains from the previous release. The second half, however, is mainly set in ‘reality', while making heavy use of modern technology in a way that's reminiscent of The Bells of Saint John.

This part is heavy on action, and didn't feel as effective to me as the lead up did, it being difficult to work out at times exactly what was going on. Still, there were some nice references to past Cyberman stories, some character background for Sam, and good use of Osgood as an antagonist for the other heroes. Her usual role is instead taken by the Master, who perhaps doesn't quite have the scope here that he does in his own stories, but is nonetheless well-written and (of course) acted.

It's not one of the strongest UNIT stories, in part because everything's wrapped up a bit too easily at the end and the Master rather tends to overshadow things when the story should be more about Kate, Osgood, and the rest of the team. But it's certainly entertaining and making the Cybermen “cyber” in the more modern sense is a fun idea.

In this fourth instalment, Scott once again proves better at adapting the original scenario to an audio story than his fellow author was in the two episodes he had done up to this point. But where Scott's previous offering was a horror tale of sorts that was able to play with the characters' emotions, here we have something that is little more than “kill the monsters”.

At least, that appears to be what the original scenario was, leaving relatively little to play with to make a more involving story. But, given that limitation, Scott does reasonably well, focussing on the conflicts between the villains and building the story around them as much as around the heroes. Some of the fight scenes are well done, with the fight with the harpies particularly effective, as they use the entrancing siren call rather than physical violence.

But it has to be said that there's little here other than fight scenes, and some of the villains bickering. The first segment of the story is basically just one long protracted fight in which our heroes stoop to some fairly unpleasant tactics to get things done. The main viewpoint character here is the dwarven ranger, who evidently has giants as his “favoured enemy”, and the wizard's narration is used only to move the story forward when the party has to spend a few days travelling or whatever.

The fighter is also well-used, being separated from the rest of the party in a way that enables us to see more of what is going on than would be likely in an actual game, and clearly being set up for a further story element down the line. It's also worth noting that the higher level of the characters is evident here, with the wizard using quite a lot of magic that would have been rather handy if he'd had access to it in earlier episodes, and the overall stakes being higher.

The Doctor (without a companion in this one) meets a young Isambard Kingdom Brunel while the latter is helping his father on the construction of the Thames Tunnel - the first tunnel to be built under a navigable river, and still in use today. The Tunnel it seems, is haunted, and the Doctor naturally sets out to investigate.

The first half of the story is, very loosely, based on real historical events, featuring an underground banquet and an ingenious method for plugging a leak in the tunnel roof, both of which actually happened. To this is added the story of the apparent ghosts which, unsurprisingly, turn out to have a science fiction explanation. Once their real origin is discovered, the story switches to dealing with that and seeing things more from their perspective. This second half was a little less effective for me, but the unreality of the setting is countered by some strong characterisation.

Brunel is the key guest character here, taking some of the role that a companion would normally fill. We see him as a young man, still living in the shadow of his (at the time) famous father and unaware that he's on the cusp of eclipsing him. Tied in with this is a story of the Industrial Revolution itself, contrasting Brunel's vision for the future of his world with some of its unintended consequences. (I'm actually surprised by how many people apparently haven't heard of him. I still recall the 2001 phone-in TV show where he was voted the second greatest person in British history! Granted, that had a lot to do with a campaign by students at the university named after him, and it's not the placing I'd give him, but still...)

It's not just Brunel Jr., though; the other characters are also well-drawn, and it's notable that there's plenty of room for strong female parts in a story that's still conscious of some of the social mores of late Georgian England.

This release sees the Big Finish debut of James Marsters as John Hart, joined by Jack as the other main character. They are joined by an unusually large cast for the releases in this particular series, although most of these guests are present only briefly.

The story begins with John visiting an aged and dying Jack in a present-day prison before revealing, though a series of flashbacks, how such a situation has come about. Initially, it portrays their rivalry in the Time Agency, before we see how John altered history to become the leader of Torchwood shortly after it was founded. From there, we follow his story, and that of Torchwood, through this alternate reality.

A lot of this is clearly meant to be a comedy, and while some of it certainly works in that regard, other parts just come across as implausible. This may be because the nature of Torchwood has always been more serious than that of Doctor Who... but then again, it may just be me. The strongest parts are once we reach the 2000s and see the way that John deals with the various issues that cropped up in the TV series, from Army of Ghosts through to Miracle Day - they're brief vignettes, but they're generally quite fun.

It's not a bad story by any means and, as I say, there are a few good laughs in it, but it didn't quite work for me. A lot may depend on your sense of humour and how far you're willing to take things.

An oft-asked question on Doctor Who fan forums is ‘what happened to Jenny after the events of The Doctor's Daughter?'. If anything, then, the surprise is that it took Big Finish so long to come up with an answer, in the form of this collection of four hour-long episodes. Some of the stories are good, and others merely middling, but if what you want is a chirpy, kick-ass female version of the Tenth Doctor, then this is absolutely for you.

• Stolen Goods – The first story doesn't follow on directly from the end of the TV episode, although it's implied to take place not long after it. It sees Jenny meet Garundel, an amphibian-like alien villain who once appeared in a 7th Doctor audio. That was set around 5,000 years before this, but there's no attempt to explain the discrepancy, so we're probably not supposed to notice it. Leaving that minor point aside, the tone of the story feels upbeat, as if the stars are finding it all a bit too much fun to take seriously. Indeed, given Garundel ‘s camp American accent, this might be intended as a bit of a comedy, although, if so, it's not a particularly successful one. It also, of course, has to set up the plot arc for the box set, with Jenny meeting a mysterious young man – who goes on to take the ‘companion' role, but is still a bit of a blank at this point – and being chased by a killer cyborg. This may all be going somewhere, but the episode taken on its own merit doesn't gel yet. 3 stars.

• Prisoner of the Ood – The second story is the strongest to my mind, although it too starts out with a light tone that's at odds with the subject matter. Having acquired the secrets of time travel (something of a necessity in a DW spin-off like this), Jenny arrives in a suburban street on present-day Earth and soon discovers that it's sealed off from the outside world. As the title indicates, the Ood feature as the ‘monster' in this one, although their behaviour suggests that they are being controlled by a sinister psychic force, as was the case in their original TV appearance. Unravelling what that might be is the central mystery here, and the tension does eventually ratchet up as the death toll starts to mount. The result is a decent monster story, featuring iconic aliens from the modern show. 4 stars.

• Neon Reign – Jenny and Noah arrive on a colony planet where women do all the work and men laze about doing drugs all day. That aside, the world as described has a distinctly Chinese feel to it (Jenny is apparently the only blonde on the planet), which makes a change from everything being European... but, while the actors are East Asian, the writer isn't and it may play too heavily on the stereotypes. Where the previous story is a base-under-siege, here we're in the revolution-against-a-corrupt regime trope that was, perhaps more common in the classic TV show than in the modern one. We get to see a bit more of Noah, but the focus remains on Jenny, clearly falling into the Doctor role but more willing to punch people than he has typically been. It's explicitly feminist, where the other stories in the collection are more implicitly so, and one could argue that it's all a bit of a blunt tool, but it's a decent example of its type. 4 stars.

• Zero Space – In the final story, Jenny arrives at a space station where she finally has a chance to work out who or what Noah is. We, the listeners, unfortunately don't get to learn the answer to that, and the hints that have been dropped so far don't go anywhere – something that might have been less of an issue had there been any sign of a sequel to this volume, which, three years on, there isn't yet. This soon turns into another base-under-siege as the villain for the arc turns up and starts chasing the heroes. There are some speeches about individuality, drawing on Jenny's own origin as a clone of the Doctor, and a number of other typical tropes of the TV series, but nothing that really marks this story out as special. 3.5 stars.

This collection begins with a story in which Batgirl fights a villain who kills people using liquid gold and... actually that's about it. There's some attempt to tie it in with Barbara's ideals, but basically, it's a fight with the odd one-liner thrown in here and there and little more than that. It's followed by the obligatory Joker War tie-in, which is little more than a do-over of The Killing Joke with a different outcome and a hint at long-term consequences that are unlikely to be followed up. The third part is the best, dealing with the creepy idea of a serial killer who dresses his victims up after killing them. The ending of that is good, putting Barbara in a difficult position... but it's also an ending that's been done before, with the same characters. And then we get a more reflective piece that shows how Batgirl is different from the rest of the Bat-family, contrasting the nature of her beliefs with theirs.

There's nothing really bad in this, and there are some good bits here and there, but there's nothing standout either. Castellucci's run seems to have been trying hard to find what makes Barbara tick, but it lacks the freshness of its predecessors in the series, and, in this volume, spends too much time rehashing the past.

A set of nine short stories released digital-only to fill the schedules during the pandemic. Since most of the stories are single-issue, and the issues themselves are comparatively short, they don't have much complexity. The majority are just fights interspersed with some arguing, vignettes that elucidate aspects of the Aquaman mythos without doing anything significant - although Arthur does team up with some Greenpeace types in one story, and they show up again in the three-parter that's the longest story of the set. (It's counterbalanced by four half-length stories at the end that keep the total at nine).

The best story of the set to my mind is one featuring Aqualad, in which he's trying to come to terms with his father. Aquagirl, on the other hand, comes across quite negatively in the two stories she features in. The short length arguably makes the ecological messages come across as a little preachy since there isn't much to do except for Arthur to stand up and say “hey guys, dumping pollutants is bad!” - one can hardly do a (ahem) ‘deep dive' on the subject in a 16-page comic book that also has to fit in a big fight scene.

But this was an entertaining stop-gap in the absence of more regular comics, and it does at least bring in some of the regular supporting cast, with Arthur himself absent in some stories.

This is a sequel to the decidedly mediocre The Helliax Rift. Fortunately, it's a lot better than that was, and, also fortunately, you don't need to have listened to it to understand this.

The main problem with the previous part of this three-part plot arc is that, medical officer Hopkins aside, nobody in it is at all sympathetic. I specifically noted in my review for that that the new commanding officer of UNIT was “unredeemable”. Well, here he is redeemed, although largely by acting in a completely different way so that he doesn't even feel like the same character. To be fair, this is set at least six years later, and probably more (i.e. it's now the early '90s), so perhaps he's learned with age - in real life people, do, in fact, change.

The story also builds on Hopkins, who has also changed from when we last saw him, and for reasons that are properly explored. Indeed, that's as much a key part of the story as the central plot about the Cybermen trying to take over the Earth by destroying its water supply. Which gives us a pretty decent story, with plenty of UNIT-based military actions, some twists along the way, and a few bits of actual science.

There are a couple of negative points. Firstly, there's only one female character in it, who acts as the companion-stand-in, although with British army v Cybermen that's perhaps difficult to avoid. More gratingly, at least for me, these are the '80s TV version of the Cybermen, who sound a bit too human - and, at times, emotional - for my tastes. But, again, one can't complain too much when this is specifically trying to emulate the '80s TV show. Those with fonder memories of those specific Cybermen may find this to be a plus, since they're rarely used in Big Finish.

The second in the series of recast stories featuring the show's original line-up of characters consists, once again, of unconnected two 2-hour stories. As before, one of these is science fictional in nature and the other is a straight historical, mirroring the roughly 50/50 split of these kinds of story in the show's first season.

• The Invention of Death – Many of the SF stories of the First Doctor's run were, or were at least trying to be, relatively high-concept SF for the day. There's also a tendency for them to be set on entirely alien worlds, rather than future Earth or colony worlds. The most extreme example of that is surely season 2's The Web Planet, but all three of the first-season SF stories also fit the description. This is very much in that mould, although it obviously benefits from having no budgetary restrictions on the visuals.

The travellers land on an alien planet inhabited by immortal and unchanging beings that are very different from humans both biologically and culturally. The first half of the story is particularly sedate, exploring the setting and explaining how the aliens live and think. It's something that you'd never do in the modern show, or honestly, for much of the classic run, but it's a good piece of conceptual SF that's reminiscent of some parts of, say, The Sensorites. In the second half, though, a threat does rear its head and the story changes pace as it escalates and the Doctor turns to science for the solution. Accompanied by reflection on the nature of mortality and what it means to lack it, as well as the unspoken love between Ian and Barbara, this is unusually cerebral for Doctor Who which, depending on your tastes, may be a good or a bad thing. But I liked it. 5 stars.

• The Barbarians and the Samurai – It's hard not to think of this as simply ‘The Samurai', since that's clearly what we'd be calling it were it actually a Hartnell TV story... but for some reason they went with a longer title. But I digress.

The TARDIS lands in 1820s Japan, which is a bit of a problem, because it's during the “Sakoku” period of isolation when foreigners (at least outside of Nagasaki) were put to death on sight. The first part of the story focuses on that threat, but soon the travellers are involved with the schemes of the local daimyo as they struggle to return to the TARDIS. It's an action story, for the most part, with peril, sword fights and daring escapes, but it also explores the cultural gulf between 20th century Europe and 19th century Japan. Along the way there are disgraced ronin, a tea ceremony, and much talk of bushido.

In many ways, it does feel like the stories it is emulating - The Aztecs and Marco Polo both spring to mind, although those also involve an extended stay in the past, where this only occupies about three days. The Doctor and Ian are more the focus than Barbara and Susan, who fall more into the role they often had on TV of being held captive - although Barbara does get a few good scenes and at least gets to deliver some of the exposition of the relevant history. 4 stars.

Some of the attempts to doing humour in Torchwood audios have fallen flat for me, but this one works brilliantly, never straying into absurdity and taking strong advantage of the Welsh setting. Ianto and Owen are paired up on a trip to a former mining village in the hills to track down the source of an alien signal, where the constant rain does nothing to improve the latter's mood. (The only time I went to Wales was to Cwm Ystradllyn, much further to the north, but my impression mirrored Owen's here. Which is unfair to Wales as a whole, I'm sure).

The humour comes from the contrast between the gloomy urbanite (and ‘foreign') Owen as a fish-out-of-water and Ianto's cheerful optimism, buoyed up by memories of his childhood in the valleys. It's mostly told from Owen's perspective as he gets into trouble with the locals, and the science fiction elements are relatively minor. When they do pop up, there's a serious tone to them that helps to puts the humour in context, making for a strong story overall.

But it's the chemistry between the two leads that sells this. Owen can be unpleasant but here he's a perfect fit, presenting an outsider's view of rural Wales in a story that's nonetheless very different indeed from the closest TV offering, the grim Countrycide. It probably helps that it's written by Gareth David-Lloyd, who plays Ianto, lending authenticity to the Welsh setting and keeping it grounded despite the alien shenanigans.

The Doctor drops Ace off in 1961 before heading off with Mel to 2017, where he arrives shortly before the USSR makes the first manned landing on Mars. Which is disturbing for a number of reasons...

The result is a story that's about time travel itself, although not in the timey-wimey sense where events occur out of order. Which, at least to my mind, means that isn't so hard to follow as some more heavily paradox based stories can be. Rather, something has changed in European history and it's focussed in some way on Ace. The story alternates between the communist-run dystopia of present-day London and Ace's attempts to save a British agent trapped behind the newly erected Berlin Wall. East Berlin was not the cheeriest place in 1961 anyway, but here something strange is happening as the new version of history begins to assert itself.

For much of the story, we're completely in the dark about what's going on, and how events in East Berlin can possibly be linked to whatever it is that's happening on Mars. Indeed, it's never fully explained at all - although the cliffhanger ending may indicate that we'll get the answer in an upcoming episode. But the story is tense, and often grim, despite the absence of a regular ‘monster'. Mel has the main companion role here, and while she is on her own for some of the story, she doesn't achieve much. On the other hand, Ace has a far more significant role, trying to win the trust of the wounded agent as she fights alone against the changing reality around her.

McCormack is better-known for writing Star Trek stories but here she's doing a good job with the theme of time travel and does better at characterising the older Ace of the audios than some other writers have recently in this series.

I'll admit that it's very much a matter of taste, but Conner and Palmiotti's anarchic and deliberately over-the-top run on Harley Quinn to be highly enjoyable and so it's great to see them back here. It follows on more directly from their run than from what we've seen since, with many of the old characters back again, albeit taking a back seat to the Birds of Prey (the line-up from the film, of course) as supporting cast. The ‘Black Label' tag also allows them to go further than they could before, with graphic violence and quite a lot of swearing alongside the crazy hi-jinks - the former effectively off-setting the humour. There's also a fair bit of nudity although (as Harley herself complains during one of the obligatory dream sequences) it's all implied and... well, there's plenty of innuendo, but there always was. Yeah, it's hardly what you'd call sophisticated humour, but it's great fun, and that's what counts.

One of the things I like about the Wild Cards universe is how many different types of story it's capable of telling. This particular offering is far from the usual, which to my mind is a plus, but to many readers could be a negative. Compared with what you'd normally expect from Martin (for whatever he has to do with this book specifically), this is entirely devoid of horrible deaths, almost completely lacking in sexual references, and largely upbeat and positive. It's also - and one suspects this is what most people might have a problem with in a superhero story - particularly low stakes.

The core plot concerns a high school jazz band spending a week in San Antonio in order to take part in a national competition. Six stories are woven into this, but they're all directly related to it, mostly introducing new characters to the series as an admittedly implausibly high number of the characters turn out to be secret aces. Or deuces, really, in most cases.

The running theme of the stories is prejudice, because the band that's the focus of it all is made up of jokers. Texas, in this respect, doesn't come out of it very well, being most prominently represented by a bigoted Baptist church, but there are, in fact, a number of more tolerant characters to play against this, most obviously in the final story.

For me, the weakest of the break-out stories is ‘Jade Blossom's Brew', in which a former contestant on American Hero basically acts like a jerk. She is doing it in a good cause towards the end, but up until then, she just seems to be obnoxious for the sake of it, and I didn't get a feel for the character at all. But all of the others worked, dealing with minor dramas along the way and teens breaking the school-imposed curfew along with trying to figure out their place in the world. Of the new characters, the one that I found worked best was the girl with the secret power to control mosquitos; otherwise, it's the returning characters of Bubbles and Jerry Strauss who make the most impression.

This is a standalone book; obviously, there's a lot of backstory to some of the characters, and to the world itself, but it's not really necessary to have read the previous books to make sense of this one On the other hand, it's so different in tone to most of those, even with the strong theme of unjustified prejudice, that it's really not a good place to start. It's a change of pace, something I wouldn't want very often, but that's nice every now and then.