Um.... wow!

What the -

Which SECTION am I even going to put it in?! These people have NO CONSIDERATION!!

And...NINTH Doctor? THE Ninth Doctor? The REAL Ninth Doctor? The betrayer-and-abandoner Ninth Doctor with the big ears?

Let's be honest, chances are we'll only listen to the BF section so maybe base it there and if someone has passionately collected the rest and wants to discuss then just add it to the general discussion?

Just a thought...

No adverts yet have mentioned Eccleston's involvement, and you know you BF'd be all over that if he was.

Hell, *I*'d be all over it.

Time Lord Victorious Big Finishes:
https://www.doctorwho.tv/news/?article=time-lord-victorious-audio-dramas&fbclid=IwAR2nOJx3nzDov-xgt5OvycRamEDHplXV9l34DrUpI2kxVZEKE0jMu4ZmFt8

Master Thief:

'Prompt and punctual as always, the Master stepped from his TARDIS' - IS the Master always punctual? I mean (give or take the books and audios) he turned up TWO REGENERATIONS LATE to play with the Doctor...

'He should have hypnotised her from the start' - well, QUITE.

'The fact it was secreted here meant it must be priceless' - not really, the bank's a bit ••••, tbh. Georgina's passcard opens the door for the Master, for example - why didn't it have a retina-scan or anything?

'She'd been good at her job' - nope, Georgina had been rubbish at her job, letting the Master bring an unscanned cylinder inside the bank to kill everyone with.

'Everyone in this universe - and the next' - so the Master's au fait with the whole previous/next universe concept even if the Doctor's bizarrely never heard of it till Satan Pit...

'You are the Master, and you - will - obey - me' are MUCH better last-words-to-a-future-self than Capaldi's nauseating instructions to JODIE!...

Lesser Evils:

Why are the Kotturuh doing this? HOW are they doing this? Why have such an all-powerful, destructive race never been heard of before? How does this (or indeed Master Thief) tie in with the Time Lord Victorious?

I guess all will be revealed at some point?

I didn't find his Delgado as offensive as you did and I quite liked his Ainley.

Like most Short Trips, the stories are ok but hardly mind-blowing. Especially the second one...

I didn't find his Delgado as offensive as you did and I quite liked his Ainley.

Yeah, his Ainley DID have the occasional moment when you realised it was supposed to be Ainley. (If not as many moments as when you wondered if it was supposed to be TOM.)

Like most Short Trips, the stories are ok but hardly mind-blowing.

I think these were my two least favourite audio-short-trips EVER. They're usually fine.

Actually, I'm inclined to agree with you. These felt very droll and forced. Glad I don't have to write a review on them...

At least Lesser Evils was SO boring that Master Thief is looking better in comparison...

He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not:

Ah. McGann is talking to himself again. Come back Lucie/Charley/Tamsin etc, all is forgiven...

This rather silly 'this planet's legal system kills anyone who breaks a rule or oath' thing doesn't really go anywhere, does it.

Everyone seems remarkably unbothered about leaving Felicity with a mad killer whilst, for example, the Doctor spills his life story. Sure, they have the excuse that he isn't SUPPOSED to kill her, but which bit of MAD KILLER WHO JUST SHOT HER OUT OF THE SKY are they somehow failing to grasp...?

'My instincts are usually so good with this sort of thing' - well, QUITE. And yet you somehow failed to note how thin the bandit story is, how threatening Brian's...reassurances are, how reluctant Felicity is to be left alone with her dear tentacled chum...

Wouldn't the Doctor remember all this killer-Ood stuff when Ten later met the Ood?

ONE DEATH exhausts Mr Ball (um, sorry, I mean the Ood killer-translator-thing)?

'We're finally free of him, we can start rebuilding our lives, together' - well, providing your father just can't be bothered to track down your crashed flyer and walk a few yards to the nearest settlement, anyway...which seems unlikely...

The Doctor just strolled out of the TARDIS without checking the scanner? (I wouldn't normally object, but when Sexy KIDNAPS you and drags you god-knows-where...)

Oh ye Gods that was boring. Even McGann sounded more bored than usual and those accents are excruciating.

This Time Lord Victorious thing better improve quickly....

Even McGann sounded more bored than usual

Ah, you are more attuned to the nuances of McGann's boredom than I am...

and those accents are excruciating.

Though, let's face it, if the Whoniverse had actually produced some convincing-sounding American accents we'd probably have nitpicked them on the grounds that the Whoniverse NEVER does that...

This Time Lord Victorious thing better improve quickly....

Yeah, it does have the feeling of scraping together some random dregs and slapping some pretty covers on 'em...

What's worse is that only one of the accents is fake.....

Oh, ALL the "American" accents are fake, it's just that some of 'em come from Real Live Americans which means, presumably, that Big Finish TOLD them to ham it up, which MIGHT make it worse but on the other hand might just be a touching tribute to The Gunfighters...

Wouldn't it take millennia to judge every sodding organism on a planet?

This has obviously (belatedly) occurred to the Kotturuh by The Knight, the Fool and the Dead so they just turn up, kill the intelligent species and some flies and bog off again in, like, five minutes flat without even INSPECTING the moss...

The Time Lords gave THE MASTER the same exiled-to-one-rubbish-planet punishment they gave THE DOCTOR?

Also - aforementioned novel makes it clear that this is THE DAWN OF TIME. Before the Time Lords have even EVOLVED. They must be breaking some pretty serious Laws about not stepping out of their time-period (compare n'contrast with Davison's panic at just going as far forward as bloody Frontios) so WHY? What's wrong with Shada?

And here is my review of "He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not"

one of his most dangerous and duplicitous adversaries.

I'm not sure that's true, they're firm allies in The Knight, the Fool and the Dead (of course, Brian and Mr Ball might just be FOOLING the Doctor until the next book, I suppose...).

a couple of lacklustre Short Trips

'Lacklustre' is the PERFECT word, I must remember to use it in ALL of my reviews...er, I mean MORE of my reviews...

Blimey, I didn't write that by-line about a duplicitous adversary....

Your reviews are BLASPHEMOUSLY INTERFERED WITH? *Tut tuts sympathetically*

WHY? What's wrong with Shada?

Amusingly, War Master audio The Castle of Kurnos 5 has the Doctor/Master exchange 'Gallifrey has dreadnoughts monitoring the system...the second they detect your TARDIS you'll be arrested and sent to Shada.' 'Yes I know' - like the Time Lords have EVER shown any signs of sending the Master to Shada...

this is THE DAWN OF TIME. Before the Time Lords have even EVOLVED. They must be breaking some pretty serious Laws about not stepping out of their time-period (compare n'contrast with Davison's panic at just going as far forward as bloody Frontios) so WHY? What's wrong with Shada?

'Many years ago, or just now, Rassilon declared the Dark Times off limits. He timelocked the time before the Time Lords (because Rassilon could never use “time” enough in a sentence).' - 'What the TARDIS Thought Of "Time Lord Victorious"' short story - I KNEW IT!

OK, I'm not sure of the...morality?...sanity?...of Big Finish having visual adverts*, but...Genetics of the Daleks.

*Though at least they're not calling themselves Audio-Visuals...

So do stories like Genetics get their own board or do we discuss them here?

Here.

We'll probably end up with fewer stories-on-one-thread than plenty of Companion Chronicles seasons or Torchwood seasons or Destiny of the Doctors coped with...

Okay.

Though I was just going to say that Genetics is pretty bog-standard. The only interesting bit was the Time Lord Victorious part when the Dalek tells the Doctor what his future self will do.

I assume that segment refers to a War Doctor audio.

It's a very long time before Doctor arrives in the narrative.

Genetics is pretty bog-standard

This seems to be becoming a THEME for Time Lord Victorious audios.

The books are better but there's only two of 'em and the premise still makes zero sense.

The cartoon was...OK but has nothing to do with Time Lord Victorious other than starring its battered Dalek Strategist.

The comic strips I haven't stooped to had the pleasure yet.

I somehow doubt I'll be taking part in any Time Lord Victorious escape rooms.

the Dalek tells the Doctor what his future self will do.

I assume that segment refers to a War Doctor audio.

I dunno, it could be a reference to Ten nipping back to the Dark Times to wipe out Death cos, y'know, he's the Time Lord Victorious.

I'll let you know when I find Genetics cheap enough on eBay.

If it jogs your memory any, the Dalek said it was part of a time squad the Doctor destroyed.

Huh. That does sound like more of a War Doctor kinda thing. Time-Lord-Victorious-Ten HAS just battled a Dalek fleet in All Flesh is Grass but I don't recall him being particularly successful at wiping 'em out. What with the Eighth Doctor being on their side, and all...

Checked my War Doctor reviews (oddly unable to remember much about Hurt's audios) and yeah, there's a mention of a Dalek Temporal Assault Squad in Agents of Chaos: Eye of Harmony and a mention of wiping out the Dalek taskforce in the next story (Casualties of War: Pretty Lies) but I don't really see why a Dalek should be bringing that up to the Fourth Doctor - 'One of your future selves will be REALLY MEAN and kill some Daleks to stop said Daleks destroying the Time Lords and taking over the universe!' What does it WANT? An apology? Even those wimps Five n'Eight would draw the line there, though of course Four WAS the pathetic 'Have I the right?' guy...

How exactly can an Ood turn assassin?

All Flesh is Grass:

'Someone had had the semi-serious idea of making an Ood into a trained killer, so Brian was taken from his Ood Pen and inducted into the Lesser Order of Oberon. It required a lot of conditioning (Ood are by nature gentle creatures.)'

Oh-kay...I s'pose there's always also 'The army always need more grunts' from Planet of the Ood...

The Enemy of My Enemy:

What's with the annoying 'We Are One' slogan?

The Doctor is deeply confused by his memories about whether the Kotturuh are alive/long dead - 'There's something wrong!'? You don't say! Possibly the 'something' you're HERE TO INVESTIGATE?

'You didn't have to kill them' - not only is this the stupidest cliche in the Big Finish handbook, in THESE circumstances it's bloody ungrateful of the Doctor, the Daleks have just saved the Time Lord species from destruction by exterminating a few GENOCIDAL MANIACS...(And hell, they'll all cease to exist once you've restored the true timeline anyway, not that you're bothering to have any moral dilemmas on this issue...)

I'm assuming (sorry, was too tired to listen properly, my fault not the audio's for a change) the Doctor didn't notice his metallic chums genociding everyone so shouldn't he have kept a closer eye on the universe's foremost killing-machines?

'And hell, they'll all cease to exist once you've restored the true timeline anyway, not that you're bothering to have any moral dilemmas on this issue...

It's a no-win situation. Cos McCoy risking-everything-to-save-their-doomed-lives in identical circumstances in Architects of History is equally annoying.

The Minds of Magnox:

The Doctor has upgraded the sonic screwdriver since when? (I mean, s/he's ALWAYS upgrading it, why is THIS occasion so special?)

Has Brian never tried alcohol before?

Brian lied about the possibility of extracting infomation from the Minds because it's the only way to save the Doctor's life? UH?

'You act like you're something special. Was Magnox just a victim of your self-importance? You're no better than the Kotturuh' - I always hate this 'you're no better' stuff, the trouble in this case is that it's RIGHT.

Families are 'very complicated, where I'm from' says the Eleventh Doctor. I guess JODIE!'s claim of seven grannies makes that true, even if there's nothing else about Gallifrey that remotely suggests interesting families.

'I remember what happened to them' says Peschell - and oddly says it in the Doctor's voice (Poor Jake Dudman must be exhausted, I'm not blaming HIM I'm blaming the director/editor/whoever's supposed to NOTICE this sort of thing).

Mutually Assured Destruction:

I'm assuming (sorry, was too tired to listen properly, my fault not the audio's for a change) the Doctor didn't notice his metallic chums genociding everyone so shouldn't he have kept a closer eye on the universe's foremost killing-machines?

I was right, he didn't know but given his lack-of-reaction when the Daleks inform him that 'The Wraxians were devolved', he doesn't actually CARE.

*Sigh* Sure, if there's one thing we haven't had enough of over the past twenty years it's listening to Nick Briggs. So it's obviously time for...an entire episode consisting of Nick Briggs arguing with...Nick Briggs. (Look, he's no Beth Chalmers - he makes great Daleks (and Cybermen. And Judoon. And so on and so forth. You can just have enough of a good thing, and I speak as someone who has literally never before thought you can have enough of a good thing.))

Having said that, Tiska and whatshisface were a bit pointless, tbh. Might actually have been better to do a Doctor/Daleks two-hander.

McGann strolling into a Dalek control room saying 'Point me to my TARDIS and I'll be on my way' is quite jarring in view of Eccy's hysterical terror at the sight of a (chained, helpless) Dalek in, well, Dalek. (OK so he's had about 300 years as Hurt between the two events but Hurt wasn't exactly foaming at the mouth at the sight of a Dalek either, well, not that I remember.)

'We can't have been in stasis for long, we'd be muscle-locked' - surely whoever-invented-stasis would also have invented a way of not screwing with your muscles? I don't recall anyone ELSE having this problem in numerous other spending-a-lot-time-in-stasis stories.

Why do the Daleks call the Doctor 'the Time Lord' instead of, say, the Oncoming Storm or Dalek Predator or whatever?

So whichever-Dalek-it-is arguing that they need Sexy's pilot as well as Sexy to present to the Emperor because 'You have failed to access the TARDIS' has never heard of a TARDIS KEY??

'The sum of your weaknesses can be your strength' the Doctor lectures Tiska. Maybe that's true for HIM/HER but they're talking about Daleks, here.

Genetics of the Daleks:

'I'm here. It probably means you're in terrible danger' - since when has any Doctor gone round saying THAT? (Though s/he probably SHOULD.)

'"It's just one Dalek." Ha! famous last words of countless civilisations' - that's not really true in the Old Who days, is it.

'What about the Daleks? Did [Swann] destroy them too?' - um, can't you HEAR the sound of Dalek guns?

The Fourth Doctor's extremely insistent on 'milk, two sugars'. (Not a nit just a reminder to myself to look out for this.)

Not bad, just nothing we haven't seen a thousand times before and the (Fourth - don't mind about some of the rest of 'em) Doctor should never be this superfluous.

Real cheek to regenerate Delgado in a Short Trip, especially as Jon Culshaw's voice isn't remotely convincing.

He's just as unspeakably-dire a Delgado in River Song: New Recruit: Never Alone, if anything he's actually even WORSE. Even the Abominations that are Fake-Susan and Fake-Barbara don't DETERIORATE.

Echoes of Extinction:

'What do you think? A transmat capsule?' 'Looks more like a depressed cupboard' - don't you diss Sexy!

Whatever happened to not crossing your own timestream except for cheap tricks?

The Doctor's little lecture about the Kotturah and their monopoly on death feels like he's just remembered oh bugger this is Time Lord Victorious stuff, better shoehorn the Kotturah in somewhere...

One chat with the Doc has the genocidal maniac declaring that 'I will kill no more'? When all the suffering it inflicted - not least on itself - failed to have that effect?

'So I have been here before. Why can't I remember? I suppose I did hit [indecipherable] Karn quite hard, memories of him are a bit...wobbly' - great, not only does Eight suffer from amnesia for most of his TV, novel and audio lives, his subsequent selves get amnesia about HIM!!

Why is the Doc so sure the entire planet's history has just been rewritten? Rather than, say, Sexy got him here on the wrong date as per usual?

Mutually Assured Destruction:
Released on December 9 2020, which was coincidentally my birthday, and written by Lizzie Hopley.

To be honest I feel that this is the least impressive episode of the said trilogy as I didn't feel it told its narrative as strongly as the two previous episodes of this trilogy.

However given the release date I will say something positive about this in that it was interesting the premise that it explored of the Doctor being trapped in a Dalek time-ship and coming with a way to get out of this situation.

To be honest I feel that this is the least impressive episode of the said trilogy

Yeah, Lizzie Hopley's a name that's more likely than not gonna give you something mediocre.