Big Finish Productions, in partnership with BBC Studios, today announces the first ever Thirteenth Doctor audio dramas as Jodie Whittaker returns to the Whoniverse alongside Mandip Gill as Yasmin Khan. 
Big Finish
Review: Torchwood – The Restoration of Catherine
Review by Cavan Gilbey
Norton and Andy, Andy and Norton. A double act which continues to always provide a pretty entertaining hour of sci-fi comedy antics as they bicker and fight their way through a series of bizarre occurrences. This month the pair have something of a love triangle to construct as the world ends unless the wedding bells ring in James Goss’s new outing for the pair.
Review: The Fourth Doctor Adventures – Metamorphosis
Review by Cavan Gilbey
A new boxset for The Doctor, Harry and Naomi is upon us and we’ve come across a more fantastical theme for the trilogy of stories that form the middle chunk of this thirteenth season of Fourth Doctor Adventures. We’ve got the returns of two classic villains, the first of which feels quite well timed given the events of the TV show and the 60th anniversary celebrations, plus an episode which just be one the most silly conceptually we’ve had from this series in a while. 
Review: Doctor Who- Sontarans vs Rutans – In Name Only
Review by Jacob Licklider
The Sontarans vs. Rutans miniseries is the first of many releases from Big Finish Productions this year that was clearly meant to be released as a box set and shifted to a single release structure, see also the Dark Gallifrey releases being three-hour long stories released in single hour installments. Unlike Dark Gallifrey, however, Sontarans vs. Rutans is a series where the actual arc is largely in the background for each of the releases so they can be enjoyed as individual stories. In Name Only is the concluding installment and the one closest to relying on the three previous installments for its resolution: it’s a story where the actual explanation as to why the previous three releases occurred becomes integral. John Dorney is responsible for writing the conclusion, and as a Big Finish veteran it’s far from the only conclusion to a miniseries he has written, but In Name Only works because Dorney knows how to strike the balance between making the three previous releases be that integral piece to the puzzle and new listener friendly. This does lead to an issue where there is perhaps too much exposition for the single hour of the story due to a tendency from Dorney as a writer to over explain the connections instead of just letting the listeners pick up on them by paying attention. This does mean that this becomes a script where Jonathan Carley has to do a lot of expositing about the past three adventures.
Review: The Ninth Doctor Adventures – Star-Crossed
Review by Cavan Gilbey
This meeting feels inevitable.
At some point we had to see Nine meet his wife, all the other Doctors have done it across the years and finally it is Eccleston’s turn to play alongside Kingston. There was a huge risk in doing this boxset, because Nine isn’t a Doctor with a romantic sensibility prior to Rose, at points in these audios being coded as a-romantic. Star-Crossed could have felt like forcing two characters together, just having them meet for the sake of finally getting round to having them all have met River. But it crucially isn’t. Star-Crossed is a boxset worth making, with a relationship well worth exploring and tinged with tragedy and melodrama. The three stories in here feel like they have been crafted with care to show how the Doctor isn’t always someone River can love, that they aren’t always the idealised image River has in her diary. Dorney, Hopley and Foley have gifted us with three unique stories that all paint a fascinating picture of this brief meeting of the old married couple.
Interview with Doctor Who actor Gabriel Woolf
Following the announcement of the upcoming episode Tales of the TARDIS: Pyramids of Mars, the BBC have shared with us at IndieMacUser a new Q&A featuring Gabriel Woolf – who has returned as the voice of Sutekh after his last appearance in the role nearly 50 years ago.
Review: Torchwood – Disco
Review by Cavan Gilbey
May sees the end of Big Finish’s ‘Ianthology’ with Disco, a story which allows for Gareth David-Lloyd delve into a side of the character we have not really had any information or development around; Ianto’s relationship with his estranged father ‘Disco’. There were some hints in the tv show about Ianto’s relationship with his dad but this episode and the latter two episodes of I Hate Mondays attempt to explore the effects of Disco’s death on Ianto. 
Review: Torchwood – I Hate Mondays
Review by Cavan Gilbey
That title says a lot really. It hits home to that instinctual hatred we have for the work week, that knowledge that we have to wake up and head out to the office for another day of doldrum and mundanities. Even at Torchwood, Monday is a day worthy of dread. As a thematic premise for a set of stories, a series of bad days at work caused by mundane and ordinary reasons, it is a perfect set-up for this trilogy of Torchwood One tales. 
Review: Torchwood – Odyssey
Review by Cavan Gilbey
The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit are amongst my favourite episodes of Doctor Who; they bring a much needed sense of cosmic and occult horror to the Tennant era and the show in general with a return of the classic base under siege formula. Those episodes are always ones I tend to rewatch when I want to dip back into Tennant’s stint on the show, which I’ve been doing quite a bit in the run up to The Star Beast. So when Big Finish announced a trilogy of stories featuring survivors from those episodes I was naturally intrigued, and this first story certainly made me far more excited to hear the next two chapters of this Ood trilogy. Here we are reunited with Ida Scott and we finally get to see what exactly the Beast meant when he teased about her relationship with her father, which isn’t exactly the best.
Review: Doctor Who – Once And Future – Time Lord Immemorial
Review by Cavan Gilbey
The penultimate episode of Big Finish’s 60th anniversary celebrations bring us our first true multi-Doctor story of the bunch, just not with the Doctors you may have been expecting. I’m surprised it took the miniseries this long to finally get round to properly pairing up a pair of Doctors for an hour, but the choice of Nine and the Unbound Doctor does make a good bit of sense since we can celebrate Big Finish’s main bespoke incarnation alongside the man who helped revitalise the program; the reason we can really have a Diamond anniversary in the way we do. However, the excitement I felt going in to this story did feel quite misplaced as this is not the story it could have been.
Indie Mac User 