Tom Baker‘s fourth season as the Fourth Doctor is the next release to come to Blu-ray when The Collection – Season 15 releases later this year.
Doctor Who fans can continue to build their own home archive on Blu-ray with a SEVEN DISC box set of the 15th Season from 1977, starring Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor. Containing six classic stories, this limited-edition set is packed with hours of new and exclusive material.
Review by Jacob Licklider
New Frontiers began the twelfth series of the Fourth Doctor Adventures wonderfully with two four-part adventures that introduced the character of Margaret Hopwood, played by Nerys Hughes, to the Doctor’s world as second companion with Louise Jameson’s Leela. Angels and Demons is the second half of the series, once again with a fifth bonus story CD, concluding the series and Margaret Hopwood’s travels, making another Big Finish Companion to have a limited run of only six stories. Angels and Demons is also the return of two-part stories to the Fourth Doctor Adventures in a significant way with three of the four stories in that format, something we hadn’t seen since 2019 with The Syndicate Master Plan, and something Series 13 will be continuing in 2024. Bringing the travels of Margaret Hopwood to a close so soon is a bit of a double-edged sword, since it’s a shorter run the stories have to be exceptionally good if the character is to be remembered unlike other Big Finish original companions with short runs (Hannah Bartholomew comes to mind as one that has fallen into obscurity while Raine Creevey is quite well remembered among Seventh Doctor fans). It does give the character the opportunity for a definitive beginning, middle, and an end which means Margaret won’t become a character like Flip or Constance who have had their travels extended indefinitely due to actor availability and illness.
Review by Cavan Gilbey
Every so often Big Finish will give us the chance to explore new characters within the Torchwood universe, offering us a look at branches and agents we may never would have seen onscreen. We’ve been to a Third Reich occupied Paris in The Dying Room, a Charlie’s Angels inspired LA in The Dollhouse and most famously we’ve had a glimpse into Norton Folgate’s Soho based branch. Double follows suit and takes back to a world where the Autons are slowly plotting their global take-over through corporate subterfuge and how a 70s British Torchwood may go around dealing with this hostile threat. Double’s strength lies in its longer format as we get to feel more involved with the world we see in Guy Adams’ script, everything is given the room it needs to breathe and we are offered an Auton story that feels genuinely fresh and expectedly bleak. Although there are some issues with how long it takes Adams to breathe, which ultimately does leave us with a big cluster of brilliant ideas and characters trapped within a narrative which ends up being somewhat confusing for the listener. 
Review by Cavan Gilbey
The War Doctor, and this was very much unexpected I would like to add, has very quickly become a personal favourite audio-centric incarnation. This Time War era Doctor had fascinated me for a long time and I have only recently bought into the John Hurt fronted boxsets, of which I have heard and loves volumes 2 and 3. But He Who Fights With Monsters, bit of a mouthful, is the first time I have delved into this new prequel era where Jonathon Carley takes on the role. I think this is a great place for me to have started with The War Doctor Begins as this set forms one long story which lasts roughly 3 hours, telling a grand space opera tale which I think does some of the strongest emotional work and character development for this particular regeneration. In terms of the non spin-off material released this year, He Who Fights With Monsters is my favourite Doctor Who release of this year hands down. So expect a 10/10 at the end of this.
Review by Cavan Gilbey
Companions become just as much of a friend to the audience as they do to the Doctor, so seeing them return by having them reunited with Doctor after ages can be really refreshing and rewarding. However this concept is only going to really work if we have actually spent some time away from those characters, which with Big Finish is nigh on impossible because every companion is omnipresent there and you can find a new Peri audio just as much as you can a new Jamie story. Tegan and Ace returning to TV feels significant since they’ve not been seen for ages, but we have heard so many extended adventures with them so having them meet a later Doctor on audio doesn’t hit that spot. This is where we come to the main issue with Tenth Doctor, Classic Companions; it’s too much of a gimmick. Sure Classic Doctors, New Monsters is a gimmick but you can understand it more with the monsters than you can with the companions. This set feels like it exists solely to give Ten some stories with older companions as opposed to crafting interesting stories based around the way their relationships have changed, which doesn’t exactly make this an enticing listen.
Continue reading
Review by Jacob Licklider
With the release of Gallifrey: Time War: Volume Four the general consensus was that the series was over. Romana was punished to chronicle the Time War, Gallifrey was in the throws of a fascist dictatorship under Rassilon’s thumb, Leela was captured, and Narvin was essentially sent off to his suspected death. And then the Gallifrey One convention for 2022 happened and Big Finish Productions announced not one, but four new Gallifrey box sets under the series name War Room with the first set releasing this August, over a week ago at the time of writing. Yes, I am a bit late because this released while I was sick, so here we are finally taking a look at Gallifrey: War Room: Allegiance.
Written by Cavan Gilbey
‘Classic Doctors, New Monsters’ has been a novel concept for a range, both previous boxsets have been inventive with their match ups and often taken their chosen monsters into new and exciting territories; Judoon in Chains being the easy stand-out from those first sets with how it creatively uses it’s monster of choice. Weeping Angels, Sycorax, Racnoss and Carrionites are all obvious choices for the range but this third volume does plumb the depths a little bit; I mean who is really asking for Balhoon or Tivolian stories? Although I must admit a two parter involving the Dream Crabs is pretty inspired as you have the potential to create some truly surreal audio landscapes. But that aside, the four stories we get are all great fun thus making this a set that really is more the ‘Stuff of Dreams’ rather than Nightmares.
Review by Jacob Licklider
The Eighth of March was a special release on International Women’s Day 2019 to celebrate the female characters of Doctor Who, essentially serving as example episodes for various series from (mostly new) female writers: The Paternoster Gang, The Diary of River Song, UNIT, and a story set in the Virgin New Adventures. Here we are, three years later and for International Women’s Day 2022, a three disc follow up has been released in the form of The Eighth of March: Prisoners of Time, exploring Lady Christina, Jenny: The Doctor’s Daughter, a Romana spin-off, and a tribute to The Sarah Jane Adventures with two new writers, Abigail Burdess and Nina Millns and an opening story from Lizbeth Myles (who has been contributing to Big Finish since 2014). Like the previous box set, this is an incredibly versatile set as the only real brief is that there is a female lead and it is set in the Doctor Who universe, giving the writers free rein on what they wish to play with. There also are two female directors assigned to this release, Louise Jameson tackling the first episode while Helen Goldwyn directs the other two, both bringing their distinct style to give each story its own flair.
Review by Ian McArdell
New Dawn 1 is the first of two 3-story boxsets which picks up the tale some fifteen years after we last heard from Terry Nation’s Survivors.
Although it eschews a move into double figures, making a fresh start with the subtitle New Dawn, this is effectively the tenth audio series. With six new episodes adding to the thirty-six already released, there’s now more Survivors on audio than were made for television in the mid-1970s, which is a remarkable achievement. However, it’s not the Seventies that we are concerned with here; though it’s not specified, by my reckoning the events of New Dawn occur somewhere in the mid-to-late 1990s.
Abby Grant returns: Fifteen years after she went into hiding, having prized her conflicted teenage son Peter from the clutches of the quasi-military operation he’d become a part of, and despite his crimes, the pair fled.
Indie Mac User 