Sylvester McCoy’s penultimate season as the Seventh Doctor will be the next release to join the Blu-ray collection. Doctor Who fans can continue to build their own home archive on Blu-ray with an EIGHT-DISC box set of the 25th season from 1988, starring Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor. Containing four classic stories, this limited-edition set is packed with hours of new and exclusive material, and will be released on 21st October 2024.
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Seventh Doctor
Review: Doctor Who – Once and Future – A Genius For War
Review by Jacob Licklider
Big Finish Productions’ third installment of their 60th anniversary celebratory series, Once and Future, has been released and puts degenerating Doctor into his Seventh incarnation, played by Sylvester McCoy for A Genius for War. A Genius for War is interesting because the TARDIS is intercepted so the Doctor can go on a mission for the Time Lords led by the General and Veklin, played by Ken Bones and Beth Chalmers respectively, as Davros, played by Terry Molloy, has an offer for the Time Lords. The TARDIS being taken by the Time Lords means that this is an episode that feels more like a side step for the series, and as such Jonathan Morris is allowed to tell a complete Time War story in one hour, however, there is some oddities with the characterisation of the Doctor. Past Lives characterised the Fourth Doctor as not the Fourth Doctor due to the Doctor being a future Doctor in the body of the Fourth Doctor, but The Artist at the End of Time altered the characterisation so the Fifth Doctor acted as the Fifth Doctor. Jonathan Morris doesn’t quite take either approach, A Genius for War blending the portrayal to play to McCoy’s strengths but also feel as if it was rewritten for a different Doctor. This is certainly a possibility as Morris could easily have pitched this as a War Doctor story, the War Doctor on Big Finish is at least similar in the types of stories he has to the Seventh Doctor, so the rewrites while extensive wouldn’t have been as complicated as say rewriting the story for the Fifth Doctor or Eighth Doctor for instance. Morris’ script makes the Doctor take charge of the mission to find Davros and then blends several past and future stories into a single hour.
Review: Seventh Doctor Adventures – Far From Home
Review by Jacob Licklider
The Seventh Doctor Adventures of 2022 were split between two TARDIS teams and it seems 2023 will be following this format, the second set being the first installment of The Last Day which was announced in the original pitch announcement for Big Finish Productions’ move to the box set model, but the first of the year continues the companion threads of Sullivan and Cross – AWOL with Far from Home. Now, social media has made several Spider-Man jokes but I actually haven’t kept up with the MCU so insert topical Spider-Man reference here, but Far from Home is the set that wants to take Harry and Naomi away from their second status quo of 21st century London and into a past that is a very prominent shadow for both of them and into the far-flung future. The structure of the set follows Conflicts of Interest by giving the listener two three-part stories to enjoy and once again I cannot praise Big Finish enough for going with this model, it’s a far more sustainable model for storytelling than a reliance on one hour Doctor Who stories as the short runtime often leads to overstuffing and an underbaked exploration of the idea. With three-part stories, especially on audio where the standard length of an episode is 30 minutes instead of just the classic 25 minute format, writers can push their one-hour ideas to what they need to be without needing tot do a larger story that would suit the four-part format.
Doctor Who Season 24 gets Standard BluRay re-release
Season 24 of Doctor Who: The Collection is the next Blu-ray title to be re-issued in standard packaging. The set is due for release 13th Feb 2023.
Review: Doctor Who – Silver & Ice
Review by Jacob Licklider
18 months. It has been 18 months since Big Finish Productions has released a solo Seventh Doctor audio with Sylvester McCoy in the role. The Grey Man of the Mountain was released in December 2020. It is now June 2022 and in between we had one small cameo in The End of the Beginning and a Short Trip read by Sophie Aldred, but that has finally changed. Silver and Ice has been released after a long time coming and it’s honestly not entirely what I expected. While every other Doctor’s set has been tied around some theme with Forty, Water Worlds, and Beyond War Games all work around a theme with The Annihilators and The Outlaws featuring central stories. Silver and Ice is odd as the two stories it contains, Bad Day in Tinseltown and The Ribos Inheritance really have no connection outside of being two stories featuring the Seventh Doctor and Mel. They almost feel as if there was an intention for them to make up a Main Range trilogy, especially if the second set, announced to be Sullivan and Cross – AWOL, continues the format. This disconnect makes me feel a bit odd about giving the set as a whole a rating as these are essentially two stand alone stories and perhaps would have been more effective had they been released as two single releases.
BBC re-releasing Doctor Who – The Collection series 26 BluRay
Season 26 of Doctor Who: The Collection is the next Blu-ray title to be re-issued in standard edition.
More Doctors announced to cameo in Time Fracture
Seventh Doctor season 24 ‘The Collection’ BluRay announced
The BBC have announced that Sylvester McCoy’s first season as the Seventh Doctor, featuring a full season of Bonnie Langford as Melanie Bush, is the next release to come to Blu-ray with Season 24 as part of their ‘The Collection‘ range.
Review: Doctor Who – The Grey Man Of The Mountain
Review by Michael Goleniewski
Big Finish’s Christmas release for 2020 sees the Seventh Doctor and Ace hoping to land in Edinburgh for the holidays but instead coming to the small village of Coylumbridge which is eerily quiet and empty. They soon meet an old friend in the area, retired Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, who is looking into a rather ominous presence on the nearby mountain of Ben MacDui that’s causing hikers to go missing and/or be hospitalised from paranoia and delusion. Naturally while Ace immediately takes the initiative in climbing the peak with a new friend, the Doctor and the Brig stay behind in the comfort of the nearby inn to learn more and wait for backup support. But soon, everyone will be up on the mountain navigating the trials of the summit while searching for answers surrounding the mysterious presence waiting for them on the windy plateau…..
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Review: Doctor Who – The Flying Dutchman / Displaced
Review by Jacob Licklider
Big Finish Production’s decision to go back to earlier story arcs and TARDIS teams for some of their Main Range releases has often been a stroke of genius; it allows listeners to experience
teams whose stories are over for a burst of nostalgia and partaking in the age old tradition of the missing adventure. September’s Main Range duo-logy is one of these; reuniting Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh Doctor with Sophie Aldred’s Ace and Philip Olivier’s Hex for some adventures early in the team’s run of adventures from two writers new to Big Finish. Gemma Arrowsmith and Katharine Armitage provide their first Doctor Who stories with The Flying Dutchman and Displaced.
Indie Mac User 