Stewart Pringle

Review: Doctor Who – The Trials of a Time Lord

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Cavan Gilbey

Earlier this year we saw the release of The Quin Dilemma, a story which celebrates the rich audio history of Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor. Now it’s the turn of Season 22 and 23 to get a homage with The Trials of a Time Lord, a fortieth anniversary celebration penned by the team of Rochana Patel (episodes 1 and 2), Katherine Armitage (episodes 3 and 4) and Stewart Pringle (episodes 5 and 6). Now for context, Season 22 and 23 are among two of my favourites from the classic era of the show so I naturally had a lot of expectations for this story to be a proper celebration of that era. Did it deliver? Yes, and then some!

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Review: Torchwood – Doghop

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Cavan Gilbey

*contains spoilers*

I’ve slowly come to realise why I like the PC Andy focused Torchwood episodes, its all down to how human and borderline slice-of-life they feel. Sure you could argue that the Ianto episodes are equally full of humanity due to how emotionally driven that character is, but the emotional stakes are always relatively high in a Ianto centric story. Whereas with Andy there’s the sense that nothing feels too dangerous, with the exception of his double-act stories with Owen that it is. This brings us to Dog Hop by Stewart Pringle, the latest outing for the beloved Cardiff copper. This time he’s on the case following a string of missing persons and rapidly appearing dogs, with some help the regulars of the Red Lion pub it is up-to Andy to solve this strange canine case. 

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Review: The Ninth Doctor Adventures – Travel In Hope

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Jacob Licklider

The second installment of the third series of Ninth Doctor Adventures from Big Finish Productions is continuing the idea of these sets being three stories wrapped around a theme.  This set has the Ninth Doctor traveling alone once again, but with the wraparound title of Travel in Hope giving the audience an immediate understanding of the overarching theme of the set.  This theme is the Doctor bringing some sort of hope, or causing some sort of hope for the future to come around, something that allows each of the three stories to really hammer home the idea of the hope that the Doctor himself is lacking, and the need for a companion.  This need for a companion was briefly solved in the previous set, Pioneers, but sadly that Doctor/companion relationship was limited to one story.  The continual use of the Ninth Doctor without Rose is becoming a clear issue and that issue is hanging over each episode of Travel in Hope, almost enough that it feels as if writers Lauren Mooney, Stewart Pringle, James Moran, and Robert Valentine are screaming at Big Finish to schedule some dates where Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper can get together and record some stories so these turning wheels don’t just keep turning.  This is the tenth set for the Ninth Doctor Adventures and there are most likely two more where this issue will present itself, both being released in 2024.  The other solution would be to give the Ninth Doctor a second, pre-Rose companion, which may come with its own set of problems, but they would be a different set of problems with a different set of solutions as potentially interesting storytelling avenues to explore a la the forced gap Big Finish made work with the Fifth Doctor and Peri in the early monthly range.full

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Review: Torchwood – The Lincolnshire Poacher

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Cavan Gilbey

Back in the early days of the Doctor Who Monthly Range we would get a bunch of audios that experimented with the medium of audio itself; Whispers of Terror, Scherzo, Special Features and You Are The Doctor to name but a few. Now that same lovingly daring spirit has been revived in the Torchwood monthly range and are often some of my favourite stories done by the company full stop, especially Cascade and Made You Look. A few months ago we got to see Ianto star in one such experimental stories and here he is again in a spooky story exploring one of the most interesting audio phenomena, the number station. Naturally for a release like this one I really think everyone should go in blind so I am going to attempt to speak as vaguely as I can so I don’t ruin the experience for those on the fence about picking up the story.

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Review: The Eighth Doctor Adventures – What Lies Inside?

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Jacob Licklider

So what happens when your production company switches to a box set structure but doesn’t necessarily have themes for every set?  Well that has been something that the past ten months of Big Finish Productions’ output has been, switching away from numbering their sets as to not overboard potential new listeners with so much content they would have to catch up on.  It is with this in mind that the Eighth Doctor Adventures range was changed from the four box set arc model to integrate it with the other releases which had some interesting side effects.  This meant that this year Big Finish have scheduled four sets featuring the Eighth Doctor, the conclusion to Stranded, the two now standard 3-disc Eighth Doctor Adventures, and a special fourth set featuring Charley Pollard.  The two standard sets were scheduled for the last two months of the year, most likely to have a gap for actual production of the sets, the first being What Lies Inside? released this month while the second, Connections, is out in December.  What’s especially intriguing is that while there isn’t any sort of story arc, Rafe Wallbank crafted connected covers almost reminiscent of the Eighth Doctor Adventures novels covers (Interference in particular comes to mind).  What Lies Inside? is the first set that falls into the category of 2022 sets where each of the stories has been completely standalone, following Silver and Ice and The Outlaws, and like those sets the structure is a two hour adventure and a one hour adventure, though here each episode is an hour long.

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Review: The Diary of River Song – Two Rivers And A Firewall

Posted on by indiemacuser

Review by Jacob Licklider

If there has been a Doctor Who spin-off range from Big Finish Productions that consistently managed good stories while still being very reliant on past pieces of Doctor Who lore, it is The Diary of River Song. Ten series have gone by and only now we have an announcement of a box set with absolutely no returning elements coming out in January 2023. Now luckily the previous nine box sets have had some through line, a story arc or just a simple theme linking all of the stories together, but Two Rivers and a Firewall, the tenth series has a problem, and it’s a big one.

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