Tenth Doctor Adventures Volume Three

Volume Three continues the “Baby’s First Audio” vibe these boxsets continue to have, but it’s a decidedly more assured production, now that David Tennant’s appearances at Big Finish are no longer considered one offs, and now a more yearly consistent series (This year we’re getting more than that with the River Set and Out of Time!) and because Big Finish know they have officially got Tennant, the scripts seem 5000x more consistent. Although Volume One and Two definitely had their lows and highs, I can safely say that if you pick out a audio from Volume Three, you know what you’re getting. It’s gonna be good, not great, but deeply enjoyable, and none of these will end in you feeling disappointed. In the end, what you are getting is what you bought, 3 hours with Donna and the Doc in all their glory.

No Place by James Goss

First off, the atmosphere that this story oozes is top tier. It’s nowhere near one of Big Finishes best Horrors, It’s very far off from Any of the gorgeous stuff Bernice Summerfield, Rob Shearman and Torchwood do in horror, but it is what I have wanted from the range so far, in that of a unique identity. Well, a unique one-off identity, it emulates the style and takes the piss on reality TV, and all in all, if I had to compare this one to any story, it’d be The Broken Clock. Except without the zany stuff that makes Broken Clock such an unbelievable experience. Way less meta, more like one of that stories’ quiet scenes. And without Michelle Gomez. But what it does is different from what RTD would have done, which I’m all for, and also it has WILF.  So naturally, I’m inclined to forgive it of any flaws it has, because some of the atmosphere that it uses is gorgeous, even if the conclusion, is as par for this series, incredibly naff: 8.5/10

One Mile Down by Jenny T Colgan

As with most Tennant audios, this one focuses on one thing, and does that one thing exceedingly well, hoping you ignore everything else. The undersea environment of One Mile Down is incredibly immersive. The world created in it is fascinating, alien, and one of the best backgrounds Big Finish have ever created for a story. And it makes the smart choice of this boxsets recurring monster to be the Judoon, which as we have seen in the RTD and Chibnall eras, are incredibly adaptable characters that work well in pretty much anything if you shove then in. So, yeah, the story isn’t that spectacular, but all of the individual elements work pretty damn great, and Tennant and Tate are their usual gorgeous selves. It’s an excellent hour that immerses you in another world, but really, background can only do so much for plot, and the guest actors are notoriously forgettable: 8.5/10

The Creeping Death by Roy Gill

I really like this one, I do. It’s basically a much much worse Midnight, without any of Midnight’s character elements or Doctor Murder or indescribable dread. It takes the concept of shoving a bunch of characters in a stuffy old room, where something unknowable lurks outside in the void, or this time, fog, as it takes a nice ol’ period piece location of the Great Fog of London and does something great with it. It has some nice gay characters (Donna is great with them, amusingly unaware of their history, yet deeply sad about the period in a way that’s so her) and as usual, she’s the strongest link in the cast. There are some more (strangely memorable) period characters like Ivy Clark, the old actor woman and the curmudgeon fellow. Although saying it out loud makes it sound like they aren’t that memorable, but they are pretty great. And hearing David Tennant quickly babble “fumifugium” is just pure bliss. It’s just as great as No Place and One Mile Down but for different reasons. 8.5/10