Continuing the discussion from New Lost Stories from Big Finish:
Probably a good idea to have a general thread for the Lost Stories.
What are your favourites from this range?
Top of the pile for me are Point of Entry, Leviathan and The First Sontarans.
Farewell, Great Macedon is also excellent (but very much of its time).
A post was merged into an existing topic: New Lost Stories from Big Finish
The quality in the range does vary wildly. Personally, I’d say that the First Doctor Box set is a great place to start - ‘Farewell, Great Macedon’ is exquisite.
Series Four is also really good. ‘The Mega’ became an unexpected favourite of mine.
Paradise 5 and The Macros are my favorites. I don’t remember much about Point of Entry, but I think I liked that one, too. I also loved the first half of The Ultimate Evil.
Interesting you mention The Macros because I re-listened to that recently and really struggled with it! My favourite factoid about it, is that it was written from memory because they lost the original script in a hard drive crash!
I loved The Queen of Time. Very similar vibes to The Mind Robber, which is one of my all-time favorites.
The Queen of Time was excellent. Could it have been done on TV at the time? Maybe. Would it have been as good? I’m not sure. What I do know is that they need to get the actress who played Hecuba back because she was amazing.
I think I wanted to like The Queen of Time more than I did:
Didnt listened to many so far but Farewell, Great Macedon easily takes the top spot for me so far!
Farewell, Great Macedon takes the title of favourite for me too. I love a Hartnell era true historical, and the script for it is so good. Earnestly believe that had it been made as part of season 1, it’d be highly regarded as one of the greats and we’d maybe have 2 of its episodes still in the archive. 
The Guardians of Prophecy is one that doesn’t really get spoken about that I’d like to recommend though. It really feels like a mid 80s Doctor Who serial in all the most endearing ways, you can almost imagine how it would’ve looked in all its budget squeezing, video tape glory.
I find it funny that season 23 is the one that the mystique of its lost stories surrounding it because in adaption I didn’t really like many of them, I feel with Trial of a Time Lord we got the better result, but the lost stories that were pitched for season 22 are often great.
I mean if it got produced in Season 1 there is a good chance we might have all of its Episodes (unless it took the place from Marco Polo or reign of terror, but I believe the former was always planned, the latter I am not too sure).
And oh! Will wrote the Guardians of Prophecy.
And yeah I kinda have to agree with it, I must say while I still have a big way to go with the Season 23 Adaptions, most of them just kinda don’t do it for me. A shame really that some of the most interesting sounding ones are the least likely to ever get turned into a BF Play
Ive heard all bar 5 Lost Stories and can wholeheartedly recommend The First Doctor boxset, Point of Entry, all of s4, The Doomsday Contract, The Elite and The First Sontarans
All exceedingly good audios
Always wanted to try listening to the Lost Stories range. I think I’ll start with the Three Doctors one when it comes out.
If you have Spotify, the entire first season is available on there.
I’ve heard all of the ‘Lost Stories’ at least twice before, but recently decided to go through them all again in order and review them this time…
And, oh boy, the range really gets off to a rocky start, doesn’t it?
Proper reviews to come soon, here’s just a summary of the first three.
‘The Nightmare Fair’ ~ 5/10
A good concept that’s pretty much ruined by pacing with as much get-up-and-go as an OAP suffering from Parkinson’s. David Bailie is honestly the highlight of this whole thing - his portrayal of the Toymaker is incredibly underrated!
‘Mission to Magnus’ ~ 3/10
I’ve always loved the third episode, so wasn’t surprised that my score remained virtually the same… but Jesus Christ, I must’ve mentally blocked out quite how awful ‘Magnus’ was the past few times I heard it!
Like the Ice Warriors don’t appear until the half-way mark, there is barely any build up to their plan, and every character is just a sexist stereotype! There’s even a joke during the epilogue about how the women of Magnus will “serve” the men from the neighbouring world when they become their wives.
Listening to the behind-the-scenes interviews, Philip Martin actually tried to say that he’d written a pro-feminism piece… how drunk was he when this interview was conducted? It’s one of the most mysoginistic stories I’ve encountered - and I’ve heard ‘Prison in Space’!
‘Leviathan’ ~ 9/10
Imagine crossing the Truman Show with ‘The Time Warrior’ and ‘The Holy Terror’, and you essentially get this absolute hidden gem of a story.
I genuinely cannot understand why this one got rejected, because a lot of the set pieces could’ve quite easily been done on screen. Just a manificent outing.
I’m glad you liked Leviathan - it’s a brilliant one. I really like Point of Entry too.
The Macros is rubbish though.
Just purchased Deathworld to start listening to on my travels to see my partner tomorrow! Will keep y’all posted.
Despite listening to every ‘Lost Story’ at least twice, ‘Point of Entry’ is actually an odd outlier… because I’ve never even listened to it. I genuinely don’t know why I skipped over it in the past, but I’ve heard amazing things about it.
‘The Macros’ is one I remember being particularly crap the last time I listened to it. Outside of the first half an hour of part one which is spent aboard the USS Eldridge and feels really atmospheric, the rest of the adventure feels incredibly generic.
It’s a shame too because the Philedelphia Experiment is one of the most interesting conspiracy theories, and one which could’ve made for a perfect Dr Who outing.
Though from what I remember, ‘The Macros’ was a last-minute addition to that first series of ‘Lost Stories’.
Of the six serials that were given the definite green-light to be part of that original Season 23, two of them have never been adapted.
We were meant to have an adaptation of ‘The Children of January’ to round off the first series of ‘Lost Stories’, but it sadly never came to pass.
Shame, because I think it’s one that fans know virtually nothing about too.
As is, we’ll likely never encounter an adaptation of it or ‘Yellow Fever and How to Cure It’.
Though I’m not complaining too much, considering some of the lesser known Season 23 ‘Lost Stories’ we recieved - ‘Point of Entry’ and ‘Paradise 5’. Also two stellar stories intended for S22 which were incorporated into that first run of lost outings - ‘Leviathan’ and ‘Megaptera’.
Actually, looking through some of the stories which were pitched for Season 23 originally, I’m gutted that this one never got the go-ahead, cause it sounds amazing.
‘Dark Labyrinth’
Written by David Banks, the story involved the Sixth Doctor and Peri encountering the Master in Ancient Crete, as well as a contingent of Cybermen. David Banks, who had played the Cyber Leader in three serials in the early 1980s, submitted this storyline around the time that ‘Attack of the Cybermen’ entered production in 1984. Script editor Eric Saward liked the idea but felt that it would prove too expensive to film.
I quickly knocked together a mock-up cover art for this. Genuinely, I would love for BigFinish to do something with this idea.
