These have been my favorite Lost Stories I’ve heard so far:
- The Foe from the Future
- Farewell, Great Macedon
- The Masters of Luxor
- The First Sontarans
- The Hollows of Time
And these are the others I’ve heard, in release order, ranging imo from “also pretty good but not standouts” to “boring and bad” (which is most of the s27 ones unfortunately):
The Song of Megaptera
The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance
The Daleks: The Destroyers
Thin Ice
Crime of the Century
Animal
Earth Aid
The Valley of Death
The Elite
Power Play
The Rosemariners
Nightmare Country
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Have I been listening to a different story all these years? I’ve seen so many people of late speak about how much they love ‘The Hollows of Time’ that I relistened to it this morning.
And I still stand by my 1/10 rating.
I would honestly call it Bidmead’s worst contribution to the franchise… which is shocking when you remember he also created ‘Renaissance of the Daleks’!
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I’m only four stories into my relisten of the first series of ‘Lost Stories’, so the ratings for the rest of the series are based on what I remember of them.
And ‘Point of Entry’ I actually have never listened to, strangely.
But if I was going to rank them from best to worst;
- ‘Paradise 5’ ~ 10/10
- ‘Leviathan’ ~ 9/10
- ‘The Song of Megaptera’ ~ 8/10
- ‘The Nightmare Fair’ ~ 6/10
- ‘Mission to Magnus’ ~ 3/10
- ‘The Macros’ ~ 2/10
- ‘The Hollows of Time’ ~ 1/10
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Would The Hollows of Time (which I’ve never actually listened to) be any better if they’d actually been able to have Professor Stream be the Ainley Master?
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I sincerely doubt it honestly.
I always make an effort to listen to all the behind the scenes interviews, and literally nobody working on this production understood what was going on. Colin Baker was perhaps the kindest by calling the story “labrinthine”.
It was also originally an incredibly visual story, and to get around that we have the framing device of the Doctor narrating his adventure after the fact… and it’s so clunky.
On top of that. Professor Stream is supposed to be the main villain, but he appears in all of maybe five scenes throughout.
Not being able to use the Tremas Master is the least of this story’s issues!
Alongside the likes of ‘Mission to Magnus’, ‘The Macros’, ‘The Ultimate Evil’ and ‘Mind of the Hodiac’.
Easily one of the worst 6th Doctor Lost Stories.
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I would honestly call it one of the worst ‘Lost Stories’ ever made.
Not counting Series Seven, because these weren’t lost, they were an embarrassing attempt to bank on Tom Baker’s reputation with pre-packaged excrement etched onto a CD!
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I know Lost Stories are pretty much exclusively Classic Who but if we ever get a Capaldi impressionist in the post Dudman world I’d love for us to get an adaptation of How The Monk Got His Habit.
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I mean, technically we already do.
Dan Starkey has proven himself to be an adept Twelfth Doctor impressionist - you need only listen to ‘Emancipation of the Daleks’ to realise that.
Honestly, would love some revival era Lost Stories.
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You know what I would kill for? SJA lost stories. I would love for the end of s5 to be rediscovered
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Currently writing my review of ‘The Hollows of Time’…
Got the story playing in the background so I can jot down bits of characterisation and sound design… and the dialogue is atrocious.
Colin Baker spends the whole adventure just waffling excrement!
I’ll be very happy once I’ve finished this review, since my two favourite stories in this series are coming up pretty soon.
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I remember thinking this too. God-awful story with or without the misogyny, honestly. The Ice Warriors don’t bore me as much as the Cybermen, but I can’t imagine anyone was begging to have them back!
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If I don’t get my review of this finished today, I’m actually going to take up daytime drinking.
My head is spinning so the story basically has the same effect… except drinking copious amounts of Disaronno is actually enjoyable!
‘Mission to Magnus’ might have been an absolute mess, but at least you knew what was going on there.
This is absolute horse [REDACTED]!
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I haven’t listened to every story in this range by any means but I’ve found some absolute gems and some absolute garbage.
Farewell Great Macedon is lovely and I really enjoyed Operation Werewolf.
But the Lost Season 27… Urgh. That made me actually angry. Thin Ice was fine but Crime of the Century was incredibly infuriating and Animal is still my least favourite Doctor Who story ever.
If a writer can’t think of a name for an alien race and looks around a bit for inspiration, stopping at their keyboard is testament to how much effort they put in. And not even bothering to disguise having seen your Numlock key and just going, “That’ll do,” is evidence of the craft put in there.
I like Cartmel a great deal but if they was what he was shooting for with Season 27 then, deep breath, I’m glad they cancelled Doctor Who.
Dreadful couple of stories, those. Earth Aid less so but it’s still pretty poor.
I am keen to take a listen to the entire Lost Stories range when time and money allow.
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You don’t like the vegan vampires that take advantage of a gramatical error to basically harvest the planet?
This seems to be one of the worst recieved branches of the range, but I personally loved it.
I honestly think the biggest mistake was keeping Ace around for all the stories, rather than sending her to Time Lord Academy in ‘Thin Ice’… which was the original plan.
Raine is one of my favourite companions. Shame that Briggsy decided to use her in ‘Dominion’ without getting permission from Cartmel, which is why he refuses to work with BigFinish now.
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I’ll be totally honest, I absolutely loved ‘Earth Aid’.
It was my favourite from that lost Season 27… because it was basically just taking the [REDACTED] out of Star Trek.
I remember writing my old review on the other site, and I managed to get this stuck in my head the entire time.
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One of the reasons I hated so much was that it squandered some ok ideas with appalling scripting and structuring.
Will never listen again, and I rarely have such a visceral reaction to Doctor Who. I’ll see if I can find the review I wrote for it.
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Honestly you people are just making me really want to experience this story 
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Yeah, same; the ‘lost’ s27 is kind of on my radar lately, and I’m not sure if this is a rec or not 
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Conversely, I really quite like Dominion!
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In terms of ranking the first four series of ‘Lost Stories’ - calling anything after that a series is honestly a joke, since they’re like two episodes - I would say the third series has the most consistent run of bangers.
‘The Elite’ is one of the greatest scripts ever conceived.
Series 4 is also really underrated, especially the pheneomenal Third Doctor outing.
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