Fugitive Doctor has such a risk of being War Doctor 2.0, and by that I mean what you say; rather generic business as usual space war stories, except The Doctor scowls a bit more.
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Still find that a bit suspicious. Makes me wonder if they have got Matt Smith and/or Peter Capaldi onboard for some audios.
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I’d love that! But I doubt it. I think Jacob just genuinely wanted to move on.
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So Big Finish seems to be slowly delving into the Chibnall Era with 2025 seeming to be the year for it. So far, they’ve announced two Fugitive Doctor sets (plus an appearance in the Once and Future Coda), two Spymaster sets, and a twelve-story series with Thirteen and Yaz. Wonder what will be next? Maybe a Classic Doctors, New monsters set with Jodie-era monsters?
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“Classic Doctors, New Monsters with Jodie era monsters?”
With all the love in the world, which ones?
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Definitely the Pting. Maybe the Stenza? And once you’ve determined the monsters, which Doctors?
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1 and The Grand Serpant
2 and Ashad (Post-Power of The Doctor with the clone?)
3 and the Lupar
4 and a Passenger form
5 and The Solitract
6 and Kerblam
7 and the Eternals in Can You Hear Me
8 and The Division (they’ll probably get to mind wipe him again)
And that’s ignoring the obvious Pting, Stenza, Swarm and Azure, I also reckon the Skithra could be really good as well
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That would be really interesting! I’d love to see that as a really scheming, devious kind of story
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Is it bad that I would be excited by none of the monsters mentioned so far and disappointed by most?
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What about everyone’s favourite, Tim Shaw!? and his collection of teeth
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This was basically my point; Classic Doctors, New Monsters exists to throw the coolest biggest excitingest monsters from Modern Who in with the Classic Who action figure set that BF loves to play with.
But like, even reading through that list, I could maybe pin down Swam and Azure as like, halfway interesting enough for this treatment, except they’re in their own mini-series and were kind of created for that purpose.
The rest of them? Look, I don’t wanna say Chibnall didn’t have an eye for iconic monsters, but he really didn’t. He didn’t so hard that he spends most of the time on his big tentpole villain (because remember, Tim Shaw WAS supposed to be the arc villain) getting undermined by having The Doctor mispronounce his name constantly (which, ick, tbh.)
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To expand on these a bit:
One and The Grand Serpent
One gets a couple of stories where the enemy is one person (Time Meddler, Celestial Toymaker) or the threat is more political/historical rather than big scary monster sort of thing. I’m imagining the One meeting The Grand Serpant being a historical, maybe prohibition era America, make it a historical with some sci-fi elements, sort of similar to The Time Meddler but a completely different setting.
Two and (Post Power of the Doctor) Ashad
Two gets some of the best known cybermen stories in all of classic, and I think it’d be really interesting to see him interact with Ashad as someone who chose to be converted, but now it’s an interesting character piece as well given he didn’t choose, the person he was cloned from did. Sure he wants it too, but now that he’s cloned, he’s distinct from the cyberman collective in a way. Plus I think his interactions with Thirteen brought a bit of darkness out of a usually more lighthearted doctor, and I’d be interested to see how that goes with Two.
Three and the Lupar
Three and the Lupar is pretty obvious, he’s bound defending earth, they’re duty bound to defend earth. Probably it’s an ‘And the Siluians’ type story where man is the monster, the Lupar touch down to try and make a peace treaty, people assume it’s an invasion and fight, Three has to step in and broker peach between them (and the Lupar aren’t genocided at the end).
Four and a Passenger form
Four and a Passenger form. I don’t know really, I just think there’s an interesting story to be had with them, and I don’t know if Four would find their use interesting, horrifying, or both.
Five and The Solitract
Five loses a lot throughout his run, and I imagine The Solitract would try to help him. This would be a character piece about Five first and foremost. Bring Matthew Waterhouse in as well as a manifestation of The Solitract, and how it tries to convince him to stay. Have Five try to teach it about loss and how pain is important, but it doesn’t understand this time like it does with 13, it won’t let him go, and instead of working through his pain, he has to hold onto it to survive.
Six and Kerblam
Six goes amazon shopping for a new coat, finds out about slave labour, and is (to put it lightly) unimpressed. I just think Six would be the ultimate Karen (/pos) in this scenario, and I’d absolutely love to see it
Seven and the Eternals (Can You Hear Me)
Scheming Seven fighting gods? Yeah, sign me up for that, wonder who’s going to be his chess piece this week. Curse of Fenric vibes (of course), but working with dreams and desires.
Eight and The Division
More memory loss lol.
Okay fine, I’ll explain.
I think this could be a really interesting Time War story, give us a bit more of a background on The Division, but mostly tell us what this hidden gallifreyan organisation has been doing behind the scenes of The Last Great Time War. We’ve seen the front lines, we’ve seen The Master rewrite time putting himself in charge, we’ve seen bombs that make the worst timelines into reality, we’ve seen the war room as the war raged, now give us backline espionage and people trying to control everything. I’m sure The Division want the Time Lords to win the war, but I’m also sure they only want to because they’re more easy to manipulate.
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You’re sort of missing the point though - I don’t need justifications as to why these monsters would be in stories with those certain Doctors, I need justification as to why any of those monsters deserve a second look, especially opposite Classic Doctors. They just haven’t earned it, imo.
(And before anyone says it, I don’t think the Sycorax OR the Adipose [I think they’re in one?] earned it either, I think CDNM should have been one box set and done, but I defy Big Finish to find something that they couldn’t milk to death.)
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Honestly, I think they deserve a second change precisely because they haven’t ‘earnt’ it.
I think there’s so much you could do with any of the monsters from 13s era, and they deserve to be brought back somewhere to show how much potential they have.
I think The Grand Serpent and Ashad were incredible performances (vocally especially and would be great there), and there’s so much potential to the, especially now Ashad is a clone.
I think The Lupar and The Eternals are really interesting concepts that were criminally underutilized, and fleshing them out more would be great.
I think Kerblam and The Solitract as settings have so much you could do in and with them beyond their original stories.
I think The Division is so interesting, and there’s so so much more you could do with them. It’s a concept that almost demands something to be done with.
And Passenger forms are pretty funky too I guess
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This is a fair take - I kind of want more out of The Grand Serpent but only because he felt like such a weirdly underwritten character, like there was a whole other back page of stuff we were meant to know about him that got cut.
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Genuine question, outside Weeping Angels, Vashta Nerada, and The Silence (because they’re the obvious three) which ones do you think deserved to be there?
I think you’d probably agree that all the ones I listed (apart from maybe Passenger forms) deserve a CDNM story more than The Hoxx or The Tivolian
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That was also my point, CDNM should absolutely have been a quad of Vashta, Angels, Judoon and Silence and left it there. I mean, looking through now, I did not even realize they’d done a third set with the bloody Carrionites. I mean, if they’re just letting anyone have a crack, then I guess why not.
Also they’ve got a Sontaran episode in this set which feels like cheating hugely.
I guess my crux is less that these monsters don’t deserve a second go, more that I don’t trust modern BF to do anything interesting with them beyond grabbing for cash. Frankly even the first CDNM wasn’t that great.
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The Carrionites were the second set, third was the hoxx, the tivolian, and two dram crab stories which, yeah, why, but also haven’t listened so they could be fun
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I think they should probably have written it off as a dodgy concept when they needed TWO Vashta Nerada stories to fill the second set 
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If I Should Die Before I Wake, with Eight and Charley against the Dream Crabs, is a masterpiece and one of my favourite 8th Dr stories ever!
Agree on the Hoxx, the Carrionites and the Tivolians being unnecessary. The Carrionites fit Colin’s Doctor pretty well, though.
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