I hope everyone has had a fantastic Christmas this year and with one week to go before the year’s up, let’s talk about the first of Modern Who’s lineup of Doctors in the Ninth Doctor. A rare case of a Doctor who I actually felt was done better on TV than he was in audio. Not that I don’t appreciate Big Finish bringing back Christopher Eccleston and giving him some of his best work as you’ll see further down. But the Ninth Doctor Adventures was a very flawed range that I never felt really explored the Ninth Doctor’s character beyond what we already knew about him from the show, there wasn’t much in the way of risks taken, anytime a potential companion was hinted at, they’d either be a one off supporting character, leave literally the following episode or in one case just completely vanish! everyone goes on and on about Rose being so important to the Ninth Doctor’s post-Time War trauma but why does that mean you can’t experiment with another companion and see what they could bring. In the grand scheme of things what did Rose actually do in her first episode that made her break the Doctor’s no companion rule compared to all the other characters who’ve done just as much if not more! And the result was the Ninth Doctor Adventures fell into a repetitive format very quickly, I’m honestly not sad there isn’t a fourth series I don’t think I’d have bothered, now I do think Eccleston will be back someday, just not for a full time stint. With that said, let’s look over some of his highlights
Rose - This has not stood the test of time like most people have said, everyone holds this to such a high standard being the big return of Doctor Who and the start of a new era, and I think it’s just alright. I do see where people are coming from and there are things it does excel at, the scenes with Eccleston and Piper are excellent, I think it does a great job with the mystery angle around the Doctor being viewed mostly from Rose’s perspective and how she how her curiosity pushes her to look deeper and deeper into who the Doctor is. There is a lot to love about this episode, but there is also a lot really stupid awkward moments; the belching dustbin, plastic Mickey and his…I don’t even know what the hell that was in the restaurant scene, the Nestene Conciousness being a roaring blob of CGI that makes faces, the Autons themselves moving around like they’re in a disco during their rampage through London scene, not even close to being on par with the original inavsion scene from Spearhead from Space! Also I’m just gonna say it, I don’t like Rose, she has so many moments during her time in the show where she’s just so unlikable. She hangs up on her terrified mother without saying anything after a city wide massacre then leaves her boyfriend literally in the gutter to run off with the Doctor. The music is also really corny with some odd choice of instrumentation. But I can let a lot of it slide with it being the early stages of Modern Who, there’s always that finding your feet period with any new show. Again there’s a lot I appreciate about this, I just kind of make whatever this face is 
whenever I see it ranked so highly in Doctor Who’s best episodes.
Dalek - Now this is more like it! This is where Doctor Who really starts to get going with it’s first appearance of the literally one and only Dalek! The only episode of the show written by Rob Shearman and mostly a rework of of the Big Finish audio Jubilee, but it is enough of its own thing where the similarities between this and Jubilee aren’t that significant. This is the peak of the Daleks in Modern Who, they rarely if ever come off this threatening from here on out. The simple premise of just how much damage a single Dalek can do, it’s an intense action piece with Eccleston putting in his finest performance as the Doctor. His scenes in this story are aptly fantastic. There’s just not enough good things I can say about Dalek, if you’ve not seen it, make it a priority.
Father’s Day - Paul Cornell’s specialty is in telling more personal stories based on his work in the expanded universe and here he brings his A game in Father’s Day. Surprisingly the first episode to really tackle the idea of a companion looking to go back and rewrite a family tragedy. But of course there are consequences for changing history, the Reaper designs are a bit unsubtle and haven’t aged well, I swear Modern Who at times (especially it’s early years) looks worse than most of Classic Who. But they’re still an effective monster, backing the Doctor and the few survivors up against the wall with only one option to defeat them, Billie Piper really shines in this, it’s one of her best acting works.
The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances - I’ll admit, I’ve not been able to look at this the same way after noticing the connection between this and The Holy Terror (trust me you’ll know when you listen to it), but that’s not in any way bad, just a bit distracting. But yes, The Empty Child is an all time classic for the show, it’s practically a tossup between this and Dalek for the Ninth Doctor’s best episode, even combined with audio! It just has so much going for it; it’s fun, clever, funny, scary, heartwarming, has a great “villain”, an iconic look and catcphrase for said “villain”, has a great ending, some of Eccleston’s best work, a new companion in Captain Jack who steals the show, it’s just a joy to revisit this!
Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways - Bad Wolf is the less interesting of the two, but it still has a lot going for it with showing this new and terrible world the Doctor unwittingly created after so quickly moving on from a previous adventure without considering the ramnifications of his actions. It’s a great idea I felt could’ve been delved into more or in a future episode. Plus the reveal and cliffhanger ending is proper on the edge of your seat television, I really envy those who watched this live and had that week-long excitement. It’s one of the things I miss about regular two-parters, I want there to be a week to week buzz about what’s going to happen in the follow up, rather than just save it for the finale. The Parting of the Ways ends Series 1 with a bang with the Ninth Doctor getting the perfect conclusion to his character arc. I said earlier the Daleks never felt more threatening than they did in Dalek, well this is the next best thing, it’s the classic Alien/Aliens formula. In fact the Dalek’s actually win in this story, the only reason they’re defeated is cos of a last minute deus ex machina from Rose, and that’s the only downside. The whole Bad Wolf deal is a bit of a letdown, all these random mentions of Bad Wolf and the answer to this mystery is, Rose becomes a god and puts those messages back in time in the first place which was brought on by an event that didn’t even have anything to do with those Bad Wolf messages! It’s a predestination paradox where one of the elements doesn’t actually result in the other. And sadly this trope of a mcguffin being mentioned ever episode or two for reason other than it’s what the finale will be about would become a recurring thing for Modern Who and their standard template for what a story arc is!
Battle Scars - A neat little pre-Eccleston’s return audio with Battle Scars, and it speaks volumes how good it is when I can stomach Nicholas Briggs’s terrible impersonation of the Ninth Doctor, The Ninth Doctor Chronicles box set from 2017 wasn’t all bad but Briggs alone made it almost unlistenable, he’s a solid voice actor but he’s no Ninth Doctor, he really bloody isn’t!!!
Respond to All Calls - I think this is a better starting point for the Ninth Doctor Adventures than the bonkers and all over the place Ravagers (I’m guessing Nova got swallowed by a crack in time seeing as how the series doesn’t care to explain what happened), it’s got a good heartfelt opener in Girl, Deconstructed, by the way I love the pre-Series 1 detail of the present day episodes this series taking place in 2004. Followed by Fright Motiff, not one of Tim Foley’s best but I love the character writing in it (especially with what I assumed would be the one note a-hole of the story) and it has a great ending with Planet of the End, I love the wildcard factor Timothy X Atack brings to his stories and this was one of his most fun works with the Ninth Doctor getting his own Heaven Sent dilemma in having to play the long game to outwit his enemies.
Lost Warriors - It’s a real shame you can’t get these audios seperately like you could do with the early Tenth Doctor audios. My philosophy is if the story has it’s own cover art then it should be availalbe to buy seperately. It’s mainly a shame cos for all the great stories we get in the Ninth Doctor Adventures, you have to take the bad with the good! This one in particular has two of my least favourite Ninth Doctor audios, the first being The Hunting Season where it’s just an hour of the Doctor dealing with the most one dimensional over the top a-holes, and then The Curse of Lady MacBeth which I couldn’t follow for the life of me, I have no idea how this got niminated for the 2022 Scribe Awards! Especially when you have a much superior story sat just next to it. Yes this box set is mostly not very good, but Monsters in Metropolis does make it worth the listen. A story almost 20 years in the making with the Ninth Doctor finally going up against the Cybermen, or Cyberman as in a oetic mirroring of Series 1, the Doctor encounters a lone, damaged and slightly crazed Cyberman. But it does more than just being the Cyberman version of Dalek, it’s probably Big Finish’s best work with the Cybermen since Spare Parts, particularly that final scene with the Doctor and the Cyberman.
Old Friends - One of the more well rounded box sets of the 9DAs, it has a solid opener with Fond Farewell, but the real meat comes from its two part finale, in yet another poetic mirroring of Series 1, after an encounter with a single Cybermen midway through the series, the Doctor now has to do battle with a whole army of Cybermen. But this time he’s helped by UNIT and the Brigadier. Culshaw is great as always, though I will say that his voice is more suited to the Brigadier in his younger days while this is meant to be the Brig in his elder years, a point where Nicholas Courntey had a much deeper voice. A little personal trivia, I’d listened to this before and after I visited Inchcolm Island in Edinburgh and it’s weird how I now visualise these scenes having actually been to where they’re set.
Back to Earth - A great start for Series 2 save for a terrible middle story in The False Dimitry (it’s actually meant to be spelt Dmitry), something I’ve noticed in Big Finish’s Modern Who focused releases is there’s usually a lot of over the top acting to the point where it borders on parody and this one was particularly painful. Especially the babushka’s acting which consists of lines like “ooooooooooh Diiiimiiitreeeeeeeeeee!” cos that’s old person acting I suppose. But the opener and closer were enjoyable, Station to Station being a cosmic horror story set at an abandoned train station with a monster that shares similarities with It. And Auld Lang Syne is one of the best from the Ninth Doctor audios, Eccleston’s a lot more toned down compared to his energetic performance in most of these audios which I don’t quite think works for his Doctor, so we get one of his stronger performances and it’s refreshing having a more personal and low key story, there’s some wonderful character moments in this.
Into the Stars - This features some of my favourite work with the Sontarans where the Doctor has stumbled upon a lost outpost where the Sontarans descended from the original invaders have over the course of thousands of generations forgotten their warlike nature and live peacefully. Great stuff! We get another dreadful middle story, a lot of the same issues I mentioned with The False Dimitry and some similarites with The Hunting Season, one dimensional characters mixed with painfully over the top acting, but at least it’s shorter and I will say I did laugh at the story teasing a common trope where the good guys are winning at gambling and are then challenged to one final game where something causes them to lose. This one actually takes a refreshing approach to this cliche, just wish it was in a better story. Break the Ice is a great ending with the Doctor faced with another cosmic horror in Jack Frost, think the Night King with the personality of the Heath Ledger’s Joker.
Hidden Depths - This one’s sadly a one story box set, we get a Sea Devil story that unfortunately is like every other Silurian and Sea Dveil story they’ve done since the original except this time it’s on one of Saturn’s moons, cos even on the other side of the solar system those reptiles can’t get away from those damn dirty apes! Lay Down Your Arms is decent with a good ending but mostly generic and a lot of the same old we’ve had in this range. Flatpack is the highlight, Series 2 having a poetic mirroring with Modern Who’s Series 2 by giving the Ninth Doctor his own School Reunion by reuinting with Liv Chenka, though I recommend listening to Liv’s adventures with Eight before getting into this one.
Shades of Fear - The highlight of this being the finale in Red Darkness, a story that at the time really gave me hope for where the 9DAs would go in the future, finally! Finally! A new companion, two companions even!!! We can actually start doing something new with the Ninth Doctor instead of the same old same old…one episode later! Yeah they couldn’t even give us till the end of the following box set, one episode later and they’re out the door! That p****d me off!!! But all the same, Red Darkness is still a great finale to the series with a new take on the Vashta Nerada making them a more threatening presence
Travel in Hope - Yeah skipping Pioneers cos good god was I in such a bad mood after squandering the potential of Callan and Doyle as new companions for the Ninth Doctor. Travel in Hope is a step up though this is where I was really starting to tire of the usual Ninth Doctor audio formula. It just about keeps me entertained with Below There and Run, the middle story’s another whatever that keeps it from being an all round good set. I swear it’s like the writers are instructed to deliberately make sure at least one of these stories sucks!
Buried Threats - We get another reunion with a familiar companion in Bernice Summerfield. Benny’s an iconic Doctor Who character in the expanded universe played wonderfully by Lisa Bowerman who’s a first ballot Doctor Who hall of famer (if such a hall of fame existed) and she works with just about any Doctor she’s paired with. This one’s no exception. But admittedly this was where I’d reached the end of my patience with the Ninth Doctor Adventures. I wrote a lenghty post on the Timescales which you can’t find anymore since I got booted off permanently where I expressed my dissapointment with the range’s lack of trying new things with the Ninth Doctor, and I told myself that going forward (not certain that we were close to the end) I wouldn’t listen to any more box sets unless they had Tim Foley on the writing credits…
Star-Crossed - Wow this finale!!! Where the hell was this level of writing for the Ninth Doctor for the past three years!!! The setup of the whole box set being the Ninth Doctor encountering River Song in each box set, but this time he’s less interested in any kind of partnership compared to how the other Doctors normally react. Which builds to the swansong of the Ninth Doctor Adventures written by Tim Foley in Archipelago, we get a bombshell reveal that the Ninth Doctor broke the cardinal rule every Doctor held with River Song and what I loved about this was that it actually isn’t afraid of saying how toxic the Doctor and River’s relationship is. Theshow and Big Finish have glorified the Doctor and River’s romance but the Ninth Doctor brings up an excellent point, is it really love? Or is it just going by what’s written in River’s diary and all the foreknowledge the two of them have about each other? This is Eccleston’s best work since his return to audio, on par with his work in Dalek. It really nails what makes the Ninth Doctor so different from all his other incarnations, for as much as I wished they tried new things with him, this finale did make me understand why he is the way he is and that him not being like the other Doctors is what makes him so special. It ends the Ninth Doctor Adventures on a very powerful note. Thought the range overall has made me cautious going into the upcoming Thirteenth Doctor Adventures next year, knowing that while the Thirteenth Doctor will undoubtedly get better stories than she had on TV (whichever one Tim Foley’s writing is gonna be a winner!), it’s not all gonna be smooth sailing and there is the danger of it developing it’s own repetitive formula and note exploring new ideas/building on the flaws with Thirteen.
And that’s my list of highlights for the Ninth Doctor, I’d love to read any thoughts of yours and I’ll see you all tomorrow.