As the first 50 stories in the monthly / main range are widely available, I thought I’d sum up my thoughts on coming to the end of them - I couldn’t find a similar thread but if one already exists, feel free to merge it! And if you’ve listened to all (or some) of the first 50 MR Stories, feel free to chime in - I don’t even expect you to necessarily read the wall of text below first 
I started listening to Big Finish because I wanted something for running - I got fed up organizing music playlists and found audiobooks too long and not engaging enough, but audio dramas are perfect - no long periods of narration and short enough that I can finish a story in a couple of runs so I don’t forget what’s happening. Plus I got a chance to revisit classic doctors! As a child I was a big fan of the target novelizations (it was too hard and then too expensive to find recordings of the broadcasts in those days) and basically I was looking for something like that in audio form - not necessarily amazingly writing, just fairly short entertainment of a consistent quality with familiar characters.
I’m not going to group them into character arcs for recommended listening, other people have done that already and I don’t have much to add, instead I’m grouping them how I would classify them in order to best organize my thoughts.
Group one - bread and butter stories (25 of 50):
- Phantasmagoria
- Whispers of Terror
- The Land of the Dead
- The Fearmonger
- The Spectre of Lanyon Moor
- Winter for the Adept
- The Fires of Vulcan
- The Shadow of the Scourge
- The Stones of Venice
- Minuet in Hell
- Loups-Garoux
- Primeval
- Invaders from Mars
- The Chimes of Midnight
- Seasons of Fear
- Embrace the Darkness
- …ish
- The Rapture
- The Sandman
- The Church and the Crown
- Nekromanteia
- The Dark Flame
- Doctor Who and the Pirates
- Creatures of Beauty
- Flip-Flop
These are all “one-off” stories, without recurring villains or new companions (although some include companions introduced in other stories, see below). My personal favourite was The Chimes of Midnight (4.5/5); then The Spectre of Lanyon Moor, The Shadow of the Scourge, Loups-Garoux, The Rapture, The Church and the Crown, and Flip-Flop (all 4/5). All of these in my opinion were solid stories with unique elements that caught my attention, and I’d happily listen to them again.
The ones I didn’t like here were Nekromanteia (even without that scene it was a confused mess, 1/5), Minuet in Hell (or “what the hell?” 1.5/2), The Sandman, The Dark Flame (both could have been good but just ended up dull and boring, 2/5), and also I’m probably unique for disliking The Fires of Vulcan (could have been very good but I really didn’t like the unnecessarily fatalistic attitude of the doctor here that seemed really out of character, 2/5).
Some of the ones I’d rank in the middle are a bit forgettable (I had to check summaries of Primeval and The Land of the Dead to remember if I liked them or not - it seems like Nyssa always gets the mediocre stories), but I enjoyed each one while I was listening to it.
Group two - the funny ones (3 of 50)
- The Holy Terror
- The One Doctor
- Bang-Bang-a-Boom!
There’s humour in a lot of the stories (which is a good thing) but these are the three that I think were deliberately written first and foremost as comedy - although The Holy Terror in particular goes beyond that. I really enjoyed all of these (4.5/5 to The One Doctor and 4/5 to the other two), but it would probably get a bit tiresome if the whole range were like this - best in small doses.
Group three - returning villains (9 of 50)
*Red Dawn
*Sword of Orion
*Dust Breeding
*Bloodtide
*Spare Parts
*Jubilee
*Omega
*Davros
*Master
These feature familiar enemies but without trying to link them into an overarching story arc (so see Dalek Empire below). Some of them work less well than others: I’d say the first three don’t do enough with the material, 3/5; Boodtide and Jubilee are better but still not amazing, 3.5/5; Spare Parts is getting there 4/5; Omega, Master are really great, 4.5/5; and Davros approaches perfection at 5/5 - the only 5/5 I’ve awarded for any story in the 50 under review. I posted in another thread that some of these villains work much better in infrequent occurrences (Omega) rather than dragging them out every 5 minutes for another run around an abandoned spaceship (Cybermen) but even the overused villains have some good stories here.
Group four - introductions (5 of 50)
- The Marian Conspiracy
- Storm Warning
- Project Twilight
- The Eye of the Scorpion
- Colditz
Three companion introductions and two attempts to introduce recurring villains. Of the companions Evelyn is (of course) my favourite but Erimem and Charley also work well with their doctors and are frankly more interesting characters than many of the companions we’ve seen on TV. Of their stories, The Marian Conspiracy gets a 4/5 for engaging well with historical characters, Storm Warning gets 4/5 for featuring the R101 that I happen to find interesting, and The Eye of the Scorpion only gets 3/5 for being nothing particularly special.
Project Twilight introduces Nimrod and the Forge and Colditz introduces Klein and I find both convincing as villains - again a lot better than some we’ve seen on TV. I personally enjoyed Colditz (4.5/5) more than Twilight (3.5) but both were solid introductions that left me looking forward to the characters’ next installment.
Group five - continuity / multi-doctor stories (8 of 50)
- The Sirens of Time
- Project Lazarus
- The Genocide Machine (Dalek Empire Part 1)
- The Apocalypse Element (Dalek Empire Part 2)
- The Mutant Phase (Dalek Empire Part 3)
- The Time of the Daleks (Dalek Empire Part 4)
- Neverland
- Zagreus
As a kid I loved this kind of story, either complicated references to other stories or multiple doctors coming together for one story. As I’ve got older I find I have less patience for them…
The Dalek Empire prequel stories work more or less as independent stories except for The Apocalypse Element that ties into not just the others but also into Gallifrey (or so I’m told, I haven’t listened to any Gallifrey yet). The Apocalypse Element is also probably the best of the lot (3.5/5), although I let The Genocide Machine off more lightly than most of you (also 3.5/5) because I liked Ace and Bev. The Mutant Phase is mediocre (3/5, Nyssa draws the short straw once again) and The Time of the Daleks got on my nerves for some reason I’ve now forgotten (2.5/5).
Then the others - The Sirens of Time more or less works as an introduction to the range, but it isn’t great on its own merits (2.5/5). I haven’t listed to the redux version but from online discussions that doesn’t seem to improve matters much. Project Lazarus is a nice continuation of Twilight combined with a multi-doctor mystery, but although good I think it would have worked even better as two separate stories with room to breathe rather than half and half (4/5). Neverland is an excellent story on its own (4/5) and ties together the “Charley” arc leading into it and the finale of Zagreus, which is a bit like a modern season finale in that it’s good but a bit over the top in terms of callbacks and references and could do with tighter editing (4/5).
Conclusion
So overall I’ve enjoyed these 50 stories (or about 100 hours) and intend to continue working my way through the main range as long as it stays like this. I think they struck a nice balance between totally standalone stories and linked ones, new and old villains, and different doctors. I think 6 and 8 got the best stories and the best opportunity to show off their characters well, 5 got the dull ones as always and 7 was a bit of a mix - my favourite doctor but the character travelled such an arc from the spoon-playing joker to the “secretly at the heart of everything” Cartmel masterplan to the VNA doctor… and Sylvester McCoy sometimes comes across as slightly confused as to which version he’s supposed to be portraying in which story…or maybe I’m just confused which one I’m listening to.
In any case I prefer the variety of swapping between doctors rather than blocks of one story arc, I even shuffled the order a bit so I listened to the 10 8th doctor stories mixed amongst the others rather than as a block of 4 then another block of 6 which is how they were released. This makes me wonder if I’m going to like the box sets as much when/if I eventually get to them in a few years, or if I’m going to need to shuffle two or three together for variety. Similarly with the spin off series, I’m not sure the 4 Dalek Empire prequel stories would have been improved if I’d listened to them back to back, which has put me off listening to the main Dalek Empire series. I guess I should maybe mix them with another series too, Gallifrey perhaps.
So anyone who’s read this far, thank you, and anyone who’s read this far and hasn’t listened to any of the main range early stuff, I highly recommend it
