Started my morning by 
ing Miss Valarie D. Lockwood
Hadn’t listened to the Short Trips, “The Galois Group” until now.
Great story, totally in keeping with the tone of these adventures with the 11th Doctor and Valarie and just perfectly performed by Safiyya Ingar (because of course it would be 
)
I want more… 
I didn’t even know there was a Valarie Short Trips!
All’s Fair is breathtaking, my favorite of 7v.
I must listen to that one as well. Great that it was good. I also feel like I want to re-listen to this set, it is such a good one.
I’m probably going to re-listen through the entire 11DCs soon. I miss Eleven a lot and my Matt Smith itch is getting worse, so I might as well listen to the next best thing.
Yeah I feel more and more like a relisten is in order, especially as last time I binged them really quickly. Maybe I’ll mix in an episode every now and then with my other sets, make it last!
This is how I did it as well and I do feel that I don’t really remember it now.
I had no idea there was one!
is there a reccomended time to listen to it?
Hmm, I am going to let someone who has listened to these audios more than me give a proper answer.
Valarie seems “fairly” new to TARDIS travel, so maybe after the first box-set?
It worked well for me here probably 4 months after I listened to these (brilliant) stories 
It happens just after All of Time and Space
I’ve said before, that for me, the three things that make the cyberman (in theory) my favourite doctor who villains are: Inevitability, Conversion, and Unstoppability.
This story makes use of all three.
The story here, it’s revealed eventually, is the result of a single, lone cyberman crashing on a planet, and plotting to take it over through guile rather than force. In Cyberwoman Jack implies that even a single cyberman could be disasterous for humanity, and here we really see that. Intelligence and manipulations aren’t often something that’s focused on in Cyberman stories, but the way we’re shown here how a single one can use a culture that’s already forcing repression of some emotions… It’s just works. We’re also shown that culture, the comparisons between something that’s happening here and now to cyber conversion is terrifying, and I think satisfies my inevitability criteria.
As for unstoppability, again, this cyberman crashed, but built itself back up to become a major power in this world. Even a cyberman that’s been seemingly defeated will get back up and try again.
But all of this is missing the forest for the trees. What makes this story isn’t the cybermen, it’s the people and the setting. A conversion camp being a hiding place for the cybermen, cybermen using faith and belief to infiltrate. A lot of the horror, for me at least, of this episode isn’t even the cybermen themselves, it’s the existential conflict that the people in this camp are going through, the shame in peoples voices as they talk about understanding their sexuality, all watched over by a cyberman telling them that it’s okay, they can be freed from those feelings. The fact that even after Valarie shows them what the cybermen are, they all still want to go and be converted because they can’t face themselves. Carmen when her emotional inhibitor is turned off, fighting against her dad for what he’s turned her into. Conversion.
I also love what this story does for Valarie, after the events of the previous story, a story putting sexuality and beliefs at the forefront just makes sense. And I love how even with the cybermen all focused on what The Doctor’s plan is at the end, it’s really Valarie that saves the day with her mind and body (literally).
Plus again, I think my favourite part of these stories is that even after the ‘story’ is over, the conflict is solved, we don’t just whizz off in the TARDIS until ‘next week’. We’re allowed to sit. We see Lilly confronting her family in a scene that reminded me of The Idiot’s Lantern, an extremely favourable comparison. We see Valarie talk to The Doctor about how he’s been looking at her, and him opening up about Clara and the Ponds. Those character moments where we can just feel the repercussions of what’s happened are what makes this series my favourite Eleventh Doctor season.
All’s Fair was great, and then Sins of the Flesh was excellent, what do you mean I only have four stories to go of this TARDIS team???
They are 4 excellent episodes though.
Really hope you like them - I’d enjoyed the whole run so much that I started to convince myself there was no way they could pay it all off satisfactorily. But, in my opinion, they really, really did.
Actually, I thought this a while back but if Jacob Dudman is really done (at least for a bit) then they could bring Valarie back if they wanted to with a different Doctor and, in my opinion, the very best choice for that would be Jodie.
Not saying they will, I just could see that working incredibly well.
The final box set has my favourite Eleven quote. It’s a shame that it wasn’t delivered by Smith.
“Don’t make me a warrior again.”
A great story to start off the boxset. Reminding us of what’s happened, answering some questions, and being a great character drama!
I took a brief break before coming back to this final boxset, and was initially worried that I wouldn’t remember everything that’d happened leading up to it. Luckily for me, it seems the writers were prepared for that. An amnesiac Eleven having Valarie and Hendricks performing a legal battle over who’s in the right is a brilliant way to not only get some incredible character drama out there, but to recap the events of the previous three sets as well.
I’ve said before that some of my favourite parts of these sets is when the characters can stop for a minute and just talk about what’s happened, and while we don’t get as much a chance for that at the end of this story after the twist reveal, everything that’s leading up to that is just characters talking and it’s really really good.
And on the topic of that twist reveal, I love it. A Dalek-TARDIS created for infiltration during the Time War, wanting to destroy the daleks for everything that they’ve done. Tying together both Eleven’s Time War arc, and Clara arc (though the events of Asylum of the Daleks). It’s all just so clean and works incredibly. Plus I love the timey-wimeyness of the twist as well. The fact that Tim hasn’t yet given Hendricks the virus yet, but responded to her because she knew him already is just an nice little touch that just adds that extra touch of Moffat to this series which I really appreciate here.
Overall, a strong start to the final set of an incredible series.
I loved this serial. Fun and weird. Also you can tell it’s starting to wind up the series as a whole.
Listened to this over a week ago, so not too fresh in my mind, but god did I love this.
The Daleks feel really menacing here, and again I absolutely adore how they work this story perfectly into it’s place in the Doctor Who timeline. The repercussions for The Doctor deleting himself meaning The Daleks think they won The Time War, the ‘Skittles Daleks’ reporting back to the Dalek Prime-Minister, the ‘Skittles Daleks’ actually feeling really menacing and like a true threat.
The way The Daleks are treated here reminds me a lot of The Stolen Earth or The Parting of the Ways. It’s less a case of trying to defeat them, more a case of just trying to save what you can, and here we have important characters falling to them, dying to give others just a little more time. I especially love how Eleven references the colours in mocking them, especially the eternal, but how it works, they still feel menacing despite it.
I love Valarie’s plan to help Eleven, I love Roanna’s interactions with The Yearn, I love Hayden’s last stand, I love The Yearn getting what it wants, and I love how even that isn’t enough to stop The Daleks.
The implication that The Eternal Dalek is somehow what helped them overcome The Yearn is also really interesting and looking forward to seeing how that pans out.
This story made me actually love, fear, and respect the Ski- sorry, the New Dalek Paradigm, and I absolutely adore that I’m able to say that I do now.
I love how bleak this one is! It’s amazing having the Daleks feel genuinely this powerful and threatening again.
Everywhere and Anywhere has made it to the final of the BBC Audio Drama awards.
