This story is part of the fourth act of the story. This is the final act of the main story of Time Lord Victorious!
The Minds of Magnox
BBC Audio
The Doctor travels with Brian, the Ood assassin, to the planet Magnox, one of the greatest receptacles of knowledge the universe will ever know. The Doctor needs to ask a vital question, but the answer is Grade 1 Classified! In order to gain an audience with the Minds of Magnox themselves he must take a dangerous test. Is he smart enough to get through?
As others have said in there reviews, the last few minutes after the Kotturru show up (which Im not really sure gels with what TLV has alredy established) of the main story tempt me into a 4/5, but the bulk of this story really is just the definition of a 3.5/5.
And that’s another one for you keeping track at home, because that ending of the 11th Doctor going back to the dark times to recover 3% of the entire knoladge of that era and donate it to a public library simply becouse he wants to, say it with me now, really undermines the lessons 10 and the listener are supposed to be learning from TLV. Honestly at this point if at the end everybody threw up their hands and goes “actually you know what he’s right, ■■■■ the Kotturru” I wouldn’t be surprised and would just call this stufd foreshadowing. (I’ve actually finished the event, and unsurprisingly this does not happen.)
I think this is alright but kind of forgettable. I feel like I enjoy the event less than the first time. I wonder if they added the eleven bit just because it was Dudman who read it.
I liked this one but I think more for Brian than anything. I understand the Doctor being unsure about his actions and looking for some validation, even if after the fact. It was a good addition.
Listened to this earlier this week and it joins the growing number of ‘Doctor Who Event’ stories which can’t manage to go beyond being very middling stories.
Dudman, as always, is a great narrator and I’m glad we finally got some more Kotturuh action but a story based on the Doctor basically trying to get someone to agree he made the right choice and condemning a planet in the process didn’t really make me feel particularly great.
11’s cameo at the end was nice though, just because Dudman is so good at it.
I’m not sure I’m going to be coming out of TLV or Circuit Breaker thinking these multi-media events deliver the goods.
I quite enjoyed this one. I yet again fail to see how it’s meant to be enjoyed as a stand-alone without the wider context of TLV, but I thought Darren Jones’ prose was really captivating and certainly the highlight. I knew Jacob Dudman was wonderful but I’ve not heard him in a long while and it was nice to be reminded of just how versatile a performer he is. One of the best things about this story was getting to see more of Brian, including some fascinating backstory. I was definitely more interested in his strand of the storyline than in the Doctor’s, which itself felt a little odd, desperate to find some validation for what he’s just done by asking the Minds about the moral value of his actions - that didn’t feel very Doctor to me, but I suppose he is having a bit of an end-of-life crisis so maybe I should let it slide.
I like the concepts of a society run on knowledge and the omniscient Minds at the helm, including the tests one must pass through to reach them. Sadly, the main story doesn’t quite stick the landing it builds to, although a return to Islos was a welcome surprise. As for the epilogue, I enjoyed it and it rounded things off nicely. I certainly didn’t expect to see Eleven at all in this event - though it begs the question of how he got to the Dark Times himself - and back out, as I assume we won’t be seeing him again.
Side note - why is the fact Jacob Dudman narrates this considered a spoiler on the guide??
