same… to me it kind of feels like a desperate attempt to revive the past, which doesn’t help the sensation that some of these ranges are floundering. I like Audacity well enough but I feel sad that we haven’t had much of her at all
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Agreed. Even if it wasn’t a huge arc, an ongoing series would be better than what we have right now. I was excited for Audacity, and while I actually love the dynamic she has with Charley, wish it was just Audacity/8. We’ve had enough Charley.
Also we only have two announced series this year so I wonder which will be getting the chop?
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I actually have really enjoyed the Audacity boxsets but part of me still can’t shake the feeling that we don’t need to go back to that early in this Doctor’s life. The appeal of this Doctor for me is charting a course through his life chronologically.
The addition of Time War audios messed with that a bit but I always could compartmentalize them as flashforwards with the Liv and Helen ones his current point in time.
Obviously being able to compartmentalize the Time War stuff means I can do the same with the revisiting of his early years but the slowing of releases for Liv and Helen makes it feel less like where we were and now we’re just all over the place with McGann.
Which is the same for any other Doctor but it’s what set the Eighth apart for me and I felt like we were on a journey, whereas now we aren’t.
So to keep on topic, not sure if it’s all controversial opinion but I also wish we had left the early years of the Eighth Doctor back in the 2000s.
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it feels controversial to me, I feel like one of the few people who is whatever about Charley. I too wish that we’d either said bye to Liv and Helen for good and moved on somewhere new after Stranded, or had solo Helen. I miss her 
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Agreed. When it was announced idk it felt regressive almost? Sure a “Further Adventures” set is fine, but did we need it? Also as I’ve said, not a huge fan of the popular Charley, but can imagine her coming back is a popular decision.
Time War too is very… Alright, good in some parts, but yeah it does feel kind of a bit jumpy and I’d rather they kept 8 as a continual era than jumping around left right and center.
IMO in an ideal world, they’d end the Charley/Audacity run with Audacity becoming a Time War era companion, and have a yearly 8/Helen story range and a Time War range.
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Yes to solo Helen after Stranded, then maybe another secondary companion? Introduce Audacity there, have her be the reason the Doctor feels inspired to revert to something resembling his TV movie costume.
I did love Charley very much, but I need no more Charley.
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I think if they did like…
8/Helen solo, two box-sets of aimless adventures, two-boxsets with a connected arc (so a smaller scale 8 parter). That’d be a great way of mixing the old/new formats.
Definitely think 8 needs a shake-up badly!!
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Here’s a controversial opinion to spin me back on topic: I really didn’t like the 4th Doctors tv era. I really couldn’t connect with it, or 4. I loved the companions, but that’s about it.
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Eight has needed something different since Stranded, and especially since it ended, but it feels like they’re too tentative to actually do anything interesting
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I binged all of Eight’s modern stuff but the lack of any kind of arc has made me not bother so far with Echoes or Audacity, I’ve only done Time War.
I agree with you that it felt like we were listening to a chronological order of Eight’s adventures but now it’s all over the place I am not as interested anymore. I’ll get to them when I get to them.
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I think for me especially my first audio was Doom Coalition 1, so I was introduced to BF during the era of 8’s arcs, so I had them for ages and to just lose them… Hey, even do 1 arc set a year, 1 non-arc set a year! I really can’t fathom why they moved to boxsets if to just not do arcs. Even an arc within a boxset??? I’d take that!!
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Okay here goes,everyone knows this,but I think Empire of Death is the worst episode RTD has written.
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I don’t think that’s controversial 
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I’d say that’s recency bias, personally…
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Personally, I think Last of the Time Lords is worse, but I just really hate that ending
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I wouldn’t say the worst, but it’s up there.
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Indeed. I (and others) have been saying this for quite a while. Ever since they ditched the Main Range, the quality of Six’s stories have declined. Going down the line…
- Mind of the Hodiac (an RTD “lost story” that was just a piece of fanfic he wrote as a child) shouldn’t have been released, especially under the Lost Stories range
- The Doctor of War/the Warrior was a joke of a series that was more convoluted than entertaining. Unless there’s some behind-the-scenes reasoning, this should’ve gone to the Fifth Doctor as it made more sense with the story’s rationale
- The Hebe arc was a disappointment. I maintain that, if Six had to get a new companion, they should’ve been anyone but another highly educated, young, sassy female. He’s already had these time and time again (young or otherwise). Why couldn’t they have been a young man in a wheelchair instead? I understand that Rayner wanted to create a character that apparently checked all her personal boxes (and, of course, was connected to another one of her characters, Evelyn) but that kind of self-indulgence should’ve been kept on AO3. And then the plot of the arc itself could’ve been better because, for a character who proclaims she’s more than her disability, the entire arc was literally about her disability. Why not just treat her as a regular companion?[1]
- The Interludes (three) have all been dreadful
- Out of Time with Ten was great
- I personally didn’t care for the CDNM release, but it was a good rating on TG
- Once and Future? Yuck. There’s no reason why he needed to be paired with Sullivan and Jackie’s mother.
- Sontarans v Rutans was fine
- Queen of Clocks was fantastic
- Quin Dilemma was whatever. The bookends (episodes 1, 4, 5) were good, the middle was boring. But you can’t expect a large story like that to be ranked high across the board, I suppose
- Trials of a Time Lord was slop. How are you going to celebrate the Sixth Doctor by, ONCE AGAIN, making a story that focuses on the negatively surrounding Michael Grade and the hiatus? How is that celebratory? Can we give that event a rest? There are so many stories about this event it’s not even funny, and every author thinks they’re so witty and clever for writing about one of the most hackneyed DW plots in the book.
I’ve gone from actively being excited about a new Six release to almost dreading them in fear of the quality. And to touch on this comment of yours: “I’m aching for some decent stories for him…that are suited to this manic but layered incarnation.” I love TV Six and I love audio Six, but, over time, Big Finish has been buffing out all of his original abrasion. Manic? Why, he’s a changed man! Arrogant? Never! Argumentative? In poor form! I call him a Grandpa Six now because that’s how he acts: a giddy, giggly character who never raises his voice and has played into the fact that Colin himself is a cuddly teddy bear.
Again, I love Grandpa Six, but at times I yearn for the days when this character got snippy, thought he was “all that and a bag of chips”, said what he wanted to say regardless of what anyone thought. It’s not like TV Six wasn’t jokey and silly at times, so there is is a happy medium. Contrary to what it may seem, there are fans like me out there who were originally drawn to Six because of his acidity, and don’t think he needed to be completely watered down to make him a worthy Doctor.
Now, I did like many of the stories in this arc, but my point remains. ↩︎
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Here’s the real controversial opinion for a Doctor Who fan. I just generally like Doctor Who.
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WHAT? YOU LIKE WHAT YOU LIKE? What kind of fan are you?!?!
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Mods, we need you! We can’t have this kind of tomfoolery!!
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