It depends on the companions for me. He is great with Ace and Hex, but I don't think he is as good without them. In the Klein stories I would say that she is the main character and he takes a back seat which makes them work.
Heard "And The Pirates" recently and what starts out as a bit of light hearted, slightly cliched pirate story actually has some surprising depth to it.
Doesn't look like I will be getting my 10th Doctor audios today. The site is being hammered and I can't get logged in. This is good news though, it must mean a lot of people are buying the new audio.
I still can't get logged on to the site to get my download. Edit: Got it now. Took most of the day for me to get it though.
I must have got in in the first few minutes. I saw the post on Facebook and went and downloaded it without a problem.
I just finished listening to the War Doctor volume 2 and I listened to 10 and Donna last week. Both are great and have reinvigorated BF. Tennant and Tate were right on it, I love the two of them. I could happily just listen to them locked in a room bantering, but the stories were also good and the supporting cast were great too. I also enjoy the War Doctor, I think this second box set is better than the first. If I am being honest though he doesn't really act any different from the regular Doctor. My only niggle with these stories is the devices usde in each story to get around him not having a name.
Just finished Gallifrey S7 and 8. While I enjoyed listening to them I was left feeling what was the point. 2 series that never happened in the end. Could they not get Julia Landau for season 8? And also how old must Lela be by now, she had the vampire blood/monkey testicle graft or whatever it was but she must be knocking on a bit by now. Ace and Narvin were wasted in these as well.
There's a companion chronicles that has Leela old, and on a ventilator, in a hospice. Gallifrey is keeping her young. Once she will have cut her ties for good, the Savage went down hill fast. The casting issue was the opposite. Juliet was cast because they assumed that they needed a Romana to hold down the franchise. Lalla changed her mind and decided to stay, or never said that she was leaving in the first place. It's probably BF getting the licence to the new stuff that screwed over Juliet more completely than her friend being hesitant about sharing their hours.
Given Gallifrey VI was supposed to be the last series of Gally, and the manner of Trey's presence in it, I would assume that Juliet Landau was originally only going to do that series. The Companion Chronicle Luna Romana was originally meant to star Mary Tamm and Lalla Ward, but Tamm's death before its recording led it a slight rejig to be told by Romana II and Trey. I haven't heard it, or any subsequent Gallifrey stories, so I don't know if they Spoiler legitimise Trey as an actual future incarnation of Romana, or if she's still just a construct, in the manner of Gallifrey VI.
I have listened to those and they are not bad, I frequently struggle with the Companion Chronicles, the quality of them varies greatly.
Listened to Torchwood One: Before the Fall (Ianto Jones and Yvonne Hartman in London). I like the way BF is telling Torchwood stories at various points in its chronology, and this was enjoyable, giving Hartman a chance to shine. Now about halfway through the first Dark Eyes set with the Eighth Doctor, and liking it well enough so far. Certainly moves pretty quickly.
I just started Cold Fusion with Davison and McCoy, based on Lance Parkin's 1990s Missing Adventure. This is a case where Davison's voice today (and, for that matter, the voices of his costars, especially Janet Fielding) make suspension of disbelief difficult, knowing that the story comes immediately after "Castrovalva," because Davison doesn't sound anything like he used to. The use of Davison-era electronic music for the underscore is a nice touch.
That sort of thing was the one problem I had with the otherwise generally great B7 audios. Everyone sounded a lot older, but the actors who played Blake and Tarrant were virtually unrecognizable as their TV selves.
Finished Dark Eyes. Overall... pretty good, strong performances and sound fx, but at times it turns into a runaround or a bath of technobabble, and a lot more time is spent on asking certain questions that get relatively perfunctory answers. Still, it's McGann, who in some respects is my Doctor, and it beats some of the C'rizz era stories.
Serpent Crest - it meandered a bit at times but on the whole it was moderately enjoyable. Last year I also listened to Protect & Survive - that was probably the most harrowing thing I've ever known from Doctor Who, up until the end of the second episode there was barely any fantasy element at all - just pure nuclear horror. It was more psychologically unsettling than the Hypernormalisation film I watched on the same day - and it's really hard to beat Adam Curtis on that front!
I just listened to the 4DA The Silent Scream, a fun little story by James Goss, utterly let down by some of the most atrocious American accents you've ever heard. They're not quite as bad as the ones in Minuet in Hell, but they are completely unconvincing and take you right out of the story.
So, as I said when I opened an unnecessary second topic on this because I couldn't find this one... I'm a third of the way through the second set of War Doctor audios. The first was okay, if unspectacular. This one seems to be making a bit more of an effort to bring in a bit of the strangeness suggested by RTD's references to the Time War. But so far, aside from the War Doctor's grumpiness when he's called the Doctor, he isn't a lot different from other Doctors. In other words, in line with what we actually see of him in The Day of the Doctor, as opposed to what we hear about him. Having finished it, I definitely preferred the second set, and was amused that the issue of whether the Doctor has actually changed was discussed by some of the characters. Just listened to one of the old main range entries, The Game, with the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa in a fairly generic early main range kind of story, though one with a bit of a twist that sets up sequels that never materialized, as far as I know. It's a pleasant enough runaround but I couldn't say there was anything really special about it, aside from William Russell's appearance in a guest role.
The problem with the War Doctor sets is, they try really hard to reassure the listener that although he doesn't the name, he's really the Doctor, so we shouldn't fret. But I think that was the point of Day of the Doctor anyway, so having a series of stories essentially saying the same thing about this incarnation is a waste of potential for the said character. Which is a shame, as it turned out to be John Hurt's final contribution to Doctor Who, and he still didn't get material he deserved.
Meanwhile, I've been going through the Fourth Doctor audios, specifically the Philip Hinchcliffe Presents sets, and so far I've listened to three of the four he's released, and I have to say, Ghosts of Gralstead and Devil's Armada (the first set) is really good. The Genesis Chamber (second set) not as good.