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Forty-Five is Big Finish doing what it does best when it remembers how to have fun. Four short stories, Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh Doctor, Ace and Hex together again, and a big stupid recurring number motif that keeps popping up like a nervous tick. I love this TARDIS team so much it actually makes me sentimental, so yes, I was rooting for this set from the off. And mostly, it delivers.
There is something very Seven about anthologies. He thrives in bite sized moral traps, half finished schemes, and stories that end just as you start to feel uneasy. The number 45 floats through all four tales like an in joke that nobody explains. Maybe an anniversary thing. Maybe numerology nonsense. Maybe just vibes. Either way, it works.
False Gods drops us into the Egyptian desert with Howard Carter digging up trouble and time wobbling like jelly in the sun. The Doctor realises someone on the expedition is a Time Lord, which immediately kicks the story into high gear. This is the strongest piece in the set. It is eerie, clever, and confident, and it understands that Seven works best when he is ten steps ahead and smiling politely while everything burns. Ace and Hex both get solid character beats and the idea easily could have supported a longer runtime.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 cursed tombs that absolutely should have stayed buried.
Order of Simplicity is where things wobble. The threat is a virus that turns everyone into an idiot. That is the whole pitch. It wants to be satire about intellectual arrogance and the dangers of knowledge without empathy, but instead it lands like a blunt object. The villain is thin, the concept over explained, and the jokes mostly thud. McCoy does his best, but even Seven cannot weaponise this much nonsense into something sharp.
Rating: 2 out of 5 brain melting PowerPoint presentations from hell.
Casualties of War pulls things back into focus by grounding the sci fi in something personal. Post war London, stolen alien tech, and Ace’s family history all collide. This is quietly effective rather than flashy. The return of the Forge adds a delicious layer of moral slime, and Ace gets material that actually hurts in a good way. It is a familiar Doctor Who setup elevated by character work and atmosphere.
Rating: 4 out of 5 cups of tea laced with existential dread.
The Word Lord should have been a slam dunk. Antarctic bunker. Locked room mystery. Political tension. Then the antagonist turns out to be Nobody, a Word Lord with a vague concept and no real bite. The story never quite figures out what it wants to say about language, power, or truth, so it settles for being competent instead of memorable. Not bad, just frustrating.
Rating: 3 out of 5 ominous dictionaries left open on the wrong page.
Final Thoughts:
Forty-Five is uneven, but when it works, it really works. False Gods and Casualties of War remind you why Seven, Ace, and Hex are such a lethal combination, while the weaker entries never quite derail the whole set. It is not a classic, but it is a good time with flashes of brilliance.