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Gods and Monsters

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Gods and Monsters takes one look at ordinary Doctor Who plotting, throws it off a cliff, and instead decides to have the Seventh Doctor play multidimensional chess against ancient gods while standing on a literal metaphysical chessboard. Which, to be fair, is exactly the sort of nonsense I signed up for.

This story acts as the grand finale to the long-running Elder Gods arc, reuniting the Seventh Doctor with Ace, Hex, and his increasingly overqualified B-Team of Lysandra Aristedes and Sally Morgan from the Forge. The immediate threat is Fenric, returning to continue his eternal game against the Doctor, but things quickly become more complicated with the arrival of Weyland, or Volund, another Elder God whose own schemes have been quietly shaping events for far longer than anyone realised.

And that’s the clever twist. The Doctor believes he’s Fenric’s great opponent, matching wits with his oldest enemy across centuries of manipulation and counter-manipulation. Except he isn’t. He’s a pawn too. For a character as relentlessly calculating as the Seventh Doctor, that’s a wonderfully uncomfortable position to put him in.

The imagery throughout is superb. Big Finish has always excelled at creating vivid soundscapes, and this story absolutely leans into that strength. Characters navigate impossible landscapes that are simultaneously real places and giant chessboards. Every move has consequences. Every conversation feels like another piece sliding into position. It’s wonderfully theatrical without becoming incomprehensible, and the script trusts the audience to keep up rather than stopping every five minutes to explain the rules.

Thematically, it’s rich territory. Fate versus free will. The illusion of control. Whether anyone, even the Doctor, is ever truly the master of their own destiny. The Elder Gods don’t simply threaten reality; they undermine the comforting belief that intelligence and preparation are enough to stay ahead of the game.

Sometimes you’re just another piece. That’s unsettling. And very Seventh Doctor.

The performances are uniformly excellent. Sylvester McCoy slips effortlessly back into cosmic chessmaster mode, balancing warmth with that familiar undercurrent of manipulation that has always defined this incarnation. Ace continues to demonstrate why she’s one of the strongest companions in the franchise, while Sally and Aristedes prove once again that the Forge characters deserved far more stories than they ultimately received.

Then there’s Hex. Poor, bloody Hex. By this point the poor man has become the narrative equivalent of a football. Every major player in the story has taken a turn kicking him around. Fenric manipulates him. Weyland manipulates him. Nimrod manipulates him. The Doctor manipulates him, which admittedly is practically part of the job description when travelling with Seven.

And then the story decides to retroactively weave Weyland into huge chunks of Hex’s past, from surviving *The Angel of Scutari* to the origins of the Forge and even the tragedy surrounding his mother.

It’s ambitious. It’s clever. It’s also exhausting. Hex’s entire time in the TARDIS has become one prolonged exercise in emotional trauma. Where’s the wonder? Where’s the excitement? Where are the moments where he simply gets to marvel at the universe instead of being psychologically dismantled by it?

So when he embraces his final noble sacrifice, I wasn’t moved. I was angry. Not at Hex, at the Doctor. Because somewhere back in the Sixth Doctor era, he promised Evelyn Smythe he’d look after the lad. Looking back from here, that promise feels spectacularly broken.

Final Thoughts
A visually imaginative and intellectually engaging conclusion to the Elder Gods saga, packed with fascinating ideas, excellent performances and deliciously cosmic stakes. Unfortunately, it also pushes Hex’s suffering past the point of tragedy and into something that feels unnecessarily cruel, leaving a bittersweet aftertaste that undercuts an otherwise excellent finale.

3.5 out of 5 multidimensional chess games where literally everyone discovers they’re somebody else’s pawn

Black and White

Black and White takes the Seventh Doctor, removes him from most of the story, throws Ace and Hex into ancient Denmark, adds Beowulf, a sarcastic alien pretending to be a legendary monster, and somehow turns all of that into a surprisingly thoughtful meditation on what makes a hero.

Because apparently Big Finish looked at Norse mythology and thought, “You know what this needs? More time travel nonsense.” And honestly? They weren’t wrong.

This is another story where Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor is technically the headline act but spends much of the runtime lurking around the edges like a mysterious old man who knows exactly what’s happening and refuses to explain anything because apparently that’s just his hobby now.

Instead, the focus is on Ace and Hex, who are joined by Lysandra Aristedes and Sally Morgan from the Forge organisation as they continue their search for the missing Doctor. Their investigation leads them to ancient Denmark, where they encounter a kingdom terrorised by a monstrous creature and a young warrior destined to become a legend.

That warrior? Beowulf. The monster? Grendel. Except, naturally, things are never quite that simple. Because this is Doctor Who. The monster isn’t actually a monster. He’s Garundel, an alien being whose existence has become tangled up with human mythology, and he’s played with wonderfully smug energy by Stuart Milligan. He’s not simply a villain waiting to be defeated, but a complicated character caught between perception and reality.

Which is where the story gets interesting. Because Black and White isn’t really about fighting monsters. It’s about how monsters are created.

History remembers heroes and villains differently from how those people actually were. Legends simplify. Stories reshape. The truth gets buried beneath centuries of retelling until a person becomes an idea rather than an individual. And that applies beautifully to Beowulf. The story asks what makes someone heroic. Is it strength? Is it sacrifice? Is it the willingness to stand against impossible odds even when nobody remembers the truth afterwards?

Big questions for a story involving a man fighting a sarcastic alien. But Doctor Who has always been good at making ridiculous things surprisingly meaningful.

The performances are excellent across the board. Ace remains one of Big Finish’s strongest companions because she carries so much history with her. She isn’t just the reckless teenager from the television series anymore. She’s someone shaped by trauma, experience and the Doctor’s influence, and those layers continue to make her fascinating. Hex works well alongside her too. Their relationship feels natural, with both characters bringing different perspectives to the search for the Doctor.

And then there is the Doctor himself. The scenes involving him and the infant TARDIS are genuinely some of the most affecting moments in the story. Watching him nurture this new sentient machine, explaining its purpose and the role it will eventually play, is surprisingly emotional. There’s a beautiful parallel between the TARDIS’s future and Beowulf’s legacy: both are shaped by what they become rather than what they start as.

It’s a lovely bit of storytelling. Is it perfect? No. Coming immediately after Protect and Survive means it suffers from an unfair comparison because that story is operating at another level entirely. Black and White is less ambitious, less devastating and less likely to leave you staring silently into space afterwards.

But that’s not really a criticism. Not every story needs to be a masterpiece. Sometimes you just need a really good Doctor Who adventure. And this is one.

Final Thoughts
A strong, memorable adventure that blends mythology, science fiction and character drama into a thoughtful exploration of heroism and legacy. It may not reach the heights of the story before it, but with excellent performances, smart themes and a wonderfully strange alien Grendel, it remains a very enjoyable trip through time.

4 out of 5 legendary warriors who probably should have asked more questions before punching the alien pretending to be a monster

Protect and Survive

Protect and Survive commits the absolute audacity of advertising itself as a Seventh Doctor story, promptly shoving Sylvester McCoy offstage for most of the runtime, then somehow turning that into one of the best Big Finish audios I’ve ever heard. That’s confidence. Or witchcraft. Possibly both.

The setup is deliciously miserable. Ace and Hex find themselves stranded in an alternate 1980s where the Cold War finally tipped over the edge and somebody, somewhere, pressed the very bad button. The Doctor is nowhere to be found. The bombs have fallen. Society has evaporated. The pair end up sheltering from the radioactive fallout with an elderly couple named Albert and Peggy, armed with little more than ration books, tea, fading optimism, and the increasingly obvious realisation that they’re all going to die.

It’s impossible not to think of When the Wind Blows during these scenes. The same crushing mundanity. The same quiet horror. The same desperate attempts to cling to normality while the world quietly ends outside. And my God, it’s effective.

There’s no triumphant action music. No glorious last stands. Just the slow, methodical collapse of hope as radiation poisoning creeps in one symptom at a time. Albert and Peggy aren’t action heroes. They’re just ordinary people trying to make sense of something no ordinary person could ever prepare for. It’s bleak. Properly bleak.

The performances absolutely sell it. Ace and Hex bounce off one another brilliantly, each trying to keep the other going while slowly accepting that there might not actually be a way out. Meanwhile Albert and Peggy are so utterly believable as an elderly English couple that you immediately adopt them in your heart.

Which, naturally, means the story is sharpening the knife. Because halfway through everything breaks. Time resets. The bombs fall again. The same conversations happen. The same deaths approach. Ace and Hex realise they’re trapped in a loop, reliving Albert and Peggy’s final days over and over. At which point the story somehow gets even better.

The revelation that this isn’t history at all, but a prison constructed by the Doctor himself, is magnificent. Albert and Peggy aren’t innocent pensioners. They’re ancient servants of the Elder Gods, creatures aligned with horrors in the same cosmic neighbourhood as Fenric, guilty of atrocities so monstrous that the Doctor devised the cruellest punishment imaginable. Not execution. Not eternal torture. Humanity.

He’s condemned them to become human. To love. To fear. To grow old together. To watch the world end. To grieve. To die. Then to do it all again until they’ve finally learned what all those countless victims once felt. That is SUCH a Seventh Doctor solution. It’s compassionate. It’s horrifying. It’s morally questionable. It’s completely brilliant.

Thematically, the story juggles nuclear annihilation, justice, empathy, redemption and punishment without dropping any of them. It asks whether understanding suffering can truly redeem evil, and whether even the Doctor should possess the authority to make that judgement.

My only criticism is that poor Sylvester McCoy barely appears. Normally that would be a fatal flaw. Here? The absence becomes part of the point. His influence hangs over every scene like an invisible chess player who’s already won several moves ago. That’s pure Seven. That’s exactly why the ending lands so hard.

Final Thoughts
An astonishingly bleak, emotionally devastating and morally fascinating story that combines Cold War horror with one of the most perfectly judged Seventh Doctor twists Big Finish has ever produced. It’s tense, heartbreaking, thought-provoking and utterly unforgettable.

5 out of 5 government-issued nuclear survival pamphlets that were about as useful as a chocolate radiation suit

The Butcher of Brisbane

The Butcher of Brisbane finally breaks Peter Davison’s recent streak of “perfectly competent stories that immediately evaporate from my memory” by doing something radical.

It’s actually good. Not just “better than the last few.” Not “well, I wasn’t actively checking how much runtime was left.” Actually good. Properly good. The kind of story that reminds you why Big Finish keeps returning to old villains and old continuity in the first place. Because sometimes they get it right.

This adventure functions as a sequel to The Talons of Weng-Chiang, bringing back the legacy of Magnus Greel, the infamous war criminal from the fifty-first century. The Fifth Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan and Turlough arrive in a devastated future Australia where Greel’s shadow still hangs heavily over society. His atrocities have become history, mythology and propaganda all at once, and the consequences of his actions continue to shape the world long after his apparent demise.

And that’s where the story immediately succeeds. Unlike a lot of sequels, this isn’t interested in simply wheeling out an old villain and pointing at him while shouting “remember this?” Instead, it’s interested in legacy. How does history remember monsters? How does society mythologise tyrants? And perhaps most importantly, how much damage can one awful person continue to cause long after they’re gone? Good stuff. Really good stuff.

The setting helps enormously. The future Brisbane depicted here feels genuinely lived-in and believable. It’s scarred by old conflicts, divided by competing narratives and haunted by historical trauma. There’s a sense that this civilisation has survived catastrophe but never truly recovered from it. Which is more atmosphere than some entire Fifth Doctor box sets have managed lately.

The cast are similarly strong. Peter Davison sounds more engaged than he has in ages. Maybe it’s the material. Maybe it’s the stronger themes. Maybe somebody finally gave him a script with actual dramatic meat on its bones instead of another collection of space politicians explaining trade disputes. Whatever the reason, it works.

Nyssa gets meaningful material. Tegan gets opportunities to challenge people. Turlough gets to be useful without threatening to betray everyone for once, which honestly feels like character development.

The themes are where the story truly shines. Historical revisionism. Political extremism. The seductive appeal of strongman figures during periods of uncertainty. The way societies reshape history into convenient myths. There’s a surprising amount going on beneath what initially appears to be a straightforward dystopian adventure.

It’s also surprisingly relevant. The idea that people might romanticise a brutal tyrant because enough time has passed is unfortunately one of the most believable concepts in the entire Doctor Who universe.

My criticisms are relatively minor. Some sections feel a little exposition-heavy, particularly when explaining the history of the setting. A few supporting characters are more functional than memorable. And because the story is carrying a lot of thematic weight, the pacing occasionally slows while it explains itself.

But honestly? I’ll take that. After several audios that felt terrified of having anything to say, listening to one that actually engages with meaningful ideas feels refreshing. Most importantly, it earns its connection to Talons. It expands the mythology rather than merely referencing it. That’s harder than it sounds. And it’s exactly why this works.

Final Thoughts
A thoughtful and surprisingly intelligent sequel that explores the legacy of tyranny, the manipulation of history, and the scars left behind by political violence. Strong performances, strong themes and a compelling setting make this one of the Fifth Doctor’s best Monthly Range adventures in quite some time.

4 out of 5 future war criminals whose PR departments somehow survived longer than they did