I didn't like this one as much, and even though it's not the *worst*, it did have several themes that made me uncomfortable.

I did like that they had Nicholas Briggs playing a man who had been caught up in a time vortex malfunction and was convinced that he was The Doctor
(Briggs had previously played the Doctor in some fan audio dramas several years earlier.)

Speaking of Nicholas Briggs, he just answered a question of mine in the latest Big Finish podcast:

https://www.bigfinish.com/podcasts/v/2019-02-24-the-avengers-and-listeners-emails

(at around the 9 minute mark)

Thinking about Minuet in Hell again, and there are so many elements that I like:

• it features the Brigadier alongside the 8th Doctor, for the first time
• it's set on Earth, but not in London
• there are 3 seemingly separate plot-lines happening at once, and the ways they weave into each other are amazing

But I don't like how edgy it is.

(continued)

and I especially don't like that the 8th Doctor has such a diminished role in this story.

I usually like stories where the Doctor is absent/barely there (like Blink, Turn Left, and The Crimson Horror), but in this case I'm not too sure.

Especially since we have the Brigadier here! The Brigadier and the 8th Doctor only properly meet up in Part 4, and it feels like somewhat wasted potential.

Also I'm getting an increasing sense of "the audio dramas like to make paranormal things real or have creatures that feed on emotions"

MR 2: Phantasmagoria
features an occultist and seemingly supernatural phenomenon

MR 4: The Land of the Dead
features ancient creatures from Koyukon mythology

MR 5: The Fearmonger
features a creature which feeds on fear.

MR 9: The Spectre of Lanyon Moor
features a Spectre/imp

(cont)

MR 10: Winter for the Adept
features a poltergeist

MR 13: The Shadow of the Scourge
features creatures from another dimension which feed on dark thoughts

MR 19: Minuet in Hell
features "demons" who feed off fear and anger.

That's 37%.

37% of the main range stories so far feature either paranormal themes or emotion eating psychic creatures.

and the next one?
it features a werewolf.

It looks like they stop doing paranormal stories after Main Range 26: Primeval

thank goodness for that... I think the oversaturation of the audio dramas with Supernatural Nonsense That Turns Out To Be Aliens is starting to get a little draining.

Every time there's a gap between BBV stories, I forget that they can actually be good.

Race Memory is really good (and is somewhat of a sequel to the TV story "Ark in Space")

I've now listened to all of Segment 8!

https://averylychee.neocities.org/doctor-who/audio-guide/

Currently I'm debating whether my reviews should be visible right away, or if they should be hidden by default. Let me know what you think!

Currently, my favourites list at the top of the page includes:

2 seventh doctor stories
1 sixth doctor story that I've not even actually listened to and keep intending on replacing
1 eighth doctor story

Maybe I should try to have one favourite for each doctor?

I'm not sure...

I think part of my problem is that (in my mind at least) "favourite" is a different category to "definitely recommended"

So even though I definitely recommend The Marian Conspiracy and The Holy Terror (6th Doctor stories), I don't consider either to be my favourite. And even if I did, The Holy Terror isn't neccessarily the best introduction point for someone new to big finish, and The Marian Conspiracy is purely historical, which makes it sound less appealing.

it's better to not have a 6th doctor story in the favourites list for now, than to have a list full of lies

I *was* enjoying this.

And then there's this really unnecessary scene where the Doctor goes to Turlough and awkwardly asks about dating and says stuff on the lines of "I don't really understand women".

And.... arg... it's so frustrating, because it humanises the Doctor in exactly the worst possible way — it makes him seem like an awkward school boy who has never had girls for friends, when the Doctor has had plenty of girls as companions.

The doctor is a several century old alien who has had all sorts of different friends and experiences.

Clueless about dating? yes, that makes sense - the Doctor never seems particularly interested in romance until their 8th incarnation.
But clueless about women???? that's nonsense.

Well, I finished listening to it and enjoyed all of it except that one scene, so I've put it in the "Yes" pile.

And thankfully: this is the last paranormal one until Main Range 26!

And then (as far as I can tell) there aren't any paranormal ones for yonks after that!

I'm so glad that they escaped the storytelling rut they were in, because I think I would stop listening if there were more.

I'm also glad that I took a break from listening to the audio dramas for a week. I've come back to them refreshed, for one thing, but for another: I'm about to hit a significant paywall. I believe it will be the most significant paywall in the guide, because:

• For segment 9, I need to pay for one release
• For segment 10, I need to buy an audio book
• For segment 12, I need to get a subscription
• For segment 14, I need to order 8 CDs

The CDs are so expensive…

for later releases, the price of them is higher in general, but because I don't need to pay for shipping I still think I'd end up saving money.

Time will tell, but I suspect that segment 14 will be the most expensive segment in the entire guide (because it's TWO different series that are inextricably intertwined together, and they're both only available on CD)

https://averylychee.neocities.org/doctor-who/audio-guide/#segment-14

Dust Breeding was so good... it's got one of my favourite things: a collection of events that seem completely unrelated, that slowly weave together to form one cohesive story.

It's also got the Master!

I added "previous in range" links to the guide, so now you can easily go backwards as well as forwards!

https://averylychee.neocities.org/doctor-who/audio-guide/#the-list

me, a few days ago: ah good it looks like there aren't any paranormal stories for a while
project twilight episode 1: this is a story about genetic engineering!
project twilight episode 3: it turns out that this genetic engineering was actually creating...... vampires!!!!!
me: oh for goodness sake

This story is already incredibly gruesome and dark, and then it had to go to "vampires".

And then even worse: they establish that vampires were real beforehand, and that the genetic experiments were just on converting soldiers into vampires (so that they'd be essentially immortal).

I wouldn't have minded them doing that.... if they hadn't already done **so much** paranormal stuff already

Anyway, the next 4 audio dramas look like they'll be more interesting.

And then I'll have listened to 50 audio dramas!

Wow!

aaaa this one was amazing!

It explored a period of history that the show rarely seems to want to touch (Ancient Egypt), created some interesting historical political drama and mixed it with alien influences...

it's so good

I've now listened to all of segment 9!

https://averylychee.neocities.org/doctor-who/audio-guide/#segment-9

Next up is some more Bernice Summerfield, which I am looking forward to!

I'm looking forward to an upcoming audio drama, which they just announced is going to feature a meeting between the first and second doctors.

Here's a behind the scenes video of Frazer Hines and Peter Purves playing the 2nd and 1st Doctors:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXGZqE6bgrU

Update: I got rid of some javascript!

Previously, the page would load all the tables, but the table rows would just be a default colour. Then, a script would go through each table and set each row to the appropriate colour.
This meant that whenever you loaded the page, the colours would suddenly pop in after a second or two.

But now: all that processing happens ahead of time, so the colours are already there when you load the page!

https://averylychee.neocities.org/doctor-who/audio-guide/

This was actually quite complicated to do: my source file is markdown, and markdown's convenient table format doesn't support tables with custom colours on each row. I could use custom colours if I manually make the tables in html but that makes them very hard to edit.

So what I had to do is make a filter that converts the markdown tables into html tables, then looks inside the table to see what my review is, and then sets the row colours accordingly

If you're curious, the source for my website is here: https://nest.pijul.com/AveryLychee/lychee-zone

`Filter.hs` and `Abbrevs.hs` contains all the code that allows me to make the audio guide without having to write lots of repetitive html.

The file that contains the actual content of the audio guide is `src/doctor-who/audio-guide.md`.

I've rewritten the intro section: it's now longer, but it should give readers a bit more flexibility.

https://averylychee.neocities.org/doctor-who/audio-guide/

Since it's quite long, I won't ask anyone to do this for me, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on the new intro section (it's everything before the segments themselves).

Really big update this time!

https://averylychee.neocities.org/doctor-who/audio-guide/

• Rewrote the intro section.
• Re-arranged *the entire listening order*, to hopefully make it easier for people following along to keep track.

The old ordering was:

"Each series is organised by the release date of its LAST episode, and then placed in the list accordingly."

Which made sense for the original guide, which was just one continuous list of audio dramas.

But when I added numbered segments to make navigation easier, suddenly that no longer really made sense, because it was messy.

So the new ordering is based on half years.

For each half year:

• First, add a segment for all the Main Range releases from that half of the year.
• Second, add segments for each named Big Finish series with their concluding episode in that half year.
• Third, add a segment for all of the BBV releases from that half year (if there were any).
• Finally, add any miscellaneous or special releases into a "Misc" segment.

By doing it like this, it means that the guide doesn't feel completely random, and instead it has a clear repeating pattern.

About a third of the way through the guide, the number of releases per month increases drastically, so the segments from then on are based on quarter years instead of half years, but it's the same pattern.

Anyway, the conclusion is: the new ordering is slightly harder for me to make, but much easier to follow.

New Stuff:

• The BBC Audiobooks are now part of the guide (all 148 of them >_>) — you can find them in the "Misc" segments from 2005 onwards.
• There are some new navigation tools from *outside* the segments: each year of releases is marked, and includes links to jump forwards or backwards a year, and also a small section indicating what's new in that year.

https://averylychee.neocities.org/doctor-who/audio-guide/

I'm 3/4 of the way through Dalek Empire, and I'm liking it a lot.

I genuinely have no idea how it's going to end. Every single episode has added more mysteries, and gone in completely different directions to what I expected.

I'm considering re-arranging the tables.

Which of these do you think is better?

(Images: 2 versions of the same table.
In the left version, each row is ordered as: Audio Drama name, then Review, and then the featured characters.
In the right version, each row is ordered as: Audio drama name, then the featured characters, and then the review )

Heck, I really did not expect it to end like that.

I definitely recommend listening to Dalek Empire, it's amazingly well produced and kept me constantly wondering what was going to happen next!

(I've known about Dalek Empire's existence for quite a while, because a lot of fan sites talked about it, even ones that didn't mention the other audio dramas at all. I can see why it got so popular!)

I've finished listening to all the audio dramas from 2001, so now's a good time to point you all to my guide again:

https://averylychee.neocities.org/doctor-who/audio-guide/

If you haven't looked at it for a while, you might notice that things have been re-arranged!

The intro is on its own page, you get more choices, the *entire ordering* has been modified and simplified, you can navigate year-by-year, and more!