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!

I loved Invaders from Mars, it's really fun.

"Hallowe'en 1938.

A month after a mysterious meteorite lit up the skies of New York State, Martian invaders laid waste to the nation. At least, according to soon-to-be infamous Orson Welles they did. But what if some of the panicked listeners to the legendary The War of the Worlds broadcast weren't just imagining things?"

Except…

…at one point someone uses the f-slur.

Why did you do this, Gatiss. You could have just not used that word.

But ignoring that, Invaders from Mars is a fun (and somewhat meta) story, and it's (almost) one of my favourites. I'd really recommend it!

to be clear about it being one of my favourites:

it's very silly and naff and a parody of pulp radio plays. It's a lot of fun, but it hasn't got much depth.

I still really enjoyed it though.

interestingly, the story contains a bunch of historical innaccuracies, because part of the overall plot-arc for this "season" is about how Charlotte, the Doctor's companion, shouldn't exist, and the paradox is tearing the fabric of time itself into pieces...

The Chimes of Midnight is incredibly good.

I really love stories where things start mysterious and then get even more mysterious...

A concern, though: I don't know how much sense it makes if you *haven't* already listened to Storm Warning.

It's probably perfectly fine, but I'm not sure...

aaaaa Seasons of Fear was really good!

I really love time travel paradox stories, and this one is really interesting and engaging.

It's also definitely where the arc of this "season" of 8th Doctor stories starts to really kick in, and it's exciting... I'm looking forward to finding out what happens next!

(The reason "season" is in quotes is because it's not officially a season, but it's still got a story arc.)

I listened to Embrace the Darkness half a month ago, but I really loved it.

This "season" of 8th Doctor stories is really hecking good.

For all the stories in the audio guide, the middle column is for "Featured characters", which gives you a good impression of which companions and recurring characters are going to feature in the story, without actually requiring a full description.

Except I discovered recently that the source I got that info from was perfectly happy to spoil surprise reveals and such, so I'm going through the guide and removing instances where things are spoiled by that column.

In the course of doing this, though, I realised that the column for the Unbound stories makes no sense. The Unbound stories are all set in various parallel universes, with various "what if"s as the guiding principle behind the story. So instead of just saying which alternate reality characters are present, I've replaced the Featured Characters column with a "What if" column, explaining the core conceit of the story.

Do I need to clarify any of these?