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?

I'm going to link this again, even though the recent changes aren't super visible:

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

What's new:
• I've removed all the (accidental) spoilers from the Featuring columns.
• I've updated the way boxsets are represented. Since you cannot buy the stories individually, it didn't make sense to recommend them individually, so instead boxsets are now recommended as a whole.
• I've finished listening to Segment 13!

I've added a bunch of recent releases to the guide (26 new audio dramas!), and I've updated the segment names to be more consistent– so instead of something like

Cyberman (Series 2)
UNIT — Incursions

we now use

Cyberman: Series 2
UNIT: Incursions

Some of the segments were a bit hard to rename (I'm looking directly at you, Doctor Who - The Companion Chronicles: The First Doctor: Volume 02 ), but overall I think it looks much better.

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

I've spent most of today rewriting the recommendations for new listeners section, and now I'm slowly going through the guide and rewriting most of the text explaining the segments.

I *feel* like I'm improving things, but I don't know if I am actually improving things, or if I'm just enjoying shuffling words around.

@lizardsquid no offense, i'm not reading this huge ass thread but i just wanted to reply to this post which came into the fediverse to let u kno
that
ur not alone! (cue drum beats)
i used to listen to big finish and i wanted to get back in but the releases compared to timelines is fuckin wacky and even if i do remember where i got up to i'd have to relisten to a bunch of shit or have recaps
its just daunting

@skelltan I'm hoping that the ordering that I've come up with would help with that kind of thing!

But I can't say for sure, because I'm still listening to the early stuff.

I've heard that some of their more recent stuff (from the past couple of years-ish) has been trying to be a bit more standalone, so you can listen without needing all the background context.

@lizardsquid also i feel like a lot of the stuff theyre pushing out actually does need context like isnt it all time war stuff linked all together, even unit getting involved via the war master interacting with them

@skelltan that's true – I had taken the stance that stuff like River Song and the War Master showing up in UNIT as being like "as long as you know who this other character is, you'll be fine following this story", but I don't know how true that is because I haven't heard those yet.

Could "a story with the Master in it" really requrie much more context than "the Master is in it"?

@lizardsquid
@lizardsquid oh wow you're actually not that far because it looks like you're listening to them all
i just found this guide and listened to what it suggested
this is an odd dichotomy, ive listened to more than you have but i've bad memory and you're fresh so you might know more lol
and yeah but i have this sort of completionist mindset where i wanna know where in that character's timeline they're at
not so much for river but very much for other characters

@lizardsquid like to further elaborate like you could watch the five doctors on its own but i want to have a decent grasp on the 3 incarnations before 5 that show up - i wouldnt watch all of their stories but id want to know more about them
but this is different in audio where i feel there are arcs being established where it helps to know where the characters are at when you encounter them

@skelltan I mean, this is why my order sticks as close to release order as possible – the character development happens at the same pace as you.

But this is kind of my own completionist mindset – I want to listen to everything and I want to listen to it all in order, I don't really want to select a release, and then try and listen to all the potential backstory for that release, I want to have already heard the backstory.

@lizardsquid as an aside i might follow along your thoughts on the audios and try and pick up where i left off should you eventually get there