Best stories since the Relaunch

What Lies Inside was one I really enjoyed too. The 8DAs served Helen really well last year, I really like her character, she's had to take a back seat too often in some of her earlier stories

What's "the relaunch?" Should I feel bad for not knowing what this means? You don't mean the end of the MR and the new XDR ranges, right? It's only just been 2 years for that (arguably a bit less given how long we had to wait for certain XDAs to start). I'm tryin' to think of what this could be and all I'm drawin' are blanks.

Not that awful, "For the love of stories," thing, right? That wouldn't make much sense. Hrm....

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...Anyway. Best stories of the past three years? I mean, damn, there have been quite a few. I think my top pick would be Peladon -- it's a spectacular set of stories culminating in one of Paul McGann's all-time best performances (and we all know how much competition there is for that honor). It gets a major boost, I think, for being entirely standalone and not part of some larger arc.

Tim Foley's The Truth of Peladon also winds up giving us a very different take on the 8th Doctor, which was... very surprising and utterly delightful. As the final story of the set, it was a fantastic capstone to an already good saga that elevated the whole thing to -- in my estimation -- one of Big Finish's greatest stories of all time. Easily my top pick for last year.

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Also very high up on that list is Stranded. I know that for some people it was a bit of a miss, but it tickled my brain in all the best ways -- and was a very welcome (if perhaps overdue) reconsideration of what kind of character the 8th Doctor could be, and what kind of range the 8DAs could be, long in the tooth as they are. Boldly experimental and undeniably ambitious, not every story in the Stranded saga quite worked (and Lord knows I've got a few issues with how the whole thing ended) but Big a Finish really swung for the fences here, and it shows. 

I think it's fair to say that, with Stranded (as well as the Dalek Universe trilogy) Big Finish finally perfected how to tell multi-set story arcs. If this is the format to be embraced by the 8DAs in the future (and it should!) Stranded presents a very fine template to follow.

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I must mention Susan's War, too. Generally speaking, I don't think the episode scripts are quite as good as the other entries on this list, but come on: Carol Ann Ford does a fantastic job as an older Susan, finally getting some properly good Doctor Who stories to work with from Big Finish after having been dealt so many poor hands by the TV show. And this time? There's no more playing second fiddle to McGann. Ford demonstrates that she is more than capable of carrying a boxset all by herself, and you just gotta love to see it.

If we don't get a Susan's War 2, it will be a honest-to-God crime.

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Is it too soon to bring up Friend of the Family? At this point last year, I recall thinking, "Peladon is gonna wind up being one of the very best stories of the year." Now, 12 months later, I'm thinking the same thing about Friend of the Family. This is, I think, the very best that The Diary of River Song range has ever been. Mysterious, whimsical, funny -- it is everything I want from a good Doctor Who story, executed to the knife's edge of perfection. 

I'm almost embarrassed to admit I was initially a bit on the fence about it. If any of y'all have been sleeping on this one, trust me -- trust everyone who has been gushing about this set for the past few weeks -- and make Friend of the Family a top priority.

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Go right ahead and slap me in the face if I ever respond to a prompt like this without mentioning any War Master stories. There are only four possible situations when that might occur: I've gone a year or more without listening to a War Master story; Big Finish has gone a year or more without producing a War Master story; there has been a precipitous plummet in the quality of the War Master range; or I forgot. In all cases violence is the only right and proper recourse.

This time, good grief, it's gotta be A Quiet Night In from the Killing Time boxset. A Story so brilliant, so harrowing, I was stuck on it for months. I just had to stop listening there, and wait for... for the rest of me to catch up. All in all I believe it took me nearly a year to get to the latter two stories in this boxset.

Usually when discussing the War Master Range, much Must be given to Derek Jacobi's performance. He is a titan of his craft. But here, at least, impossibly, Jacobi's masterful performance winds up paling next to Katy Manning. Her final scene is profound n a way I was neither expecting nor fully equipped to handle from a Doctor Who story. Writer Lou Morgan clearly has a phenomenally good understanding of what makes a War Master Story compelling (I dunno about y'all but my one overriding thought after listening to her in the BTS tack was, "I really hope she writes more WM stories!") as well as a keen awareness of how to best play to the actors' strengths. An absolutely incredible, literally jaw-dropping tale.

Even just thinking about the final few moments of A Quiet Night In -- a small eternity -- gives me chills.

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And I'd have to be the heir to the throne of the kingdom of idiots if I failed to mention Dalek Universe (all of it). Hot on the heels of the extremely good Tenth Doctor and River Song set established firmly that the latter's upsurge in quality represented not just a fluke, but an entirely new (much higher) standard of quality for the 10th Doctor Adventures range. The stories of Dalek Universe are much more thoughtful and nuanced than I was expecting, and I genuinely believe they represent the very best of David Tennant's work in the role of the 10th Doctor. Here he -- at the very least -- reached those same heights as Series 4, or exceeded them. 

The entire trilogy is masterful but I want to make special mention of House of Kingdom -- the final story of the first set, which made me really sit up and take notice. An incredible character piece that really demonstrates how Doctor Who can take all of its old and sometimes silly trappings, and still tell incredibly poignant, character-driven stories with proper dramatic heft, emotional resonance, and all those other fiddly things necessary for words scrawled on paper to become actual art.

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Finally, I ought to mention Masterful. Like Stranded, Masterful seems to have been very much hit-of-miss for many people. Here, however, I have an easier time seeing why some folks left the set feeling a tad disappointed by it. The plot tying everything together is... yeah, it ain't great. But -- BUT. ...But consider this: Geoffrey Beevers.

If you've listened to the set, you know exactly what I mean. Beevers' Crispy Master gets a subplot here where he steals the very heart of the show. It's a delightfully unexpected turn for a Master mostly associated with loathing or camp, allowing Beevers to showcase just how much more range he has as an actor than he's typically allowed to convey with ol' Crispy's character. I cannot overstate just how much this subplot is the beating heart of this story, an emotional foundation upon which the greater narrative rests, and would collapse entirely without. Here we catch a rare glimpse into what kind of man the Master could have been in other circumstances, and there see someone who we can believe the Doctor would've called friend.

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I know there's a certain tendency among fans to look at the Big Finish library and decree that all of the best stories are the old ones, that contemporary Big Finish have somehow declined in quality, or otherwise lost their way. But as a latecomer to this hobby, listening to old stuff hand-in-hand with the new stuff, I don't really see it that way. Not on the whole (certain characters may not be handled very well at present, but that's a different, more specific concern). In the past few years, I think we've gotten several stories worthy of ranking not just among the best tales big Finish has ever told, but also among the best Doctor Who stories ever, period.

If I felt I could safely ignore the (generally more expensive) new releases for the (generally cheaper) old classics, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But I can't. Because as much as I may sometimes be disappointed or disheartened, the simple fact of the matter is that we've gotten some really, truly, deeply incredible stories over the years -- and impossibly we keep getting more.

I dunno about y'all, but 2023 has already been a great year for Doctor Who, and it's scarcely even begun. I can't wait to see what 2024 and beyond might bring.

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EDIT: Oh, man, I really wound up writing too much. Sorry 'bout that. But, still, what a year. And seeing what y'all are picking just makes me even more excited -- I'm seeing several stories that are still languishing in my backlog, like the latter 9DAs, Solo, and the last two 8DA boxsets. Always nice to have stuff to look forward to, ya' know?