11th Doc Chronicles Vol 4 All of Time and Space Out Now

Vol 4 Released 21st February 2023

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mark687

Geronimo was brilliant, looking forward to listening to this one soon

"All of Time and Space"-
amazing story.
This is exactly my type of story, completely bonkers and totally rolling with it, while smashing any available fourth walls.
Great play with characters and expectations and looking at how stories are constructed.
I love when we get a bit more experimental stuff and if that stuff is pulled off well, and it certainly is here.
I know, some of the ideas here have been played around with before- is the Doctor just a fictional character bouncing around the head of a writer? What if the Doctor became a puppet? But this is just so well done and uses these ideas in a different context, that it just works without being repetitive.
Very good start.

Well, wasn't 'The Yearn' the sweetest (blummin') thing in the world...?

I loved All of Time and Space. A wonderfully offbeat story that knows exactly what it's doing and just confidently cracks on with it.

The Yearn was lovely, utilising a common Doctor Who story type to its advantage by making Valerie the lead and offering some more development for her. I think she's terrific.

Curiosity Shop I wasn't so keen on. I can see what it was trying to do, but I felt the framing device let down the message it was trying to convey. That confrontation between the Doctor and Valerie at the end should've dominated more, but in the end it's a bit of a late revelation because the story is spending too much time getting Dudman to do impressions of other incarnations of the Doctor. If this was on screen then that would've been a very brief and therefore more effective sequence, rather than prolonging it to an hour.

I preferred the first set, but did enjoy this second instalment overall. Valerie continues to shine and the stories are both fresh, yet faithful to the era they're expanding upon. It's exactly what Doctor Who at Big Finish should be.

A Review



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mark687

I loved all three stories in this set! I love the 11th Doctor's era and this is such an amazing addition. I was particularly impressed by Curiosity Shop. Dudmam's impressions of 11 channeling 1,3,5,6,9,and 10 were spot on. His 4, was not as good as the rest but still pretty good. What makes all that effort more impressive, though, is that those impressions are wholly justified by an excellent story. Valarie's half of the story, while quite distressing, is so well-written and performed.

Back when I was watching series 7, I was disappointed with the uneven quality of stories. So far, this run of the 11th Doctor Chronicles feels like series 7 I wanted back then.

Curiosity Shop is another good entry. I like how this series does not shy away from the Eleventh Doctor’s more manipulative side and boy does Valarie go through the wringer here because of it. Thematically this also does well with the Moffat era conceit that “the Doctor” is less a name for a protagonist and more a state of mind (which I guess given this chronological setting you could argue makes this thematically a prequel to The Day of the Doctor).

Dudman’s voices are all passable, and work in the context of this story, but this is really Safiyya Ingar’s story, and they shine.

I'll admit I was curious about those box sets at first because I actively dislike the Eleventh Doctor on screen but really enjoy Big Finish's take on him. I always found him boring and irritating at the same time, even though I genuinely believe Matt Smith is a great actor. I don't know, I always thought his incarnation was missing something and he seemed to devolve between series 5 and 7. Same thing goes for Missy whom I disliked in Capaldi's run and yet she's grown on me a lot since Michelle Gomez started recording audios. Maybe it's because I'm not fond of their physical mannerisms and tend to prefer when their personalities are channeled through their voices.

These last two box sets however ? I love them. Probably some of BF's best recent material. They're well paced, well written, highly entertaining, Dudman's impression is good as always and I agree with all of you when you say that they're respectful of the era's tone. They fit perfectly between series 7A and 7B.

Eleven and Valarie's chemistry is wonderful to hear and she'll probably end up being my favorite Eleventh Doctor companion. It's kind of amazing how well rounded and likeable she is. I'm really hoping BF and the actress won't be parting ways once Dudman retires. Or at least that her story is wrapped up in a satisfying fashion like what they did with Anya and Mark in Dalek Universe.

I already can't wait for the 3rd volume if the whole series is as consistently good as the first two box sets. It's the kind of range which reminds me why I fell in love with Big Finish in the first place.