M050 - Zagreus

This is it. The big one. Five hours, four Doctors, and a whole host of former companions (mostly playing other characters).

Following the events of Neverland (M033), the 8th Doctor is infected by Zagreus, a myth of ancient Gallifrey, and he rages about the TARDIS like Jekyll and Hyde. Charley, meanwhile, finds herself back in 1900s England with her mother, who soon turns into a rabbit. A hologram of the Brigadier comes to her and she realizes she is not really back on Earth.

Where they really are is a lot of timey-wimey explanations that don't fully make sense, but if you go with it Zagreus is a various and entertaining story. The Doctor's former selves pop up as a strange trio of alternate characters, but eventually make appearances in their proper personalities. Dozens of former companions also make appearances, and some familiar voices are easy to spot, but because most of them are not playing their original characters they may go unnoticed by those of us who have not seen the entire original series.

But many good lines and clever references to classic children's literature like Alice in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz make for a hodgepodge epic of an audio play.

M049 - Master

The Doctor and the Master really do have an odd relationship. In this tale, which the Doctor is telling to an assassin with a finger on a sniper rifle trigger, he has found the Master, scarred and suffering from memory loss, living as a doctor in a remote human colony. Horrible murders, prostitutes with their hearts cut out, are scaring the community, and the Doctor, the Master (going under the Doctor's usual alias of John Smith), the strange wealthy couple that have taken the Master in, and their maidservant play out a drama of manners.

Some interesting twists keep the story moving, but the limited setting and relatively non-sci-fi tale seems like a bit of a waste of the medium. But then again even the television series has low budget episodes scattered throughout.

M048 - Davros

I'm not sure how much of Davros' story has been told in the TV series (I've only seen the Genesis of the Daleks storyline that introduced him), but it seemed like a huge chunk of it was told in this audio story.

Davros is dead, or he appears to be, but his value as a genius scientist is outweighing the Doctor's arguments that he is a genocidal maniac, and the corporation in charge of the Orwellian planet they are both on has decided to save him. Then, in an attempt to create the worst Odd Couple sitcom yet, the corporation teams Davros and the Doctor together to solve the planet's looming resource crisis.

Things go predictably bad when Davros rediscovers his Dalek side, but no matter how predictable the plot may be, the writing of this episode is quite strong, and a monologue by Davros about his experience being in a coma with a mind as great as his is a particularly strong section.

M047 - Omega

It starts quite funny, with the Doctor heading to a Time Lord museum/historical re-enactment space station with a pair of dottering old ladies. The exhibit employs actors to portray the dead characters of ancient Gallifrey, and one of them, Omega, is not quite as dead as he should be.

Just when the trapped on a spaceship with an actor possessed by the ghost of the character he was playing story is about to get old, near the end of part three, a big twist is thrown in, which causes some troubles for the story's clarity, but does a great job of rebooting interest and taking the whole play home.

M046 - Flip Flop

Finally a story that addresses the time loop issue. Pity it reveals just why time travel writing usually avoids it: annoying repetition. Like the film Vantage Point, which continually rewound itself to show different characters' points of view, Flip Flop suffers from repeating sequences when the time travellers return to places they have been before.

The story starts in the middle of things and the Doctor and Mel are stepping out of the TARDIS to hear their names being called out in an Orwellian police announcement. Joining up with a pair of terrorist/assassin/time travellers, the Doctor and Mel are forced to take them back in time 30 years to assassinate the President before she makes a decision that leaves the planet in the hands of unpleasant slug overlords.

The ripple effects of their actions are revealed when they all return to the present and find it drastically altered, but for the worse. And here the time loop problem reveals itself. When you change something in the past and return to the present, a new you exists. Now the terrorists are disaffected lieutenants in the military and the Doctor and Mel have to leave before the other them arrive in their place...

Which they do, in the middle of a police alert looking for them. And then they meet up with a pair of disaffected lieutenants who want to go back in time and stop the assassination of the president to undo what has gone so wrong the past 30 years, oblivious to the fact they are to blame.

It's nice to know that the writers considered this problem, and it is a clever idea to have an infinite loop of the Doctor and Mel arriving and switching the planet's history and leaving again before a past version of themselves arrives and does the opposite, but since the whole thing essentially repeats itself (with the same sort of questions being asked and the same sort of conclusions being reached by the Doctor), it all feels a bit redundant.

M045 - Project Lazarus

When I saw that this episode was a multi-Doctor story I was quite excited. I thought I was going to have to wait until Zagreus (M050) to hear a proper team-up story. Turns out I was half-right because although both Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy are in the story it isn't quite so straightforward as two Doctors meeting.

Right away it is revealed that this is actually a sequel to Project Twilight (M023), which was a 2 TARDIS vampire story that didn't make much impact. It turns out the Doctor has not forgotten he abandoned vampiress Cassie in Norway, and now he is heading back to find her to test a cure for her condition. He and Evelyn find Cassie on the run and are soon drawn back into the world of Nimrod (least threatening villain name ever) and The Forge, his secret vampire lab.

The story actually concludes by the end of the second episode so that halfway through we switch and are now with Sylvester McCoy's seventh Doctor when he is drawn back to Nimrod and The Forge again. But this is when things get interesting.

Colin Baker steps out from behind Nimrod and reveals he has been helping the crazy scientist with his plan. Hard to believe, and Doctor #7 stays skeptical, but the two Doctors team up to solve the issue of the Forge.

The story takes a few predictable twists, but the banter of two Doctors in the same room is there to be heard anyway. It's a fairly successful story that is really only limited by Nimrod and his plot being less interesting than some of the Doctor's opponents have been.

M044 - Creatures of Beauty

I can't decide if there was a paradox in this story or I heard the parts out of order. I think I quite like the roundabout plot involving the Doctor and Nyssa being held by totalitarian police on a planet suffering from major atmospheric pollution, but the story takes so long to explain itself that some of the impact was lost.

Scenes of torture are not very good in audio because they involve a lot of screaming, and a few go on too long in this one. There is also the problem of no one telling the Doctor or Nyssa what is going on, which for the audience that arrives with them already captured is even worse because for the first hour there is nothing but questions without answers.

Some of the flashback structure that is used makes things more confused than they needed to be, but overall by the end I still feel like it was a good tale; just one that could have been a short story or a bonus release.