Emperor of the Daleks is a set which essentially wraps up the end of the Seventh Doctor's tenure as the regular Doctor in the strip, and the stories collected within this book are pretty much a mess. I must say the constant attempt at keeping continuity with a book series not everyone (including myself) was reading was problematic. Essentially to understand some of the things that happen to the characters in the strip, you needed to be thoroughly read up on the novels. For instance, Ace suddenly disappears with no explanation, so at the start of this book, she is just replaced with Bernice Summerfield, who was created in the Virgin New Adventures series. There is no clear intro for Bernice in the strip, she is just there. If you were only reading the comics, you were getting half the story, and it becomes fairly clear that the strip, despite its longevity and popularity, was now playing second fiddle to some upstart series of novels.

I liked some of the stories in this set, and it should be said that while my experience with the character is entirely from some Big Finish adaptations of the NA novels and this strip...I like Benny as a character. But the lack of introduction of her in the strip (and the lack of explanation as to where Ace went) is definitely a problem. And the fact that Ace comes and goes throughout the book and acts contrary to how she was before she disappeared. 

The big meat of the book is the titular "Emperor of the Daleks" which appears in the middle of the book. This big sweeping story is such a clunky read due to it's obsession with trying to clean up continiuties (what happened to Davros between Revelation and Remembrance of the Daleks as well as that army of Daleks forgotten about since Planet of the Daleks) and working in the Sixth Doctor and Peri and the Seventh Doctor and Benny...as well as the unwelcome resurrection of Abslom Daak and the Star Tigers who had a great end in "Nemesis of the Daleks" from an earlier comic volume...that it seems a shame to bring them all back for a messier end.  The strip became run by fans so deeply into the continuity that it forgot that part of what makes Doctor Who fun is that it is constantly moving forward and having NEW adventures.  Even as a fan who loves the minutiae of the continuity and connecting dots, I found "Emperor of the Daleks" to be a rather tedious read.  Connect all those dots if you want in your head, but trying to actually spell it out for everyone is a total bore. 

There is also the full-colour anniversary story "Time & Time Again" and the one-off from a special issue titled "Flashback" both of which feature appearances from past Doctors and show a love for continuity that is less interesting if you aren't so deeply into the nooks and crannies of the franchise.  Admittedly these were comics printed in a magazine geared towards just that audience, but that doesn't really make them fun adventures to read. Write a reference book instead of a comic if that's what you are into. 

After the final story in this collection, they moved on from the Seventh Doctor as the lead of the strip, and actually tried something new for the long running strip, which is to have a different Doctor star in each installment.  At a time when the show was off the air and showed no signs returning, that kind of made sense, particuarly as trying to make all the contiuity with the books work seemed to not be working out for the Seventh Doctor. The Seventh Doctor to the strip for one last tale before the the Eighth Doctor would take over, and I look forward to reading that adventure (and the other Doctor tales that filled that gap) when it gets collected in it's own volume.

This final volume of the Seventh Doctor's run is a mixed bag.  Fans of the Virgin New Adventures or of the strip in general may want to check it out, but casual readers beware. While I admire that at the time they had wanted to try and make sure the continuity with both the TV series and the books that were effectively trying to be the legitimate continuation of that series fit...I don't think that experiement proved too successful, and this collection is the proof of that. I don't really care for much in this volume, and I think it is easily skipped. 

Evening's Empire is the fourth volume of the Seventh Doctor's adventures in the Doctor Who Magazine strip. To me, while it starts strong and has a few high points, it is mostly hampered by the attempt at keeping continuity with the Virgin books being published at the same time, and a tone that the strip and those books seemed to take on that I don't particularly care for.  Too dark, too dreary, too far removed from the fun I want out of Doctor Who.

The titular opening story was actually sort of a director cut of the original, as originally art fell way past the deadline and only the first part ran in DWM before the ongoing production issues ended up canceling the whole story. Then they apparently finished the story as a graphic novel in color later on, but this new version restores the original black and white art and a few tweaks that they never did, with the original artist contributing brand new artwork. And it was a great story! Shame it never got to run in the strip as originally planned, but nice that the Writer (Andrew Cartmel) and Artist (Richard Piers Rayner) finally were able to get it out there and have people see a story that sort of fell apart for them back in the day.

The rest of the collection is hit or miss really.  "The Grief" can be fairly solid, but it is mostly just an Alien knockoff.  "Ravens" has beautiful art but a story that just doesn't feel like Doctor Who to me at all.  I know that in the Virgin New Adventures they made the Seventh Doctor more mysterious and darker than even he had been at the end of the TV series, but while I've only sampled a bit of those books (mostly via some Big Finish adaptations admittedly), I think they might've gotten carried away with that.  "Ravens" just makes the Doctor unlikable in my opinion.  "Cat Litter" requires so much knowledge as to what must've happened in some book that I barely understand what was going on in the strip.  If you were a regular reader who had not been keeping up with the books, you'd probably feel pretty confused and annoyed by a story that just assumes you'd read something else.

The only story beyond the great opener that really did anything for me was "Merorial," which was a nice reflection on the horrors of war and the grief it can cause.  It was a simple but fairly beautiful little story, and it's writer, Warwick Gray, would later change his name and take over the strip with some fantastic results. 

I would say that despite most of the stories collected in this volume are mediocre to downright bad, the opening epic from Cartmel and Rayner being beautifully brought together after failing to do so back in the 90s kind of make up for that. The usual section of commentary from the Artists or Writers is particularly illuminating in this Volume, as the main draw for the book is the remastering and completion of a story that failed to make it's proper debut.  This isn't the best collection of stories, but at least the best story of the bunch is lovingly restored, with some beautiful new art to replace lost pages, and some explanations from the artist as to what exactly caused the thing to not get properly completed at the time.  There is some value in this book...even if I think a good chunk of the stories ended up being lousy. 

BBC Worldwide have released this collection of Eight Abridged Audiobooks from the Tenth Doctor's line of Novels, all of which feature Martha Jones as the Companion. The stories themselves range from mediocre to just plain decent.  Nothing in the collection really jumped out at me.  The readings all all decent, particularly those read by Freema Agyeman and Will Thorp.  Adjoah Andoh did a decent job as well, but Reggie Yates lacked something in his reading...while others found a way to capture the Tenth Doctor's voice in some way (Agyeman being the best in my opinion), Yates just never found a tone that worked for me.  His approach seemed to just be talk faster, but he missed key elements of this Doctor's delivery that took me out of the story, and just thinking "oh but the Doctor would've said it like THAT," which made it much harder to get into the story. 

It didn't help Yates that he was saddled with one of the least interesting stories of the bunch. In Sting of the Zygons, The Doctor and Martha battle Zygons in the early 20th Century...imagine Zygons on Downton Abbey, only somehow that isn't fun.  The second story of the bunch is The Last Dodo, read by Agyeman, which was a definite improvement in terms of story and reading.  The Wooden Heart is another decent story, but again nothing too stellar is found within this collection.  I did enjoy the Halloween themes and monster in Forever Autmn as well as the adventure with the sentient otters that is Wetworld.  Sick Building had some decent ideas, but the story is decidedly average. Peacemaker is another average adventure, this time with the backdrop of the old west, though I do think it got better as it went along.  This particular audiobook does show off some of the vocal range of Will Thorp, who does a lot of different Amercian accents. 

The one story that really jumped out at me was The Pirate Loop. Read by Agyeman, it has neat time travel mechanics, intriguing mysteries, unique storytelling devices, and Space Pirates who look like humanoid badgers.  What's not to love in all that?  Of all the stories, it seems the most memorable,  the only one I will probably continue to think of from time to time. 

Ultimately, this wasn't that impressive a set of stories.  There was nothing that was too bad, but everything was just middle of the road. A little bland. As someone who had not read any of the BBC original novels, these abridged audiobooks were sort of like a sampling of them...and it left me uninterested in reading more.  Because of the ongoing series, there is (or at the very least was) probably a lot of rules for what they could and couldn't do in the novels.  As such I think you end up with a fairly bland output of stories, things that certainly work as Doctor Who, but because of restrictions from the show itself take some of the edge out.  It could be that sme of the spark gets lost in the abridged nature of the audiobooks, or it could be the readings themselves weren't to my liking. For the most part, anything read by Thorp and (especially) Agyeman were more entertaining to listen to, but I can't say this was the most entertaining set of audiobooks. For collectors only, I would suggest just checking out either the audiobook of the prose version of The Pirate Loop, instead of going for the whole boxset.

The latest trilogy of adventures for the reunited team of Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh Doctor and both of his TV companions Ace and Mel played by Sophie Aldred and Bonnie Langford respectively, concludes with an interesting story from Matthew J Elliott. As the title suggests there are shades of The Manchurian Candidate, although anyone expecting a political thriller in the mould of The Deadly Assassin may find themselves slightly disappointed.

The story serves as a direct sequel of sorts to 1984 TV story Warriors of the Deep with the action taking place in 2085, exactly a year after the disastrous events on the seabase. Sylvester McCoy revels in the opportunity to once again show off his Doctor’s mysterious side as we once again see him following him on unfinished business without letting either Mel or Ace in on his secrets.

The story takes advantage of having four episodes to play with by using the first two episodes mainly to establish the setting and the threat as the Doctor, Ace and Mel find themselves teaming up with a mercenary expedition into what the Doctor knows full well to be a Silurian jungle base. What he hasn’t reckoned on, however, is that the Silurians have enacted a plan to bring destruction to, rather than peace with, the human occupiers of planet Earth. To do this they have taken control of one of the leaders of the two power blocs which control Earth who coincidentally are due to meet. And so, the second half of this play brings into play the characters of Director Shen (played with admirable restraint byLouise Mai Newberry) and Chairman Bart Falco, enjoyably portrayed as a sort of Australian Donald Trump by Nicholas Asbury. The cast is also ably supported by Big Finish exec producer and all-round monster voice 17021 and Sinead Keenan in the roles of Professor Ruth Drexler and a Silurian named Avvox.

Without wanting to give too much away once again the play works by playing to the character strengths of both Ace and Mel. However, once again this reviewer is mildly frustrated that Big Finish seem to have abandoned the slightly more adult version of Ace which they established over the many years of her adventures alongside the younger character of Hex. Of course, it could be suggested that maybe these new adventures are set at an earlier point in the Seventh Doctor and Ace’s timeline. However, this story and several of the other previous stories since Mel re-joined the TARDIS crew, clearly features theTV Movie console. It was previously established within the Big Finish canon that this console first came into being just prior to the 7th, Ace and Hex release The Settling (2006) so therefore these adventures cannot be said to be taking place prior to Hex’s arrival. This aside, this is a more than worthwhile conclusion to this second trilogy featuring Ace and Mel and minor character gripes aside this reviewer will be very much looking forward to the trio’s return for another trilogy of adventures beginning in August 2018 with Red Planets.

The Good Soldier, the Seventh Doctor's time in Doctor Who Magazine didn't really find a voice until the show got canceled. The script editor for the show's final years under McCoy was Andrew Cartmel, and you can tell he has put an influence on the strip during this period. It helps bring the feel of the latter end of McCoy to the strip right off the bat, and that carries through the whole collection here.

Of the Seventh Doctor collections, this is possibly the strongest collection.  It actually felt like a collection of stories that worked together, as opposed to just a variety of random stories. In this book we start off from the moment Ace joined the strip, and the opening and closing stories of the volume are written by  Cartmel, and there is a great big story in the middle by Dan Abnett titled "The Mark of Mandragora," which has a couple of lead-in stories as well.  All around a good collection of stronger stories, a more cohesive tone, and Ace! It is sort of a shame the strip couldn't maintain this level under the Seventh Doctor for long after this. 

This collection felt the most like the Seventh Doctor's run on TV, which sort of makes sense as the stories in this were published right about the same time that a new season of Doctor Who might have started, but (of course) did not.  Panini's collection is, as usual, lovingly put together, and as this grouping of stories is some of the best stuff from the Seventh Doctor's time leading the strip?  Definitely worth a look in.