Cardiff has been the production base for Doctor Who since 2004 and perhaps in recognition of this its residents were treated to the red carpet treatment for Series 8's world première 16 days before its TV screening.

As part of the wider world tour to promote the new season and Peter Capaldi's arrival as the new Doctor, the Cardiff première was held at St David's Hall, a concert venue in the heart of the city's shopping precinct and ideally located for a West End-style première event.

Tickets for the screening and Q&A sold out pretty much instantly amongst scenes of the website crashing and demand far exceeding supply. To help manage the disappointment, a free fan meet was arranged for the morning of the première, with Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Steven Moffat and new guy Samuel Anderson traversing the 1/4 mile from Cardiff Central Library to the front of St David's Hall.

Having such a long "catwalk" was a double-edged sword. It meant that more people had the chance to see the stars up close and personal (at no point was it more than two or three deep), but it also meant they had further to walk in a short period of time. And while free publicity cards of Capaldi, Coleman and Anderson were given out to all, the chances of getting an autograph or two were really down to pot luck. Capaldi was particularly attentive - chatting, personalising autographs, posing for "selfies" and generally soaking up the rock star attention he was receiving.

All the while, Daleks patrolled the runway, stopping to terrorise the occasional delighted child, and Cybermen stomped up and down. BBC execs with clipboards scurried the barrier's length, prepping Capaldi for his next interview or soundbite, while presenters Lizo Mzimba and Jason Mohammad earnestly interviewed another group of delirious cosplayers. Even the TARDIS was in attendance, sitting outside the department stores.

After the screening, the cast set off for the London leg of the tour, hosted at the BFI. But back in Cardiff, as the carpet was rolled up, the railings stacked back on to the trucks and the visitors trooped off to the Doctor Who Experience in the Bay, the magic still hung in the air.

This was the same street that featured in the very same season opener being promoted that day (though it pretends to be elsewhere) and it's the same street that doubles as St Paul's district in the season finale. Two roads over and it's where Rose witnessed Autons smashing out of a shop window, and isn't that where Kylie and Doctor Tennant wandered around one Christmas?

And that's why Doctor Who premières happen here - they're a fixed point in time and space.

• To see more photos of the event, go to Nick's Photobucket album.

Tom Baker's fourth Doctor has, in recent years, returned to the mainstream in not only the 50th anniversary special audio and television adventures, but also with the help of Big Finish Productions. This particular story in the Fourth Doctor Adventures range sees the Time Lord and his companion Leela, who always seems to be getting the customs and elements of other cultures confused, land on earth for what they describe as a “holiday”.

But as is nearly always the case with Doctor Who stories, something is terribly amiss in what should be an idyllic seaside town, albeit a small one.

The story opens with a man who, we discover, is a dealer in second-hand books completing a purchase with a customer, one of the crucial characters in the story. This shop also proves to be the scene of the first rather gruesome murder, one of several committed by an unknown killer using unconventional methods. This leads into a story that I obviously do not wish to spoil, but does involve some rather new twists, turning this two-episode adventure into a story that is part investigation, part dark suspense. This story does have remarkably good character development, considering the amount of episodes and limited running time. However, this could possibly be down to having a full cast to work with as well as their enthralling performances.

The fourth Doctor is portrayed with an ominous sense of foreboding by Baker, with Louise Jameson's Leela offering a pleasant and surprisingly quick method of plot progression. Even though Leela is commonly befuddled by the Doctor's mentioning of things like "enjoying some rock", it isn't just the tribal warrior who presumes a lot about the people or places they discover. One particularly fine example of the stories humorous writing style, seen at scattered points throughout, occurs when the Doctor enters into a relative monologue about autograph signing. The outcome is, to say the least, expected and a good light hearted moment.

Every member of the cast does a remarkably good job here, considering the story takes several possibly unexpected twists and turns. The main villain of the piece, the Crooked Man, is a sinister character who we learn relatively little about, but we understand that he will use any means necessary to achieve his own ends. The voice is well chosen and with this being an audio only adventure, the listener is forced to conjure up their own version of this mysterious foe.

The atmosphere carved out by the drama itself is chilling, the suspenseful piano and string-based score continuing to fill the reader/listener with a sense of unease. This is further enhanced by the appearance of shadows and hallucinations, which seem to be a common theme in this story, with Laura Corbett, returning from her visit to the second-hand book shop, seeing a door that did not previously exist in the house before. This theme of shadows and strange sights helps to intensify the emotional tension that persists throughout.

The Crooked Man is a seemingly new, time sensitive villain, with his suspicious companion in the form of Lesley King, a rather rude and forceful television personality. Although all is not what it seems as an old scenario, the land of fiction, once again returns to menace the Doctor, his companion and potentially the whole world with monsters and foes the likes of which humanity has never seen.

To conclude, this story was a gripping one with the entire cast working collaboratively to produce an experience that will hopefully keep you guessing right until the end. Additionally, those who haven't encountered the land of fiction before shouldn't need any prior knowledge. However, those who are interested can discover more about this mysterious place in City of Spires, The Wreck of the Titan, Legend of the Cybermen and The Claws of Santa in the Big Finish audio range.

To say that the character of Sil (played then and now by Nabil Shaban) was one of the antagonists with which this reviewer didn’t particularly engage during his initial (and subsequent) viewings of various serials from the sixth Doctor's era would be a gross understatement. Much as the more open-minded fans amongst us might champion the various highlights of Colin Baker’s tenure on the TARDIS – indeed, Revelation of the Daleks and The Trial of a Time Lord are both stuffed to the brim with ambition – there were undoubtedly times between The Twin Dilemma and The Ultimate Foe where Doctor Who’s then-terminal status at the BBC was, for the most part, justified.

Ever masters of the art of subverting expectations, however, Big Finish deserve considerable credit for refusing to be intimidated by using some of the more controversial adversaries in the show’s extensive backlog. Shaban’s hyperactive, sickeningly corrupt ‘businessman’ (if such a term can be attributed without causing offense to those real-life individuals whose job title reads identically) is back in full force in Antidote to Oblivion, “whether you like it or not” (to paraphrase a similarly loathed line of dialogue from The Twin Dilemma), constantly conspiring to manipulate the residents of a far-future incarnation of the UK on behalf of his equally-seedy superiors at the Universal Monetary Fund. Regardless of whether one adores or bemoans the construct in question, the relish with which Shaban portrays him is completely evident throughout and if nothing else warrants more than a little admiration.

On the other hand, writer Philip Martin’s insistence on mirroring the aforementioned guest star’s fidelity towards his past work cannot be excused so easily. Try as it might to differentiate from what’s come before by emphasising the somewhat refreshing character dynamic between the Doctor (Baker) and his incumbent companion Flip Jackson (Lisa Greenwood) as well as placing Sil in a far more vulnerable position than we’ve arguably seen him so far, Antidote could very well go by the alternative name Best of Sil and, if anything, would probably have received further plaudits for paying homage to the character’s previous appearances so accurately. That’s clearly not Martin’s intention, though, as by including a semi-indoctrinated community of underground dwellers in the narrative, he seems to attempt a form of dystopian satire aimed at our race’s present overreliance on financial gain and related paperwork, only for the all-too-familiar structure, cliff-hangers and underdeveloped characters presented within it to rob the drama of any opportunity to be credibly scrutinized and interpreted on an academic basis.

For every thorn, of course, there remains a hidden-yet-certainly-present rose (yes, that’s a slightly altered idiom, but what’s the use of a good quote if you can’t change it?), and in this instance, despite the other Baker’s rendition of Gallifrey’s one-time lone survivor not always being held in the same lofty esteem as Tom’s or the rest, the penultimate regular classic incarnation earns himself plenty of justice. Gone is the hilariously self-ridiculing take on the character which Colin offered in last year’s monumentally successful 50th Anniversary mockumentary The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot, replaced by a far more passionate and consistent portrayal made possible by Martin’s accomplished distribution of worthy dialogue. Flip, meanwhile, mightn’t exactly rank up with Sarah-Jane Smith and Amy Pond as one of Doctor Who’s more beloved companions (though that’s through no fault of Greenwood’s own – quite to the contrary, it’s scriptwriters such as Martin who cruelly neglect to give the oft-forgettable character meaningful arcs), yet Greenwood’s actual performance is every bit as layered and engaging as her co-star’s work.

It’s ultimately the lack of ambition present in Antidote to Oblivion which overtly distinguishes it from superior Big Finish dramas such as (to name but a few recent examples) Starlight Robbery, U.N.I.T. Dominion and the exemplary Destiny of the Doctor range, an infuriatingly persistent shortcoming of late in the studio’s Doctor Who range which needs fixing as quickly as the twelfth Doctor needs to determine whether or not he can truly call himself a good man when the show returns to our screens next month. Whilst we’re all but guaranteed a resolution of some kind for the latter dilemma in Series Eight, that this flaw has restrained a number of storylines in the 2014 Who audio range offers us less cause for immediate confidence in the former department. Chances are that the studio are saving their piece de resistance for their impending multi-serial collection The Worlds of Doctor Who in October, yet given that their own 50th Anniversary Special – The Light at the End – was hardly flawless, not to mention that 2013 brought with it a commendable number of accomplished Big Finish dramas even before Light, the notion of remaining unperturbed by the increasingly diminishing returns-esque nature of their recent output is becoming ever more challenging as the months progress.

The second of this year’s audio adventures featuring the fifth Doctor (Peter Davison) and Nyssa of Traken (Sarah Sutton) sees the time travelling duo arrive on board a giant floating tomb: the final resting place of the God-King of the Arrit, an ancient civilisation who might one day have rivalled the Time Lords, had they not become extinct.

There’s little about the Arrit, as they’re portrayed by writers Gordon Rennie and Emma Beeby (The Doomsday Quatrain, 1001 Nights) that suggests ancient and powerful intelligences – one of many flaws of this frankly rather flimsy tale. Save for the ultimate plan of their God-King, the Arrit come across as rather generic aliens, as does their giant floating tomb-ship, a musty labyrinth littered with occasional corpses and fiendish traps straight out of the ‘deadly room of death’ trope satirised so memorably in Galaxy Quest.

With the TARDIS crew pitted against the Arrit’s insectoid slaves, the Arrit-Ko, and only other adversary save for the tomb itself being a party of tomb raiders led by the mercenary Virna (Eve Karpf), there’s an awful lot of running around corridors in Tomb Ship and very little in the way of narrative tension, though thankfully the drama increases in the final chapter, as various plot threads combine.

Tension should arise out of the conflict between the Doctor and his antagonists, but neither Virna nor her hapless sons – Hisko (James Hayward), Heff (Jonathan Forbes), Murs (Ben Porter) and Rek (Phil Mulryne) – have much in the way of personality, rendering their interactions with the Doctor quite forgettable. The monomaniacal Virna is gratingly one-dimensional, and her children aren’t so much well rounded characters as a predictable collection of types: there’s the stupid one, the violent one, the slightly suspicious one – and of course the short lived one whose sole purpose is to show us how the traps work.

Also present on the tomb-ship is the mysterious Jhanni (Amy Ewbank), whose real identity will be easily guessed by listeners, while the sudden appearance of another character from an earlier Big Finish release late in the piece is forced in the extreme, straining willing suspension of disbelief almost to breaking point.

Performances, thankfully, are strong, though Davison sounds a little bored; the rest of the cast do their best with their underdeveloped characters. For once, Sutton does not have to play a possessed Nyssa. The sound design is excellent, one of the few highlights of this underwritten, unimaginative story.

Some of Big Finish’s audio adventures are true classics, easily comparable to such outstanding television stories as Kinda and The Caves of Androzani. Sadly, the company’s 2014 releases for the fifth Doctor to date are more akin to Time Flight and Warriors of the Deep – evocative of the period, perhaps, but hardly worth revisiting.

Charlotte Elspeth Pollard, “Charley” to her friends, played by India Fisher has been a mainstay of the Big Finish Doctor Who audio dramas ever since her first appearance alongside eighth Doctor Paul McGann in the 2001 play, Storm Warning. The eighth Doctor and Charley parted company in 2007’s The Girl Who Never Was. However a surprise twist saw her being picked up by sixth Doctor Colin Baker, with whom she shared a handful of adventures in which she sought to hide the truth of having already met the Doctor’s future self. Charley’s story appeared to have reached an end in 2009’s “Charley finale” trilogy culminating in Blue Forgotten Planet which saw her left behind as an agent of the mysterious race known as the Viyrans.

Nicholas Briggs had promised that Charley would return in her series and five years later, following the eventual commissioning of Jonathan Barnes and Matt Fitton to write the scripts, it has finally arrived. At the start of The Lamentation Cipher we learn that Charley has spent centuries in the employ of the Viyrans, assisting them in their ongoing mission to rid the universe of a deadly virus. However due to being mostly kept in cryogenic suspension for decades at a time she has barely aged at all since the end of her travels with the Doctor. A chance encounter with a slightly nerdy would-be adventurer called Robert Buchan provides Charley with an opportunity to attempt to escape from the Viyrans. And so begins a new series of adventures which see our heroine transported from a pub overlooking a spatial phenomenon known as the Ever-and-Ever-Prolixity to an encounter with lost explorers in a remote uncharted forest and an unexpected reunion with her parents.

The Fall of the House of Pollard is possibly the highlight of the box set. Anneke Wills has previously played imagined versions of Charley’s mother Lady Louisa Pollard in the plays Zagreus and The Next Life and it is a joy to hear her bring the real Lady Louisa to life. She is joined by Terrence Hardiman who gives a richly layered performance as her husband Lord Richard Pollard. Lord Richard swings between being a delightful curmudgeon to a somewhat unhinged individual who has clearly been affected by Charley’s disappearance six years earlier. The plot may have some parallels with popular ITV drama Downton Abbey but the reunion scenes are worth waiting for and genuinely touching for those who have followed Charley’s story from the beginning.

Always in the background of events are Charley’s erstwhile employers The Viyrans. For the most part they are voiced by veteran actor Michael Maloney, reprising them from Patient Zero and Blue Forgotten Planet. Whilst for the most part very robotic, Maloney add some layers to the different Viyran voices, particularly as the softly spoken Rogue Viyran who has a central role to the story running through this set. The Viyrans are often at their most frightening when they use their ability to assimilate the language and voice of those they encounter.

The set concludes with the suitably epic The Viyran Solution, in which the mystery that connects Charley to the Lamentation Cipher and the Viyrans to the Ever-and-Ever Prolixity is brought to a head. Nicholas Briggs gets a welcome opportunity to steal several scenes playing corrupt businessman Bert Buchan, the father of erstwhile hero Robert, who attempts to exploit Viyran technology to make a profit.

Returning to the role after five years, India Fisher continues to inject Charley with effortless enthusiasm and reminds us why back in the days before the new television series Charley became such a popular companion and why she continues to shine as a lead character in her own right. Whilst not wanting to give too much away, although the label “series one” is fairly suggestive, the door is left open for Charley to have further adventures and this listener will certainly welcome a second series. However, the frequent references to Charley’s adventures with the Doctor act as a reminder of the slightly unsatisfactory conclusion to her travels and we can’t help hoping Charley will see her Doctor again one day.

Big Finish Productions strive to create audio adventures that can be enjoyed by everyone and their efforts for last November's celebrations were very successful in that regard. As part of their relentless quest to bring more and more original tales of the Time Lords to anyone who likes audiobooks, a three story run involving the slippery Quadrigger Stoyn came into being.

This trilogy consists of The Beginning, The Dying Light and finally, Luna Romana. The Dying Light is one of several audio adventures featured under the banner of "The Companion Chronicles".

Even though I received a Companion Chronicles CD with my special edition copy of The Light at the End, the main 50th anniversary adventure, I haven't got around to listening to it as of the time of writing. However, I was aware before delving into this story that they might be shorter adventures, partly due to them not being full cast audio dramas. Nonetheless, as I listened and wondered what twists and turns the plot had in store, I was actually surprised and a little disappointed to discover that there were only two episodes in this story. This allows for little background and character development to be accomplished in comparison to the more common full cast audio dramas, such as The Sirens of Time, which normally have around four episodes each.

The story is, to say the least, an intriguing one. The Doctor, in his second incarnation, along with Jamie (Frazer Hines) and Zoe (Wendy Padbury), land once again off-course, in a cave of some kind. After realising that the scanner isn't defective, as is first feared, the three time travellers then embark on an exploration of a great city. This takes them into some rather dangerous situations, one of these encounters finishing up the first episode. In what could be seen as an homage to the second Doctor's era - the time travellers are trapped both in progress and retreat by large stone giants. This does play a role in the second and final episode of the story, if only seemingly for dramatic tension. The planet on which the travellers land is said to be a dying one, orbiting a dying star. Well, no prizes for guessing where the adventure gets its name from.

The plot itself seems fairly sketchy in places, although since this review only covers the standalone story, there may be important links in the other sections of the trilogy which are missing here. Repeated listening may be preferable to discover exactly how the salient points are supposed to fit together.

The only criticism I could place on this story is that there was no dedicated cast member for Katherine, although Hines' performance is admirable. His second doctor, however, does deserve a mention and, as seen in The Light at the End, his performance does imitate the late Patrick Troughton relatively well.

The casting of Terry Molloy, well-known to most Doctor Who fans as the psychotic and maniacal Davros, creator of the Daleks, seems well thought out. Quadrigger Stoyn does begin as a particularly prickly character, aided by Molloy’s choice of vocabulary as much as his own vocal qualities. It progresses to a point at which we, as readers/listeners, might begin to sympathise with him, but there is nearly always an uncertain feeling about what he is going to come up with next, appropriate for a villain of this style.

All in all, The Dying Light is a rather intriguing two-episode adventure even as a standalone story, with what might be considered a minor lack of casting and a slightly puzzling story.