Once a year, Big Finish releases a collection of four short stories over two discs, just to break up the run of trilogies in the main Doctor Who range. This year is the turn of Sylvester McCoy’s seventh Doctor in the company of Ace (Aldred). The stories have the vaguest of linking themes – Ace is learning to pilot the TARDIS and keeps ending up in the wrong place. Beyond that we have four very different stories.

John Dorney starts the set off with the titular You Are The Doctor, in which the Doctor and Ace might get killed over and over again as they face the Porcians. This is the most experimental and in many ways funniest of the four tales and will amuse anyone who remembers a certain range of books.

Next up Jamie Anderson (as in son of Gerry, and director of many of 2016’s releases) gives us Come Die With Me a take on Agatha Christie with the punniest of titles. Can the Doctor solve a puzzle that has so far defeated 1,868 others and outwit the sinister Mr Norris? All very melodramatic and entertaining.

Christopher Cooper’s Grand Betelgeuse Hotel mixes and opulent casino hotel with insurrection and mistaken identity in perhaps the grittiest of the four stories, while Matthew Elliott’s story of the Daedalus brings an alien threat to bear on the planet Earth, one he hoped would never find its way to our corner of the cosmos.

All four adventures entertain, John Culshaw keeps his fourth Doctor impression to the extras and it is clear everybody, as usual, had a great time making this collection.

A decent collection of short stories showing there is plenty of creativity still left in the main range despite all the attention focussed on the modern Doctor Who titles Big Finish are also releasing for the first time.

YOU ARE THE DOCTOR AND OTHER STORIES / AUTHOR: JOHN DORNEY, JAMIE ANDERSON, CHRISTOPHER COOPER, MATTHEW ELLIOTT / PUBLISHER: BIG FINISH / STARRING: SYLVESTER MCCOY, SOPHIE ALDRED, JOHN CULSHAW, KIM WALL, NADINE MARSHALL, AMRITA ACHARIA, JULIET COWAN, OLIVER DIMSDALE, GEORGE POTTS, VINETTE ROBINSON / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

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