YMMV / Big Finish Doctor Who

WARNING! THERE MAY BE UNMARKED SPOILERS!

• Arc Fatigue: Hex's storyline (which was first seeded in the earliest Big Finish stories, several years before he even appeared) is widely considered to have come to a natural end after "A Death in the Family", but the story arc was continued for another eight releases over four years after that.
• Archive Panic: The Guinness Book of World Records has certified that, at 275 releases featuring (mostly) the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors, with classic-style four-episode serials ranging from a minimum of 90 minutes to as much as three hours each, the main range alone is the longest continuously-running science-fiction audio drama series in history. Add to this the separate ranges dedicated to Doctors 1-4 and 8-10, as well as a vast number of spin-offs starring various companions, villains and side characters, good luck finding the time to listen to the entirety of Big Finish Doctor Who.
• Awesome Music: See AwesomeMusic.Doctor Who.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Charley, companion of the Eighth Doctor, seems rather divisive among the fans. Some see her as a brave and adventurous foil to the Doctor, while others have the same problem with her that they do with Rose: that she and the Doctor were subject to a Romantic Plot Tumour. Some find her to be both, Depending on the Writer.
  • Winston Churchill, you either wish Big Finish would stop making stories glorifying a man who committed a number of atrocities and whose post-World War 2 tenure as Prime Minister was a disaster, or enjoy both impartial and affectionate depiction of a complex figure who did great work ^note  such as sowing with David Lloyd George the seeds of the welfare state beyond World War 2.
• Broken Base:
  • The Dark Eyes anthologies seem to have divided some fans, with some people saying the anthology format lends itself poorly to a series that relies on consistent narrative. Dark Eyes 3 seems to have fixed the complaints however.
  • Though the first two seasons of the Eighth Doctor's adventures in Big Finish Doctor Who were well-received, the 40th anniversary story "Zagreus", with its long confusing plot and some bizarre moments like Ace being a robot duck, met quite mixed reception meaning many think it's a poorly paced, overly long mess, and a wasted opportunity. The 5th, 6th and 7th Doctors even lampshade this. They treat the events like a performance, and neatly anticipate that the critics will call the whole thing overly long, confusing and derivative. Meanwhile some people feel that Zagreus was a marvellous tribute to 40 years of Doctor Who, down to Big Finish and the Expanded Universe. The Divergent Universe arc also met quite mixed reception, with the long stories, Charley Pollard becoming less likeable, and a lack of character development for C'rizz. The rushed ending to the arc was justified in that due to New Who the 8th Doctor left the Divergent Universe earlier than intended to avoid alienating the fandom, but the 8th Doctor's stories in the regular monthly releases after this weren't as well received. However the New Eighth Doctor Adventures began to win back the fandom.
  • Although most stories tend to either be praised (A Death in the Family) or loathed (Nekromanteia), there are the occasional stories that have fans equally split praising and deriding that story. The golden example is "The Boy That Time Forgot", and stating that its reaction from fans was "polarizing" would be an understatement. Some fans compared it (worse than) "The Twin Dilemma", while others called it one of Paul Magrs' best work. It's up to the individual to interpret and rate the story themselves.
  • In more recent years, the company as a whole has been criticised for the sheer proliferation of spin-off series, often for characters nobody was asking for (Lady Christina, really?) and (barring some exceptions) a general dilution of story quality towards the banal and predictable across the whole line. They have been doubly criticised for the fact that the pool of writers has remained basically the same size (in 2017, fully a third of their Doctor Who releases were credited to just three writers. Nine more accounted for a whole two-thirds of the output.) and with no open submissions policy, was also extremely homogenous and cliquish. Of their annual writing competition winners, only one of the four has had a follow-up commission, for a single story. To their credit, in 2020 they seemed to be making a deliberate effort to rectify some of these issues.
• Complete Monster:
  • "Jubilee": Nigel Rochester, President of the English Empire, is one of the more disturbing villains in the Big Finish series, being a Dalek worshipping human in charge of a nightmarishly genocidal and xenophobic empire which attempts to emulate the Daleks in all the worst ways. He remains cheerfully upbeat and affable even when mutilating little people to fit in his "toy Daleks" or beating his wife for speaking in contractions.
  • "Nekromanteia": Wendle Marr begins by sending a fleet of ships and their crew to their deaths, then orders the flagship's commander to die as per his company's protocol. When the guy refuses, he has his assistant prepare to destroy the guy's livelihood and the lives of his family. He later receives funds to help improve the horrid quality of life for the workers on his pet project, but decides to instead pocket the money for himself and kill all the workers once it is finished. He is so evil that even the ship commander—who tries to rape companion Erimem—is more likable than him, with his assistant killing him and making the ship commander CEO of the company instead after his greed nearly causes the destruction of the whole universe.
  • I, Davros ^Episodes "Innocence"; "Purity"; "Corruption"; "Guilt"; "The Davros Mission": Davros is as bad as ever. A Mad Scientist from birth, Davros locks his tutor in a radiation chamber and mutates him into a hideous monstrosity, and murders his own father for threatening his future scientific career. Promoted to head of the scientific division, Davros began producing horrific weapons, one of which he uses to slaughter hundreds of Thals. Davros also experiments on the remains of both his mother and sister, as well as having his Love Interest framed as a Thal spy and killed. Injecting pregnant women with radioactive compounds, Davros produces mutant Kaled children, a procedure that ends up horrifically killing the mothers. Davros then orders the Kaled council to give every Kaled child to him, wiping them out when they refuse, and has a desperate mother fed alive to her own mutated son. Being taken captive by the Daleks many years later, Davros tricks a Thal spy into thinking he will reform, only to betray her and use the poison she gave him to wipe out the Daleks to blackmail them into making him leader again. A psychopath who deems love a weakness, Davros rejects all chances at redemption and casts aside and betrays everyone close to him in his quest for supremacy.
• Continuity Lock-Out: Criticism over an increasingly impenetrable continuity led to a very Soft Reboot of the storytelling format around 2015, when Main Range titles reset to be slightly more standalone (or form loosely connected trilogies) and approachable to the new listener, in the style of their earliest episodes. Other ranges continue to be heavily serialised, however, because they already appeal to long-time listeners.
  • Several of the later main range releases in the Forge / Hex story arc require you to be up to date with previous releases. The trilogy of "Protect and Survive", "Black and White" and "Gods and Monsters" requires you to have heard the preceding trilogy of "Project: Destiny", "A Death in the Family" and "Lurkers at Sunlight's Edge", and that also needs the previous two "Project" stories ("Twilight" and "Lazarus") plus "The Angel of Scutari", "Arrangements for War" and "Thicker than Water" at the very least. And you would ideally have also heard as many of Hex and Evelyn's previous stories as possible to understand the climax of their emotional journeys. Plus there's the Companion Chronicle "Project: Nirvana", which should ideally be listened to between episodes 1 and 2 of "Black and White". And that's just one specific example.
• Cult Classic: The reaction to the announcement of a Lady Christina boxset was... lukewarm to say the least, with people citing it as the greatest example yet of a spin-off being made just because Big Finish had the new series licence. However, it was well received by those who actually bought it, some even calling it one of the best releases of 2018, praising it for its lighter tone, camp sense of fun and enjoyable lead performance. Although it took two years, a second series was later announced.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Despite Liv being canonically paired with Tania, most fans prefer to pair her with Helen due to their friendship and feeling that they have better chemistry.
• Fridge Brilliance: Why does the Macqueen Master like Eight, but can't stand Seven? Because, inadvertently thanks to Eight, the Master got a new regeneration cycle, rather than have to continually possess people. And Seven? In their last on-screen encounter, Seven sort of left the Master to die on the exploding Cheetah Planet. And, benefit of hindsight, the Macqueen Master probably realized that Eight did try to save him from certain death/endless oblivion in the Eye of Harmony.
  • Another layer to the Lone Dalek killing the alternate Doctor in “Jubilee”. After the Dalek states its intention to kill the Doctor if he will not give it orders, the Doctor replies with "Go ahead." — an order.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The Eighth Doctor and Lucie on a crashing spaceship in Max Warp. It turns out to be a simulation. Played for laughs but considering what eventually happens to both of them...
  • The Eighth Doctor starts Big Finish by saving a girl from a crashing ship. Now think about how he ends...
  • Lucie Miller thinking the Doctor died on Karn from a fall.
  • The Doctor in "To the Death" wanting to save Lucie from a crashing spaceship.
  • "A Death in the Family" features Evelyn Smythe sealing away the Word Lord as she died from old age and bad health. On September 26, 2014, Maggie Stables passed away in her sleep after a long battle with illness.
  • In another real-life example, the standalone UNIT series episode "The Longest Night" featured a spate of suicide bombings on the London Underground. It was released just four months before the 7/7 Bombings happened. And in a strange twist relating to events a decade later, in the story they're actually caused by a far-right group trying to take Britain out of the EU.
  • "Spare Parts" states that the Fifth Doctor was partially responsible for the creation of the Cybermen as his body was made as the blueprint. The Series 12 finale "The Timeless Children" reveals that this wasn't the first time the Doctor's body was used for experimentation for another race, as he/she was also responsible for the creation of the Time Lord regeneration cycle. This also goes a double whammy as the Master combined both Time Lord bodies and Cybermen tech to create his own personal army, meaning that the Master spitefully made a monster using the Doctor's biology twice-over!
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • "Brotherhood of the Daleks": "MERCY! MERCY!" Flash-forward to the "The Big Bang"...
  • A big Chekhov's Gun in The Natural History of Fear is a spinning top that Charley kept tapes of the Doctor's memories in. Fast to Inception, and what's Dom's totem?
  • In The Veiled Leopard, one of the guests at the fancy dress ball is dressed as a centurion. After New Who Series 5-6, it's almost impossible not to wonder if it was Rory.
  • The Seventh Doctor in The Genocide Machine getting worried when he finds out he hasn't returned books to a library is funnier when in "The Infinite Quest", the Tenth Doctor is convicted of evading library fines 250 times.
  • Urban Myths features Douglas Hodge as a Celestial Intervention Agency agent. Six years after it was recorded, Hodge originated the role of Willy Wonka in the West End musical Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, thus giving even more support to the Grand Unifying Guess that Mr. Wonka is actually a Time Lord. And now he's playing another inspector.
  • Casting example. Lord Julius Nicholson playing the Master in Big Finish is even funnier now that Malcolm Tucker was the Doctor.
  • The Eighth Doctor travelled with Mary Shelley as a companion. Come "The Haunting of Villa Diodati" and Shelley meets a different incarnation of the Doctor, though in different continuity.
    • Big Finish intended to address this in a deleted scene in "Return of the Cybermen" where a Time Lord observes the Time War spreading out of the fallout of "Genesis of the Daleks" into the Doctor's timeline to create every Continuity Snarl in Doctor Who ever, explicitly pointing out the above Shelley case.^note It also seems to allude to the various conflicting departure stories for companions like Ace, and that the events of the novel Human Nature happened to both the Seventh and Tenth Doctor. (It was cut for being "too silly".)
• Jerkass Woobie: Omega and the Master come across as this in their audios.
• Narm: The Dalek anthem in "Brotherhood of the Daleks" is sung to the tune of "The Red Flag", a song associated with left-wing or socialist politics. The issue is that "The Red Flag" has the same melody as the much more widely known "O Tannenbaum" ("Oh Christmas Tree"), giving the impression that the Dalek anthem is set to the tune of a Christmas carol.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Big Finish have made a habit out of this, resurrecting unliked characters and concepts and showing what strong writing and the unlimited visual effects budget of a sound-only medium can do. Perhaps the greatest example is:
  • The Sixth Doctor. His tenure on TV is poorly regarded, to say nothing of companions like Mel and Peri. Big Finish took Colin Baker from the least-favourite Doctor of many to the (officially!) most-beloved on audio, and it's almost universally considered that his best episodes are in fact Big Finish audios.
  • Peri and Mel: Miracles can be worked with strong writing. Add to that a tendency to remember and use the characters' backgrounds (Peri's a botanist, Mel's a programmer, but you wouldn't know it from the series) and characterization beyond Ms. Fanservice and Screaming Woman, and many fans re-evaluated them. It also helped that Nicola Bryant's American accent has improved with age, and they let Bonnie Langford put her Panto experience to good use in the fan-favourite Panto episodes.
  • Adric, with the help of a strong dose of Alas, Poor Scrappy.
  • Eric Roberts' Master: His performance in the TV movie is often remembered as one the most hamest, cheesiest portrayals of The Master and is not fondly thought of by fans. When Big Finish secured Roberts' talents to reprise his incarnation for The Diary of River Song and Ravenous 4, he gave a more subtle, cunning, and sinister tone to his Master that was well received by fans
• Seasonal Rot: Dark Eyes 3. Molly O'Sullivan is Demoted to Extra, and the Daleks are nowhere to seen, instead the Master is the Big Bad which seems out of tone for the series.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Doom Coalition is frequently regarded as one to Dark Eyes. For one thing, unlike Dark Eyes it was planned as a 16 story arc from the beginning and has a tighter narrative as a result. Also its plot is largely character driven and features new villains such as the Eleven, the Clocksmith, Caleera/The Sonomancer and Padrac rather than relying on the technobabble of the retrogenitor particles and (overusing) big name villains like the Daleks and the Master.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The War Doctor mini-series. Not only does it waste time on generic war stories Recycled In Space, but many of the horrific acts the Doctor allegedly committed during the war are left as Kick the Dog moments at best, and Take Our Word for It at worst. Granted, since the Doctor will ultimately still prove himself as being worthy of the title, it's not all bad - but that, combined with the fact that it left many important figures in Doctor Who history unresolved (e.g. Romana, Brax, Susan, and even Cardinal Ollistra, who arguably served as the Big Bad at points in the series), left the base very much broken over its quality. To add insult to injury, the big question of what leads the Doctor to use the Moment is also left unanswered, so unless "Engines of War" is canon, we'll most likely never know the truth (especially with the passing of John Hurt).
• The Woobie:
  • Bad things seem to always happen to Hex. Evelyn Smythe knew this the minute she met him. Ace emphatically points out "No one upsets our Hexie and gets away with it."
  • Scorpion King Adric just wants somebody (preferably Nyssa) to love him (and also revenge on the Doctor for leaving him to die. But also love).
  • And his spiritual successor Thomas Brewster just wants his mum back.
  • The Doctor himself, for that matter, no matter what his incarnation. The Big Finish writers seem to like tormenting him almost as much as the TV writers.

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