The End is in Sight - More Audio Trips with Eight

We're closing in on the end of this season with Eight, which also sees Charley and C'rizz depart the TARDIS. Or at least this one anyway. This week we cover the penultimate three episodes before we hit those departures. So hopefully we get a properly look at C'rizz's weird abilities that are starting to become a bit murky.

Time Works
Weird planet with a strange history, time out of sync, and everyone obsessed with clocks. This is a Divergent Universe script right?

Okay, I know it is. Seems that with Eccleston's debut having happened in the real world Big Finish decided to end the Divergent Universe and go with a something a bit more new-listener friendly. That makes a lot of sense, and to re-work a bunch of already commissioned scripts also does. Scaredy Cat was also one, and looking back I can totally see it. But Time Works pulls off the Divergent Universe better than half the ones we got during the original run, but is also incredibly blatant about its origins. Not that's a bad thing.

However, the decision to skip parts of the story through narration didn't work for me. Especially as the framing device was wrapped up before the actual story. Like someone couldn't get the story to work and just jumped past the problematic parts.

Something Inside
Oh Dear. Another Eighth Doctor with a memory problem serial. Only this one manages to do something different, and actually didn't bother me that much. Instead of him wandering about not quite sure what's going on, the Doctor just gets about business, left with an understanding of how he works, his memory being missing allows a couple of walls to come down and the usually very nice Eighth Doctor gets quite a hard edge to him.

The actual story of psychics, is a neat look at what would happen if we start playing with genetic engineering during war time and the fallout after that. I'd like to see a bit more of this time period, because the quick shot of the jail wasn't enough. Not much more to say about this one.

Memory Lane
I really liked this one, I didn't expect to as it started. But the novel idea of how the alien's minds worked, that they really have no long-term visual memory, and how the prison generated cells out of memories was just really well done.

It's also quite notable that we finally get a proper explanation for C'rizz's ability to 'save' people is given. Not quite as creepy as I thought, or hoped. The fact he absorbs their personalities just by being near them too long is a little mundane to the threatening “Do you want to be saved?” questions from earlier this season that seemed to indicate he only absorbed them if he killed them. It almost derails the whole affair.

That aside, fun little serial.