Big Finish Productions In the Bleak Midwinter

Written by	John Dorney, Tim Foley, Roy Gill,
Format	Compact Disc
Released	2023

Starring Paul McGann, India Fisher

Synopsis: Midwinter is a magical time - a season of hope and renewal. A time to spend with friends. With both Audacity and Charley by his side, the Doctor is looking to celebrate. But the season also brings cold and darkness, and the TARDIS travellers are about to experience three very different winter's tales...

• A Review by Caz Bruzzone

A Review by Caz Bruzzone 10/9/25

This is a three-story set from Big Finish, all set around Christmas time. I am not listening to them around Christmas, however, but I am listening to them in winter. That's the southern hemisphere for you. It's cold right now, so they seemed fitting.

In the Bleak Midwinter follows from the previous boxset, Audacity, and is a precursor to the next instalment of the story, Deadly Strangers.

These are part of Big Finish's Eighth Doctor range, starring Paul McGann as the Doctor, India Fisher as Charley and Jaye Griffiths as Audacity.

24 Doors in December

This story was fine. It was fun, nothing super out there, and I don't have much to say about it. Nothing bad, but it wasn't super memorable. I didn't like how they verbally described the scenes in narration; I'd prefer to gather that context based on what they're saying. I liked how it revolved around Al, not the Doctor et al, which can be a refreshing change to the usual narrative. Al's dreams/premonitions of the future gave off Minority Report energy as well, which I appreciated. And that's all I have to say, really. I'm only reviewing this one because it feels wrong to review story 2 and 3 without at least mentioning story 1 first. On to The Empty Man, andiamo!

The Empty Man

The Empty Man is set in post WW2 Britain and follows the story of Eldridge Brinkwood, a writer who broadcasts his ghost stories over the radio. He has just finished telling one of his tales when his colleagues disappear, and he stumbles into the Doctor as a doppelganger wearing his face follows behind. This was a pretty humorous exchange, with Eldridge going back to get his coat, claiming to be an 'old man' who would catch his death in the cold without it (unless his death caught him inside, that is). Through the rest of the story, it's revealed where the doppelganger came from, and why it was wearing Eldridge's face. Overall, the plot was interesting; however, my favourite parts came from the exchanges between characters.

Charley and Audacity really start getting to know each other in this story (and their actors, India Fisher and Jaye Griffiths, also became pretty good friends while recording), almost forming a sort of TARDIS-crew family. My favourite interaction between the two of them occurs when Audacity questions the rubble and ruin caused by WW2, and upon hearing of WW2, Charley casually saying "oh, there was another one?" Audacity is then rightfully a little shocked as to how she could be so dismissive and uncaring towards the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives. Overall, their relationship progresses through this story, and Audacity cements herself as a 3-dimensional, likable character.

Up until this point, Audacity, to me anyways, hadn't quite felt 'alive.' She had seemed sort of flat in her previous stories - not boring or bad, just nothing more than an average, random character. That all changed in this story. Eldridge is a fun character. and he's one of the highlights of this episode. He's essentially a bumbling old guy, and can be quite funny. Particularly with his interactions with the Doctor: they're constantly joking around with each other, which I enjoyed listening to. He was also in a relationship/ex-relationship (it was rather in a state of limbo) with Marci, another man.

I think this was good representation, and I appreciate how it didn't try and make the main plot point that Marci was a man. Because it didn't, and doesn't, matter. The point was that two people cared for each other, yet butted heads, and when things got messy they tried to make it work, all while being scared of making it worse. And aside from a brief question from Eldridge, asking if the Doctor minded his "choice of relations", it was normalised. While during the time period it was set in this would be unrealistic, nobody outside the core characters were around to judge, and as such it didn't matter.

Likely from his experiences, Eldridge had a very open mind. He accepted the Doctor, Charley and Audacity's stories without really thinking twice. Perhaps he was just really open to new ideas, or bored and willing to accept whatever people were saying, in the same way people working retail say 'sounds nice have a good day' to whatever wild story a customer spins. Eldridge was also responsible for two of the sweetest scenes: one where he reads a single fan letter from a few years back, and the bittersweet moment of him and Marci at the alps. Both of these were extremely well executed, particularly the latter.

This story also slotted nicely into the original run of monthly Eighth Doctor adventures, placing it at sometime before The Chimes of Midnight. After the Doppelganger, or Empty Man, is revealed to impersonate people at the end of their time, when they are due to die, Charley questions why it had looked like her before adopting Eldridge's appearance. As listeners, who have all likely listened to Storm Warning through to The Girl Who Never Was, we know that this is because she 'died' on the R101. However, at this stage, Charley doesn't quite understand what that means. As per usual, the Doctor is dismissive, but Audacity brings it up. I hope that this is brought up again in the next part. This scene was another one of my favourites to listen to.

Also, it was written by Tim Foley. So far, of all his stories I've heard, I have loved every one of them. This story follows that trend. Overall, definitely my favourite from this boxset.

Winter of the Demon

This story wasn't my favourite. It followed an electrical company trying to harness an ancient demon (that was maybe from Roman times) to produce infinite power, with an archaeologist excavating a lioness made of molten rock. So a standard Doctor Who plot, really. My main issue was that the plot was hard to follow. First, it was never explained what the 'demon' was; some buzzwords were thrown around, like "solar engineering", using some sort of "fusion" to create fire. But it was never clear if it was a legitimate demon or some alien of some kind. Or why it was there, even; there was some crown guarded by a cursed lava lion that summoned it? Except it was already there before the runes were translated and read? Once again, the ideas are definitely feasible and could have made sense, they just needed to be fleshed out more. They needed an explanation, and having a slightly longer run time to give it some more breathing space would have helped.

The demon was defeated by a huge iron cannon ball being thrown at it; apparently iron interrupted the fusion process, maybe? It was maybe mentioned but never explained. Basically, I found the plot hard to make sense of.

The Doctor also acted rather un-Doctor-like at one stage, tricking the Lava Lion into jumping into the bay, where she solidified into stone. This was a sentient Guardian of some kind and was treated like a child who was misbehaving. This creature was cast aside by the Doctor, and I do not appreciate that. However, this scene did still have my favourite line of dialogue of the story:

(Charley/Audacity/Archaeologist are questioning how stone can move)

Doctor: "Stones move all the time, right underneath your feet and in the earth - you call it magma," (or something along those lines, I'm going off memory)

Audacity is a bit of a letdown in this story, after building a lot of momentum in The Empty Man. Here, she hangs around a party and befriends the archaeologist, and she judges people for their extravagance but does not do much more. She challenges the Doctor a little, in a way that could have been refreshing but sadly fell a little short.

Overall, this boxset is worth a listen to, particularly for The Empty Man, which is now one of my favourite Eighth Doctor Stories. I'm looking forward to seeing how these character threads are picked up in Deadly Strangers, the last set of stories with Audacity (that I know of). Here's for hoping the Doctor doesn't miraculously get another bout of amnesia and forget yet another companion!