In teaching Ben, Polly, and Jamie how to fly the TARDIS, the Second Doctor accidentally brings his team to Russia 1942 in the middle of WWII. When they rescue a young female pilot from the snowy landscape after a small skirmish, they are soon captured by a group of aviators known ominously as the Night Witches. But a strange connection is brought to light when one of the pilots is found to bear an exact resemblance to Polly herself and thus by superstition one of the two is expected to die.....

'Night Witches' is a good historical for the Second Doctor team that plays with the exact double idea at the same time to varying degrees of success. The soundscape is incredibly good with lots of chilly vibes, loud explosions, and aerial / land-based machines in various forms of combat. The premise by Roland Moore centers on a part of the war that I don't think too many people will have heard of and it's a fantastic idea that brings a strongly diverse cast with it. Each member of the Witches themselves is very interesting and played by some of the strongest cast members I've heard in an audio format. They feel like a fully fleshed-out unit that you sincerely admire even as they are sometimes forced to work against our mains.

Speaking of our team, it's a decent story for them even if one or two feel a bit underutilized. Both Ben and the Doctor get a lot of strong moments and drama and Polly is the obvious focus of the story delivering strong emotion and raised stakes as the bigger twists begin to happen. But Jamie doesn't do much more other than follow the Doctor around and provide his distinct voice despite Frazer Hines, as usual, being fabulous in playing multiple roles. Despite a lot of the good, this story does have a few significant problems. The length on this really gets exhausting by the end and there are a lot of moments of forced tension that feel extremely unnecessary. Despite how much the bigger twist with the doppelganger character is played up, not much comes of it outside of some neat character interactions and in how it influences the rest of the cast around them. Thankfully, the smaller pieces and bigger picture still work well especially with narration provided by Wills that helps a lot in keeping the story going.

I wouldn't say it's absolutely necessary listening for this team and I can think of a few other stories I would rather listen to again over this one. That's not to say that this story is in any way bad though and 'Night Witches' is still a fine release and well worth hearing if you like the setting or this team. 

Kamelion is still with us, and he's not being nearly as annoying as he was in devil in the mist. This writer clearly understands how to use him well. The story centres around an explosion in a mine that kills many people, this leads kamelion to attempt to deal with the grief of a widowed woman. And being kamelion, he doesn't understand what grief really is.

I really like this plot idea. I know it's been done before in other ways, but I think it's done very well here. Kamelion doesn't understand grief as an emotion, and I think this is a perfect metaphor for what children are like. Kamelion is pretty child like in his naivety and the fact that he's always a liability, so I think this could possibly be what the writers were going for. Or I've just made this up in my head.
All the regular cast are just brilliant. Tegan is back to her likeable self, not getting pissy with everyone else at every chance. Turlough actually gets something to do for once. And Peter Davison is brilliant as always, putting an awful lot of effort in to his role. There's also a great array of guest cast members. However after just listening to corpse day, I have been given an irrational phobia of middle aged Welsh men.
I'd definitely recommend buying the set just for this story. I haven't listened to power game yet but I absolutely loved this story. On top of all the other things, the music suite is one of the best I've heard from big finish in a while.
Overall, a truly brilliant story

This is a very entertaining and interesting episode which has one of the greatest moments and greatest cliffhangers in Doctor Who history as it ends with the dramatic reveal of the War Doctor and the incredible casting which was the most wonderful surprise. I will always remember my reaction when this happened. It was electrifyingly exciting and intriguing. That moment alone makes this a great episode and the majority of the episode is very good even before that great moment. There are flaws though as the 'conference call' with the Doctor's friends somehow meeting in a type of psychic link and having tea (or champagne in River's case) is pretty bizarre. The way this then leads to River's scenes towards the end and her physically being able to be touched is also a pretty big stretch logically. I am sure there were better ways to bring about the involvement and interactions of all the characters. They could have simply been there helping the Doctor then River could have been captured by the Great Intelligence preventing her from doing what Clara does (because there needed to be a reason for River to not step in instead of Clara). The idea of Trenzalore as the definitive end for the Doctor is annoying to me too. Moffatt already went through a whole very long story arc that the Doctor was prophecied and destined to die at Lake Silencio which was cheated by the Doctor and IMMEDIATELY replaced with ANOTHER prophecied and destined death and burial for the Doctor! How can there be two prophecies of a place for his unescapable death and isn't it repetetive and unimaginative to do this especially as Moffatt insisted on faking and cheating deaths of the Doctor and his companions over and over again. However, this episode does not really deserve to be blamed for the faults of the Trenzalore idea. Anyway, the quality of the rest of the episode in terms of acting, drama, excitement, humour and nostalgic references to the Doctor's past as well as the awesome reveal at the end overshadow any shortcomings.

Richard E. Grant is again perfect as the Great Intelligence, the Whisperers make a suitably scary monster, River's scenes are touching and Matt Smith is on form. The aspects I am not so keen on probably take half a point off my rating but this is still a great 9.5/10 for me due to the strongest elements.

I love Gaiman. That said this was a bad flop. I don’t like this habit in mods era to make classic enemies broken. The cybermen bow assimilate like borg and this break the suspension of belief just like asylum of the daleks lame new dalek nano infection rubbish , please don’t ...

Still hints of visual magic of Neil’s imaginative style here and there. The story is pretty.
The young characters are excruciatingly bad and almost make me want to stop watching. Lots of cheesy moments scattered throughout.

One extra positive though that I can give is the cybernats , this is a idea that boosts the cybermen in a not to far flung manner like their adaptation ability. This should be reused , it’s scary that it could get in your nose or mouth and latch to your brain !

Anyway I think this story has quality scattered around among its bungling mess.
A shame as I had high hopes for Neil’s second addition to the show.
One hopes he’d consider doing a novel some day !!