Well they did it. Big Finish made me care for a character portrayed by Roger Davis. For those who are unfamiliar with Dark Shadows, Roger Davis played Peter Bradford, Jeff Clark, Ned Stuart, Dirk Wilkins, and Charles Delaware Tate and I hate his performance. Yeah it's a soap opera so I'm not expecting Oscar worthy performances, but all of Davis's choices have a tendency to either grab his head or whatever poor actress you have in the scene. His characters are often one note even for a soap opera, so it's quite an achievement when listening to The Blind Painter, an audio giving the story of painter Charles Delaware Tate and his Mephistophelian deal with Count Andreas Petofi.

The Blind Painter is like listening to the memoirs of someone who's life has been tragedy and scratches an itch for the macabre, something that the Dark Shadows audiobooks can do so well. Nicola Bryant works well of Davis' portrayal of Tate as someone whom he used to know a long time ago. The ending is one of Shakespearean tragedy and is an excellent conclusion to a surprisingly good play about love, loss, art, and black magic.

Now I didn't particularly like the finale for Series 11 so I may have gone into Resolution (of the Daleks) hoping for something to fulfill the itch the finale didn't scratch. The episode actually got very close to doing that: the Dalek itself while not the best design (yeah I know it is a one-off, but it just looks cheap and almost computer generated) was probably the best appearance of a Dalek since at the very least Into the Dalek. It felt amazing to have a Dalek being crafty and manipulative a la The Power of the Daleks and The Evil of the Daleks as well as just plain killing people without a chance because Daleks are superior. Chris Chibnall did an excellent job writing a Dalek story, but there's a big problem with the episode which makes me give it a 5/10 instead of the probably 8/10 or 9/10 it would get: Ryan's dad. While the story arc around Ryan's father leaving and essentially not being there was built up for the story, this episode attempts to cover the lengthy process of patching up a broken relationship as such. The episode ends with Ryan and his father in a loving relationship again because he said he was sorry and Ryan saved him at the end. It only gets worse when you realize how much tension is broken throughout the episode when we cut back to Ryan and his father, instead of the more interesting Doctor Who style story of the Dalek invading Earth.

Still the main cast as always has been great with Whittaker and Walsh being stand outs (though can we stop with the damn goofy fam stuff please? It doesn't feel like the Doctor) and the direction is great. It also may be just me but it seems Briggs has gotten a new lease of life with these Daleks so that's a plus.

When telling any story, the ending is paramount for the overall quality as a bad ending can leave a bad taste in the viewer's mouth. It's the last thing you see from a story and what is most likely to stick into the mind once you go away from the story. The Power of Three is perhaps the first Doctor Who story to come to mind whenever a bad ending ruins the previous good will of the story, but The Witchfinders is joining it in its ranks. The story starts out great, with the Doctor and company being caught up in witch hunts in a small village where a radical landowner is testing people even if she hides her own secret. Throw in James I played brilliantly by Alan Cumming, and you should have a pretty good romp and to be fair for the first 30 minutes or so Joy Wilkinson writes a really good story. It's just that the ending does not make any sense with a resolution that feels tacked on. The reveal of the aliens being the source of the witches feels like it is meant to be a cliffhanger and the characters are so engaging it would be great to see them continue in a second part fighting the mud aliens. That and there are a couple of moments that just take me out of it, the Doctor thinking she wouldn't be tried as a witch if she were a man just takes you out of the action considering the events from The Witch from the Well and the fact that men were tried as witches (witch until relatively recently was a gender neutral term). Outside of that Whittaker gives a great performance and her scenes with Alan Cumming are just great. Wilkinson also seems to be the first of the writers to give each of the companions something to do, even giving Yaz some decently written character development. The episode in conclusion could have been one of the greats had its conclusion been expanded upon.

With a title like Kerblam! this story has no right in being good, it harkens back to the meaningless one-word story titles of the 1980s like Castrovalva, Kinda, or Timelash. Pete McTighe writes a story that on the surface seems to be anti-capitalist propaganda as pointed out by another reviewer, but they seem to have forgotten that the message at the end of the story is that capitalism is a tool and it must be used correctly, less it is corrupted. Kerblam! as an organization is not corrupt or evil, the manager and head of human resources are both good people who just don't realize the bad things that are going on at the company. At it's heart the story is a message against radicalization, even if the radicals have good ideas, do not create a situation where you see yourself becoming the villain.

McTighe writes what is essentially the anti-The Robots of Death, a murder mystery where the robots aren't the ones killing people, but it is just a human wanting to help people. Whittaker and Walsh make a dream team and Mandip Gil is also a lot of fun, though Tosin Cole has a bit of a lag in his action which is a shame. Kerblam! is full of fun twists and turns, a good villain, and some really nice character interactions continuing the high note of Series 11 with only one clunker so far.