I'm afraid that The Jupiter Conjunction, by Eddie Robson, didn't work for me as well. I was simply not convinced by the astronomy and physics of the setting, a human colony on a comet which has been used to ferry supplies between earth of Jupiter and now faces crisis because the planets will not be aligned correctly in future. It seems to me utterly implausible that one might use a comet for this purpose - no reference is made to the rapid rotation, the low gravity and the icy, crumbly, volatile surface; and even if anyone ever did, the positions of the planets are not exactly unpredictable and would be built into the business model from the start. If you can swallow the background (and most listeners probably will) it's a decent enough tale of aliens being exploited by human allies and vice versa, with comedian Rebecca Front playing the chief villain, and some excellent sound work on the alien voices. Most people will like it more than I did. ( )

Though I enjoyed Big Finish’s first trilogy that reunited the Fifth Doctor with Nyssa, Tegan, and Turlough (Cobwebs, The Whispering Forest, The Cradle of the Snake), it didn’t push its TARDIS team into must-buy status for me, and thus I gave a miss to the second trilogy — and I’d intended to do so to the third.

But there I was, reading reviews for The Jupiter Conjunction, a release which had been overshadowed in my mind by the fact that Big Finish was bringing back Magnus Greel in a prequel to The Talons of Weng-Chiang in the final instalment of this trilogy. As usual, I had grumbled sight unseen about the return of yet another villain from the Hinchcliffe/Holmes era; I’m still waiting for Kandyman II: Sweeties’ Revenge. Anyway, many of the reviews of The Jupiter Conjunction were saying that it was a nice, solid story, the sort that wouldn’t knock the world over but perhaps was the kind of thing Doctor Who should generally aspire to.

Read the rest of this review at Unreality SF.