I was planning to review Eye of the Scorpion which I am currently listening to but I am only halfway through it at the moment so I am going to review The Mutant Phase which is another older Big Finish story which I have listened to recently.
I did not know what to think of this story during the first two episodes. It seemed to me a story that I could take or leave. It set up a lot of mysteries and threads, so many I believed that the story would fail to answer them. Episode Three was a massive change to me however. The story began as this pretty small scaled story featuring a base full of humans fighting for survival due to some mysterious events which had happened on Earth but when the story began to tie things together and moved onto Skaro I was really impressed. The scenes of Skaro, especially those featuring The Emperor Dalek totally gripped me and I was so desperate to hear what happened next.
The actual super mutant Dalek idea I found was quite interesting. The idea that the Daleks are evolving into something new and they do not like the new form foreshadows Robert Shearman's Dalek which was to come. The story also moves into morality territory which I really liked. It felt so reminiscent (but I do not think that is the word) of the current Eight Doctor Adventures. The Eight Doctor probably has the greatest morals of all The Doctors, he will not throw away the life of another to stop something, to him it is not a 'numbers game' which many other Doctors were more like (The Seventh Doctor, The War Doctor). The Fifth Doctor is very similar in this. He works with the Daleks reluctantly to stop a greater force. Having listened to both this and Dark Eyes Two: The Traitor one may think that Big Finish are running out of ideas but this does not bother me.
The performances overall are very good; the characters are quite bog standard, nothing special or particularly memorable about them, they are just there. The Daleks are good in this.
In summary slow start which sets up so many threads which tie together beautifully in a timey wimey morality story featuring some cracking scenes and ideas which come into being in the second half.
7/10
(PS. 7/10 means to me a pretty standard Doctor Who Story, this is why so many of my reviews have resulted in the stories resulting in seven. In future use this as a guide, anything above seven is great in my opinion but anything below seven is not so great in my opinion)