"A war with the Daleks that wiped out the Time Lords? That's just the most preposterous thing I've ever heard."
My thoughts on Dark Eyes are rather confused. Let's start with what it is and see where we go from there.
Dark Eyes is easily the most complicated Doctor Who story I have ever gone through. It's overcomplicated, overlong and overcrazy. It's like the Time War story we never got(thus far). Seriously, the stuff that happens in here... at times I thought steam was coming outta my ears.
The Doctor is dispatched by the Time Lords to find a woman named Molly O'Sullivan(imagine a snarkier Amy Pond) whom the Daleks intend to use to wipe the Time Lords from history and whom the Time Lords intend to use to wipe the Daleks from history. To achieve that, a renegade(played by the wonderful Toby Jones) has gone back in time to infuse her with particles that would wipe out Time Lord DNA from history. I'm not too keen on how that would protect said renegade himself(he still came from the Time Lords, after all), but never mind.
In her adult form, Molly is nearly ready to be used as a weapon so the Daleks and the treacherous Time Lords chase her through time and space(The Chase, but for real!) from one crazyville to another, never stopping, never faltering.
Eventually, it turns out that the renegade Time Lord is the future incarnation of the Time Lord who gave the Doctor his mission in the first place. The present version was not very satisfied with his future version meddling with history and the future version hates the present version for being such a manipulator(Seventh and Eleventh, anyone?).
It also doesn't help that Molly isn't the most cooperative of companions.
In the climax, the Doctor is forced to return to the Dalek base(having already visited it in the past) because his TARDIS was a fake, Time-Lord controlled one(his real TARDIS is hidden in the fake TARDIS) and finally the events come together and implode and all this madness unravels.
Paul McGann brings his A-game as the Doctor(I can never imagine Eighth in velvet again), who has lost all hope and is only living because he hopes to find it. I thought he should've explained the Daleks better to Molly(instead of being peppered with "oh, they've totally changed!") and I never really caught when he got a new outfit, but other than that, I thought he was great.
Molly grew on me over time, but I don't think she had any chemistry with the Doctor. As they themselves said, they were thrown together by the circumstances.
I loved both versions of Straxus. The first one had a calm, deep, comforting voice and served as an anchor(even when he was evil) who kept explaining things. The second one was Toby Jones, of course. It's nice to see the Doctor isn't the only one running into his other selves.
What Dark Eyes succeeded in was being adult. Not adult in the "sex and violence" meaning, but adult as in "dark, complicated, dangerous". It certainly makes you buy the Time War and the necessity of its alleged conclusion, even if you didn't before.
Where it failed was being for anyone but the most devoted Doctor Who fan. I was listening to this story around the same time I watched The Celestial Toymaker and let me tell you, I couldn't wait to get back to Hartnell just to stop concentrating so hard and following all the plot threads.
Considering how shocked the Doctor was about the Projector thing, whatever happened to his Time-Space Visualiser?
I mean, half the story really happened just to convince the Doctor of the other half. If that makes any sense. In any case, I admire this story merely for existing, but do I have any intention of going back to the Time War? Not if you paid me.
Also, what's up with the jumbled TARDIS sound and intro theme? I thought the BBC counted Big Finish as canon.
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