Jenny - The Doctor's Daughter, Series 1

An oft-asked question on Doctor Who fan forums is ‘what happened to Jenny after the events of The Doctor's Daughter?'. If anything, then, the surprise is that it took Big Finish so long to come up with an answer, in the form of this collection of four hour-long episodes. Some of the stories are good, and others merely middling, but if what you want is a chirpy, kick-ass female version of the Tenth Doctor, then this is absolutely for you.

• Stolen Goods – The first story doesn't follow on directly from the end of the TV episode, although it's implied to take place not long after it. It sees Jenny meet Garundel, an amphibian-like alien villain who once appeared in a 7th Doctor audio. That was set around 5,000 years before this, but there's no attempt to explain the discrepancy, so we're probably not supposed to notice it. Leaving that minor point aside, the tone of the story feels upbeat, as if the stars are finding it all a bit too much fun to take seriously. Indeed, given Garundel ‘s camp American accent, this might be intended as a bit of a comedy, although, if so, it's not a particularly successful one. It also, of course, has to set up the plot arc for the box set, with Jenny meeting a mysterious young man – who goes on to take the ‘companion' role, but is still a bit of a blank at this point – and being chased by a killer cyborg. This may all be going somewhere, but the episode taken on its own merit doesn't gel yet. 3 stars.

• Prisoner of the Ood – The second story is the strongest to my mind, although it too starts out with a light tone that's at odds with the subject matter. Having acquired the secrets of time travel (something of a necessity in a DW spin-off like this), Jenny arrives in a suburban street on present-day Earth and soon discovers that it's sealed off from the outside world. As the title indicates, the Ood feature as the ‘monster' in this one, although their behaviour suggests that they are being controlled by a sinister psychic force, as was the case in their original TV appearance. Unravelling what that might be is the central mystery here, and the tension does eventually ratchet up as the death toll starts to mount. The result is a decent monster story, featuring iconic aliens from the modern show. 4 stars.

• Neon Reign – Jenny and Noah arrive on a colony planet where women do all the work and men laze about doing drugs all day. That aside, the world as described has a distinctly Chinese feel to it (Jenny is apparently the only blonde on the planet), which makes a change from everything being European... but, while the actors are East Asian, the writer isn't and it may play too heavily on the stereotypes. Where the previous story is a base-under-siege, here we're in the revolution-against-a-corrupt regime trope that was, perhaps more common in the classic TV show than in the modern one. We get to see a bit more of Noah, but the focus remains on Jenny, clearly falling into the Doctor role but more willing to punch people than he has typically been. It's explicitly feminist, where the other stories in the collection are more implicitly so, and one could argue that it's all a bit of a blunt tool, but it's a decent example of its type. 4 stars.

• Zero Space – In the final story, Jenny arrives at a space station where she finally has a chance to work out who or what Noah is. We, the listeners, unfortunately don't get to learn the answer to that, and the hints that have been dropped so far don't go anywhere – something that might have been less of an issue had there been any sign of a sequel to this volume, which, three years on, there isn't yet. This soon turns into another base-under-siege as the villain for the arc turns up and starts chasing the heroes. There are some speeches about individuality, drawing on Jenny's own origin as a clone of the Doctor, and a number of other typical tropes of the TV series, but nothing that really marks this story out as special. 3.5 stars.