The Settling

Whew. Where to begin?
I was looking forward to this audio, since it was written by Simon Guerrier. I've heard a lot of good things about him and what he's done with the Companion Chronicles. This story did have a framing device rather like the CCs--Ace and Hex re-telling their bits of the story while they wander around the TARDIS, recovering from their experiences. And what experiences they had! This is a really trying audio for everyone, especially Hex. Companions always have to learn about history the hard way, don't they? Hex goes into battle multiple times, faces Oliver Cromwell, gets beaten up by Cromwell and his men, is almost hanged...It's rather nice to see companions actually being affected by the events of a certain story after they've gone back into the TARDIS. I feel like we see the companions and the Doctor from an outsider's point of view; from the participants of the story's points of view. At the end, the Doctor and his companion(s) go off into the TARDIS,and most of the time we don't hear them discussing it in the console room. That story is never mentioned again. But if you were travelling around all the time, seeing so much death (as one does with the Doctor, unfortunately), you'd be affected. Of course you would. Not being affected is just bad writing.
Thoughts:

• "Actual midwife Seventh Doctor" is how one of my friends described this story. And oh, gosh, that was sweet. Seven taking care of people. Screw medical history, when there are hundreds of soldiers lying around dying, Seven whips out his sonic screwdriver and goes to work. 
• The part two cliffhangers are, for some reason, usually the best, and this one was no exception. No danger , no being trapped, no big reveal. Just that a baby's coming and the Doctor will have to deliver it. Fabulous. He does really well, too, and keeps his calm under the pressures of midwifery. 
• The moment where the Doctor finds Ace's body and thinks that she's dead is just heartrending. She does seem to recover quite quickly, though, where just few seconds before she was speaking so hoarsely. Like I said before, not enough time is given for companions to recover after being tortured or injured or put through a traumatic experience. 
• Well, I take that back. Big Finish usually handles that quite well. I mean, when you think about the events of Project Lazarus, it seems as if the Sixth Doctor just shrugs off being almost tortured to death. But then he puts himself and Evelyn down on a peaceful planet where they can get minimally involved. And then he gets a month of doing not much (at least not his usual running around), and why? Probably because he almost died at the Forge, and needs time to get his strength back.
• This was just a depressing audio in general. I mean, our audience-identification character Mary lived, but all the men at Wexford died, and god, those women and children whose boats sank under the weights? It's just sick to think about, all that carnage for no good reason.
• I loved the idea of lemon trees in the TARDIS library. Thank you, Big Finish, for showing us more of the interior of the TARDIS than the new series ever does. (And they even tried last series, too. Tsk tsk.)
• Big Finish does it again, taking a historical character no one likes (Queen Mary springs to mind) and making them so human with Oliver Cromwell. Doctor Who has a knack for going beyond the dry history books and giving us the nitty-gritty, realistic portrayals of people. I thank them for it.