The first story was written by Jacqueline Rayner and places the Doctor and Evelyn in unfamiliar surroundings. The story is simple and seems to focus more on the relationship between The Doctor and Evelyn. The Doctor and Evelyn have travelled to the home of Julius Cesar and his wife who is expecting their child, only to find that the child that has been born is a girl and not a boy thus kicking off the moral dilemma of whether they should change history back. For the first time The Doctor and Evelyn are at severe disagreement. For some reason Evelyn has decided that it is perfectly acceptable to change history because it might turn out better than what things are like currently. The fact that when she originally joined the Doctor was to research history seems to have escaped her momentarily. The moment when she fakes an ailment is the point where for the first time ever I disliked Eveylyn. The Doctor handles Evelyn’s change of stance with the typical Doctor way, just ignore it and try to plough on regardless. There is a great moment where the Doctor gets to Cesars’ home before Evelyn and you think that the Doctor has used the TARDIS but in fact he has just ran faster than Evelyn. In this episode Colin Baker is on good form with not much to do but uses the moment where he is trying to cook a romantic meal with the comedy timing it needed. Maggie Stables is also on good form despite her radical mood change of character, this form of difficultly is more suited to the other characters like Peri or Mel not Evelyn. Will Thorp, who had starred in the 2006 Doctor Who story ‘The Impossible Planet’ and ‘The Satan Pit’ played Gaius Julius Caesar superb in the character. Lucy Paterson was starring in this story as Aurelia and was very good playing the woman who wanted to get romantic with Caesar and got out of the mood when the Doctor and Evelyn appeared.
The second story was a Robert Shearman story and was called My Own Private Wolfgang. The first thing that striked me about this story was the theme tune in the greatest way ever and it was good how it led into the main story. This story is another one where The Doctor and Evelyn have already arrived and are in the middle of an adventure. The fact that there are eight characters in this story but only three actors (and that’s including Colin Baker and Maggie Stables) is what makes this stand out. John Sessions plays the remaining characters and deserves a lot of praise because he makes the four characters sound completely. The suicide attempt was truly shocking but done in a mildly comical way but the fact that he has been trying to commit suicide in different ways but still unsuccessful just added mystery to the plot. The Mozart that the Doctor and Evelyn encounter at first is a very sad character and you grow to feel sympathetic for the man. The revelation that there are different Mozart clones is typical Shearman. The plot that Mozart has created clones of himself to go back to prevent Mozart from dying when he was young so that he could carry on living and the futuristic Mozart never gets to live is quite a bizarre one (even for Shearman) why would someone want to cease existing and why would he create thousands of Mozarts. This story is very complicated and if it was a four parter then this story would work but it feels like Shearman has just crammed it all into 25 minutes and as a result it is a poor story. This doesn’t reflect in the actors performance. Colin Baker’s performance is slightly below par of the previous story but not by much, Maggie Stables is better in this than in 100BC and John Sessions if perhaps guest star of the year as he manages to sustain the quality of the different characters for the entire episode and that’s what prevents this story from failing completely. Definitely a poorer episode than 100BC.
The third story is written by Joseph Lidster and is called Bedtime Story. This story is set like a proper bedtime story where we are been told the story. The main point of the story seems to be that when the grandchild is born then grandfather dies, this is a good plot point as it made me curious as to what is causing this and why. The what is answered in this story but not really the why. Again like My Own Private Wolfgang, it seems to spend a long time setting it up and then it realises it only has a few minutes so it rushes to an ending and by the end of this story I didn’t really get a good understanding of the story. Everyone in the story was good, credit has to go to Frank Finlay who’s voice works very well in this story as Old Jacob. Will Thorp who was in 100BC is more suited to this story as he is required to speak and act as if he was in modern day Britain. I don’t know whether or not I blanked out at some point but the story didn’t really have a conclusion, as soon as The Doctor discovered what was happening it was the end of the episode.
The fourth and final story is written by Paul Cornell and is called the 100 Days of the Doctor and I think is the best story of the lot. The idea that the Doctor has 100 days to live and for once he doesn’t know how to fight against it. Colin Baker and Maggie Stables were in their best episode really because they were on their own (except that Nicholas Briggs appears as The Assassin but he wasn’t really a main character). This was the first time since Scherzo that a story just has the Doctor and the companion. I was thoroughly enthralled by this story because it was really an excuse for the 6th Doctor to spy on his previous and future incarnations. What Cornell did was not just have the Doctor with his TV companions only but with his Big Finish companions as well. The relationship between The Doctor and Evelyn is different in this story from past adventures and in a better way than 100BC.
These four stories were disappointing. One thing has been proved beyond doubt with this story and with Circular Time and with the virus strand that accompanied I.D, Exotron & The Wishing Beast is that you cant tell a good story in 25 minutes. You would need at least an hour to tell a good enough story. It wasn’t that the stories in 100 were poor its just that they all suffer from such as short amount of time to be able to tell this story. Colin Baker and Maggie Stables were good in these stories but ultimately that could help the overall release from been one of the poorest releases of 2007
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