Emperor of Eternity (2010)

The latest Emperor of Eternity is written by Nigel Robinson who previously wrote the Fourth Doctor story Stealers from Saiph. This is the second story to feature two companions though this story is Victoria’s story rather than hers and Jamie’s. It seems like Frazer Hines’ involvement in this story was just because he was around for the Sixth Doctor stories. The story took me a while to get into because I could quite work out what exactly it was suppose to be. I think because we have just come off an adventure where there were two companions it felt to me like it was trying to be something big.

The setting was quite a different one. We have had pure historical stories in the past such as The Transit of Venus but with this was perhaps more heavily involved with historical events that the Transit story. This story is set in 210BC China where the Doctor, Victoria and Jamie meet Qin Shi Huang who was the first emperor of China. The TARDIS collided with a meteor though we don’t actually get to hear that. We soon learn that people want to kill the emperor. The Emperor is after the Ninth Wonder which will guarantee immortality which will meet that the gods won’t punish him for what he’s done in this life. A lot is made of the monk, this is partly down to Jamie. His primitive mind jumps to the wrong conclusions. At one point I thought he might have been an alien or even the Meddling Monk. Its then a bit of a surprise then when it turns out that the monk is the real emperor and he wanted to see what people thought of him. It did annoy me slightly when at the end he decided that he didn’t want immortality. What was the point of the story? It was a bit of a weird end and after all the work that had been done to set up the story I thought the conclusion was weak.

The visual images that are used in this story are quite dark in tone. The opening bit where all the villagers have been killed because they saw the meteorite which was deflected by the TARDIS was quite a sad moment. It was made even sadder when Victoria felt responsible for their deaths. Debroah Watling does a reasonably good job however the main problem that there is in this story is there are way too many characters. This isn’t helped by Watling not really doing much to make the characters sound different. That said I think the excessive number of characters was more down to Nigel Robinson than Debroah Watling. Frazer Hines’s performance does deserve a mention. Even though most of his work was in the first episode his contribution was needed and it meant that there was one voice that Watling didn’t have to do. On a production note, I felt that the tracks were way too long. They were normally about 10 minutes long whereas a normal track length would be 3 or 4 minutes long. If I fell asleep during a story then I know I could start at the beginning of a track and only have to listen through a short period before getting back to where I was. A slightly positive point is that I thought the music was really good and at time was almost on par with TV Who.

Whilst this story did take a bit longer to get going than most Companion Chronicles, I did feel this was a better offering than Stealers from Saiph. The use of Frazer Hines was an added bonus and even though the story could have done with fewer characters it was still a fine adventure. Not the best Second Doctor story but worthy of a listen especially if you’re a fan of Chinese history or of historical Doctor Who stories.

The Time Monster (1972)

The Time Monster is the final story of Season 9 and on the whole the series has been a bit of a disappointment. Apart from The Sea Devils the stories haven’t quite matched up with the previous series. This story is a six parter and its vital to make sure that there is enough going on to keep the plot going for that long. Robert Slomon co-wrote this with series producer Barry Letts though due to regulations at the time only Sloman got the credit.

As with most stories featuring the Master, he is pretending to be a high ranking individual who is trying to take over the world. In this he is Professor Thascalos who is using the resources at the Newton Research Unit at Cambridge University to coduct time experiments. Now for me this is a good premise for a story but it starts to go downhill when it brings all the Atlantis drivel into it. True all the stuff initially set on Atlantis does have a very nice film quality to it which makes it look different to the static looking studio filming but that’s not really enough to get through it. The set designs are also something to be amased at. The sets of Atlantis looked like that a lot of money have been spent on them. This helps create the right impression but unfortunately the pacing of the story at this part of the story is where I began to lose interest.

The characters of Ruth Ingram and Stuart Hyde are of their time. Ruth is a feminist and doesn’t like it when she is talked down to. It gets mentioned at the beginning but its not until she meets opposition from Benton and Stuart in Episode 4 that it surfaces again. Nicholas Courtney, Richard Franklin and Ian Leveine are on usual comedic form. Jon Pertwee and Katy Manning are brilliant together and their relationship shows that they care for each other both as the Doctor and Jo and as Jon and Katy.

The Time Monster is penultimate appearance of Roger Delgado who is the best of the actors to have played the Master. Delgado’s version is more straight faced and enjoyable to watch than what we get with Anthony Ainley or John Simm. Delgado is at his finest in this episode using all the things that makes him so damn good as well as a trick in pretending to be the Brigadier. He hypnotises people and like in The Sea Devil he manages to manipulate the most senior person to his will.

There were some things that didn’t quite work. In a 21st Century world the name TOMTIT is only going to creates giggles. But they cant have known that in 1972. The other thing that doesn’t work is Kronos. This bird like figure is quite clearly a man in a white suit. Normally this sort of thing can be defended but this time it cant be. It just looks bad and slightly ruins all the hard work the writers and actors have put into making this work.

When it had all finished I think that this story wasn’t as good as it could have been. There were some nice images and some good ideas with very well made sets but all the stuff with Atlantis was unnecessary. Its not the worst story of Season 9 but its not the best end that it could have been.

Paradise 5 (2010)

2010 TOMS TARDIS AWARD WINNER

• Best Lost Story 

Now being over half way of the Lost Stories series it’s fairly easy to know what to expect with these stories. However the last story ‘The Hollows of Time’ was an appealing adventure. Totally devoid of anything enjoyable I would rather sit through Underworld that Hollows. I wasn’t aware of PJ Hammond before I saw his episode of Torchwood in 2006 and when his second story From Out of the Rain aired in 2008 I became a fan of his and when I saw that his story was going to form part of the series I became tremendously excited. Hammond being the busy guy that he is was too busy to be involved with the re-writes and so it was given to Andy Lane to take responsibility for this story. A few things were changed to make this work for radio. The first being that in the original Paradise 5, the original P5 was suppose to take place during the The Trial of a Timelord series and so there was quite a fair bit with the Inquisitor and the Valeyard but Big Finish felt that this wasn’t really relevant and also added to the budget. Another change was that in the original it had Mel as the companion not Peri.

The story is set on the holiday resort called Paradise 5 where the Doctor and Peri are trying to meet up with the Doctor’s old friend Professor Albrecht Thompson. Something is going on and its down to the Doctor (as usual) to find out what. Despite this it is Peri that is given a lot to do in this story and drives the plot forward. The thing that I am really impressed with about this story is how it mixes drama with dark humour. The cherubs sound like Gremlins but are nicer. For me they are on par with those little marshmallow looking things from Partners in Crime (2008 TV). The big shock came for me when it was revealed that Professor Albrecht who the Doctor was looking for was in fact a Cherub. A problem that I have is how things were tied up. I thought that the fact that Gabriel and Michael were just in it for money seemed to be a slight cop-out. I was expecting them to have their soles owned by the Elohim but this wasn’t the case. This made their eccentricity that less tolerable.

I think that the Elohim were well realised in this story and were a genuine threat throughout this adventure. Their purpose in the story was believable. The idea that there is a war between angels and demons and that people on Paradise 5 are being used to help fight this battle isn’t that dissimilar to certain plots in other sci-fi but thanks to the music and the direction of Barnaby Edwards it helps add to the dark tone that the story has. Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant both seem to be enjoying this story and in particular for Baker it was nice to see a more Big Finish type of Doctor. Alex MacQueen was probably for me the best of the guest stars. I’ve seen him in shows like Holby City and The Thick of It and thought that his portrayal of Gabriel was perfect for the story. The relationship that Gabriel had with Michael made suggestions that they may have been more that just friends.

PJ Hammond’s story is a good one but credit must also go to Andy Lane. Having written the best story of 2010 (so far – March) it was a good idea to get Lane to work on this and episode one is all of Lane’s work and to be honest, I wouldn’t have guessed because it all blended in together. After a poor Hollows of Time and a disappointing Leviathan it was nice to have Paradise 5 bring this series back to good form.

The Architects of History (2010)

After two stories that have been enjoyable it was important that this story ends this series of in style. After the great cliffhanger in Survival of the Fittest I was really looking forward to this story which just from the cover looked like it was going to be something special. Written by Steve Lyons (Toms Tardis Award Winner in 2007 for Best Writer) has been given the task of finding an ending that will satisfy everyone (or at least the majority). Its 2044 and Klein arrives on a Moonbase (some 30 years before the Cybermen arrive) and at the same time the base becomes involved in an invasion by shark looking creatures called the Selachians.

Klein has been going back to try and change history to how she wants it but every time she does this she is effecting another reality and this is causing problems with all the time strands. What she has managed to do is create a golden age where Fascism is running wild. It takes a while to get things straight in my mind as to what was going on in terms of timelines. The moment where the interior of the TARDIS has disappeared reminded me of the 2005 story Fathers Day. It does have quite a dramatic weight to what is going on because it basically strands Klein on the Moon where she doesn’t really want to be.

The Doctor that we have in this story is apparently not the same one that we had in Survival of the Fittest. He has appeared in a cell at the beginning of the story which is quite confusing. But to be honest in Klein’s story we learnt that the Eighth Doctor was always going to be Paul McGann no matter what reality they are in. There are quite a few things that are a bit strange. The first is that the Doctor went back in time to bring the Selachians to the Moonbase. I think that the Doctor’s plan was brilliant. There was a lot of planning that seemed to have gone into it. He gave them the things they needed to mount an invasion. Another thing that we learn in that Rachel Cooper has become a companion to the Seventh Doctor but mysteriously does remember her. The character of Cooper was a very strong character and well played. She has had adventures that we are not aware of yet the feeling that I got was that she has had countless adventures. It was a really sad moment when the Doctor left without her as the Doctor had abandoned her.

Lenora Crichlow is the big name in this story joining an elite group of actors who have appeared on both TV and audio Doctor Who. Crichlow appeared in the 2007 story Gridlock and has recently appeared in the BBC3 comedy Being Human as well as the BBC1 drama Material Girl. She gives the character a sort of normality whilst having some grit and determination about her. She would be a good addition to Doctor Who on a more permanent basis. Sylvester McCoy is very good in this story but does seem slightly in the background at times. He is held prisoner on the base and its only towards the end that he really seems to be involved more in the action. Tracey Childs is brilliant in this story as she has been in all three adventures. I think that she challenges the Doctor in ways that no other companion has done before. There were some moments in this story that really showed what a great actress Childs is. She manages to play a hard nosed Nazi and also a nice normal person at the end with equal enthusiasm. There were other characters that were very good in this story. Major Richter was quite an unpleasant character. Almost like Nyder from Genesis of the Daleks. Played by Jamie Parker, this character was one that would do whatever it takes to survive and that would involve killing people.

The Selachians are a wonderful creation. Admittedly they might look a bit silly on TV but I think that they would be a match for the Daleks. They sound really distinctive, quite like the Viyrans. Their willingness to listen to people reminded me of the Daleks and when the Selachians threatened to kill six people every half hour I thought even the Daleks wouldn’t be that brutal. I think that like the Viyrans they have potential and future stories would be good to know more about them because not enough was known about them. They have apparently been used in novels but seen as I have an allergic reaction to reading novels I don’t really know about them. The story is all about the Doctor’s actions. His actions in getting Klein trying to change things back to how they should be led to resentment on Klein’s part.

The destruction of the Moonbase effectively destroys the Galactic Reich which giving the amount of messing about that Klein did with the timelines was ineffivitable. But the ending is like Survival of the Fittest it’s the last five minutes or so that is what I will remember. The thing that I have really enjoyed over the last three stories are the scenes that the Doctor and Klein have had where they discuss the moralities of changing history have been good and they been quite thought provoking which is quite unusual for a Doctor Who story. The Doctor isn’t the sort that will murder someone so the idea that Klein turns up at UNIT and its not made clear whether her memory has been wiped and she has been placed on Earth to live out a life without knowing what she knew before or whether she is in a part of the TARDIS where this reality has been created outside of time. Normally this sort of confusion would be irritating to me however I think whichever version it is I think that to kill her would have been a waste of time in bringing her back and would have betrayed the Doctor’s core morals.

The Architects of History is a fitting end to the series. Steve Lyons has done a brilliant job in creating characters and a setting that works very well on radio. John Ainsworth should also be praised for directing a story that had a lot of pace and kept me enthralled from start to finish. Elizabeth Klein has been used brilliantly in this series and whilst the ending was the right one it does mean that we probably wont be treated to further Klein stories in the future. Though we might be able to have a Klein Companion Chronicle.

Oh, and as this story shows. Don’t live or work on the Moon as it will be blown up or invaded by the Cybermen or even abandoned due to the Dalek Invasion of Earth 2150.

Freakshow

When Ringpullworld was first released in November 2009, I was a little disappointed with the release because it just didn’t really click for me. I thought that the strange way it was structured was not what should be. This story follows on from the 2009 free Companion Chronicle story The Mists of Time. Mark Strickson appears in his second story but according to the Doctor Who Magazine it was the first to be recorded. This story is set after Terminus whilst the Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Turlough are running from the Black Guardian.

Arrive Buzzard Creek in Arizona in 1905. Turlough leaves the TARDIS after he gets sick of Tegan. He comes across the town and its not long there after before he comes across a fairground and in it there is a figure called Mr Winklemeyer. There is something sinister about Winklemeyer. Who is a Vomar and is on Earth to promulgate his species. He is using the elixir of life and is going to use the people of Buzzard Creek to get what he wants. The elixir contains micro organisms to together will make a Vomar. Whilst inside the stomach of their host they basically eat their way out. Turlough befriends a creature called The Wild Man is a creature that Winklemeyer uses in the shows. His name is actually Berman Lamizine (guessing about the spelling) and is a Krolok (again guessing with the spelling). Apparently he is been held there against his will which is quite similar to some of the horrible animal shows around the world.

The story in the second half is about the smart implants and how to override them. It becomes a game to try and outsmart Winklemeyer but eventually he manages it with Winklemeyer giving up. The Doctor’s plan to introduce an anti-elixir to kill of the spawn and prevent the people of Buzzard Creek might seem like murder but then the argument could be made that to allow the humans to die would be murder. It ended with the Doctor taking all the creatures of Winklemeyer’s show back to where they belong and all’s well that ends well.

Mark Strickson was very good in this story and in fact was better than in Ringpullworld. I think because he didn’t have to stop every five seconds to deal with the other character he was allowed in this story to just get on with it. His Peter Davison impression wasn’t great and neither was his Tegan voice but to be honest that’s not a major issue for me. The character of Winklemeyer wasn’t quite what we normally get in Doctor Who. I didn’t think that his plan to try and recreate his species by using the citizens of Blizzard Creek was totally wrong. I didn’t get the feeling that he was in the group of evil people like Mavic Chen, Tobias Vaughn or even Davros. I did enjoy Toby Longworth’s performance and felt that it was an entertaining performance. He has a wide range of voices and Longworth manages to do something unique in a Big Finish play. That is to do an American voice without me cringing with embarrassment. I thought that the Berman character was a very nice character. He sounded friendly and it was (if not inevitable) that he was going to die. His death was dealt with in just the right way.

There is a slight issue that I have with this story and it’s a tiny bit of continuity. The story is a testimony presumably for the Galactic Authority. Though he mentions that he is doing a testimony it is never mentioned again. I think that this may have been a mistake by someone actually editing this.

Mark Morris has written a very sharp and enjoyable story. One of the things that I wrote when reviewing The Mists of Time is that I wouldn’t grumble paying for it. With Freakshow I would definitely have no problem paying for this.

The Suffering (2010)

2010 TOMS TARDIS AWARD WINNER

• Best Companion Chronicle

The Suffering marks a break from the norm in the Companion Chronicle series. The 27th release sees two companions not one to tell of their story with the Doctor. Both Vicki and Steven have done a story before. Maureen O’Brien did the very first story Frostfire in 2007 and Peter Purves did Mother Russia in 2008. The fact that there are two companions sharing the stage means that the story will have to be structured differently. Thankfully this story is in the safe hands of Jacqueline Rayner who wrote the superb story The Transit of Venus. Now I listen to this after finishing The Hollows of Time which I though was dreadful and so needed this story to pick my spirits up.

The story is told in two parts with Steven telling the first part and Vicki telling her part in the second half. Steven’s story is probably the more drama driven of the two. With Vicki out of it because of the influences of the skull that they stumble across. There are several moments where Steven’s in danger. Also as he is with the Doctor it gives him the chance to do a Hartnell impression which he doesn’t do that badly actually, much better than in Mother Russia. Steven’s story doesn’t really have much to do with the suffragette stuff and this means that his story is more of a character development piece. I think that for me I found this to be more Doctor Who than Vicki’s story. There was more science fiction than history and that meant the story was slightly stronger as a result.

Vicki’s story is where the suffragette story came into its own. The Suffragette Movement is an important part of history and its woven very well into the story and it tied in very well with the alien being who was a suffragette on her own planet. On her planet the men were rulers and treated women merely as baby carriers. This led the women to try and overthrow the men but what they did with her was cut off her head and throws it into space. This head landed on Earth and was only woken up when Vicki arrived on Earth. What I quite liked was how Vicki’s role in the TARDIS was put under the microscope. The way that Vicki dealt with any doubt was well handled and this part was enjoyable for reasons different to what Steven’s story was.

The Suffragette movement was given quite a lot of room and it shows what they were fighting for and it’s an interesting history lesson to younger listeners who might find it hard to believe that there was a time when women weren’t allowed to vote and men’s opinion of women were very poor indeed. There were a few instances which I thought were going a bit too far in terms of necessity. The first being the line about someone being pushed down some stairs and only the fact they screamed showed that she had survived was perhaps a bit too grim for a family orientated release. The second was the near three minute crossover of Purves and O’Brien reliving some of the torturous things that they would have endured. Personally this is what ruined it for me as whilst I thought it was important to be honest to what the suffragettes had to fight against I think it could have be toned down a tad.

Maureen O’Brien and Peter Purves were excellent. Their voices are very suited to radio despite not really sounding much like they did back in the 1960’s which is slightly understandable. They do however show a lot of enthusiasm and in the interviews at the end of the each part seem delighted with the idea of coming back to do more. Hopefully it won’t be too long before they are able to do so. However just on their own instead of together.

Overall whilst I did enjoy this I didn’t think it was Rayner’s finest offering. I just found that at times it did drag and could have been made slightly shorter. Really it was Vicki’s story and everything that happened in her part was more relevant to the theme of the story than Steven’s. Ultimately that is where the problem with this release. There was no need for two companions and it sort of diluted the story. That said the scenes between Vicki and Steven were funny and I think that it’s a better story than the previous CC story.

The Hollows of Time (2009)

The fourth part of this first collection of Lost Stories sees the Doctor encounter a creature that like the Celestial Toymaker in The Nightmare Fair that it had faced in the classic series. The Tractators first appeared alongside Peter Davison in Frontios (1984) and to be honest I wasn’t that fussed about their return. Ok they looked a bit odd but seriously there must be more interesting creatures to bring back than the ‘Sand Monsters’. This version as well as the intended version were both written by former script editor Christopher H Bidmead who wrote the 2007 play Renaissance of the Daleks. In that story he wanted ‘From an idea by’ line put about his name and that was because changes had been made to the story that he felt he couldn’t put his name to. In other words if it were rubbish (like it was) then he couldn’t shoulder much of the blame, if only he had done the same for this story.

The story sees the Doctor and Peri in the TARDIS reliving their past adventure. However they can’t quite remember what happened (though they seem to conveniently be able to tell the story). Where they pop to the village of Hollowdean to see Reverend ‘Foxy’ Foxwell. In a series of Lost style flashbacks the story unfolds at a ridiculously slow pace. There are many problems with this story and some are out of the hands of Bidmead and Big Finish. The main one is that the Master was suppose to be included in this story however Cardiff said that Big Finish couldn’t use the Master so the figure of Professor Stream is left in the air (Stream is an anagram of Master). Another problem is that the story is very dull. There’s nothing that I could say makes this story stand out for me. What exactly was the point of having the Tractators in this story? They serve nothing new to the plot and only add to a growing list of one time monsters that Big Finish have bought back however this time to a less than successful point. Another problem is that with the lack of the Master there was a big plot problem which isn’t resolved satisfactory. The Professor Stream was quite interesting in many ways but it would have been nicer to know more about him and why he was in Hollowdean.

The characters as well were very flawed indeed. Simon was a total irritation from start to finish. The character of Reverend Foxwell started off well but soon became tiresome and repetitive. Steel Specs and Jane were two characters that lacked originality and both deserved to be written out as quickly as they were. Unfortunately Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant suffer through a stagnant story that doesn’t allow them to be what they have become in previous lost stories.

In the interview extras between parts 2 and 3 Colin Baker says something that sums up this story for me when he said he didn’t understand the complexities of the story and what I want to know is how are we suppose to know what the hell is going on when the actors don’t know. Christopher H Bidmead seems to be hell bent on installing too much science into his stories. If I want to be bowled over with science terms then I will read a science book. What I want from a Doctor Who drama is 10% of science and 90% of drama.

Unfortunately this story is the worst story that Big Finish has produced for quite sometime. I didn’t really understand Brotherhood of the Daleks (2008) but if I had to listen to Hollows of Time or Brotherhood then I would go for Brotherhood partly because there was a curious element whereas with Hollows there is just nothing engaging about it at all.

Survival of the Fittest (2010)

Following on from the fantastic A Thousand Tiny Wings we have a very different story. For the first time since The Minds Eye back in November 2007 we are treated to a three plus one story. The difference in this case is that the first episode is the single story and the next three episodes form the main story which is the opposite of how it has been in the past. The first episode was called Klein’s Story and as you would imagine it’s about Elizabeth Klein.

It’s about what happened to Klein when she went travelling in the TARDIS during the events of Colditz. It’s a curious tale where Klein ends up in 1962 Cambridge where in this story Ace has been executed, Hitler has survived (he dies in 1961) and the Doctor gets shot in Colditz in 1955. During these events the Doctor regenerates into Paul McGann’s Doctor. This is where the story gets weird as McGann’s Doctor manipulates Klein into changing history back to what it should be. This was because Laser technology had been discovered sooner than it should have been. This leads to Nuclear weapons been developed and major cities being destroyed like New York and means that the Third Reich win the war. This story moves at a fast pace which makes time for Klein to get intimately involved with Major Jonas Faber. As if this episode needed anything else to make it stand out then it has Paul McGann as the guest star. He is obviously playing the Eighth Doctor who is pretending to be someone else to hide the fact that his earlier incarnation might hear this story. McGann plays Johan Schmidt who is someone who makes Klein curious about what he knows and uses her ambition to get her to change history.

The character of Faber is someone who has uneasy feelings about Schmidt/Doctor but is ignored by Klein who was blind sighted by the possibility of success. Rupert Wickham plays the role of Faber brilliantly. The tale does well to highlight that Klein is more ambitious than evil. Whilst Nazi’s are terrible people with terrible beliefs there is a fine line that Big Finish has to walk on. It’s a good story that serves no other purpose than to help give Klein a back story that she desperately needed. Not much is known about Klein apart from what we know so a bit more knowledge about her is always going to be appreciated. John Ainsworth and Lee Mansfield are responsible for this story which is short snappy and more importantly is an intriguing tale.

As we progress into Survival of the Fittest. A three part story which sees the Doctor and Klein arrive on a planet which is being threatened by two humans who are trying to capture a particular source that helps the Vrill grow to the size they are. The story does take quite a long time to get started but once it does we have a setting which sees the Vrill on the verge of extinction. I quite liked how the idea that the TARDIS can translate alien languages into English that little bit further with the idea of scents actually saying something.

The characters were all good enough. I particularly found Steffan (Adrian Bower) to be a typically nasty character. It initially looks like he is trying to lay the groundwork for colonisation but then his true motives came out. I recognised Bower’s voice because he was in the Channel 4 drama Teachers. His character wasn’t the most original one but Bower played it just right and made it a relatively normal character. However it was Klein that stood out for me but not necersarily in the way that I would have expected. Sylvester McCoy is on usual good form, he seems to enjoy having debates/arguments with Klein and this is perhaps the most passionate that we have seen from McCoy in quite sometime. The Klein we get in this story isn’t quite what I am use to. For part of it she was the traditional companion and concerned with the future of the Vrill and then later on she was back to her Nazi self. I think at times it was quite confusing and also frustrating. It was quite interesting listening to Klein and seeing her trying to support the Vrill. Tracey Childs is really got into her stride in the latter half of the story which saw Klein realise that the GO Police were essentially fascists and this seemed to spur Klein on and once she discovered the TARDIS key she was off and away quicker than you could say ‘Ace would never have done that!’. The last five minutes were the best part of the story. Once Klein had the key she basically turned the Vrill against the Doctor and Steffan and that’s where the whole thing really got interesting because with the TARDIS gone the thing that I wanted to know was how the Doctor was going to get off the planet then there was the death of Steffan which came as quite a shock. What we are left with at the end of this story is the Doctor without his TARDIS with a Nazi scientist roaming around in time and space free to pursue her ambitions and that sets up the final story of this series brilliantly.

There are problems with this story the first is how the four episodes are laid out. Now traditionally the first three episodes would be at the beginning and so the extras would come between the second and third episode where the story had got going a bit but in this instance we would get the first episode and then have to stop to listen to the extras. Now I know that you’re reading this and thinking that I could just skip the extras until the end but I haven’t done it before and I don’t see why I should start now. But the real issue that I have was with the story itself. I don’t think it’s a bad story just average and with the potential of this series it’s seems wrong that we have an average adventure. Like The Angel of Scutari in the last Seventh Doctor series, this story will unfortunately be seen as the weakest story of the series.