January 20, 2011

The Necropolis Express (2011)

The Necropolis Express is the follow up to the great first story. The story takes place just after Litefoot and Sanders and so the sadness of Ellie’s death is clear. In fact the story starts off with quite a grizzly idea. Jago and Litefoot are on the train so that they can put Ellie out of her misery and stop her becoming a vampire. The story is written by Mark Morris who is a writer I like and we always get a good story with him. His previous credits include Plague of the Daleks and Freakshow.

The story sees the train that Jago and Litefoot were travelling on arrive at a church which instantly sends out alarm bells (figuratively). It was clear it wasn’t going to be plain sailing when they set off on an unofficial train and bribing the station master to get on it. When they arrive at the church there is no-one there to great them. It does raise one question. Who was driving the train and why didn’t they get involved in the story? The only person there is a figure who turns out to be Doctor Sibelius Crow who use to be friends with Litefoot but got struck off for doing things that he shouldn’t be. The setting helps a lot with this story. As there is a lab underneath the church along with tunnels it helps add to the unknown and the creppy setting gets turned up to 11.

Crow had a secret and it was he was trying to fend off death but what he had created were monsters. What was surprising was that he wasn’t working on his own and in fact it was Gabriel Sanders that he was in cahoots with. The fact that Sanders was behind what was going on in the lab proves that he will feature more in the remainding stories. When Crow thought that Litefoot was making up Sanders’ death up, I thought that Sanders was going to turn up but alas he didn’t.

Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter are on superb form as usual but I think that the main star of the story was Vernon Dobtcheff (previously a scientist in The War Games) is very good and is a good baddie. The character was very similar to Litefoot in that he is quite posh and is clearly is a very smart man (even though his motives are stupid). The relatively small cast worked surprisingly well and meant that there was more time for longer scenes between the three main actors and some great speeches. The Necropolis Express is an enjoyable story which manages to maintain the quality from the first story. In the previous series, I thought that the second story wasn’t as good as the first but in this series I cant say that. I think that the idea of a story arc is a good one and will benefit this series. The Necropolis Express is a story that is just as good as a single story as it is fitting into the series. Oh and the title is great and has a lovely explanation from Benjamin.

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