It’s fair to say that The Trail of the White Worm was a set
up episode but as set-up episodes go it was pretty darn good. That episode was
all about the Master but in this final story of the series we see the return of
the Kraal who last appeared in the 1975 adventure ‘The Android Invasion’. The
revelation was somewhat ruined by the fact that they appear on the cover. This
story has a lot to live up to as it’s the end of a very strong series but sadly
for me it doesn’t hit the mark and falls somewhat short.
Quite quickly the Master seems to be losing his influence
whereas in Spindleton’s fortunes seem to change once the Kraals appear.
Spindleton has some hopes of what he gets out of this venture and it isn’t global
domination but just to have Britain all to himself before it stopped being the
empire leader that it was. I thought
that there were several interesting scenes that were dotted throughout this
story. The first was where Leela wants to put the Master inside the TARDIS
might seem a bit stupid given the past (and future these two have) but it is
done with honourable intentions.
We have a Doctor that has been copied which is similar to
what happened in ‘The Android Invasion’ where Sarah Jane Smith was the one
being copied. However he’s not the only one that gets copied as we also get a
false Master. I had a horrible fear that
this was going to descend into try to figure out who was who and this would get
in the way of the story but thankfully this confusion was kept to a minimum.
The worst thing about this story was the terrible cliff-hanger
is the wrong word. It’s like it was put in there by mistake as there is no real
build up and no real sense of drama and at the return of episode two really
confirmed this for me. I can’t help think that the story would have been better
served by either coming up with a stronger cliff-hanger or not having one at
all because I think that this was very weak way to end the episode.
There was a nice amount of humour in this story and most of
it was from Tom Baker. There was a nice running gag about the Brigadier. In my
review of TOTWW, I commented that knowing we weren’t going to get Nicholas
Courtney in this story was a sad thought and whilst that’s still the case I
liked how in the brief moment where they mentioned him they said that the
Brigadier was in Canada. Makes a change from Peru or on the moon I suppose. On
the subject of Tom Baker, I thought that like every story in this series he
puts in a solid performance. The story allows for some of his Doctor’s humour
to shine but I like the partnership between him and Louise Jameson as it seemed
very real in this story and Louise Jameson put in a solid performance and has
had a very good year as Leela. I thought that supporting cast was very good. I
enjoyed Geoffrey Beevers in both these episodes. I thought that in this one
there were several lines that he delivered where he seemed to be having a whale
of a time being the Master again. Whilst I don’t think that the Master was as
effective in this story as he was in the last one, I still think the Beevers is
a brilliant Master. I thought that Michael Cochrane was better in this story as
Spindleton’s motives were laid out which showed why we should be bothered about
his character.
Ultimately this is not as good as I thought it should be and
as good as the series demands its should be. It’s not the worst story of the
series but it’s a far cry from The Wrath of the Iceni. This entire series had a
lot of expectations from me and my main worry was having listened to the Tom
Baker stories that he had done for AudioGo and not being impressed with them at
all, I was worried that this was going to be the case in this series however
pretty quickly it wasn’t the case. Even the weakest stories haven’t been as bad
as those stories and it’s a testimant to Big Finish that have found six scripts
that have
managed to recreate the Fourth Doctor that we all want and more importantly
give Tom Baker the scripts that he ideally wants to help show a modern audience
what the Fourth Doctor is like.
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