Prisoners of Fate (2013)

The final instalment of this Fifth Doctor series. I was hoping that Jonathan Morris would be able to come close to matching the good work he did on ‘Protect and Survive’. I think that story is one of the best stories and was hoping that there would be something that this story to be a fine way to end the series. The story starts off with the impression that the story is going to be about Nyssa’s return to her time in ‘Cobwebs’ where she was looking for the cure to Richter’s Syndrome but in the world of Doctor Who some time has passed. However what seemed like a promising concept soon went downhill.

The problem with this story I felt was that I didn’t feel like it knew where it was going. Whereas with ‘The Lady of Mercia’ and ‘Eldrad Must Die!’, I could see what they were aiming for but with this I struggled with this. The first two episodes were good and I felt that the third was perfectly fine but it was the final episode which I thought was too long and seemed like padding. It needed someone to say whilst making this that they needed to lose about 10-15 minutes from the final episode.

Whereas in the previous adventures Nyssa wasn’t the centre of attention, this story manages to rectify this. I liked the family drama that came up in the first part of this story, it was good how Nyssa’s son tried to hide his face so that Nyssa wouldn’t know what he looked like. Sarah Sutton is the best thing in this story and I thought that Nyssa had the right amount of the old Nyssa and the mother Nyssa. Mark Strickson and Janet Fielding seem to suffer from background filler syndrome where they have to let Peter Davison and Sarah Sutton take centre stage.

Whilst this story has its moments, I have to say that I found Prisoners of Fate to be a bit of a let down. I think had it just been about Nyssa and her son then I could have dealt with it but this story is one of those rare adventures where I struggled to keep up with it and as I never give up on a release mid-way I just kept with it and whilst its not the worst release that Big Finish have ever done its not one that I will be in a rush to re-listen to.