The Doctor, Zoe and Jamie land on a world that is dying. The
story is called The Dying Light so it was obvious that the world wasn’t going
to have much of a future.
In the early stages of the story, there was mention of ‘the abbot’
which had the same feeling of when people use to talk about the Master and you
knew who they were talking about and it’s the same here. We know that they are
talking about Quadrigger Stoyn. When Terry Molloy does make his appearance in
this story it’s in a wonderfully dramatic sense as he starts to relay the
information about Jamie and Zoe with a metallic thump after every sentence. I
like the idea that he has created black holes to try and capture the Doctor.
There are things that I like about this story and that’s
principally the performers in this. I think that Terry Molloy is an under-rated
actor and its nice when he’s given something other that Davros to do. Stoyn is
very bitter and angry in this and gets to do what he does really well. Both
Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury are very good. It’s always worth listening to a
second Doctor story because it will usually have Frazer Hines and he does a
fine Troughton impression. Both Hines and Padbury are very good with this
story.
As much as I want to like this, I just cant say that I loved
it. I think that there are things to like so its not a terrible story by any
stretch of the imagination and I dare say that if I listen to this in the
future then I will think differently of this but at this moment in time I think
that it suffers from following in the footsteps of the brilliant ‘The
Beginning’. Hopefully we will get more stories from Wallace in the future
because he should be allowed to write for the main range.