M053 - The Creed of the Kromon

Continuing in the Divergent Universe, the Doctor and Charley find themselves in a kingdom ruled by the Kromon, giant insect creatures who have enslaved the humanoids. They capture Charley with plans to turn her into a new queen. The Doctor must save her by bartering his knowledge of inter-spacial travel.

Other than the introduction of a new recurring companion, C'Rizz, this story is creepy and a little over the top. Perhaps it's just my lack of interest in bugs and all things disgusting, but the whole arc of Charley being genetically and psychically tortured into a new bug queen was unappealing. C'Rizz seems like a nice enough guy to add to the mix, but when the three of them left the Kromon behind to continue their search for the TARDIS, I was happy to go with them.

M041 - Nekromanteia

A curious combination of witches and corrupt corporations feels like two Doctor Who tales being unwillingly brought together. In one, a tale of religious belief and pagan-style ceremony, Erimem and Peri are threatened by witches. In the other, a tale involving a corporate construction project headed by a cartoonishly evil CEO, the Doctor faces his own mortality (sort of) and finds a powerful and dangerous energy source.

The evil corporation stuff is more interesting than the crazy witches, so the play's good bits are weighted down by the bad, and the result is mediocre. Once again the 5th Doctor is not given the best material to work with and comes off looking the worse for it.

M037 - The Sandman

Starting with a foreboding scene about the nightmarish "Sandman" character, a species-wide boogeyman, the story of an alien world haunted by a collective memory quickly reveals that the source of the nightmare is the Doctor himself.

Lacking some of the concrete villainy that can be required to keep an audio story engaging, the tale of how the Doctor became a millenia-old nightmare to an alien race flounders a bit. The episode has a highlight in the explanation for Colin Baker's technicolor coat, but is otherwise bland.

M036 - The Rapture

A hot new European nightclub called The Rapture draws the Doctor's attention when he and Ace come to Ibetha to relax after their ordeal in Colditz. An angelic DJ and his brother seem to have slipped mind control into the club music. And, at the same time, a mysterious young man has set his sights on Ace for unknown purposes.

Other than a clever introduction via radio personality to the techno remix of the Doctor Who theme music, the episode relies mostly on Ace and her developing storyline while remaining very Earth-bound.

M031 - Embrace the Darkness

For a story involving blinded crewmembers of a ship on a planet with no sun, this episode had a lot of silence. Blindness is logical audio drama disability since it just gives a natural excuse for the characters to have things described, but when it is followed up by stretches of mysterious noises and ominous movements it loses some of its narrative value.

The reasons behind the blindness, and for the lack of a sun, are slowly revealed. In the meantime we are introduced to a pair of blinded space travellers who fit the unfortunate sci-fi horror movie mould of the depressed and the irrational. Nether are particularly good archetypes, which is why they are usually killed off in the middle. No so in this case, but by the end the story has resolved in a satisfying way and put forward at least a little bit of thoughtful philosophy, albeit nothing as deep as some Eighth Doctor stories have.

M026 - Primeval

I don't dislike Peter Davison. In fact, in the Children in Need special "Time Crash," I liked him quite a bit. Something about the cocky charm and the celery stick. But why are his monthly episodes so bland?

The Doctor and Nyssa are on ancient Traken, Nyssa's lost homeworld, and she is going to die if the Doctor can figure out what's going on. By the end, I wasn't sure he had. I find the Doctor stories where psychic powers play a heavy part are some of the weakest. Perhaps its because of the undefined way those powers always end up working; the rules never seem firm, and so they feel like a constant cheat in the narrative.

A grandstanding villain and the Doctor unexpectedly getting caught off guard weren't enough to make this a recommendable two hours.

M023 - Project Twilight

Considering the title, this episode took quite a while to make its blood-sucking reveal. The result is a modern-day London tale about a backstreet casino that fronts for medical experiments by genetically-engineered vampires. Thankfully it is more Daybreakers than Twilight, with pseudo-science explanations instead of a sparkle-based mythology, but the fact it is a vampire story is enough for me to lose interest.

The idea that vampires were actually made in a Captain America-style super soldier experiment during the First World War was interesting, and a variety of built-in weaknesses as a precaution seemed promising, but by the end of the episode the Doctor and Evelyn have had very little to do and the story wraps up in a short and disappointing finale.

M021 - Dust Breeding

This episode, which starts quite well, sees the 7th Doctor and Ace travel to a time just before the famous painting "The Scream" by Edvard Munch is about to disappear. The Doctor explains that he has been stocking his impressive TARDIS gallery with famous works, which he "saves" just before they are about to be lost anyway: a philosophy Ace quite rightly makes fun of the Doctor for believing. Funnily enough this episode was created just a few years before Munch's painting really was stolen (although it was recovered two years later).

After they arrive on Duchamp 331, the Doctor and Ace get caught up in the mystery of the barren dust world, which reveals a plot by the Master to take control of an ancient superweapon that has been trapped inside the painting.

It's unfortunate that the Master is involved in what is another overly-complicated and unclear story. The pseudo-science that is such an important part of Doctor Who is weakly explained and generally doesn't mesh the different elements of the Master, the superweapon, and the painting. Secondary characters are forgettable and (in the case of one accent) rather annoying. And the conclusion is nothing clever.

Overall, a skippable episode.