M045 - Project Lazarus

When I saw that this episode was a multi-Doctor story I was quite excited. I thought I was going to have to wait until Zagreus (M050) to hear a proper team-up story. Turns out I was half-right because although both Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy are in the story it isn't quite so straightforward as two Doctors meeting.

Right away it is revealed that this is actually a sequel to Project Twilight (M023), which was a 2 TARDIS vampire story that didn't make much impact. It turns out the Doctor has not forgotten he abandoned vampiress Cassie in Norway, and now he is heading back to find her to test a cure for her condition. He and Evelyn find Cassie on the run and are soon drawn back into the world of Nimrod (least threatening villain name ever) and The Forge, his secret vampire lab.

The story actually concludes by the end of the second episode so that halfway through we switch and are now with Sylvester McCoy's seventh Doctor when he is drawn back to Nimrod and The Forge again. But this is when things get interesting.

Colin Baker steps out from behind Nimrod and reveals he has been helping the crazy scientist with his plan. Hard to believe, and Doctor #7 stays skeptical, but the two Doctors team up to solve the issue of the Forge.

The story takes a few predictable twists, but the banter of two Doctors in the same room is there to be heard anyway. It's a fairly successful story that is really only limited by Nimrod and his plot being less interesting than some of the Doctor's opponents have been.

M043 - Doctor Who and the Pirates

Here is another play that had great potential, but didn't quite pull it off.

We start with Evelyn visiting one of her students and forcing the girl to listen to a tale of how she and the Doctor met pirates. This overt narration is handled quite well and there are several scenes that mock the format by having all the supporting pirates be the same as Evelyn tries to give them all unique names but ends up just cribbing from Charles Dickens. And later, when the Doctor joins them to continue telling the tale, he adjusts the pirates dialogue to better stroke his own ego.

The third part of the play almost derails it by turning into a musical. Its a bit unexpected, but it ends up working, if for no other reason than the clever lyrics. A highlight being a version of "I am the very model of a modern major general" sung by the Doctor about being a time lord.

Where the story doesn't quite pull it off is with the student and her eagerness to have the story end so she can be alone. Reasons finally emerge near the end as to why Evelyn and the Doctor are intruding on her with this tale, but it isn't the satisfying explanation that was needed.

Still, a fun episode particularly good for fans of musicals.

M040 - Jubilee

We open with a trailer for an upcoming film starring The Doctor vs the Daleks, which begins normal enough until the Doctor is blowing up Daleks left and right and their mechanical voices are shouting, "Scamper! Scamper!" Then, when the announcer tells you that your mandatory ticket will be sent to you, we know we aren't on Earth as we know it.

The TARDIS is shifting in and out of two locations and the Doctor and Evelyn get out just before it disappears. They seem to be in central London, 2003, but in this world victory against a Dalek invasion a century before has led to the modern rule of the tyrannical President of Britain. Contractions are illegal and the Daleks have become a cartoonish villain used to sell anything from baby powder to power tools, but locked in the tower of London is something truly frightening.

The Daleks have, in my opinion, lost some of their power. They are often portrayed like the Nazis in an Indiana Jones film, pure evil without much else. But in this story they recover their complex villainy. A Dalek that has been held captive and tortured must face something no Dalek ever faces: making a decision for itself.

This play managed to swing between manic satire and thrilling suspense on a level closer to Torchwood than to Doctor Who, with a body count to match. It brings up some challenging philosophy and some interesting sci-fi all at the same time.

M022 - Bloodtide

When the Doctor and his companions visit famous figures in history, the peril they find themselves in tends to connect back to the celebrity guest. Eccelston and Charles Dickens dealt with ghosts, Tenant and Shakespeare dealt with witches, so it is appropriate that Colin Baker and Charles Darwin face the Silurians.

While visiting the Galapagos to let Evelyn see Charles Darwin form his theory of natural selection, the Doctor hears about demons in the caves. It turns out that some Silurians have awoken from their cryosleep and they are not happy to find their planet infested with monkeys.

Sometimes the script indulges Darwin's thought process a bit too much, allowing him to verbalize his entire theory as Evelyn pops in to say, "Go on," and "That sounds reasonable," but the concept is still strong. And when evolution becomes an important plot point, Darwin makes for an appropriate supporting part in a fairly thrilling adventure.

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.

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.