Your Gateway to the Universe of Doctor Who

Rewatched Apr 25th 2025

What if The Doctor didn't turn the entertainment off and Raffaella Carra was still playing while everything happened

Just a weird unmemorable story all around. Peri gets attacked by a weird mutant, the Doctor offhandedly kisses someone. Very strange.

Maxie is absolutely my favourite member of NuPROBE, and this story does a great job on showing why.

Once again we've got a more character focused piece here, Tasha and Maxie out on their own investigating a forest that makes people come back different. It's a classic setup, but the execution here just makes it work really well.

The idea of this place that knows what a forest is meant to be, but can't quite replicate it is great, the visuals of grass not moving when you step, or an old well not leaving any grime on your hands, are a brilliant way to lead you into the idea that something's wrong, before you're then thrown things that are increasingly out of place, the giant cliff, the ship, the burning house, everything being strange and out of place, and the way that it's slowly built up just adds a certain vibe to it.

I love the idea of the forest preying on people's worst days, and that we get to see what that means for Tasha, not only hearing some of her past, but seeing it. I love that the solution is acceptance, going back into the woods and facing what really happened. And I love the ending, the idea of something not being able to work on an alien is one that's been done a lot in the past, but cliche as it can be, it works for me really well here, it was set up previously to be fair, with Maxie quoting back exactly what was said to her about 'the human soul'.

Focusing on character in these sorts of shorts tends to work best for me, and here I think it's done really well.

Another story focusing more on the side-cast of the PROBE team, and I love it.

This take on PROBE sort of starts to show some more signs of what Arcbeetle would do later with SIGNET (at least what I've heard of it). The alien here very much being a threat, we see as much in the story's opening, giving us its PoV really helps you understand the danger it poses, but it's also out of place, not misunderstood, but misunderstanding. PROBE here want to protect people, yes, but they also want to figure out a way to help the alien as best they can.

The previous few stories have show monsters that can't be reasoned with, or forces from beyond this world that we can't begin to understand, but here, it genuinely feels like given time, and were what ends up happening not to have happened, they could have forged a connection with this alien.

Dalek War has been a pretty bumpy road overall, hell, Dalek Empire so far has been, but there's one thing that's always kept me coming back to this series (apart from the TARDIS Guide Clubs): Karlendorf.

Here, Karlendorf truly comes to center stage, we learn more of his motivations, his reasonings, he's never presented a bastion of morality, but his morals are clear and unshakeable. Honestly from the way he's presented, he sometimes feels more like a force of nature than a character, an oncoming storm, if you will, and the way this story is told, being uncovered by historians as a tale from thousands of years ago just adds to that larger than life character he builds up for himself.

Albie's death here surprisingly kind of just doesn't affect the story, almost proving how much of a secondary character he really was in Dalek Empire. It's almost a shame, but also yeah, I just don't really feel anything about it at all.

But back to Karlendorf, I think the two best scenes in this story are him talking to the leaders of the two dalek factions. His conversation with The Mentor especially is really interesting. The way The Mentor is characterised here, not as a good dalek, still a monster in the way that she and her daleks have treated planets that didn't join the war, but still somewhat reasonable. There's a cruel logic to her actions, and you can really see how the differences between her and davros ended up creating such similar yet different daleks. Her and her daleks, to me at least, feel like what you would get if you replaced the rage and fury of N-Space's daleks, with a cold pragmatism. I love that they choose to leave, not because they think they'd loose, but because they can forsee that the conflict would lead to death for everyone, and that Karlendorf would let that happen rather than give in.

And then the final confrontation with the Susan-Emperor. The tale that the historians are telling in the future of the story that inspired Karlendorf, Karlendorf's plans all coming together, forcing Susan to the forefront and using her connection to the emperor to the daleks, to kill them all in one fell swoop. Karlendorf killing countless millions of lives, dalek and otherwise as all dalek technology is destroyed. Where the Ninth Doctor refused to kill all people on earth to wipe out the daleks, Karlendorf doesn't hesitate to wipe out solar systems.

Victory or Death.

How else was a Dalek War meant to end, I suppose.

A spectacular finale to the series, and I'm so glad I stuck with it for that.