In this story, the Doctor doesn't really go to Amsterdam.

At the bones of it, the story has a few very good ideas. However, the whole thing is bogged down by oddities and unnecessary diversions, which make it no more than an entertaining but engaging watch.

On the good side, there is Omega, who is pretty great in the serial in my opinion. His plan is thought out, his motivations are clear and his character is interesting to watch. Having a traitor in the high council is also a good idea, and setting a story in a foreign city has been great before (looking at you, City of Death). The cliffhangers are great, and Davison-as-Omega is also extremely compelling. I wish they had done more with that as opposed to the Gallifrey plot. Lastly, Colin Baker as Maxil is very entertaining to watch, and seems more dangerous than his boss, the Castellan, and more effective to boot.

However, the flaws are numerous. First of all, for a story that seems like it is going to be set in Amsterdam, very little of it takes place in Amsterdam, and most of what takes place there is B-plot at best. The story doesn't seem to want to give too much time and attention to the plot of the two backpackers of which one goes missing, treating it as no more than a vehicle to shoehorn Tegan into the story. Having the backpacker that goes missing due to the monster of the week be Tegan's favourite cousin is a massive, massive stretch. Also, once the Doctor shows up, the plot gets dropped fast enough to cause whiplash. When the Doctor calls for Tegan once, she half-heartedly replies that she's helping her cousin. He calls again not a moment later and Tegan's cousin has suddenly disappeared from her mind. At the end of the story, Tegan leaves him to his own devices as she abandons him to travel with the Doctor again without ever saying goodbye.

(I couldn't take Omega's helper alien seriously either, I kept thinking of it as some kind of skeksis.)

Meanwhile, the meat of the plot happens on Gallifrey. You see, the High Council has never been as incompetent as it is currently, and that has caused one of them to turn traitor. The question is who it is. Is it one of the three barely-realized councilors? Is it the Doctor's old friend, Borusa? Is it the other old friend of the Doctor who we've never seen before, Hedin? Or is it the obstinate and extremely hostile Castellan, who is incredibly eager to kill the Doctor for some reason? This write-up may make it seem like it is the Castellan, and that is also what the story wants you to think. It's quite forward in obviously suggesting that it is the Castellan, and that made me realise quite early on that he was probably a red herring, albeit one that expands the plot with somewhat unnecessary complications. Though I thought it was Hedin quite early on, the plot did succesfully make me doubt Borusa, so I was a bit disappointed when the plot went back to Hedin, who was so obviously the good guy of the council the odds of it being him were about 70% to begin with.

The council, meanwhile, never feels like a group of people that are governing a planet. Their discussion is shallow, they show little to no initiative, the way they interact with the Doctor and Nyssa is so informal that it almost seems like the Doctor is in charge somehow and Borusa pivots from happily greeting the Doctor to "no, we have to kill you Doctor" with a sad face, as if he's got mood swings. Nyssa threathens to shoot them and they barely react.

On that note, Nyssa really likes guns in this serial all of a sudden; very out of character. But if I was stuck on Gallifrey and some Castellan seems to take every opportunity to try to execute me with Kafkaesque justifications that make you suspect he just woke up on the murder side of the bed that day, perhaps I would suddenly have an appreciation for guns too. Later in the serial, the Castellan turns out to be a 'good guy', but I don't buy it.

They really should have halved the runtime of the Gallifrey plot by not making the Castellan a massive arse and streamlining the traitor plot, so they could focus more on the tragedy of Omega.

Not my favourite, luckily Omega the audio play is soon in my watch/listenthrough.