Harry and Naomi have been separated. What's worse, in Naomi's time, the world is destroyed. Enter the Doctor, on both ends, who asserts that this is a corrupt timeline trying to oust the current timeline now the Angel has given it an opportunity. What follows, is chaotic.

I think the idea of the Doctor jumping around the timeline to make small changes here and there to solve the corrupted timeline is genius. It puts me in mind of Friend of the Family, and Protect & Survive (the part where the Doctor has to reason backwards to find the tipping point). However, this play does not focus on the changing history and the future to solve the timeline part overly much, as we follow Harry, Naomi and Ray, from, if I am correct, Delta & the Bannermen. For them, this is a decently straightforward tale. However, the tale is still told out of order, and to be honest, I'm not sure if that was the best idea.

The conflict of the play revolves around Madoc Howell and Sally Cain. In the corrupt timeline, they will team up and create Catastrophix, a company which has to do with doomsday prepping and causing the apocalypse. Madoc is described as the moral compass and Sally Cain is described as the ambition, which I interpreted as the driving force. During the play, the (ahem) play of the Doctor and co is to drive a wedge between the two to stop Catastrophix.

I don't see anything wrong with the setup, but the execution is lacking in my opinion. The play almost exclusively treats Madoc as the problem, which is incongruous with the way Madoc is presented as a reasonable and well-meaning kid. He gets hunted by UNIT, treated badly by the Doctor and (through the former two's actions) loses the faith of Ray, who he cares about, without actually being guilty of doing anything yet. Meanwhile Sally Cain is presented as an absolute asshole, but all the play does is have some characters tell her she is bad and she is otherwise ignored, almost let off. While perhaps not the intention, this made listening to the play a somewhat nasty experience where the Doctor was seemingly just bullying this kid/man for no reason where instead he could have easily talked the man around to help him. I just didn't enjoy that at all. Eventually the Doctor and UNIT scare Madoc so badly he almost tries to kill Sally, and while that is never good, I can easily see Madoc have an emotional breakdown when suddenly every single party is trying to get at him for something he hasn't done and, notably, really don't want to do. This kid is going through the wringer and really doesn't want the apocalypse to happen because of him. Of course that Madoc breaks that way is presented as Madoc going too far, and not the Doctor and co being far too heavy handed in their approach towards Madoc. All of it left a nasty taste in my mouth.

Ray is pretty cool here. I haven't done Delta and the Bannermen, but I liked her. She's a bit non-descript so far.

Naomi's and Harry's exit was rushed and felt incomplete. However, I think this was intentional to highlight Older!Seven from the last story being a dick. I'm happy they both got where they wanted to go, though.

All in all...

yeah.

I mean it's a competent story which does a lot of things well but the execution is heavily flawed in my opinion.