Oof, what an absolute letdown that absolutely soured me on the whole Excelis Saga. After all the neat ideas of this planet, that even get elaborated on here with some clever ideas, instead these interesting plot points around the Excelis world are told through godawful, mind-numbing exposition, well, all of it feels like it got flushed down the toilet.

Everything was lining up for this to be great. Grayvorn having planned out and figured out the Doctor over these three encounters, turning Excelis into a totalitarian nightmare, and even a pretty ballsy ending - these are all ingredients that could have come together into something truly special. Instead, I found the plot very meandering and the acting even worse. I was excited for Yee Jee Tso to return since I really liked him in the Doctor Who movie, he felt really stiff and awkward. Even Anthony Stewart Head felt like he was struggling with the material a bit. It is so disappointing and so unfortunate, with way too much of the plot being conveyed to exposition. Another character played a young man and he seemed kind of fake to me as well.

It's a real shame, too. I really liked Sylvester McCoy here, especially at the end. He has to make a tough choice and the destruction is beyond enormous, which I think was conveyed well through the special effects. I also did appreciate how each Excelis story had its own sense of music and mood to it, I just wish this one lived up to the dark atmosphere it had created. A lot of these plot points felt severely underdeveloped. There is a gem of an anti-fascism theme I think could have worked well for this audio, but it quite simply did not come together well at all. All told, Excelis hardly feels like it would have been ideal for the main range, yet alone a special side series.