Written by one of the few who's written for both Tom's onscreen run and his audio range, this is a rather dark and scary tale with some amazing moments, and the first of the E-Space Trilogy. Let's hope that the other two stories are as awesome as this!

You can tell that Tom Baker isn't having a lot of fun here, unfortunately. He comes off as a lot more aggressive and nasty, even if the line isn't intended like that. However, this darker side of the Fourth Doctor helps to create a scarier atmosphere within the story, especially as the emotional ties of the Marshmen hit the Doctor close to home, and he's a lot more vulnerable. The opening scene where the Doctor and Romana discuss the power of the Time Lords is a really important one, and shows you how the pair have grown and developed over the course of two and a half seasons, with the Doctor starting off brash and rude and quite spiteful towards the Time Lords for dumping Romana on him, whilst Romana was faithful to the Time Lords - where now the roles have reversed. Romana's character gets some real development from this story, which can't be said for many of the companions of the Classic Series, and it's one of her finest performances. It's really unnerving when she's attacked and infected by the spiders, it's like she's playing an entirely different character, but it's so heartwarming when she's cured, and that grin returns to her face. K-9 gets a bit to do here, but not much - I find it hilarious when he's pursuing the Marshmen, and then comes to a stream and just thinks "Ah, my deadliest enemy - water!" and just turns around and runs off. Nearly forgot about Adric - and so did the writers at the end, it seems. He's a rather boring companion at the moment, and I'm not sure who he's meant to be. He considers himself a rebel, yet stays true to the word of the Deciders. His personality is all over the place, and I struggled to connect with him at all - Most people consider Adric to be just plain annoying and insufferable - me, I'm annoyed by him because I don't understand his character, and he has little reaction to his brother's death - but at least he got that belt! The ending cliffhanger was excellent, when the starliner launches, but then it dawns on the Doctor and Romana that they're stuck in E-Space, setting up the next two stories - but seriously, what happened to Adric?

The Marshmen looked excellent - really creepy monsters for sure. The twist at the end is distinctive and genius, with the Marshmen attacking their own people, who look different due to evolution - the racial themes behind it are so progressive and interesting, and fits into the story perfectly, with a great final message to cap the story off with the aggressive analogy for slave owners being defeated and forced out of the territory they're invading. Aside from the message that accompanies them, they're really intimidating, especially when they're breaking into the cruiseliner, and their defeat felt like it was earned, and still hlped to push forward the message that, even in our society now, one measly fight didn't defeat them, and racism, or the Marshmen in this case, exists outside of their spaceship and in the mistfall. The spiders were really horrifying, especially since I have arachnophobia, but that moment when Romana picks up a fruit to throw it at them, and one jumps out of the fruit to bite her really takes the cake for me. Scariest. Cliffhanger. Ever.

The location footage is excellent, the swamps are really atmospheric, especially when the Marshmen climb out of the water and attack the Terradonians. The culture was built up really well, and although the spaceship looks a little cheaper, the whole episode has an air of creepiness about it, and the visuals do help to boost that creepiness and it looks fantastic.

The subplot of the Terradonians' spacecruiser is really interesting and built up to match the main plot of the Marshmen invasion that the two interlink together quite effectively, and the world-building used for the Terradonians' society is fascinating, and you can tell that Andrew Smith worked hard to keep the story engaging throughout.

The music does not fit the tone of this story at all - Apart from a few subtler moments, the story feels really lighthearted and weird with the score - When K-9 is stalking the Marshmen, the song "K-9 on a Mission" plays - it's an epic track, but seriously does not fit the scene at all.

This is a really strong story, incredibly progressive and full of stellar dialogue! Lalla Ward's excellent acting is really setting us up for a big punch at Warrior's Gate. I'm not ready for her to leave. But this is an amazing outing for this series, and redefined the show's themes in a way that's never been done before - I wouldn't be surprised if this was a New Series story. But it's a brilliant start to the E-Space trilogy, and the tone and atmosphere of the story is so dynamically different from N-Space, which is what I really like to see with parallel universe stories, and something that disappointed me a little with stories from Big Finish's Divergent Universe arc. But here it's excellent.