On the Starship Future, 10 thousand people lie in status travelling to their new home, a skeleton crew is keeping things running, and a dead alien has been discovered…

It is a nice start, people being woken up to to relieve or replace staff. An unfortunate event that killed a security officer. There’s a bit of mystery when one of the revived people doesn’t remember the person lying next to him. Not to mention the Dalek that’s been found.

It takes over fifteen minutes for the Doctor to enter the story. I do feel its worth mentioning as sometimes you’re left wondering what’s going on - Love and Monsters springs to mind.

The Dalek that’s been discovered isn’t as dead as is first believed. The fact is that this story is a pretty typical example of lone Dalek needing to rebuild the race using whatever resources available. Its just rehashing bits of other Dalek stories, Revelation of the Daleks, Resolution of the Daleks etc. Its not doing anything new and its a little disappointing.

The other plot strand, is that people have been replaced before the ship left earth, but this is kind of in the background as the Dalek theme takes precedence. It feels that there wasn’t enough space for both plots to be played out. Meaning that neither is as developed as much as they could have been.

I was going to say that this could be just any fourth Doctor adventure, however about three quarters of the way through a Dalek gets chatty and references ‘Timelord Victorious” and the previous audio, Mutually Assured Destruction. It does feel shoehorned in, as if they suddenly realised it needs to tie in in with the arc and better mention it. The Daleks are not known for their small talk, and it comes out of the blue.

Not sure what this does to the TLV arc, I gather it led into the escape room event. But you can enjoy it on its own without needing the rest.

Its an Ok story.