😵(2.73) = NEAR DISASTER!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

This story begins with Six and Peri being dragged into a starship in the far future, dragged there by Anzor, the Doctor's old school bully who's never been mentioned before or since. The scene with them is weird, making the Doctor whimper while Anzor traps them on the starship.

Anzor himself is nothing but a thorn in the side of everyone, and I don't know why he's needed for the story.

The story pops right into space politics between Anzor, representing the Time Lords, and an alien race ruled by females. None of it is very interesting or relevant.

The opening episode is a confusing mess, and I don't know how everything and everyone connect. It's also painfully slow.

The dialogue is pretentious.

There's no dramatic tension, no stakes, and no interesting details in the story to make you invested in and care for any of the characters.

The child characters don't sound very natural. They're some of the most wooden child actors I've ever heard in a BF production.

Peri is hardly in the story and isn't given anything interesting to do. Nicola Bryant does fine with the material she has to work with.

Six is like his TV self here, but even Colin Baker doesn’t make him very interesting.

Sil returns, and Nabil Shaban puts in another strong performance. Why he's here is beyond me, but he's the strongest performance among the guest cast and the best aspect of this story.

The cover also spoils the return of the Ice Warriors, who do not appear at all in Part 1 (there's no hint of their involvement in all the mess). They suddenly pop up at the end of Part 1, in a rather tiresome twist.

Part 2 then takes a sudden turn and focusses on the Ice Warriors and their destruction of Magnus, making the story easier to follow and a bit more traditional, but not significantly more interesting.

The Ice Warrior characters aren’t particularly memorable or original, but Nicholas Briggs knows how to voice them.

The setting of the story never comes alive to me. I fail to picture the spaceship or the planet Magnus. The only thing I can think of is that the planet shares its name with a common Swedish first name.