This is part of a series of reviews of Doctor Who in chronological timeline order.

Previous Story: The Ultimate Evil

To say that this story was a struggle to get through would be one of the biggest understatements of the decade. It (and other poorly timed events in my life) essentially caused me to burn out on Doctor Who. I don't want to put all of the blame on this story but it certainly didn't help anything. I'll start with the few praises I can give it, it's very era-accurate. For the most part that's not a good thing but it shines in things like the soundtrack and performances. Of course all the bad parts of this era are also here, the Doctor is wildly out of character, being too afraid to even speak to his childhood bully (yes, the often fearless Doctor has a childhood bully that he's deathly-afraid of).

There's a lot of really weird messages here and it's one of those gender-role reversals where women absolutely despise men and try to kill them at any chance. The ending was also really off-putting with some blatantly sexist jokes. Peri is obviously also awfully written here and I found her relationship with a young boy really odd, calling him an "alpha male" at one point. It's easy to forget the Ice Warriors were even here, they could be replaced by any generic alien.

Oh and I don't even want to bother talking about Sil, I hated him in Vengeance on Varos and I hate him here but if you like him as a villain he's exactly as he was on TV. The Lost Stories can be hidden gems sometimes but usually they were lost for a reason (and I can think of many for this one).

Next Story: Leviathan