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TARDIS Guide

Review of Moonflesh by Ryebean

8 July 2025

This review contains spoilers!

After a few strong stories, we're back to formula, bland Main Range quality. It reminded me quite a bit of Ghost Light, but it's not as experimental, more quite boring. I was disappointed, considering that it's written by Mark Morris, who wrote the strongest Tenth Doctor novel I've read so far.

Even in the darkest of times, the Doctor tries to be optimistic and reassuring - it's a bit of fun to hear him be light-hearted about the fact that Phoebe's been possessed, claiming he's been possessed lots of times before and he's been fine! Davison does fine, but there's never a moment that actively stands out as keeping me engaged with the character. I feel like I'm saying that over and over again, but the problem is that, with the incarnation being rather bland, there's never going to be anything that can fix him without massively retconning his characterisation. Same for Nyssa, nothing interesting that really makes her standout as a companion fit for this story. She's serviceable enough, just incredibly boring.

Vaatus is a very generic stock villain. There's an interesting concept to be built upon, with a creature being awoken by mankind's predatorial habits, and then turning the tables so the humans become the prey, but the way the Moonflesh is handled just is standard territory.

It's been a while since the Doctor and Nyssa have strayed away from Earth, and I'm starting to get a little bored. The Edwardian landscape suits the Fifth Doctor well, and it shows off the supporting characters well, but it's just uninteresting honestly. Nothing happens with the setting that keeps me engaged.

The supporting actors never really show off, they, too, seem very bored by the script and try their best to carry out such dull material, but nothing seems to really work, unfortunately.

The music for this episode was rather bland - no standout tracks, plodded along nicely - much like the rest of the story.

Favourite Line: "Oh, I'm sure he'll be fine. Especially once I explain that Vatuus is just using Phoebe to communicate with us. But perhaps I should tell him that I've been possessed by dozens of aliens and it's never done me any harm!"

This is probably the worst story for a while, and when you're producing so many audios at once, you're bound to start releasing bog-standard boring episodes like these eventually.


Ryebean

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