We're back with Marc Platt in the 19th century, and despite a strong start, this one made almost little to no impact. Admittedly, I did listen to it as background noise while I fiddled around in a video-game about space-ships, so maybe a tale of Russian serfs and the Napoleonic Wars was never going to grip my attention. Except of course that for the first fifteen or so minutes, it really did. It sets itself up as a pure historical in the vein of The Romans; following on from the events of The Gunfighters, Doctor 1, Steven and Vicki land in rural Russia, where they are rapidly taken in by the locals, fed a lot of borscht, and given jobs in the community, something that seems to happen to them basically wherever they go. I'm a freak for a pure historical, even more so when it gives us a bit of insight into the characters of these original, black and white TARDIS teams (it's why I have such a fondness for Farewell, Great Macedon and even The Fragile Yellow Arc of Fragrance; while that one isn't a pure historical, it's much more about who Barbara is as a person than the weird space stuff going on). Off the back of Frostfire, where Marc Platt was able to explore a little of the trauma that comes from being left behind by The Doctor, even if it's by your own choice, we don't really get the same exploration of Steven here.

Some of that (OK, I'll be charitable, almost all of it) is down to the framing device, in my opinion. We're once again having the companion explain the story to another, unseen listener, and again, the unseen listener bootstraps back into the story at the end to tie it all up into a neat bow. Frostfire made this work, even if I acknowledge it begrudgingly, because Vicki was telling a story about something that happened a long time ago. From what I gathered from the ending of Mother Russia, which was rushed, messy, and overly expository, Steven is retelling the events of about twenty minutes ago to the creature that was directly involved in the event? The final ten minutes feels almost entirely like Steven describing the things that happened and the Shape Thief agreeing.

Basically, much like The Witchfinders, this starts as a good historical story with nice bits of flavor and texture (The Russian setting is lovingly evoked, as is the passing of seasons as Team TARDIS spend the better part of half a year living in the village) that is thrown way off balance by the arrival of an obligatory alien. There's a moment where we're treated to what we think might be a bit of Seventh Doctor-esque deception, the closest we get to some good character work for Steven as once again his faith in who The Doctor is becomes shaken and challenged. But instead, it was a shapeshifting alien (about as innovative as the Frost Fair) and by the time we're closing out, the whole thing collapses into a dense sort of mess that left me cold.

It's not all bad - Steven fights a bear, and I think we can all agree that were The Revenant made in 1965, Peter Purves would have been a solid casting. He gives a good strong performance here - his Steven voice has always sort of been his Steven voice, but even he really can't put a lot of enthusiasm into the dreary exposition that makes up the final third of this story. Not a highlight.