The Doctor's first encounters with the shadows! ...Creepy but predictable.

His recent loss of Leela on board the TARDIS shows in Tom's performance - he's a lot more unreliable without a companion to keep him in check, often gets rather aggressive towards the pest control, and bounces around quite regularly without someone restricting him. This is the Fourth Doctor in a way we haven't seen him before, and I wish there were a few more stories before we meet Ann Kelso where he's a bit of a loose cannon.

The problem with introducing the Vashta Nerada like this is that they have to establish the lore that we already know. I worked out way before I even listened to the story, just by reading the description, that Funworld had been built on the forests. It wasn't a surprise that it wasn't a creature that had murdered everyone, but the shadows. If there is going to be a returning monster, there needs to be something added to them to make them more interesting than just rehashing old material. Imagine a rollercoaster ride - would the swarm of the Vashta Nerada be able to keep up with the swarm? I'm not saying there's no originality whatsoever - once the unveiling of the monsters were revealed, there were a few scares - the swarm splitting in two, sneaking aboard Steele's ship - but there could've been something more to improve the first half.

I got some Nightmare in Silver vibes from this story, with Funworld being similar to Hedgewick's World. For both stories, the funfair setting was criminally underused, but Night of the Vashta Nerada definitely has the better one, with the control centre being abandoned and covered in darkness, reminding me of FNAF, and the animatronics, reminding me of FNAF...Hmm... The abandoned park was a very good idea to host the Vashta Nerada, it always feels tense, but as I mentioned earlier, I would've loved to have seen more of this environment, via a rollercoaster chase or some other way.

Everybody dies! This story takes a bit of a darker turn than the TV debut for these monsters, where the entire cast dies. Each character feels developed and important to the story - Phelan acts as the stand-in companion with an interesting telepathic power, and is extremely likeable, and as the audience warms up to her- Oof, she's dead. The brute force Grosta, made of stone - the Vashta Nerada don't go for stone - Oof, they killed him out of spite. They chose to include just the right amount of characters - not too little to make the story feel empty, but just enough to create tension in the team, without strength in numbers.

Perhaps it's due to the lack of Leela, but this is one of the best Fourth Doctor stories I've heard, maybe since Foe From the Future. The entire cast is fantastic, it's so creepy, and while the Vashta Nerada are a little lacking in some places, there are moments which make them stand out as solid contributions to the rogues gallery of the Whoniverse. Imagine Torchwood with Vashta Nerada... Make it happen, Big Finish!