6️⃣🔽 = PASSABLE: OKAY!

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

This time: mirror, mirror on the wall; who’s the evilest of them all?

The TARDIS performs an emergency landing, taking Sixie and Peri to Elizabethan England, where they get involved with a “Spanish wizard” trying to bring a nefarious other-dimensional force to Earth. It’s The Masque of Mandragora and The Talons of Weng-Chiang all over again!

It feels good to be back in this era, and the audio does a generally fine job of describing the people and traditions of the era while seamlessly hinting towards deeper sci-fi elements. The dialogue is of the Shakespearean kind we hear in stories such as The Crusade.

We meet playwright Christopher Marlowe and his friend Tom here, and they are quite colourful characters, with fun performances for Matt Addis and Tam Williams. Sixie sure likes to hang out with his writer pals!

Velez is quite enjoyable; a typically larger-than-life Doctor Who villain, but with an effective presence that looms over the listener and the other characters from the onset. He’s never too over-the-top, but always effectively villainous.

Part 1 is very talkative but doesn’t do much in terms of progressing the story or building tension. Baker and the guest cast keep it pretty believable, though. Peri goes off chasing a poor sacrificial victim and getting into trouble, while the Doctor slowly gathers information.

Peri’s troubles towards the end of Part 1 raise the stakes a bit for the second part of the story, and Nicola Bryant’s acting here sells the weight of the cliffhanger. We then follow Peri as she is stuck in a strange realm and the Doctor tries to locate and rescue her; there’s a lot going on in Part 2, yet things still remain a bit contained. The other dimension does add some tension though, especially when the Doctor finally faces the Omnim.

There's certainly many good ideas here—the invisible flies, the “magical” mirror, the Aztec treasure—it's just that the blend of the ideas doesn't make for very engaging audio.

One of the better parts of the audio is the sequence where Peri impersonates the Queen (and not being very good at it).

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• This story has been adapted by Marc Platt from a 1.5-page story treatment by Barbara Clegg.
• The mute Jack is played by Alex Mallinson, who is better known as a cover artist for Big Finish.
• The inconsistent way the actors pronounce Velez’s name annoys me.