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TARDIS Guide

Review of Prisoners of London by gothoperas

13 January 2025

This review contains spoilers!

Matthew Waterhouse's second audio novel, Prisoners of London, takes the team exactly where they want to go. London, 1982! Well, kind of.

Matthews prose here is captivating, the first hour flies by and before you know it, each of the main team are separated by miles which expands the scope of the story monumentally, each with strikingly different locations so that nothing feels stale as you switch between them.

Tegan's story here is the most interesting to me, and arguably gets the least amount of detail. She's imprisoned on the moon and does well with the worldbuilding of the planet of London, she also gets the least amount of interesting side characters to interact with whereas the Doctor gets the Emperor and Nyssa and Adric get their own pair of mysterious misfits to try and understand. Emperor Geoffrey Chaucer is a fantastic character. She is flawed and ignorant, but really comes to show she's a good person.

The plot takes a turn in the last third, with the introduction of a whole new element that has been teased at since the start. In fact, all the elements introduced from the very beginning all fit together like a satisfying jigsaw puzzle.