Just so incredibly bad that each time I am reminded of its existence I have to be surprised it somehow has a generally favourable reputation. The absolute worst piece of fiction I have ever encountered in the Whoniverse, and I’ll be incredibly surprised and frankly delighted if another story manages to surpass it in its ridiculous idiotic edgyness, purely because such an achievement must be so out of this realm and beyond the acceptabilities of any script editor that was still alive in the year of our lord and saviour eighteen ninety one before the birth of Christ, that it must only be possibly made that way on purpose, because good god, is this, like, really bad.

It’s not only edgy in a way your theoretical fifteen year old nephew who has been bragging to his classmates about having watched a cheap slasher movie without his parents knowing might write a cooler version of his childhood favourite characters (they are unfazed by DEATH and they say DAMN and SHIT), but it wonderfully also reflects the generally expected writing capabilities of this theoretical nephew of yours, if your nephew had actually been their writing teacher and this script the homework that even he had to give a bad grade. Because man, it’s such a dumb story. It’s so stupid. Several scenes make me question if this wasn’t meant as a parody and everyone else just wildly misunderstood it.

Like what do you mean “it’s dark”? It’s dark in the sense that a guy explodes and we get the visual image of Colin Baker and Maggie Stables covered in blood? That’s not dark. ‘Dark’ is handling usually more taboo topics. ‘Dark’ is talking about horrors of war, touching on mental health issues or a story about inevitable evils that pop up from the societies that we create. ‘Dark’ is not exploding people. ‘Dark’ is not “Doctor, I am very strong, and I am going to kill you. I drink blood, by the way.” ‘Dark’ is not killing and hurting characters in your story for no rhyme or reason. That’s stupid. Then you’ve simply written a stupid story. Not a dark story. You’ve written meaningless nonsense. Things happening just because. To shock, to maybe evoke a feeling or two, and to leave the listener completely empty afterwards.

There’s so little cohesion to this thing. A plot so meandering that I couldn’t tell you what happens, because basically nothing happens, it’s impressive that it’s short as well. It’s just here to shove the characters into places where they can do their edgy scenes. I’ve finished listening! Hooray! Now, what was all that about? You tell me! Not only is the plot meaningless, I find the scenes actively unpleasant! Like what can I even do at that point? Me when I project the twilight, and then Nimrod and the Doctor kissed, that would have been a better story.

One star for actually being pretty well paced.