The opener to the final series of the Fourth Doctor Adventures audio range! There's a bit of a formatting change, we've switched to four-parters at last, which made it a little jarring as I didn't realise that, so I wasn't expected for such a complicated story! However, this story fits into Season 18 so well, with it matching the gloomier, more science-oriented tone of the series.

Marc Platt manages to capture the serious, aggressive voice of the Fourth Doctor, but sometimes Tom Baker's performance is a little too much, as he snaps almost every single line. I'm not sure whether that's a fault of his, Marc Platt's or director Nicholas Briggs or a mix of both, but he ends up just being really unlikeable. Unfortunately, the rest of the TARDIS team doesn't fare so well either. Lalla Ward's incredibly unenthusiastic about it, Romana claims that she likes having Adric on board, but the way she says it suggests otherwise. Speaking of Adric, so far he's just been a very boring, undeveloped character, but in this story, I just want to punch him in the face. I really hope this isn't how he's portrayed in Season 19, because I couldn't bear him in this one story. I don't know why, but it sounds like Matthew Waterhouse is playing a very different character, he sounds nothing like Adric. I think the main flaw I have with Adric is just the performance itself, because Adric grieving over Varsh and letting them get a bit of development at last is good, but he sounds so obnoxious and stuckup throughout that I don't care. Platt doesn't manage to characterise K-9 very well, I can't really imagine a robot dog doing some of the stuff in this story, and his death scene is a bit pointless cos we know he's not dead. Overall, the characterisation of the TARDIS team is very poor, both in performance and writing.

I'm so confused about the plot. There's so many themes and ideas going on that it becomes a convoluted mess - There's a prison asteroid, and there's a guy called Darklish, and I think he's meant to be the main villain, and he's manipulating Adric for some reason, but I don't know, and then he has giant chess pieces and plays a game of chess with Adric and then loses? The problem with doing something like that is that something grand and visually impressive like giant chess can only work with visuals, but Doctor Who doesn't have the budget to achieve something like that. Also, Scratchman already did that way better. There's also like a rust whale thing, and I've got no idea how the hell that's related to the plot, and then it can suddenly talk, unless that's the chess piece thing cos those two completely different storylines are running parallel to each other, and it makes things so complicated.

The setting does fit the tone and experimental works of Season 18 - it's atmospheric and dark, but again, it doesn't work with the plot of the story, and unfortunately, Big Finish still don't get the unpredictability and strange nature of other universes - there's no reason why this story couldn't have worked in any other season - Most of the time, they didn't try it with the Divergent Universe, and they didn't try it here - let's hope for some new stories relating to a new universe, not just a new planet.

The only side character who stood out to me was Crimsson, who spent a lot of time infatuated with Romana and practically worshipped her - this character got a lot of depth and development, and was clearly the standout of the lot. Unfortunately, the rest didn't impact me at all.

Despite the poor characterisation, unfortunate use of setting and E-Space arc, and just a mess of plot, it's an enjoyable story. The dialogue's fun, but it's just so complicated that I lose track of what's going on.