This is part of a series of reviews of Doctor Who in chronological timeline order.

Previous Story: Kiss of Death

Another mediocre outing for this team. I really thought I was going to like this one honestly; sentient rats seemed like a fun idea and the Rat King is a great example of incorporating real world oddities into a Doctor Who story. Unfortunately the actual story failed to amaze me. It had it's moments but the negatives of these 2 hours outweighed the positives.

I will start with the positives, all the performances from the cast are really great. I'm really enjoying the dynamics of this team even if their stories have not been very impressive. There were a few things in this story I liked, the twist regarding Dr. Wallace was clichéd but still managed to be a bit of a shock. It led to the sacrifice at the end which, again, while it was clichéd it hit quite hard.

The concepts here are also really interesting; rats being trained up as Cold War spies and then developing sentience and beginning to perform their own experiments is something only Doctor Who could pull off. The idea of the rats also feels like something that would have genuinely crossed someone's mind in the Cold War like many other ridiculous schemes from that era.

All that though, doesn't change the fact that for about 90% of this story the characters are mindlessly wandering around tunnels avoiding rats. This story could have been an effective horror if it went all out on the fear-factor of the rats and the way they converted humans but as it is it's left in between silly and scary making for a dull listening experience in my opinion.

Next Story: The Emerald Tiger