MR 011: The Apocalypse Element

The Daleks enact a rather overly complicated plan to cement their own powerbase in this overly long epic. Oh dear. I figured that not all Six and Evelyn audios would be good, but I didn't expect it to drop off so soon when all the Sixth Doctor audios so far have been bangers.

The problem is that the story is just too complicated for its own good and that's because the Daleks' plan is too complicated. Not to mention the usual Time Lord stuff is too complicated.

The Daleks piloted a planet (The Dalek Invasion of Earth!?) into another universe or some such and dumped hundreds of the people who were on that planet as dead bodies on another planet. So there's a conference of time travelling empires to determine what happened.

It turns out the Daleks wanted this planet because it has a rare element, more on that later. It also turns out that Romana II, on official business as the new President of Gallifrey, was on the planet when it disappeared and has been a slave to the Daleks for twenty years. As far as I know, this is the first time Romana has ever been seen to be President or as having left E Space. It's also her first appearance on audio. So that's exciting.

The Daleks steal a bunch of time travel secrets from the delegates at this conference and then crash their stolen planet into the planet on which the conference is taking place, killing everyone.

That's the first half. Yeah. The Second half involves the Daleks tricking Vansell, an agent of the CIA, into letting them onto Gallifrey by pretending to be refugees from the conference. And Vansell, being from the CIA, wants to steal the refugees' time travel secrets. Kind of the most obvious trick in the book, but sure.
The last hour and a half consists of running around while the Daleks invade Gallfrey and enact their final phase of the plan. They have a giant weapon, the Apocalypse Element, which they detonate to destroy a galaxy. It will extend to destroy the entire universe if it isn't contained and they believe the Time Lords have the ability to contain it.

Only it was a trick. It's not a general purpose weapon. Obviously they don't want to destroy themselves. They want to destroy and remake an entire galaxy leaving it easy and ripe for Dalek invasion, building up their own galactic power base right on Gallifrey's doorstep.

The thing is that for most of this plot I had to read the wiki's summary to understand what was happening because it's overly complicated as it is nevermind the writing. It makes sense as the writer of this one also wrote The Land of the Dead which had an overly complicated monster for no reason.

That said, all the key figures here get interesting things to do. The Doctor gets to shout. Evelyn gets to act as a key when the Doctor uses her eyes as the only retinal scan that will open any doors on Gallifrey. Vansell gets to be all sneaky. The President gets to have his moment of trusting the Doctor and then getting double crossed. It's just... not very interesting. I'm sorry, I just don't think Gallifrey is very interesting as a setting. It's a boring and stuffy place and the Doctor left it for a reason.