👍🏼MCCOY! → GOOD!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

This story is told as a slowly unfolding mystery, with Six and Peri suffering from memory loss and having to piece together exactly why they’ve been visiting the village of Hollowdean. The original script was penned by Christopher H. Bidmead, who’s now adapted it for the Lost Stories range.

The opening episode slowly eases us into the story as we meet the people of Hollowdean and learn about the mysterious Professor Stream, the Doctor’s buddy Reverend Foxwell, and the titular Hollows of Time. The tail end begins to raise the stakes a bit but also turns the narrative a bit more muddled.

Part 2 amps up the tension nicely and keeps moving through its twists and dangers (including the very obvious but pretty exciting twist surrounding Professor “Stream”). But then it turns a bit more muddled again for the second half of the episode.

Considering the types of stories this range has presented so far, this one is surprisingly straightforward and formulaic. It feels like an adventure that could very well have worked on TV. We have a man designing impossible technologies, backed up by a mysterious financier, before everything goes awry. The music, performances, and general vibes feel like something from the late 1980s.

Some of the dialogue is pretty fun and takes advantage of Sixie’s fondness for language. I also rather like the story structure, where the entire adventure is technically a flashback, as the Doctor and Peri sit inside the TARDIS trying to remember exactly what they’ve been through. There’s a Tales of the TARDIS vibe throughout the entire story.

Baker and Bryant are great together, and Trevor Litteldale is as wonderful as Foxwell. The real treat is David Garfield (from The War Games and The Face of Evil) as Stream.

The Tractatros and the Gravis, first seen in Frontios, are back for this story, but they are never anything more than afterthoughts and pawns in the bigger game.

There’s another annoying child character in this one (Simon). It is not Mission to Magnus levels of bad, but close.

We also get a lot of sand. There are sand creatures that make me think of Dune and characters hating sand with a passion akin to Anakin Skywalker.