MR 010: Winter for the Adept

Well I did say for the Fifth and Seventh Doctors to get their act together. And it seems they did. This one is quite good. I also have been known to say that Doctor Who can be dropped into any story and it can work. This is a great example of that. This is a straight up ghost story. There's a psychic, a telekinetic, poltergeist activity, and a REAL ghost.

An evil alien from another dimension has been opening up a portal for an invasion fleet with the use of human psychics and a human ghost. Yes. That's the summary. And it's not super important.

The important thing is that the atmosphere is quite well done here. The haunting music, the sound effects of things moving about, the piano playing on its own. It sounds like a haunted house. And what a great setting for a haunted house too: a super expensive finishing school in the middle of the Swiss Alps in a blizzard. Totally isolated. A lot of it reminded me of Luigi's Mansion because that was one of my favorite games as a kid.

This story also features India Fisher in a pre-Charley role, which was wild. Her voice is so recognizeable that I was thrown off for a second. This is also probably the first time I've ever had Nyssa in a story and felt like she had a personality. She's actually on the Doctor's ass. Constantly berating him for accidentally teleporting her here and being sarcastic about his failures.

I'm also, hopefully, kind of starting to understand the appeal of the Fifth Doctor as well. He mumbles a lot, he's very easy to push around, he seems very unsure of himself, and he stutters a lot. Maybe that's the appeal? He's someone you want to protect? Regardless, this was a very fun story. Definitely the best Fifth Doctor story so far and the best non-Sixth Doctor story so far easily.