A completely adequate serial with Omega as our villain. I prefer his older look but he’s still good here and provides a compelling dynamic to the Time Lord bureaucracy of it all. Also, Colin Baker has a little bit role here and I was surprised to see him, another of the ranks of actors who had one-off parts before joining full time.

Should have been three episodes. That last episode in particular has too much tedious running around. It doesn't help that the villain is less interesting here then during their previous appearance.

Part of Doctor Who's charm is the dissonance of world ending events happening in the most banal of places. However, Amsterdam as a location just feels pointless in this episode, and I can't help wishing that the whole thing was set on Gallifrey.

On the upside, Colin Baker is great  as a Time Lord heavy.

In this story, the Doctor doesn't really go to Amsterdam.

At the bones of it, the story has a few very good ideas. However, the whole thing is bogged down by oddities and unnecessary diversions, which make it no more than an entertaining but engaging watch.

On the good side, there is Omega, who is pretty great in the serial in my opinion. His plan is thought out, his motivations are clear and his character is interesting to watch. Having a traitor in the high council is also a good idea, and setting a story in a foreign city has been great before (looking at you, City of Death). The cliffhangers are great, and Davison-as-Omega is also extremely compelling. I wish they had done more with that as opposed to the Gallifrey plot. Lastly, Colin Baker as Maxil is very entertaining to watch, and seems more dangerous than his boss, the Castellan, and more effective to boot.

However, the flaws are numerous. First of all, for a story that seems like it is going to be set in Amsterdam, very little of it takes place in Amsterdam, and most of what takes place there is B-plot at best. The story doesn't seem to want to give too much time and attention to the plot of the two backpackers of which one goes missing, treating it as no more than a vehicle to shoehorn Tegan into the story. Having the backpacker that goes missing due to the monster of the week be Tegan's favourite cousin is a massive, massive stretch. Also, once the Doctor shows up, the plot gets dropped fast enough to cause whiplash. When the Doctor calls for Tegan once, she half-heartedly replies that she's helping her cousin. He calls again not a moment later and Tegan's cousin has suddenly disappeared from her mind. At the end of the story, Tegan leaves him to his own devices as she abandons him to travel with the Doctor again without ever saying goodbye.

(I couldn't take Omega's helper alien seriously either, I kept thinking of it as some kind of skeksis.)

Meanwhile, the meat of the plot happens on Gallifrey. You see, the High Council has never been as incompetent as it is currently, and that has caused one of them to turn traitor. The question is who it is. Is it one of the three barely-realized councilors? Is it the Doctor's old friend, Borusa? Is it the other old friend of the Doctor who we've never seen before, Hedin? Or is it the obstinate and extremely hostile Castellan, who is incredibly eager to kill the Doctor for some reason? This write-up may make it seem like it is the Castellan, and that is also what the story wants you to think. It's quite forward in obviously suggesting that it is the Castellan, and that made me realise quite early on that he was probably a red herring, albeit one that expands the plot with somewhat unnecessary complications. Though I thought it was Hedin quite early on, the plot did succesfully make me doubt Borusa, so I was a bit disappointed when the plot went back to Hedin, who was so obviously the good guy of the council the odds of it being him were about 70% to begin with.

The council, meanwhile, never feels like a group of people that are governing a planet. Their discussion is shallow, they show little to no initiative, the way they interact with the Doctor and Nyssa is so informal that it almost seems like the Doctor is in charge somehow and Borusa pivots from happily greeting the Doctor to "no, we have to kill you Doctor" with a sad face, as if he's got mood swings. Nyssa threathens to shoot them and they barely react.

On that note, Nyssa really likes guns in this serial all of a sudden; very out of character. But if I was stuck on Gallifrey and some Castellan seems to take every opportunity to try to execute me with Kafkaesque justifications that make you suspect he just woke up on the murder side of the bed that day, perhaps I would suddenly have an appreciation for guns too. Later in the serial, the Castellan turns out to be a 'good guy', but I don't buy it.

They really should have halved the runtime of the Gallifrey plot by not making the Castellan a massive arse and streamlining the traitor plot, so they could focus more on the tragedy of Omega.

Not my favourite, luckily Omega the audio play is soon in my watch/listenthrough.

Quite a good story, though slightly undermined by it's constant cutting between locales. On the one side, a strange disappearance in Amsterdam; on the other, political machinations and treachery on Gallifrey, with the latter being a far stronger story. I was quite compelled by the cast of shady Time Lords and their ulterior motives, though the design of Gallifrey was a little underwhelming, and the pacing was rather slow. On the upside, though, we had Nyssa with a gun, Colin Baker's Maxil, and Omega's jolly holiday in Amsterdam, complete with some quite splendid shots of the TARDIS team pursing him. And naturally, we had the triumphant return of Tegan Jovanka. What more could anyone ask for?

I did enjoy this episode. I watched it on the Season 20 Box Set, with the original CGI. It's a quick four-parter that I find builds on Gallifreyan lore, even if they don't have the strange headresses. Overall, the return of Omega (Played by Ian Collier) is a nice link back to the 10th season, which was also an anniversary story. I'd personally have preferred they spend more time on Gallifrey, but I understand that there's not much to do on that planet. Peter Davison did a good job in a dual role, and I would've been surprised at Tegan's return if I watched it live. I also enjoyed the setting of Amsterdam, since it's a place the show doesn't normally go. Still, I enjoyed the mention of Leela. Nice to see she's happily married. For now, anyways...