Kingdom of Lies

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

Previous Story: Smoke and Mirrors

This story manages to be so cliched and predictable and yet so fun. Normally when I say fun, it's to pad out a review because I have nothing to say other than I enjoyed a story. That's a fairly low bar though as I enjoy basically all Doctor Who, it's just a quintessentially fun franchise. On this occasion however, when I say fun, I mean FUN.

It's a simple premise, but one that works to the strengths of this TARDIS team very well. A country caught in the marriage crisis of it's rulers. It has progressed to the point where they've split it in half with a literal dividing line. It is literally red vs blue (they've painted their own sides red and blue). Adric and Tegan are captured on one side of the line, while the Doctor and Nyssa are captured on the other. Both teams make up a lie to save themselves, Adric pretends to be there to protect the Duchess from threat of assassination by "the Scorpion". The Doctor, unwillingly, and Nyssa pretend to be the aforementioned Scorpion.

I love the way the Doctor goes along with being mistaken for a famous assassin. Five is the perfect Doctor for this as he's the last Doctor you'd expect to be able to pull something like this off. Nyssa's strange enthusiasm for the assassination game is also very fun and on point for her character. Hijinks ensue, and the main cast aided by all the incredible side-characters slowly unravel the misunderstanding. Holograms, body doubles, fake rifles, fake assassins, real assassins, real rifles, you get the point. There's also a declaration of war in there somewhere, it sounds chaotic (and it is) but in the actual story the twists and turns are extremely entertaining to follow.

Now comes the fourth part, I predicted it from the start and yet it was still shocking. The Scorpion, (the real one) was actually there all along and causing the mistrust that snowballed into outright hatred between the Duke and Duchess. They intend to go through with their plan, and nearly do. The Duchess is dead on the floor and the Doctor gets a rather cold moment where he threatens the Scorpion with a gun. The Scorpion is insistent that the Doctor wouldn't shoot and even taunts him by intending to shoot his companions. I genuinely thought he would kill the Scorpion. Somehow there manage to be about three more twists after this but regardless it all ends happily ever after with the Duke and Duchess reconciling (another thing I predicted).

Overall, while I predicted nearly every twist in the story at the very beginning it still managed to be more refreshing and unique than some of the most experimental Big Finish.

Next Story: Ghost Walk