Starlight Robbery

I covered 'Will Arrowsmith is really annoying' in the last one, so I'll simply say it again now and move on. Starlight Robbery takes us from the dense, plodding plot of Persuasion and dumps us in a whirlwind story of theft and alien worlds. The Persuasion Machine has been stolen and is up for auction by the slimy conman Garundel, first introduced to us in Black and White.

I, however, have a poor memory, so it took me going to TARDIS Wiki to realise that actually, I did know who Garundel was. The story works fine without knowing him, but it was a fun callback once I realised what was going on. Indeed, the whole episode is quite fun. This kind of action space market subgenre isn't really my thing most of the time, but this was a story with big goals and mainly managed to be entertaining.

That said, though the episode was perfectly fine-to-good, I have to say, I am a little sad about Klein. Now she works for UNIT, it feels like all her interesting character traits have been filed off to make her into a generic 'good guy'. The most interesting thing about Klein before was the way she was aligned with the Nazis and had such vastly different ideals to the Doctor. Of course, I'm not saying I want her to be a Nazi, but her having a totally different set of ethics to the Doctor and fighting him over it made her a character of immense depth and intrigue. And without it? Well, we get some flashy stories where the good guys win. And I think to me, that's a shame.