The Burning Prince

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

Previous Story: Omega

I didn't expect this story to be as good as it was, I was going into it expecting something fairly dull, and at the start it definitely seemed like my expectations were correct. Around the second half, this story picks up incredibly. The main twist is fairly well-done even if I saw it coming a mile away. This is mainly due to the unabashedly evil performance of Princess Aliona, she's certainly not the most despicable villain (That says more about Doctor Who than it says about her) but I couldn't help but genuinely despise her.

Peter Davison gives an all-star performance here and really channels the Time Lord Victorious when he confronts the princess. He also adds an emotional punch to the end of an already bleak story considering everybody died by the end. I love how blunt this story was with killing off it's characters, none of the deaths felt cheap either, they all had a lot of weight to them.

Overall, a fantastic story that genuinely exceeded my expectations tenfold, I very much recommend this story.

Next Story: Cuddlesome

When I see a solo Doctor adventure in the MR, I tend to breathe a sigh - often I find companionless Doctor stories to be tedious at worst and dull at best. Unfortunately, Davison is in no way my favourite Doctor either, so I was gritting my teeth for this to be yet another one I'd have to power through. I was then delightfully surprised to find I actually very much enjoyed it.

On reflection, I should have paid more attention and noticed it was a Dorney script - John Dorney has been know to write duds but they are very few and far between, and this is not one of them. The story to begin seems simple enough; a prince is marrying for the sake of peace between warring factions, but the woman he is to marry has been kidnapped and, because he loves her, he has gone to rescue her.

Though it is perhaps a little obvious by the nature of this kind of story that the princess is inevitably going to be a double agent, only going into the marriage in order to obtain the DNA of the opposition so she can help wipe them out, the twist is still well realised and didn't leave me with the sense of yeah, of course it was her as twists often do. Overall, I had fun listening to this one. The pace was good and I didn't feel bored, and that's about all I ask for from a Main Range episode.