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

Previous Story: The Great Beyond

Really standard story for the Companion Chronicles, the early ones were just very mediocre. Sarah Sutton does some decent narration but this is just a very dull story in general. She captures the mannerisms well however, especially of Tegan and the Doctor. It plays with some really interesting concepts but none are well explained and it just makes this story quite a slog to sit through.

There is very little characterisation of the main team, or atleast, if there was then I completely missed it and/or it was very subtle. It was difficult to stay awake during this, I didn't care much for the characters and the voices of the main alien robot things annoyed me.

Next Story: Iterations of I

After quite a lot of disappointing companion chronicles with the Fourth Doctor, I'm glad that we're slowly starting to get back on track - but not by much.

It's a little disappointing that the Doctor is barely in this, but I suppose it makes sense so that Sarah Sutton doesn't need to play too many characters. Her impersonation of the Doctor isn't the best, but Peter Davison has a very plain voice which isn't too imitable. I love how judgemental Tegan is, ready to call out the Dar Trader's horrific methods and ideologies, and it contrasts with Adric's views so well, sparking a mature discussion about death. Nyssa is struggling with more psychic visions as per Kinda and Zaltys, which is some great setup to Primeval. There's also some references to Terminus, which I haven't seen yet but I know of. There's some excellent character moments for Nyssa, such as looking back on her home and her old life being destroyed in a few seconds. Whilst this is her story, it never fully goes into depth about her. It scratches the surface about a bigger character, but never properly explores it.

I'll be honest - I struggled with this. I didn't know that this was a prequel to the Seventh Doctor Main Range story "The Death Collectors", so there wasn't much context and it's probably best if you listen to that story first if you want to try this story out for yourself. They spend quite a bit of time developing these monsters and their ethics in Part 1, but then nothing really happens to keep you engaged in Part 2 and they end up kinda generic. Also they sound a lot like the Time Reaver, and they breathe super loudly when other people are talking and it gets on my nerves.

The locations are average, using dead bodies for walls is pretty grotesque, but they never use these locations to their advantage.

I love the little subplot where Nyssa is trying to settle one of her patients, it gives her so much more in terms of character development than the rest of the story. The patient is kinda creepy though...

All I can say about this story is it has potential - it had so many great ideas but never fully takes advantage of them, which is very disappointing. Also the sound design can be rather in-your-face at times which I'm not a fan of.

the story is told from nyssas perspective presumably a while after shes left the tardis in the future, and its got a very depressing vibe. theres some really cool moments like her literal death but i feel like the dar traders are undeveloped and its not really overly explained what their exact purpose is. the story takes a weird turn in the last 15 minutes as well and none of it really meshes well with other elements of the story. not the best companion chronicle.

I quite enjoyed this one a lot more then last time it could be because of my timeline order but it felt so idk comforting in a way