SAME REVIEW AS THE MIND RUNNERS

The Mind Runners reminded me of the Mind Robbers, of course, and the Demon Rises reminded me of the Satan Pit. Despite this, my preference is contrary, as I preferred the first story to the second- and is that Philip Schofield on the Mind Runners cover???

The Fourth Doctor didn't get too much to do in this until Part 4, when he just goes on a rant - However because he doesn't get much to do in the earlier parts, the rant just sort of comes out of nowhere. On the other hand, Leela once again gets the spotlight, with her huntress personality meaning she takes the charge in finding the Mind Runners, and fighting Mr Shift. K-9 does little more in this story apart from act as backup for the Doctor and Leela, but it's nice to see him anyway.

Mr Shift is a very unique monster - I do think he works a lot better in The Mind Runners, changing state and being quite creepy - as the story develops in The Demon Rises and we learn more about him, however, he becomes a bit more generic and turns into a standard monster-of-the-week. As with many Fourth Doctor Adventures, the concept is better than the execution.

The technological city of Chaldera reminds me a lot of the colony from the Sun Makers, and therefore settles well into the Williams era. Each scene feels quite claustrophobic and cold as possible. This allows for the characters to feel very isolated.

Once again, the side characters are very bland and uninteresting, and whilst their stories are set up nicely in Part 1, they're sort of forgotten about in the rest of the story.

This story was okay. Season 7 had two amazing stories, then it gave us this. It felt like a bit of a stepdown, honestly.

Yeah I didn’t vibe with this volume at all unfortunately hope volume 2 is better or s7 is gonna be a real dud

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

Previous Story: The Mind Runners

Wow, well that was a great conclusion to the last one.

So many interesting concepts and they were all handled really well; Mr Shift, mind running, a living planet that wants to use it's inhabitants as fuel. It had such a great atmosphere too, the world felt alive, literally. The Doctor was at his best here, you never really knew if he had thought it all through or whether he was coming up with his plans in real time. Leela and K9 were a joy to listen to in this story, especially the latter, he just worked quite well in this story.

There were plenty of twists and overall I think the scene towards the end was filled with clever reveals that I wouldn't have seen coming. My only gripe, and it is a small one is how there was an evacuation ship somewhere nearby in space ready to evacuate an entire planet, but that's a minor detail in an otherwise great story.

Next Story: The Shadow of London