I’m unsure why this story didn’t click for me compared to others on this thread. It’s set in an interesting time period and the basic plot is serviceable enough - but it just plods along so slowly with barely a flicker interest. There’s that grating voice as well - how did the director allow that?

As someone has said upthread the historicals have been quite weak across the 9DAs so far.

So far this is easily the worst box set so far. I’m quite loyal to the series but another one of these would have me reading reviews before purchasing.

The Ninth Doctor #20

'Back to Earth: The False Dimitry' (2022) from The Ninth Doctor Adventures: Series 2.

Not a particularly big fan of this one, but it is one of the stronger historicals that have been in the 9NAs thus far. The relationships that Dimitry has, the presence of the fake one, and the climax were all cool, but the story palette is just a bit stale for me really and didn't grab me at all.

An unfortunate low point of the 9DAs so far, but to be positive, it does retrospectively clarify that Ravagers *was* much better than it seemed, I’ll go back and correct those ratings up. No episode of that was as poorly acted, unengagingly sound designed, or as frankly boring as I found this one. I see that it’s a low rated entry from this series everywhere, The Curse Of Lady Macbeth doesn’t seem very well-regarded either but I liked it a lot, here I must agree with the consensus, I’m not a fan of this dialogue or the plot and I didn’t really warm to any guest character in particular. Eccleston sounds disengaged from the story too, but still delivering his lines well. Kind of a dud, 2/5