SAME REVIEW AS THE DEMON RISES

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.

A strong start to this 2 parter in invested in what’s gonna happen next

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

Previous Story: The Crowmarsh Experiment

That was a great story, start to finish. The world felt very well thought out and lived in and the concept of Mind Runners is brilliantly unique. As the start to a two-parter, it's a very strong one. There were a lot of fun character moments, further cementing 4, Leela and K9 as one of my favourite TARDIS teams so far. The reveal of the villain was very well set up with a casual mention of him at the start. Overall, it's a story with a lot of atmosphere and great execution on some unique concepts so I'm curious to see where this will go.

Next Story: The Demon Rises