I like what they did here tbh I’m not a movellian fan not really into them but they where very well used here

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

Previous Story: Subterranea

I think this story has a lot going against it, mainly the Movellans. While I appreciate that Big Finish likes to give one-off villains second chances, there's usually a reason they are one-off. The Movellans manage to be one of the worst parts of Destiny of the Daleks, an already bad story. I will give credit to this though, it makes the Movellans marginally more interesting and I like Chenek as a character.

Even though the "robot with emotions" trope is a bit tired by now, this story manages to make it fairly interesting but aside from that I just didn't really enjoy this one. It lacks the rich atmosphere that every other story of this series has had so far, it lacks a genuinely interesting plot. A lot of action and yet not much happens at all.

Next Story: The Leisure Hive

Disco is back in a... uh, a mediocre way.

This feels like a story that could fit into the first season of the Fourth Doctor Adventures. The Doctor cracking jokes around robots from an archaeological site - after some really strong material for this version of the Doctor, it feels like we're back in the Hinchcliffe era again, and really neither the Doctor or Romana feel like they had any development from this story, and did the Doctor just let the Movellans blow up and not care at all?

I don't get what was going through their heads when they came up with this idea. "Hey, do you remember the retro robots from that rubbish Dalek story? Yeah, let's write a story all about them!" Actually, retro robots from a rubbish Dalek story also describes The Chase... Despite this, if any monster from the Williams era could fit into an 80s aesthetic, it's these ones. They're real funky and match the visuals of that era quite well. But they're just generic robots, and they're so uninteresting and bland - and Polly Walker is so monotonous. I get that it's because they're robots, but if you're going to have robot monsters, do something interesting with them. They try to, with the experimentation cyborg-y thing, but it doesn't engage me. And how do they stop depending on their power packs? That's like a remote control working without batteries.

Again, Hinchcliffe vibes from the setting. Archaeological excavation and quiet little English town. It devolves into a pointless runaround the village and I don't really care for what's going on with it. It's not used effectively at all.

Do they have like only two actors? Why do they keep recasting Jane Slavin in every other Fourth Doctor story? Aside from her run as a, frankly, boring companion, she's in 18 stories with Tom Baker. And she can't even act, and it gets on my nerves. I don't really care about the archaeologists.

Bland. That's all I can say here. They didn't have enough of a story to go off, and you'd think it means they'd put more focus on the characters themselves, but they don't.