I love learning more about romana I’m not gonna lie perfect start to the finale can’t wait for more

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

Previous Story: The Movellan Grave

This is shaping up to be a great finale. It's strange, exciting, tense and rather surreal. The stakes are high and there's an interesting mystery surrounding the Time Lords' involvement in this planet.

Sartia is an interesting character, there's enough breadcrumbs to realise that something is not what it seems with her and yet the twist at the end was brilliant. Overall it's a great start and I'm looking forward to seeing it through.

Next Story: The Thief Who Stole Time

REVIEW ALSO POSTED IN THE THIEF WHO STOLE TIME

I appreciate what this story tried to do, even if it didn't do it too interestingly. I lost my interest halfway through Episode 1 which made it difficult to engage my interest for the other three episodes.

Marc Platt manages to capture the essence of the Fourth Doctor perfectly - striking a balance between his straight-faced, serious persona within Season 18, but also harkening back to elements of his more whimsical side from Season 17. For once however, this isn't the Time Lord we're focusing on. This is clearly more of a Romana-centric story, and Lalla Ward does a reasonably good job. If she comes across as brash or rude at times, it fits in with the narrative of the story as she is put through a lot and is clearly stressed out. I'm a little disappointed that K-9 wasn't in the finale, but that's just a minor nitpick I have.

Sartia feels like a knockoff Master here - a renegade Time Lord, who's old friends with Romana and butting heads with her. She feels incredibly pantomimey and over the top for a villain, and I'm really not impressed. I don't care much for who she is, but that's not at a discredit to Joannah Tincey's performance. She tries her hardest to bring out the best of this character, but I just was left bored.

I'm really fascinated by the idea of alien planets. Like, proper alien, something completely unique, with completely different weather patterns to Earth, their own cultures, everything. Season 18 definitely tries that, and it's clear in this episode too - a planet with a surface similar to a newtonian fluid. The setting is established so well and it's interesting to see what Marc Platt does with Funderell - it lives up to its name, the concept definitely is fun (if the setting itself is a little dark and ominous...)

I don't know who's involved here. No-one really made that much of an impression on me. There was a camera crew, but I don't know what they were doing, it's never properly explained, and if it was, it wasn't explained well. Also, they just felt a bit shoehorned in and didn't fit into the story properly.

Standard score, nothing interesting - still loving the synths.

This is an average adventure - the only thing worth of note is the worldbuilding aspect, as well as the brilliant performances from Tom Baker and Lalla Ward, of course!