Well for once with these books I am really impressed with the twist

5️⃣🔽 = MIDDLING!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

“RAIDERS OF THE LOST SPEAR!”

This is a simple little heist story involving Viking artefacts and a visit to a Viking village in Uppsala, Sweden, to find Odin's lost spear. This leads to a standard fair Third Doctor story: they get captured, spend time chatting, meet the Master, and escape, only for Jo to get recaptured and be sacrificed. It then speeds through all of these familiar elements to reach the climax with all characters gathered in one room.

The strangest thing about this is how we supposedly witness the origin of Old Norse mythology, as the Viking characters we meet are the “real-life” Vikings Odin, Thor, and the rest are modelled after. Sadly, the story does very little in terms of exploring these characters, and they remain little more than pawns.

Another weird thing is that this story turns into a bit of an Indiana Jones adventure, as we learn that Odin's spear is the Spear of Destiny, which was thrust into Jesus as he hung on the cross and was later hunted down by Hitler during the war, to be used as a weapon against his enemies. And it's just one of several old artefacts with great power that the Time Lords are trying to track down.

The Master is shoehorned into the story. He has no real purpose, and the story would've worked just as well without him.

The author narrates his story with a flat tone, not giving his characters a lot of personality. It doesn't help that his Three and Jo aren't very recognisable in the first place.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• It's great how the story seeks to address a lot of the prominent myths surrounding the Vikings. It even mentions the fact that they are the only people who named one of the days of the week after their bathing day (Saturday).