The Thing from the Sea

☹️(4.32) = BAD!

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

Paul Magrs offers a typically horror-inspired 18th-century tale with the Fourth Doctor, featuring alien sea serpents and a magician named Cagliostro. Susan James narrates the story with a sort of grandmotherly wisdom, as if she were telling a bedtime story.

The rural Renaissance Italy setting is brought to life pretty nicely, even though the story is more centred on painting these vivid views (and doing so pretty well) than telling a very interesting story. This is likely due to the fact that the story is told through Mrs. Wibbsey and her POV, which sort of slows things down and makes the Doctor more distant. I found my mind wandering quite a lot while listening to this.

The alien serpent is a talky one, and Jameson gives it an intriguing voice, but its presence doesn’t bring a lot of tension to the story. Count Otto also doesn't stcik out very well. The Doctor's dialogue is well-written and feels like part of this incarnation of the Doctor.

The latter plot developments bring in Cagliostro more properly and move the story closer into sci-fi territory, but it’s not very engaging for it.

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

Previous Story: Survivors in Space

While The Nest Cottage Chronicles are over, the story isn't. It's good to have a story entirely narrated by Mrs Wibbsey, I think her character is fascinating and has a lot of potential for character development that is well realised in this story. This story has a nice setting and some interesting ideas but it's nothing particularly special and lacks the uniqueness that made Nest Cottage so special.

Next Story: The Winged Coven