This was a really fun celebrity historical, which has a very New-Who feel to it. I honestly didn't expect much from this story, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Already, this team is proving how well they work together without the shadow of Adric looming over them, all three actors giving it their all. This story absolutely suits this trio, with the most human Doctor struggling to cope with one of his companions struggling with relationship troubles, but he seems a little excited by the prospect of meeting someone from Tegan's normal life, and the chemistry between Davison and Delap really showcases that. It was a lot of fun hearing him suddenly pitch up to an art gallery and start spouting off information to other visitors as if he was a tour guide, it's such a 5th Doctor thing to do! Nyssa doesn't have too much to contribute to the overall story, but the way in which she interacts with the rest of the cast is where she shines, with some really strong character-based moments, grounding these scenes and adding a sense of realism. Her personality is so soft that she naturally brings out the best in people, allowing them to open up about their emotions and having an honest, mature discussion. If anyone's going to face their ex in Doctor Who, it would have to be Tegan, wouldn't it? Arguably the most "Gen Z" companion, her interactions with Kyle are dealt with interestingly and realistically, and really shows how much she's changed since Time-Flight, giving a real authentic, human approach and highlighting the importance of her return to the show, as the character that the audience can relate to the most. She's really had a traumatic few days, hasn't she? Nearly lost her cousin, been kidnapped by Omega, met her ex-boyfriend, realised said ex-boyfriend was an android and nearly lost her best friend! Overall, all three bring something to the table, and I'm glad that we're getting stories that are fitted especially for this team, as we had started to lose that at the end of 5/Nyssa's run.

What a clever idea to have water monsters in Amsterdam! The city with countless canals! I'll go on more about the setting later, but the Nix are fairly engaging monsters. They're nothing special, but they drive the narrative forward in an interesting way and there's a decent balance between tension and action for these aliens, chasing Nyssa and Tegan through the streets and having a fairly plausible backstory.

Yeah, Amsterdam! Man, the setting for this story is just brilliant. Jonathan Morris knows how to effectively tie in the surroundings with the plot, and not just plopping the TARDIS team somewhere random for no good reason. There's so much to explore, with the jumps from the 20th to the 17th century, and the way that both locations are developed with plenty of audibly interesting scenes, having a bike chase scene (anywhere else, it'd just be running, but because it's Amsterdam, there HAS to be bikes!), and the cooler, night atmosphere of the 1600s.

Like I said, Kyle is a standout, having excellent chemistry with our core cast and managing to play off a realistic performance of an android who's become more human over time and developed feelings of love for Tegan. There's such a subtle moment at the end where he decides to keep his heartache and feelings of loss, knowing he can't be a proper human without them. Rembrandt makes an appearance in this episode, and he's so much fun to be around, with a grouchy, nasty aura around him, but also a more nuanced, dark insight into the famed artist's life, feeling isolated from everyone around him. The Countess, unfortunately, feels a little like a panto villain and never really intrigues me, but she tries her best to keep the material she gets interesting.

The soundtrack felt very Gold-esque, and while I enjoyed it, I didn't think it particularly suited the story, especially with the Fifth Doctor. It was a nice score on its own, though.

Favourite Line: "Love has an inconvenient habit of overcoming hate."

This was really surprisingly enjoyable. It was a great showcase of the upcoming Season 20 team, and I'm excited to see what other adventures are coming up for them- What's that? The Doctor's abandoned Nyssa and Tegan?! Why did the TARDIS suddenly disappear?! But yeah, lots of fun and so much heart poured into this from all angles.

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

Previous Story: Arc of Infinity

Man it's great to have Janet Fielding on audio, especially since I was getting really tired of 5 and Nyssa alone. This is a story that understands Tegan's character perfectly and she's absolutely the stand out character in this one. The actual premise is really fun, Rembrandt is an interesting historical figure to explore and I like how they've handled him in this story. The main thing this story has going for it though is absolutely the dynamics between the main characters.

There's a lot of general timey-wimeyness in this adventure as the characters constantly zip up and down history, the parallel reality where the Dutch were the leading power in the world was also interesting (and one of the scariest things in Doctor Who, ever. /j)

Overall, just a very fun story with a solid premise and some nice fairly touching moments.

Next Story: Omega

Doctor Who – The Monthly Adventures

#208. The Waters of Amsterdam ~ 8/10

◆ An Introduction

Amsterdam is home to so much culture: seventy-five museums, fifty-five concert halls, and a plethora of art galleries. Its appearance in the Command & Conquer series also caused me a great deal of stress when I was younger. The final Imperial mission took place there, and the opposing factions were just relentless in their attacks!

Athena Cannons are raining orbital death on your base from the beginning, whilst the Allies wait for two Proton Colliders to fully charge up. If you don’t manage to destroy said super-weapons, just restart the mission. If that wasn’t enough to be dealing with, the Soviets turn up about halfway through the battle, and they’re armed to the hilt with Apocalypse Tanks!

Following their ordeal with a murderous lunatic from the realm of anti-matter, the Doctor and Nyssa have been reunited with Tegan. It isn’t long before her ex-boyfriend shows up… which leads to an encounter with water goblins, a renowned Dutch artist, and the creation of an alternate timeline. Oh, and did I mention that said ex-boyfriend happens to be an android?

◆ Publisher’s Summary

Reunited with the Doctor and Nyssa, Tegan joins them on a trip to Amsterdam's Rijkmuseum to see a new exhibition of the work of Rembrandt van Rijn, featuring his drawings of “Vessels of the Stars”. The Doctor is astonished to discover that they are designs for spaceships that would actually work, and decides to pop back to the Dutch Golden Age for a quiet word with Rembrandt – but the world-weary artist is no mood to help.

Meanwhile, strange forces are swirling in the canals, creatures from ancient myth, the watery, goblin-like Nix. What is their connection to the mysterious Countess Mach-Teldak – and to the events of Tegan’s life during her year away from the Doctor?

◆ The Fifth Doctor

I’m delighted that I chose to jump back into the audios with such an enjoyable little romp. Peter Davison sounds enthusiastic and full of energy throughout.

The Doctor hasn’t met Rembrandt yet. Though living a non-linear life, one can’t be entirely sure. He gets mistaken for a tour guide in the Rijksmuseum, and ends up rattling off facts about artists from the Dutch Golden Age like a Wikipedia article!

◆ Nyssa

Nyssa gets sidelined in ‘The Waters of Amsterdam’. This would usually bother me, but the character recently had a fifteen part story arc dedicated to her, so I can let it slide. Sarah Sutton still delivers a great performance.

Nyssa attempts to console a world-weary Rembrandt by telling him that his work would be highly valued and regarded in the future… but that doesn’t really help the artist now, doesn’t help with his ever mounting debts.

◆ Tegan Jovanka

Janet Fielding is afforded some excellent material in ‘The Waters of Amsterdam’. She even gets given a robot ex-boyfriend to deal with, but more on that later.

In the last twenty-four hours Tegan has seen her cousin turned into a zombie, been held hostage by an alien with a henchman which looked suspiciously like a plucked chicken, been on a wild goose chase through Amsterdam, and had her ex-boyfriend turn up out of the blue. Tegan admits that she probably wasn’t cut out to be an air stewardess; being polite to complete idiots is not really her strong point. She doesn’t dance, though she does a mean Charleston.

◆ Robot Ex

BigFinish are extremely well-known for making sure every gap in the established continuity is filled, like a plumber who got a little carried away using the expanding foam! ‘The Waters of Amsterdam’ is no exception, taking place directly after Omega’s expulsion back to his own universe at the end of ‘Arc of Infinity’. This works in Morris’s favour, allowing him to explore what Tegan actually got up to during the year she spent away from the Tardis – including getting sacked from her job as a trolley dolly, pursuing a relationship with someone who is absolutely loaded, and then kicking said boyfriend to the kerb when she realises that he’s completely lacking a backbone!

Kyle initially appears to be this fiercely attractive and charming young man, with a bank balance reaching into the millions! Managing director of his own import-export company, dealing in luxury cars, speedboats and yachts. His apartment also happened to be situated in one of the most prestigious neighbourhoods in Sydney, offering panoramic views of the bridge and the opera house. He almost appears too good to be true… and that’s because he is!

This slick entrepreneur was actually an android created by the Countess Mach-Teldak to scour the planet for other extra-terrestrial visitors. And since Tegan had picked up some harmless temporal particles whilst travelling in the Tardis, he found the perfect person to latch onto. Kyle’s whole reason for getting into a relationship with the mouth on legs herself was to gain access to the Tardis… and I’m honestly shocked that she didn’t deck him upon finding this out!

Considering what an interesting character he is, it surprises me that no writer has decided to bring back Kyle. BigFinish could definitely get some great storylines out of him.

◆ Thunder, Rain and Lightning. Danger, Water Rising.

If I were pressed to pinpoint the weakest aspect of ‘The Waters of Amsterdam’, then it would have to be the two main villains. The Nix were basically a race of goblin-like people that lived in the canals of Amsterdam, and looked almost identical to Perfect Chaos from Sonic Adventure! They lived as water-based molecules and behaved as such, meaning that they could be frozen or evaporated (hence why a fire extinguisher filled with carbon dioxide makes for a very effective weapon against them). My main issue with the Nix is that I cannot understand a word they’re saying. Instead of just adding on the water effects in post-production, the director got Robbie Stevens to sit in his booth gurgling water like his life depended on it. I’m sure that made the recording sessions incredibly fun – for everyone barn the cleaners – but it makes all of the lines absolutely incomprehensible!

As for the other main villain of this adventure, generic is the best way to describe her. The Countess is your bog-standard cackling villainess, who committed genocide against her own people and tried to blame it on the aforementioned gurgling goblins. When that lie disintegrated around her like a house of cards, she attempted to change the course of human history by getting Rembrandt to draw up spaceship blueprints because she wanted to annihilate the Nix. Her motivations are completely nonsensical and her actual plan just felt needlessly convoluted. I would expect these sort of issues from a rookie writer, not someone with a portfolio as extensive and vibrant as Jonny Morris’s.

◆ Sound Design

Trams rattle through the city as the people of Amsterdam go about their day… at least until the squelchy water monsters of death decide to gatecrash the Rijksmuseum! Martin Montague’s sound design for this release is marvellous.

The hustle and bustle of a Dutch café, and the ringing of bicycle bells as people ride along the banks of the canals. The humming of an aeroplane in flight, where Tegan gets into an argument with an arrogant businessman! Rain pouring down onto the roof of the Rijksmuseum, thunder crashing in the distance. The gurgling voices of the Nix are quite honestly rancid, like Daffy Duck with a mutated larynx! The hissing of a fire extinguisher as Kyle freezes one of the Nix. Muskets are fired at the Nix, as they attempt to access East India House.

◆ Music

Jamie Robertson is handling the score for ‘The Waters of Amsterdam’, and there is something incredibly jaunty about it. Especially during the first part of the adventure, where Tegan is basically recounting her time spent back on Terra Firma.

◆ Conclusion

“I doubt Tegan would be pleased to find out that her former boyfriend was an alien…”

Rembrandt has been drawing spaceship schematics thanks to a deranged alien countess who blew up her own race. Pursued by aliens who strongly resemble Perfect Chaos from Sonic Adventure, the Countess Mach-Teldak decides to alter the course of human history in order to blow the Nix’s world to kingdom come!

Jonathan Morris has long been revered as one of the greatest writers for Doctor Who, with his adventures consistently appearing on people’s “Top 10 Greatest Stories” lists. That might explain why it’s a real shock to the system when he creates anything less than perfect.

Whilst the adventure does tend to drag on a bit towards the end, and the villains have all the depth of a daytime talk show, I still managed to have a good time listening to ‘The Waters of Amsterdam’. It’s a fun little romp through the Venice of the North, but nothing more.

After Tegan very coincidentally ended up in Amsterdam in Arc of Infinity, in this play, her ex-boyfriend ends up in Amsterdam as well. However, nothing could quite be that simple where the Doctor is involved...

This is one of those stories that starts in one place, ends in another place and does a whole lot of stuff in between. That stuff includes, but is not limited to:

• Having wacky Dutch names and pronounciations (Glauber sounds more German and Polsbrook is better on the ears but spelled wrong (should be Polsbroek)). I'm still fresh from the Story Demon's pronunciation of Hoekstra, and this is an improvement.
• Actually using the fact the Doctor is in Amsterdam
• Giving a very interesting portrayal of Rembrandt's life and outlook on fame, despair and living, almost a reaction on Vincent and the Doctor. Additionally, they manage to tie it in meaningfully with Nyssa's character history.
• Showing another one of Tegan's real world acquaintances in Kyle, Tegan's ex-boyfriend. I think Kyle is done exceptionally well; the narrative acknowledges that both Tegan and Kyle are very flawed, and I like the role Kyle and this relationship play in the overall story.
• Have an interesting time travel plot.
• Have an incredibly hamfisted gap for BF to put solo 5 stories in and almost succeeding as playing it off as a joke. I can forgive this.

The result does have some pacing issues, but still is about the sum of its parts and manages to feel rich.

An alien android makes Tegan listen to The Talking Heads in this one!