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

Previous Story: The Boy That Time Forgot

Well this was infinitely better than the last story, though that's not particularly difficult. I had good fun with this one, Brewster is infuriating but I think he's rather fun and brings some much needed excitement to the TARDIS team of 5 and Nyssa. John Pickard is great as Thomas Brewster and his chemistry with Peter Davison shines in this story especially.

The setting was interesting however I don't think it was handled particularly well, it was very difficult to visualise making it difficult to follow the action. Underneath the somewhat interesting ideas this was just a very plain and formulaic story. It could have done with another part or two to really flesh out the world.

Brewster impersonating the Doctor and selling off bits of the TARDIS was quite fun though and made for some good tension. Again, I'm curious to see where his character goes and do more to develop his character beyond his first story.

Next Story: A Perfect World

I'm starting to get the feeling that we're in rather generic territory here - the early Big Finish years were experimental, dark and gritty, the last couple of years for Big Finish have been authentic and matching the tone of the 80s, and in the middle there's a grey area where they can't go too dark because the TV series has returned but still trying to reach that adult demographic. This story is enjoyable, but forgettable.

Peter Davison gets so much challenging material here - Losing his TARDIS, having to fight against everyone he meets, trying to keep Brewster in line, it's a very stressful situation for the Doctor and the performance really shines through. Unfortunately, now there's another, more interesting companion, Nyssa gets sidelined yet again. I'm not sure how I feel about this - while she's great and has fantastic chemistry with the Doctor, I think she doesn't have enough personality to her to warrant her staying around for this long, and with the addition of Brewster, it seems like there's two rather bold personalities on board the TARDIS and Nyssa. Season 19's crew showed how bland she was, and it seems that Brewster's doing the same thing. I hope that they do something more with her because she's incredibly generic by this point. I really love the direction in which they took Brewster. The tension between him and the Doctor at the start of the story is strong, but you can tell by the end that he's trying to do the right thing, even if the result isn't particularly marvellous, but the Doctor admires him anyway. It's brilliant to see the amount of development and how realistic it feels in just three episodes, the team is fully formed and I can't wait to see how they get on in a proper Doctor-Companion dynamic.

Everyone is against the Doctor here, aren't they? The spoilt princess Vuyoki is a great character, really complex and I like those morally grey characters because they bring about an interesting dynamic into the story. The Ruhk is a weird concept that I don't really understand. I don't know why it was coming after Gammades' crew or what it wanted exactly, and why loads of them came out at the end. It was very confusing and I'm so confused as to how it was defeated, it seemed like a very rushed ending.

The setting was unique and seems very beautiful. I'm a little disappointed that this isn't a TV Story because I think it could've been realised beautifully within the budget they had. It's very simple but feeds into the story well, with bits of the TARDIS spread across the reef.

Hello, down there! Gammades' crew was your generic army force. Nothing at all distinct about them, just another obstacle for the Doctor to overcome and they left me really bored.

I can't say anything about the score, bland and forgettable, which is disappointing. You'd think they'd spend more time putting a memorable score into an exclusively audio production. The soundtrack is the audio equivalent of TV's visuals, it's so important.

Favourite Line: "She dazzles the Reef like a comet with her beauty."

Like I said, enjoyable but forgettable. I was worried that this would be the case when I started this era of the Fifth Doctor, and I was right. The problem I have with the main range is that they're pumping out so much content that they're going for quantity over quality and that's creating a problem for fans - there are going to be so many audios to collect, and a lot of them are going to be only okay. Like this one. But I like the character work it does for our core cast.