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

Previous Story: Moonflesh

Another really generic and painfully dull story. It really feels like they've ran out of steam for the 5 and Nyssa team. There's not much I can say in favour of this story, I suppose the villain voices were fairly good but that's about it. I found it hard to care about the characters, especially any of the sons. The only time it got somewhat interesting was the reveal of Virna's daughter.

There's technically a new "companion" here aswell but after two really poor stories I find it immensely difficult to care about her story whatsoever. Atleast with Thomas Brewster he brought a much-needed fresh dynamic to the growing-stale TARDIS team. I really hope the next story makes this trilogy worthwhile.

Next Story: Masquerade

Doctor Who does Tomb Raider. With its many twists and turns, interesting side characters and villains, this is good fun! Note however that Moonflesh is required listening.

The music is a bit monotone, but the sound design is on point and the worldbuilding is very nice too.

Quite a simple concept, dragged out over four parts, creating a very overlong story which was uneventful and dull.

I was hoping to be proven wrong by my expectations of the Fifth Doctor - and for the most part I am; on TV, he's meek, innocent, childish, always optimistic; most of the time on audio he's confident, sometimes aggressive, demanding - but then you get stories like this and Moonflesh where he just doesn't have a personality. All he does is service the plot and spout expositional dialogue. It's making it rather a slog to get through his audios, and I'm dreading the idea that the same will happen to the 6th and 7th Doctors in the early 2010s, which is arguably Big Finish's weakest point. The same's said for Nyssa, too - I say that a lot, but I'm just not interested by her as a character. There was a mature character arc, but she's overstaying her welcome and I'd like her to be gone now, please. Thankfully, I'm about to start Season 20 and she leaves in this season, but there's still quite a few audios with her in; maybe rejoining Tegan will allow for some new stories to be told, but I'm not holding out hope.

Virna is a bit generic, again - her and her family of pirates reminded me of the Voltas from the Tenth Doctor adventure Cold Vengeance, and they tried to breathe life into a one-dimensional character, but there's nothing that could be done with them. I liked the little comedic moments of the two sons, showing how utterly incompetent they are at the job and how they've been coerced, and I loved the twist that this wasn't Virna's first time at the tombship; I expected that there would be some time travel shenanigans, but it actually followed a linear and surprising path!

It's nice that we're moving away from Earth at long last, but this ends up being just a 2 hour runaround and, while it's a nice play on the stereotypical, Indiana Jones-y tombraiding, but there's nothing particularly standout.

What on Earth was going through their heads? "You know who we should bring back? A random extra from the previous story!" Why is Hannah Bartholomew in this episode? She doesn't even show up until Episode 3! She's honestly a waste of space and included just for padding. Not impressed.

The music's dull and generic, again, it services the plot but there's never a memorable track.

Favourite Line: "Forgive me, Miss Bartholomew, but I don't recall you ever being invited aboard the TARDIS." No, she wasn't invited. Kick her off.

Two duds in a row, and after the previous trilogy being one of the strongest (the Stockbridge Trilogy), I'm expecting to this to be one of the worst. Thankfully, after Masquerade, there's only two more two-part episodes, before we return to TV. I'm sick to death of just the Doctor and Nyssa, hopefully Tegan can spark things up a bit.