Spoilers

The team start to wonder about the Doctor…

Where episode 1 of this new 10 part drama seemed to bounce off the established worlds of Doctor Who – with key references dropped that perhaps meant more to the listener than to the characters at that stage – this second part feels like it’s really embracing the worlds of the series (and that word is being used in the plural). There are mentions of elements from Doctor Who from the 1970s to the present day, as well as The Sarah Jane Adventures (and one particular reference that ties very neatly to a Lockdown tale), and no two ways round it, Cleo and her brother start to become very heavily entangled in the Doctor’s world.

This time around, the archive story that features is 2007’s Smith & Jones with the return of a main character from that (although once again recast for the audio) whose testimony makes Abby realise that things are rather more serious than they might have thought, and of course Anjli Mohindra returns as Rani in a very tense sequence.

Anyone – and there’ve been a few online – who suggest that the team behind this don’t know their Doctor Who might like to tot up the number of episodes that are obliquely, but very deliberately, referenced (including in this episode’s title). Quite where it fits in with regard to the events of series 13 is still to be revealed but there are lots of possibilities opened up by Rani’s conversation with Cleo and Jordan, and I’m just beginning to wonder if this might be where the cliffhanger of Class gets resolved…

Verdict: If episode 1 was like the early part of Love & Monsters, focusing on the non-Doctor Who element more heavily, this takes us into the Whoniverse with a vengeance (maybe even literally…) 9/10

Paul Simpson

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