The Doctor and Romana meet those who are not wholly bad or good as they arrive on the planet Funderell…

Marc Platt’s script for this final adventure for the Doctor and Romana this season (this is the first of two releases) owes a specific debt to one of the best pieces of radio drama written in the 20th century. If you’ve heard Under Milk Wood – particularly the version which featured the mellifluous tones of Richard Burton – you’ll pick up on many of the references, notably the inversion of the play’s opening lines, but there’s a lyricism to the writing throughout that gives it a mythic quality that all involved play up to, without making what’s already an intensified reality feel completely wrong.

That treatment works well with the story of those who live on Funderell, and those who have come to visit – whether deliberately or accidentally. All of them have secrets, although some are unaware that they do, and Platt provides a story that undulates in the same way as the planet itself – where you think you understand something one moment, the next its meaning becomes distant.

Joanna Tincey’s Sartia is an interesting addition to the Doctor Who mythos, expanding a part of Romana’s backstory that hasn’t really been tackled over the years – even in the Gallifrey series, where you might have expected it. We tend to forget that the character Mary Tamm played was fresh out of the Academy, and must have had friends and acquaintances on Gallifrey before she was assigned by the White Guardian to help the Doctor. Tincey picks up the nuances in Platt’s script and I really hope that the character survives the next instalment…

Verdict: A rather differently styled story that draws you in. 8/10

Paul Simpson