The hunt for a CVE leads the Doctor, Romana, Adric and K9 to an encounter with one of the most ruthless adversaries the Time Lord has ever met…

It takes some doing for a character to arrive on the scene and gain the accolade (if such it is) I’ve given him in the description above – and between Andrew Smith’s scripting and Nicholas Woodeson’s performance, the villain of this piece deserves it. It could so easily have become melodramatic (think Graham Crowden in The Horns of Nimon) but Woodeson and director Nick Briggs make it all the more chilling by the restraint on display.

There’s plenty of drama throughout this story, with strong roles for all the guest stars – George Layton’s Regis Tell, and Sarah Woodward’s Anla in particular. Smith comes up with assorted twists (in some cases quite literally, given the interesting spatial geometry of the Engineer’s craft) and continues the Season 18 theme of removing K9 from the action at the most unfortunate time for the other characters. All of the regulars are well served by the script, and there’s some real fire at times.

Verdict: A cracking adventure that inserts neatly into Tom Baker’s final season. 9/10

Paul Simpson

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