The Doctor, Anya and Mark’s search brings them to a secret experimental base…

John Dorney’s tale for the out of time 10th Doctor and his companions picks up on elements from The Daleks’ Masterplan as well as other elements from across Doctor Who history to provide a story that gives all three leads plenty of opportunities. It also provides Blake Ritson with a real bad guy to get his teeth into in the shape of Major McLinn, the sort of character that any Doctor would have an issue with, but this incarnation particularly.

When I interviewed Joe Sims a few weeks back (before this set was out) I predicted that an episode would have to end in the way this one does, and Dorney paves the path to it with many good intentions. Sims’ Mark Seven is becoming increasingly human in his responses (there’s a great line about teenagers from Tennant in response to early signs of this) and the relationship between his character and Jane Slavin’s Anya is moving on a different trajectory than you might have expected from the early episodes.

Barnaby  Edwards’ Arborecc finally makes an appearance, and there’s a certain lovely meta quality to his fate; Pippa Bennett-Warner’s Fliss is key to the episode, and she and Sims sell the bond between the two in a few words. Howard Carter’s sound design and music really place this in its television era without feeling like it’s simply aping what came before, and Ken Bentley subtly turns up the heat as the episode progresses until we reach a cataclysmic finale.

Verdict: Great performances in front of and behind the microphones make this one of the strongest Dalek Universe instalments yet. 9/10

Paul Simpson

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