The inhabitants of Baker Street live through the first year of the COVID pandemic…

It’s eighteen months since this audio was first released, attracting a lot of discussion of its use of the pandemic, and the way in which the relationships between two key central characters is handled, much of it negative.

There’s a phrase used on a particular gameshow that the question answerer zigged when they should have zagged, and that feels appropriate for this story. John Dorney’s script tries to encapsulate the feelings of loneliness and isolation that came in lockdown but while it brings back memories of that time, it also doesn’t use it to make any sorts of meaningful points about the handling of the situation. Characters – some that we’ve come to know over the past few box sets – die off camera, and the impotence of the Doctor and Liv (both of whom should have some way of dealing with this) isn’t anywhere near as palpable as it should be. (And COVID and lockdown finished at Christmas 2020? Really?! I seem to recall a huge mess over lockdown that Christmas, and going into Tier 4 on Boxing Day… If the point of this was to reintegrate the Doctor into the proper timeline, then this is another odd choice.)

And then all magically comes together on New Year’s Eve. Andy has a new job, the TARDIS is repaired and it’s time to hop off for new adventures – which means Liv leaving Tania behind, because, as Tania knows full well, TARDIS life isn’t for her. So there’s a touching farewell between them (slightly overegged by the score) and moments later, after who knows how many adventures, Liv is dropped back by the Doctor… the words “cake” and “eating it” come irresistibly to mind. Sure, that means we get a chance for stories like Flatpack, as well as continuing tales for the Doctor, Liv and Helen, but it removes yet more jeopardy from them – we’ve already had six box sets of “Liv can’t be killed” with The Robots. If I was Helen Sinclair, I’d be worried…

Although I understand entirely the desire to course correct and have the real 2020 feature after the alternate timeline dominated the Stranded series, many of the core developments of this story could have come at the end of the previous episode – possibly even with the horrible irony of the Doctor dropping Liv back a year later than planned, so Tania and co. have lived through the pandemic pre-vaccine. For me, this simply doesn’t work.

Verdict: To quote the 5th Doctor, There should have been another way. 4/10

Paul Simpson

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