To cross to a safe zone on a planet that’s constantly in flux because of the War, the Doctor and his party need help from a Dalek…

Matt Fitton’s story for this second adventure picks up immediately after the few survivors of the Theseus crashland – and amongst their number is a Dalek with memory problems. Trying not to awaken its programming too far, the Doctor walks a tightrope as all around them the jungle lives and dies and lives and dies. It’s a great concept, and unfortunately, we’ve heard it not too long ago in the recent First Doctor Companion Chronicle, Across the Darkened City. Okay, some of the details are different but the core idea is a little too close for comfort. I was joking about the Big Finish Quality Controller in the review of the first story, but this similarity to a story that only came out four months earlier is a little surprising.

That familiarity set aside, it’s a great story, not so much for the Dalek element, as for the way in which the tropes of the Time War are quickly set out through the situations the Doctor, Bliss and their comrades encounter. Races’ entire trajectories are thrown off course because they happen to be in the way when the Time Lords and/or the Daleks choose their latest battleground. Echoes come from everywhere around – both spatially and temporally. Who’s to say what is real, and what isn’t?

Verdict: A strong continuation. 8/10

Paul Simpson