Jackie Tyler has a stalker. Well, of course she does. It’s not like there’s any other reason Captain Jack Harkness might be hanging around the Powell Estate…

One of the least likely pairings in Doctor Who history comes to the fore in this fun tale from James Goss, which takes some of the same central ideas as Love & Monsters and weaves a story of unusual alien invasions and the importance of hot sausage rolls.

Camille Coduri is getting a new lease of life as Jackie, between this, the Ninth Doctor Chronicles and the forthcoming 10th Doctor set, and she’s clearly loving all the opportunities to flesh out the character. She may not be book smart like Jack, using all the long words to describe the situation they’re in, but she has an innate understanding of what’s important – and more to the point, what might get them out of the predicament that is threatening her and Jack.

The way this set is put together, Barrowman is playing some very different versions of Jack – gone is the hesitant character of the first story to be replaced by the more gung-ho version of Utopia and Torchwood series 1. He knows what his gifts are and how to use them to good advantage but he still needs the links to his past.

The musical score for this is… different but effective, and there’s some clever sound engineering and design from Martin Montague alongside Scott Handcock’s direction, which never quite allows elements of the story to become irritating that easily had the potential to do so.

Verdict: An unusual combination that works well. 8/10

Paul Simpson