With absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with the TARDIS, the Doctor agrees to take a holiday – on a planet where people go from pleasant to feral in moments…

As has been pointed out on a few occasions – not least by this website – there are sometimes good reasons that some Doctor Who stories are “Lost”. That very much applies to this tale.

We’ve had all the other stories from the proposed season 23 – or at least those for which there is adequate extant material – produced by Big Finish some years ago. Wally K Daly himself penned a novel for Virgin’s range, and I suspect that reading that (once) was my sole experience of this story until now.

Everyone involved – from director Helen Goldwyn and sound designer Nigel Fairs to stars Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant – tries their best, but, for all Daly’s excellence as a radio scriptwriter in other genres, this really is the proof that not everyone can write Doctor Who.

The exposition is extraordinarily clumsy, the internal continuity askew – the Doctor makes clear that Time Lords don’t take holidays; one of Mordaunt’s plans relies on Time Lords using the balls for holidays! – the concept ghastly (yes, we saw the Doctor out of control in Mindwarp; you have to suspect Saward liked the idea as used here, and suggested its use) and generally it’s just unpleasant. There are various comments in the extras to the effect that this hearkens back to the way the show was when Colin Baker was the Doctor on television – and unfortunately it does, but not in a good way,

Verdict: There are very few Doctor Who releases that I can never see myself returning to; this is one. 3/10

Paul Simpson