The Doctor learns that Man isn’t just the warmest place to hide…

Tim Foley wraps up this box set of adventures for Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor with a story that feels so much on a par with the televised stories that you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it had been broadcast at Christmas 2004 as a winter special, setting the scene for the adventures to come in March. (I still like the trailer that we got in real life then, but this would have been so much cooler… in all senses!)

It’s the Ninth Doctor at his best, dealing with the foibles of humanity and its strengths and weaknesses as displayed by the folk on the space station, who have gone where no one is meant to have gone, and opened a door to allow a creature from myth and fable to re-emerge into our universe. There’s plenty of well-performed and directed action sequences alongside bickering, painful death and potential redemption, and second chances where none were expected.

Helen Goldwyn ensures that Thalissa Teixeira and Simon Shepherd make the most of the nuances in the script, while Pip Torrens seems to be having the whale of a time as the villain of the piece, with Amy Manson voicing a rather different kind of computer (wife!). Iain Meadows’ sound design ensures you have shivers down your spine, while Howard Carter’s score once again underlines rather than dictates the emotion of the scene.

Verdict: A different sort of Christmas story that honours and expands its TV origins. 9/10

Paul Simpson

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