At a spa in Bad Homburg, the Doctor encounters a Russian Tzar… or does he?

Lisa McMullin’s script is something of a backdoor celebrity historical, although unless you’re familiar with key German literature of the late 19th century, you may not connect the title with one of the key characters… (Unusually the description of this story on the website gives away something we only learn in the closing few minutes.)

Just as The Unquiet Dead posits an alternate reason for Dickens’ method of writing in the last few months of his life, so this gives a different explanation for why the key peace text of the title was written. According to McMullin’s Lay Down Your Arms, its author was witness to some highly unusual acts of violence, assisted by her errant singing teacher (!) Herr Schmidt – no guesses as to who that is – all the while fending off her mother’s attempts to marry her off to someone with a title. McMullin devises a new sort of alien, whose MO is most appropriate to the person whom they are disguised as, and picks up on a number of characteristics of the Ninth Doctor, notably his mangling of the names of those he considers idiots! (He also gets the definition of tone deaf wrong…)

Guest stars Kate Sissons, Joseph Kloska, Diana Quick and Jamie Parker throw themselves into the story, with Ken Bentley’s direction and Howard Carter’s sound design widening the canvas as appropriate.

If (like me) you had no idea who Bertha is – and just assumed it was a character devised for the story – the final few minutes are fascinating (and sent me down a rabbit hole investigating!) and you can find out more here.

Verdict: An enjoyable tale with a more serious than usual underpinning. 9/10

Paul Simpson

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