The Doctor has to ensure a critical moment in football history happens as it was meant to…

Katharine Armitage’s story to conclude the Pioneers set is an unusual one, with a mix of tone that verges from comic – the way in which the Doctor shoehorns in as many references to football as he can – to the seriously horrific, with one scene in a stable reminding me very much of the sequence in the dog pen in John Carpenter’s The Thing (and Iain Meadows must have had a nightmare tracking the movement of each of the alien’s tentacles during this!).

In addition to the Doctor ensuring that the maddest of football fans doesn’t achieve its aim of consuming everything it possibly can to do with the game, there’s a parallel plot regarding a maid gaining agency – even if it takes some tragic events for her to reach that point. Rachel Fenwick gives a powerful performance, particularly against Raymond Coulthard’s William, and there’s a suitably bittersweet coda to the story (and I was relieved that it didn’t mirror the start at the end.)

Verdict: Although I’m sure there’s some more appropriate footballing phrase to use here that didn’t turn up in the script, it’s a solid outing for the Doctor’s team. 7/10

Paul Simpson

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