The Doctor, Roz and Chris are separated on a battlefield…

Steve Jordan’s story for the New Adventures TARDIS team is based around a familiar trope in Doctor Who fiction – the Doctor and his companions get separated and find themselves on opposite sides of a conflict, believing their fellow time travellers to be either dead or in mortal peril. They get to know the ins and outs of the situation from these opposing viewpoints, and at the end are reunited, only leaving after they’ve brought some form of peace to the world they’re on.

It’s given a New Adventures twist with the Doctor spending some time inside his own mind trying to negotiate with bacteria that are trying to kill him. There’s some unpleasantness involving Chris being tortured – although given that the character is established in his first appearance in the books as someone who uses body beppling (i.e. cosmetically altering his looks so he’s appeared to be a giant teddy bear), it’s hard to see that he’d have a problem with the idea of the changes being threatened, even if the methodology is clearly hurting!

Verdict: Good production values for a straightforward tale. 7/10

Paul Simpson