Prime Winner review [Nigel Fairs]

The Doctor and Peri land in what looks like a '30s casino for aliens. But what is Peri's step-father, last seen in '80s Lanzarote, doing here?

Who are we with?: The Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown.

Where are we?: A casino far from Earth.

When are we?: For the Doctor and Peri this takes place shortly after Revelation of the Daleks, presumably before The Nightmare Fair given how the pair are still bickering.

The Good:

• Nicola Bryant is very, very good at making each character distinct. Her accents are superb (although her American accent continues to stray from coast to coast).
• The method of cheating at the casino isn't a ground-breaking idea but an interesting one all the same.

The Bad:

• The Doctor's a bit unpleasant in this story. It makes sense given that it's presumably set between Revelation of the Daleks and season 22a, but emotional abuse in the TARDIS is always a bad thing.
• The Doctor makes a very strange jump in logic in assuming that the Howard Peri saw was actually Kamelion. He's not the only shape-shifter in the universe. What a strange line of thinking for him to come to.
• The Howard mystery fails to interest and the payoff is lacking. The reference to Maxil isn't clever.

This Reminds Me...:

• "You'll need to wear something blue!" Blue is established as the colour of mourning on Necros in Revelation of the Daleks.
• We previously met Peri's step-father Howard in Planet of Fire.
• "That shouldn't have happened," the Doctor also remarked in Attack of the Cybermen.
• The Doctor has a bleeping device not unlike the one he will later use to identify Evelyn Smythe as a nexus point in The Marian Conspiracy.
• The Doctor replaces his fob watch, which was broken in Revelation of the Daleks.
• The Howard lookalike is just that - a lookalike, just as the Abbot of Amboise looked like the First Doctor (The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve), Ramon Salamander looked like the Second Doctor (The Face of Evil), Ann Talbot looked like Nyssa (Black Orchid) and Maxil looked like the Sixth Doctor (Arc of Infinity), among a number of others.

Verdict: This story lacks in a number of areas. The plot isn't hugely interesting and the mystery of what Howard is doing in the casino turns out to be... well, just a guy who looked like him. We've had lookalikes in Doctor Who a number of times before but they've always served some sort of purpose. We wondered whether the Abbot was the Doctor, Ann and Nyssa are mistaken for one another, the whole plot of The Face of Evil, but this time it's just because. The narration by Nicola Bryant is good and, as someone who really isn't a fan of Peri, her character is written tolerably whilst we get a nice gleam of the Sixth Doctor's niceness towards the end. E

Short Trips

Gardens of the Dead  |  Prime Winner  |  Washington Burns