Animal review [Andrew Cartmel]

Raine has her first journey with the Doctor and Ace, arriving at Margrave University in 2001. She and Ace pose as freshers to investigate an ecoterrorist plot with extraterrestrial connections.

When and Where: Margrave University in England, 2001. This is between Crime of the Century and Earth Aid for the TARDIS crew, and four years after Battlefield for Brigadier Bambera.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "You will come to know harm."
• Like with Crime of the Century, the first episode is the best, although still not great, featuring some nice interaction between Ace and Raine which has just the right amount of antagonism between the two. Ace learning that she's supposed to be a vegetarian and then having a burger served to her is funny.
• Brigadier Bambera (one of the few decent elements of the otherwise solid season 26, Battlefield) returns, played more convincingly than in her onscreen appearance.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "You lied to me." / "You lied to yourself."
• "Here's one he prepared earlier!"
• "Hey, Doctor dude! Check this out!"
• The cliff-hanger is one of Classic Who's staples and Big Finish have done a number of excellent ones. Cartmel's scripts, however, are utterly devoid of any exciting endings. The various plotlines don't tie up very neatly either: we've got Ace and Raine going undercover to investigate an ecoterrorist who turns out to be in contact with the Numlocks; we've got man-eating plants in the university for some reason; and then there's the battle robots that the Doctor came here to investigate in the first place. Very little actually happens in this story and, whilst this could be forgiven if it involved some character work for Raine or something, it's another overly thin plot with nothing happening until part 4.
  
• Ace is still present but has no function that Raine couldn't just have easily assumed, meaning that despite the fact that this is Raine's first journey in the TARDIS she disappears for large chunks of the story. We've seen the Seventh Doctor and Ace. Give us Seventh and Raine.
• Is the sergeant dopey or corrupt? He isn't consistently characterised, seeming to want to execute Ace for one of the cliff-hangers but showing no such cold-bloodedness in the rest of the story. Scobie, too, is boring and, although his mission is noble (at least, his motivation is) he isn't remotely sympathetic.
• Oh, dear. The Metatraxi. Why? They aren't an interesting race and the translator gag isn't funny.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: An improvement on Thin Ice and Crime of the Century, but still a poorly written release. Thinly-plotted, uninteresting and once again sidelining Raine, this story is a jumble of plotlines with no engaging characters or developed themes. Still, it's more competent than its predecessors and Brigadier Bambera's appearance is a welcome one making a rare connection to the later seasons of the classic series. This story is very bad, and that earns it an E.

The Lost Stories (Series 2)

Crime of the Century  |  Animal  |  Earth Aid