Doctor Who: City of Spires

This is the first part of a trilogy of closely connected stories pairing the Sixth Doctor with former Second Doctor companion Jamie McCrimmon. The Doctor arrives in Scotland in 1780, at a time when the Jacobite cause is essentially dead and have been replaced by the Clearances as a cause of rebellion for the Highlanders. It becomes clear almost from the first few moments of the story, though, that all is not as it seems, and not just because there are monsters prowling in the glen.

This, unfortunately, is the biggest weakness of the story, which piles mystery upon mystery but never provides any meaningful answers. Now, of course, the reason for that is that those answers are being held over for the next two parts of the trilogy, but they're so prominent here that their lack of resolution makes the story feel somewhat unsatisfying - there's no cliffhanger, just a sense that we never had time to get to the bottom of anything.

The story itself is functional, being based around aliens taking over Scotland to (apparently) drill for oil, but little more than that. At times it's a little difficult to follow what's happening, as if it was more written for a visual medium than an audio one, although it does all come together in the end. On the other hand, while Georgia Moffat is given relatively little to do, Hines and Baker do an excellent job with their characters. Indeed, the pairing works better than might be expected, with Six proving an able replacement for Two, contrasting the Doctor's intellectualism with Jamie's straightforward approach.

Overall, though, the story works better as a starting point for the new trilogy than it does on its own, and is perhaps overly long for that particular role - things certainly speed up significantly in the other two parts.