Doctor Who: Shadow of the Daleks 1

[This is the first half of a two-part story. I am reviewing both parts here.]

While this is, in effect, an epic four-hour story told over the course of two separate releases, it's noteworthy that it's actually split into eight 30-minute “episodes”, each by a different writer. Each episode sees the Doctor arriving in a different place and time and, since they're relatively short, this sees the pace of the story zipping along - an effective way to deal with something that's, overall, quite lengthy.

Nonetheless, this is a single story, with each of the locations the Doctor arrives in being inhabited by seemingly the same four people (and in most of them, nobody else) - albeit with different names and backgrounds, depending on where they happen to be. Many of the resulting stories are particularly surreal, with reality warping around the characters in different ways, yet each has quite a distinct flavour. Perhaps the most innovative (although with echoes of the earlier Big Finish release Live 34) consists of a recording of the Doctor fronting a radio show, complete with the sorts of sounds you get when, say, a radio mic is jostled as somebody moves about.

Others include an encounter with Douglas Jardine; one suspects most people outside the UK and Australia haven't heard of him (he's the “bodyline” chap) but we're given enough context that even people who know nothing about cricket should get an idea of his legacy. There's a doomed spaceship flight that has some particularly dodgy science in it but otherwise works quite well as a sort of base-under-siege (one of two in the set), a time loop murder mystery, foreshadowing of the Time War, and a story set in Renaissance Florence.

Oh, yes, and Daleks. They're actually not in it much, only really turning up in the final episode as everything is explained, but the surreal nature and unfolding mystery of the story wouldn't suit them. As a nebulous threat in the background, however, they add to the mystery and atmosphere. Still, if you were expecting something along the lines of a typical Dalek TV episode you're going to be disappointed, as it's nothing like that. But it's an intriguing story with good use of the small cast forced on them by the pandemic - Kirwan and Mohindra in particular using an array of different accents to distinguish their various selves from each other.