Doctor Who: Solitaire

The Doctor and Leela arrive in 1st century Norfolk just as Boudicca's Rebellion is getting underway. This is a straight historical, with no aliens or monsters, and, as such has obvious overtones of the First Doctor's era. Leela, naturally enough, identifies with the Iceni, and wants to change history in their favour, while the Doctor is opposed to that, as well as to the general slaughter that's about to unfold.

Despite a few quips to remind us that this is, after all, a Fourth Doctor story, the tone is generally quite grim. Boudicca is a woman wronged (the play only hints at the specifics, but we all know the tale) but also a woman who wants to wreak bloody vengeance on the Romans, and who revels in the resulting death. There is a moral message to the story, too, but it's not overly belaboured, as it was in the previous episode, and it's nice to see Leela for once not being a fish-out-of-water and dealing with people she can readily relate to... even if she's badly misjudged what's going on.

Some of the dialogue does feel rather stilted, probably in an attempt to make the speech seem ‘archaic' - although how relevant that is when nobody present is speaking even a very early form of English might perhaps be debated. (Although I thought the fact that most of the Iceni speak with a Welsh accent was a nice touch). And Dorney does have the Doctor repeatedly calling Leela “savage”, which makes him sounds more condescending than he did in most of the relevant TV stories.

On balance, this is a good story, a fairly dark historical that gives Leela some good material that's very fitting for her character.