Doctor Who: The Chaos Pool

The Key 2 Time trilogy wraps with an action story involving lots of robed cultists and giant slugs. The story does a good job of bringing together various threads from the first two parts of the trilogy, keeping the whole noticeably more cohesive than the story arc on TV. Not, it has to be said, that season 16 didn't have some triumphs, but, despite the framing device, it's hard to see it as a single story, which you definitely can here.

This story has a number of good ideas, with Zara being quite a key player, and Lalla Ward being well used in a dual role. The White Guardian gets a dressing down, making it clearer than the TV series managed that he's just the flip-side of his Black counterpart, and, in the long run, not really any better. It makes perfect sense that the Doctor, who has always been a somewhat mercurial and disruptive figure would not be all that keen on an entity that so represents order, and it's good to see that brought out.

On the other hand, the slug aliens are rather overdone, and the sub-plot about Zara and Pargrave is entirely unconvincing. (It may not help that, having being recorded first, Jansen and Doddington, as the twins, are still feeling their way with their “new” roles). The ending, when it comes, isn't exactly a great shock, either. It's perhaps also worth noting that much of it doesn't make sense if you haven't seen season 16, since there's a fair few continuity references that some may feel border on fanwank.

It does work, and I've enjoyed the trilogy. Certainly this is better than The Armageddon Factor, although that may not be terribly difficult. But neither has it been hugely memorable, and, like the original, the beginning is probably better than the ending.

3.5 rounded down to 3.