Doctor Who: The Cold Equations

A First Doctor story told from the perspective of Steven.

The second in a trilogy of stories featuring new companion Oliver Harper alongside Steven Taylor, this takes place in the far future, much of it on board a wrecked space station. It's unusually hard science fiction for Doctor Who, with the “cold equations” of the title referring to orbital mechanics. To me, this fit well with the '60s era of the show to which it ostensibly belongs, but others might find the digressions to explain the maths of what's going on a little distracting. On the other hand, this is only a couple of short segments, and they were likely as clear as they could be without the aid of graphics or animations...

Oliver doesn't actually get to do very much here, although we do learn his dark secret, and why the police were pursuing him in the previous story. Steven, on the other hand, actually gets to use some of the things he's learned as a space pilot before meeting the Doctor, and there's also some foreshadowing of his eventual departure in the TV series. The Doctor is in it rather less, but that's to be expected in a Companion Chronicle, and allows us some great moments of dialogue between Oliver and Steven as they face their apparently certain demise in the second half - the sort of thing that Guerrier so often excels at.