Doctor Who: The Primeval Design

The Doctor travels to Dorset in 1830 to meet Mary Anning, the famous fossil collector. Of course, he manages to turn up just after a man is killed by a mysterious “monster” and sets about tracking it down in a story complete with whisky smugglers, wandering crocodiles, and plenty of fossils. The aliens involved in it all don't turn up until the halfway mark, but there's plenty going on before then, with Anning making a strong supporting character of the sort that, were she not a real historical person, would make a good companion.

Unfortunately, the first half is stronger than the second. Up until then, there's a good sense of 1830s society, something that kept Anning out of the scientific discourse at the time despite her obvious ability and knowledge. Since that's such an important part of her real-life story it feels entirely appropriate to deal with it here (through, for example, people's reactions to Leela) in a way that many Doctor Who historical stories tend to gloss over. Plus, there's all the whisky and the crocodiles to keep things busy, even if the villain is hamming it up a bit much.

Once the aliens make their appearance, however, the story becomes more focused on action and this, as so often on audio, doesn't work so well. It's often difficult to work out what's happening from bystander's descriptions or sound effects alone, and this applies to scenes of people trapped by the tide as much as the fight scenes with the monsters. Plus, the young lovers who find themselves caught up in it all turn out to be really quite annoying, constantly whimpering about how useless they are - which, may, perhaps, be intended to showcase Leela's heroism (and she is pretty good in this) but does wear thin after a while.

A minor point that I suspect most others won't have noticed is the use of words that didn't actually exist at the time - “dinosaur” is an example, having been coined in 1841. On the other hand, one could argue that it makes it easier for modern audiences to understand, in much the same way that we don't expect 16th-century stories to be written entirely in Shakespearean English. But there are surely ways around that.