Doctor Who: Wirrn Isle

The Doctor and Flip arrive on the island of Inchfad on Loch Lomond about forty years after the events of The Ark in Space, just as a new colony is being established there (well, a farmstead, really - it has a population of three). And just as the Wirrn trapped beneath the frozen Loch begin to wake.

My feelings about the story are rather mixed. Some of the background doesn't really make sense, and there's far too much jiggery-pokery with the Transmat system in the second half, which gets rather confusing at times. On the other hand, there are some good sequences, with Flip stranded out on the ice, and swarms of Wirrn gathering in true base-under-siege style. The guest characters are also well written, with strong themes of family loyalty and betrayal being woven into the story, and Flip continues to prove herself a worthy companion.

But then there's the Doctor. Six is written here as he often was in the TV series - overbearing and arrogant, as well as rather too judgemental towards Flip. Consistent though that may be with his original portrayal, it clashes with the rather more considerate version seen in other Big Finish stories, apparently due to the influence of previous companion Evelyn. It's perhaps not quite the Six-Peri dynamic, but that's faint praise.

It's perhaps doubly odd considering the Doctor's insistence that the Wirrn not be harmed, since laying their eggs inside of people is just how they perpetuate their species. One could believe such an attitude of Five, but it's harder to reconcile with Six, especially this interpretation of him.

I think on the whole that the good outweighs the bad, although it's a close-run thing, and the story opening up to a wider setting in the second half doesn't do it any favours. We do get some great atmosphere on the way there, but overall this is worth 3.5 stars, which, after a lot of hemming and hawing, I'm going to round down to three.