| SCHERZO by Robert Shearman |
| Story 51 Synopsis: The TARDIS fades away, and the Doctor and Charley find themselves in sensory deprivation. They eventually find they're trapped in a huge glass ring, with a sound creature that they're slowly creating and which is evolving. It wants full existence, but needs one of them to die. Both refuse, and they break out of their surroundings, heading out into their strange new universe... |
| Review:- So, the mystery begins again, and the Doctor and Charley struggle to adapt to their new situation. With no sense of time, their first loss is the TARDIS, stranding them good and proper. Then, it's a question of how they adjust to their fate, and also adjust to their situation - a love for each other. Blessed with shorter than usual episodes, and some odd cliffhangers, this is not so much a story in its own right, as an introduction to the Divergent Universe arc. Questions such as how the travellers will get about their new environment are left open, focussing more on even more basic ideas such as how they can live in a universe they weren't designed for. The eating of the fleshy body they find is a rather distasteful scene, but it is perhaps a part of their new evolution. Their melting together also seems a part of this, though probably works better in sound than it would in vision. Things only seem to pick up any speed towards the end of part 3, where the Doctor gets Charley to cut his throat, a shocking moment that seems reasonable within the script, but also a feeble shock tactic to inspire some drama in the listener. Too little, too late, and the creature's pleading for either the Doctor or Charley to kill themselves is into the realms of the baffling. Following previous discussions in the previous adventures, they now agree that they would die for each other, but nobody else. Quite what that will mean is a mystery. So, the story trickles to an end, and having faced up to their choice, the Doctor and Charley head into the great unknown. Interesting though it is, anyone paying �13.99 for this new must have felt a bit cheated. This could probably have been condensed down into 1 or maybe 2 episodes and stuck with another story. On its own, it's too brief to be worth the trouble. But hopefully, things will pick up... |
| Disclaimer: I own a copy. |