• The new Companion. The Doctor is traveling alone (making it difficult to gauge exactly when this story takes place) and makes a new companion in this story, one with a prior attachment to Doctor Who yet whose face we haven't seen. She's a welcome addition, immediately demonstrating an interesting rapport with the Doctor - she accepts the oddness of his reality with surprising ease but clearly has her own agenda, and the Doctor is torn between clearly liking her but being suspicious of her true motivations and what she might not be telling him. She proves an undeniable asset though - she's smart, pro-active, doesn't back down from a challenge and even doesn't mind getting physical when the situation calls for it. She's a treat to listen to and a welcome addition to the story. It is a mark of the strength of the writing/her performance that she easily holds the listener's attention even during those periods where she is separated from the Doctor and doing her own thing. The very best thing though, is that even though everything I just wrote could be interpreted as meaning Anna Hope (who played Novice Hame in seasons 2 and 3 of the revival), I'm actually talking about somebody completely different.
  
  
• The Doctor. As always, Colin Baker is excellent, that should come as no surprise. He always does his best with the material he is given, and often raises it up to a higher level, making bad stories tolerable, good stories better, and excellent stories superb. This is a strong script with an interesting concept and a quality core supporting cast, and Baker sinks his teeth into it with pure gusto. Whether it's his reactions to the odd behavior of his new companion; his charmingly naive confusion as to why being found with a murder victim makes him look suspicious; the casual way he extricates himself out when he DOES realize; how he deals with a peculiar case of poisoning; or the way he pieces together the small scattered details of the situation and turns the tables on the bad guy, it's just so much fun hearing Colin Baker doing his thing. His closing line to his companion where he makes it clear he's fully aware that she's hiding something and is only putting up with it out of intrigued curiosity is great, and actually brings me to mind of one of my favorite scenes from the 11th Doctor's run, where his companions know more about something than he does and attempt to keep it from him, and he stops to remind them that as playful as he can be, they should never make the mistake of thinking they are cleverer than him. So it is with the Sixth Doctor, his companion knows more than he does, she's trying to keep it secret with the best of intentions, and he's willing to go along with it.... but don't think for a second he's fooled. As the kick-off for this new Doctor/Companion pairing, I think the closing scene is just perfect.
  
  
• The "Condemned". The title is a pun of sorts, but it works very well. The obviously reference is to the soon-to-be condemned building itself where much of action takes place, but it also refers specifically to Sam, the man trapped in the dark in the basement, condemned to a fate worse than death. The murder victim was condemned to death both by his terminal illness and his actions. The medical doctor is condemned both morally and ultimately with his life, the bad guy and the victim's wife are condemned to pay for their callous and self-serving actions. Writer Eddie Robson can usually be relied on for a solid story and he does so here, weaving together a fun little tale of greedy, self-interested people (human and alien) trying to pull off a squalid little con and getting rumbled by the police - by itself it would be okay but nothing special, but as always it's the addition of the Doctor to a basic genre story that gives it the fresh twist to make it compelling. Even without that though, there are moments of pure brilliance that shine through - the best comes during a moment where the Doctor's new companion walks into the basement to locate Sam: a prisoner she's been in sporadic contact with throughout the story. Her slowly growing realization that the room is empty, that the dark is a near-physical thing that swallows all light and even sound, is chilling in the best way, a moment of pure horror that almost feels out of place in the otherwise straightforward scam story. These brief moments of body horror, such as the reveal of what happened to Sam, are somewhat diluted by the rather pedestrian scheme outlined by the main bad guy, but they remain effective.
  

• The shallow tertiary cast. Though the Doctor, his companion, his OTHER companion, and to a lesser extent Sam are well realized, the rest of the cast are not. At best they're shallow because we get such little time with them, but at worst they're cliched stereotypes, the worst offender being the Chief Inspector. There are just a few too many characters given just a bit too much time, so their lack of depth becomes apparent. A tighter cast would have served the story better, or at least less focus on the tertiary characters as most of them end up being written out or killed off and having little impact on the story. World-building is good and to be commended, but with a comparatively low running time (especially divided up amongst four distinct episodes) they end up feeling like filler.
  
  
• The resolution. While everything is wrapped up and most questions are answered, I couldn't help but feel that nothing really feels actually resolved. The bad guy gets his, but the way it happens feels distinctly.... cruel (even though he was a smug idiot for walking into it in the first place); the lady who manipulated people to commit crimes for her is forced to do something herself but it's something that actually benefits her and allows her to get off scott-free; the girl who abandoned her morals to hold people hostage for money never has a change of heart but just ends up siding with another manipulator who isn't quite as bad as the first; the lady whose partner killed himself.... is just gone from the story; the medical doctor who was actually doing good work if for bad reasons is gone, leaving all those people who need him in the lurch; the police officer who lets the Doctor clear out of town is left probably facing a lot of tough questions she absolutely can't answer (at least she'll be back in future stories, something actually welcome for a change from most writer's pet characters) and Sam can't ever escape the fate that befell him, and the cute little comment about how maybe he and Maxine can work together to make a better life for them and the other inhabitants just smacks of a last second attempt to blunt that fact.
  

saucerman fucked around with this message at 13:34 on Dec 13, 2015

Tim Burns Effect fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Dec 13, 2015