TELOS: Shell Shock

It took this long to get a Sixth Doctor adventure and… it doens’t feel like one. Simon A. Forward is trying something rather different with this story, and it feels incomplete.

The Doctor ends up on a beach and Peri ends up dead, and there are crab soldiers. Beyond that, we keep going with the crab soldiers for a while, with a big enemy eventually turning up to kick off the end scenes and then the story finishes.

The problem is that this feels like it has some ideas in it, and the story was written to get them together, but the story isn’t working as that’s the only thing it has going for it. And the ideas aren’t really that good. (There is a horror of war concept, and crab soldiers starter, and that’s about it.) Even the big deal of The Memory doesn’t come across so I’m not sure if Simon worked it out properly.

Then there’s the Doctor, which hardly feels like any Doctor, let alone being played by Colin Baker. Maybe Troughton would have been better, but then you’d have to deal with his companions, and what Simon puts Peri through is hard enough for him to deal with for one companion.

Not a great story, let’s roll on shall we?

[END]