Unorthodox protrusions and a heck of a lot of screaming
The Eighth Doctor and Tamsin are drawn to a Poe-inspired prison on the planet Nevermore
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Dear listener, pray abandon your customary taste for cheerful relaxation and peace of mind, for the tale we here commence to describe is played at such a pitch of depravity as would make those surest of their character and salvation by the true God buckle at the knees. The Doctor and his unsuspecting companion, Tamsin Drew, naive and innocent as to the wicked ways of the wider universe, are hurled by a machinating cat onto the surface of a hellish world wreathed in noxious mists.
Accosted by brutish mechanical corvidae, they are drawn inexorably, irresistibly into the malevolent web of an imprisoned genocidaire, her prosecutor of old and his young ward, and all around them, resonating in the walls and invisibly across the poisonous ether, the restless spirit of Edgar Allan Poe is writ, framing them for a series of grisly murders for which execution will be summary upon extortion of their confession, if they do not first succumb to death’s cold touch out of sheer terror!
Once upon a prison dreary, ravens wondered, weak and weary,
Following a quaint and curious plot of terrible bore
As I listened, really hating, suddenly up came my rating,
For someone finally acting, acting like a character I don’t deplore.
“’Oh, Fuck this,” I muttered, “I can’t keep up this rhythm anymore.”
“Only this stanza and not one more.”
I liked some of the concepts and plot points but felt like it could have been done better. I really hate Tamsin Drew in this. She was mostly useless, except for her escapology class. Wendigo, played by Fenella Woolgar of The Unicorn and The Wasp fame, was the one saving grace. I’m glad that at least one character was interesting. It is really sad when the war criminal is more endearing than the companion.
The Poe stuff and the other characters all seemed like filler. They could have done Poe far better. In fact, the doctor meeting Poe could have been a Big Finish Short Trip & not this boring episode. 1.9
Time to polish your telescope, DrewBackWhen – Ceres is a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt, not Pluto’s largest moon. Think you mean Charon, old salt