Divine Intervention

Stranded #1.4

Released: 17 June 2020

Listened: 12/30/21

This final story is by David K. Barnes, and the tone feels a little different to the rest of the box. As with the other stories, there’s a lot going on at once, but some of it is pretty depressing. The Doctor is despondent again, and getting a bit desperate to get the TARDIS working once more. Robin is again being sulky because his father is away for work all the time, even past the point of a regular workaholic, and he takes it out on Helen, who’s acting as his tutor and minder, although he insists he doesn’t need one. Robin is also developing a bit of hero-worship of the Doctor, which is fairly understandable. Liv and Tania are doing pretty well despite their secrets, at least until the Doctor inadvertently invites the whole building to join them on their date, which is really an excuse to put all the characters in the same place. The Doctor runs into Sgt. Andy while shopping, they stumble across a dead alien, and then the alien killers, who want the Doctor dead. After leading the aliens to the restaurant where everyone else is hanging out, the Doctor notices that Andy and Tania are unusually accepting of time-traveling aliens. (Nobody notices, but Tony and Ron also react more proactively than you’d expect.) After encountering hostile aliens face-to-face, Robin’s opinion of the Doctor goes up tremendously, and most of the secrets come out in the open, or at least those of the TARDIS crew do. There isn’t really a big climax, because there hasn’t really been a single arc here, and there are a ton of plot threads left unresolved from the individual stories. But the box has accomplished what it set out to do, in creating more character-driven stories, and taking a slower pace so we can get to know them. It makes a nice change after several seasons of high concepts and big action.