Patience

Stranded #3.1

Released: 2 December 2021

Listened: 1/2/22

The third boxed set kicks off with a rather surreal story that doesn’t give you a whole lot more information about what’s going on in this arc. We open a while after the previous story, with Team TARDIS on the run from the Judoon, and split into three groups: Liv with Andy, Helen with Tania, and the Doctor on his own. The Doctor doesn’t have a lot of screen-time in this story, but he’s mostly telling a story, a fairy tale, really, to another party. The other four are on planets that had been settled, but something disastrous has happened to the inhabitants. Liv and Helen each go about exploring with their standard attitudes, but both Andy and Tania seem listless and tired, which is somewhat unusual. Even more unusual is that they’re both having psychic flashes, when they haven’t shown any evidence of psychic powers before, and they both seem to be obsessed with playing cards. Describing what actually goes on in this story is tricky, because of its dream-like feel. Which you wouldn’t think would fit well with Judoon, who’ve never been very imaginative, and indeed, the story doesn’t go well for them. But they’re Judoon, which means they’ll keep after a quarry long past the point of good sense. That said, this story features the first appearance of a baby Judoon, which sounds adorable. The Judoon seem to have been employed by Mr. Bird, from back in “Must-See TV,” which is interesting, but doesn’t have enough to go on yet. In breaking with recent tradition, there are a variety of writers in this boxed set, this one written by Tim Foley.