No More Lies

Eighth Doctor Adventures #1.6

Released: 4 February 2007

Listened: 9/12/21

This one also has quite a new-series influence, in that it starts in the middle of an adventure (or possibly at the end of one), and tells you how you got there through flashbacks. It also contrasts a genteel English garden party with temporal shenanigans on a spaceship. In fact, we never really learn what the baddie did to start all the trouble in the first place, or what his plan was, because it’s a very human story at the core. There’s an extremely small cast, including English acting luminaries Nigel Havers and Julia McKenzie, but also Tom Chadbon, who wonderfully played Duggan in “City of Death.” The sci-fi trappings are there, but very much in the background. The Doctor isn’t as harsh as he has been in the last few stories, but Lucie is very active and take-charge, almost reckless. She also seems to have a strong trust in the Doctor at this point. So it’s a bit of a bummer when her “Bad Wolf” plotline pops up at the end and kidnaps her into the next story. Although this story isn’t loud and dramatic, it’s one of the few this series that gets the pacing exactly right, by keeping a lot of the plot outside the story. The quality has stayed high all throughout.