The Judgement of Isskar

Main Range #117

Released: 22 January 2009

Listened: 12/23/19

The first part of the unfortunately named “Key 2 Time” trilogy, in which, yep, the Key needs to be reassembled by the Grace, the race that created it, because the Doctor messed things up the first time around by using an artificial Sixth Segment. As a result, the Doctor gets a temporary companion named Amy (who’s renamed Abby after this trilogy, and after Amy Pond appears) and an adversary named Zara, both creations of the Grace to hunt the segments. Peri is frozen in time for her safety, and out of this story. Unlike the original series, this one doesn’t obsess over where the segments are hidden; four are found by the end of this story. However, there’s a lot going on in this one. The first section is an Ice Warrior story, set both before and after the disaster that befell Mars, so we get a flashback to the events referred to in “Red Dawn,” which makes it a shame that Peri isn’t here. Part two concerns a somewhat silly race of insect people and their internal politics, and then it all crashes together in part three. Add in all of Amy’s character development, and there’s a lot going on here, which partially explains why the story ends on a cliffhanger.