Time's Assassin

Fourth Doctor Adventures #8.5

Released: 13 February 2019

Listened: 5/1/22

The second boxed set of Season 8 opens right after the cliffhanger of the last one. A few things become slightly clearer…but not really. Most intriguingly, Ann reveals one layer of her deception, but only to the listener, not the Doctor. As for the rest, it’s a Guy Adams story, so there’s plenty of absurdity. In fact, just about every character in this story who’s not part of Team TARDIS is mad in one way or another. Special credit goes to Blake Ritson as Dr. Elmore, the maddest mad scientist I’ve seen in a while, and Jon Culshaw as Zephon, son of Zephon, who takes pettiness, paranoia, cruelty, and vengeance to the next level, while still remaining pathetic at the core. The only real downfall to the story is that the Doctor doesn’t seem to solve any problems. Bad guys lose, but not as a result of the Doctor’s actions, and the Doctor himself only survives through a deus ex machina. (Well, machina ex machina, or something.) What’s clear, though, is that the first half of this season appeared to be just a bunch of disconnected stories, and now we’re finding out that it definitely isn’t.