The Final Phase

Fourth Doctor Adventures #2.7

Released: 15 July 2013

Listened: 6/11/22

Cuthbert may very well be the single most stubborn opponent the Doctor has ever dealt with. Although he’s smart enough to realize that the Daleks have screwed him over…when the evidence slaps him in the face repeatedly…he’s determined not to reveal why he wants to build a dimensional gateway. The Daleks are very nearly equally stubborn in trying to get it away from him. K-9 gets to be clever in helping the rebels fight the Daleks. Romana gets to be clever in figuring out much of what Cuthbert is doing, but not all of it. And the Doctor gets to have a go at making the Daleks see sense for once in their lives, but you can imagine how well that goes. The nice bit of character development is Romana coming to realize that she does like the Doctor somewhat, laying the seeds for her regeneration. There’s plenty of sound and fury here, but on the whole, the story feels a bit unfinished. And it’s kind of a shame to have four out of seven stories this season taken up with Cuthbert, when “The Auntie Matter” and “The Justice of Jalxar” are pretty clear stand-outs. One wonders if more could have been done, but without Mary Tamm, that’s unlikely to happen.