The Paradox Planet

Fourth Doctor Adventures #5.3

Released: 16 March 2016

Listened: 6/27/22

This story attempts to channel another part of the Douglas Adams era: not the silliness, but the high-concept sci-fi of ideas. In this case, it’s a planet at war with its own past. The people of the past era used up their fossil fuels and let many species of animal go extinct, despite having access to high-energy zenox crystals. So their descendents from the future travel back in time to snatch up both the animals and the crystals. You can probably see where this is going. Romana gets separated from the Doctor almost immediately, and they each spend a good portion of the story trying to puzzle out what’s going on, a process that takes some time, because this is the first half of a two-part story. Romana II seems to work better when she’s not just parroting things back at the Doctor, but instead she finds entirely new people to be exasperated with. Admittedly, the people of both time periods are fairly exasperating.