The Queen of Time

Lost Stories #4.2

Released: 29 October 2013

Listened: 10/19/20

Now we’re on to a couple of Lost Stories, which are usually longer than Short Trips and Companion Chronicles. As it happens, this one is kind of short, as Lost Stories go, because there’s not a lot of plot to go around. The TARDIS gets trapped by one of those omnipotent beings, specifically one the Doctor seems to know, who has some mastery over time. She seems to just want the Doctor to play games, making this much like “The Celestial Toymaker,” only with less Towers of Hanoi, and more flirting. Frazer Hines and Wendy Padbury tag-team this one, and Lost Stories from the first three Doctors tend to be heavily narrated, so they’re doing a lot of talking. The story itself is pretty surreal, and I can see why they wouldn’t have wanted it in the same season as “The Mind Robber.” The descriptions of some of the scenes are actually disturbing, and I believe they were intended to be, although I wonder how that would have worked out on TV. Although it’s certainly a better story than “Prison in Space,” there doesn’t seem to be quite enough going on to justify a full four-parter.