The Flying Dutchman

Main Range #268

Released: 8 September 2020

Listened: 12/7/20

This recent (as of this writing) two-part release has been slotted early in Hex’s tenure, when he’s still getting used to traveling in the TARDIS. It’s a rather low-stakes story about a ship that encounters the Flying Dutchman, and the threat that poses to the crew -- no elder gods, or fate of the universe, and in contrast to the last couple of stories, it’s not dark at all. The Doctor is a little bit inscrutable, but again, the stakes are low; he’s just offering Ace and Hex a puzzle to work on. The secondary characters are fairly one-note; there’s an insecure new captain, and a bunch of crewmen who sound like pirates, and are rather easily swayed. They’re not particularly impressive as sailors either; Ace manages to hold off a bunch of them single-handedly. If you listen, Philip Olivier sounds a bit older than when he originally played Hex, but it’s only a bit. In the end, it’s a fair-to-poor story.