The Hollows of Time

Lost Stories #1.4

Released: 18 February 2010

Listened: 4/9/20

This one is also one of the better Lost Stories. The TARDIS lands in contemporary England, and the Doctor wants to visit an old scientist friend, who’s caught up with a mysterious “Professor Stream,” who’s obviously the Master, but that’s never revealed in this story, because they apparently didn’t have the rights. The story was written by Chris Bidmead, who normally goes in for hard science, but this story mixes up gravity, quantum mechanics, and artificial intelligence in ways that don’t make a ton of sense. There’s also some robots, and the Tractators, even though they barely feature in the story except to provide gravitational power. Oddest of all is the Doctor being trapped in space in a disintegrating car, and somehow managing to drive it back to Earth. There’s an odd frame story in which the Doctor and Peri seem to be having memory trouble, and narrate the events of the story to each other. This is mostly intended to get around the more visual parts of the story that wouldn’t come through on audio, but it just comes off a little stiff.