Excelis Rising

Special Release

Released: 8 April 2002

Listened: 5/23/20

This is another of those stories that runs across the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Doctors, meaning that they’re really best listened to in sequence, but for this project, they happen months apart, and I forget the details. In this case, the Doctor returns to Excelis when it’s in a modern or slightly pre-modern era. It’s a rather small story, compared to the first, with an attempted theft of the Relic from the museum where it resides, and the former Warlord Grayvorn still hanging around to try to get his hands on it. It seems remarkable that he’s waited all this time, only to have the Doctor turn up and foil him again, but that’s how it went. The characters involved are a little blase about the prospect of regeneration and living for a thousand years, but it’s handled relatively realistically. It’s very much a “middle story,” with Grayvorn rather easily defeated, and left around, if disembodied, for the Seventh Doctor to meet later. No matter what happens, having Anthony Stewart Head playing a slimy villain is worth the price of admission, and he’s much less shouty this time around.