Iron Bright

Main Range #239

Released: 19 June 2018

Listened: 5/30/20

This one starts out seeming like a true historical, but doesn’t stay that way for long. The Doctor ends up in London, 1828, during the digging of the first Thames Tunnel. It’s one of those times when the Doctor gets a little star-struck, this time by Isembard Kingdom Brunel and his father, the engineers in charge of the working. It turns out that there are invisible portals to another planet all around London, which originally provided entertainment for the aliens, but now are dumping deadly pollution, and the Thames Tunnel will drive straight through one of them...so naturally Brunel the elder wants to invade, for King and Country. The Doctor is mostly passive through all of this, wanting to give Brunel the benefit of the doubt, but he has the most experience with alien governments. Also, this is the first Main Range story to use the Jodie Whitaker version of the logo on the cover, although there’s also a version with the traditional Sixth Doctor logo as well.