The Krillitane Relic

Classic Doctors New Monsters #5.3

Released: 21 January 2025

Listened: 4/18/26

This one is complicated for a number of reasons. First, the Doctor is traveling with Ray, from "Delta and the Bannermen," still played by Sara Griffiths. However, it's a 20-years-older version of Ray than we saw before, having been picked up by the Doctor during "Catastrophix," which hadn't been released yet at the time this story came out. It's also connected to "The Krillitane Feint" from earlier in this boxed set, but that was a long time ago for the Doctor, leading him to believe that he's encountered Zoe again. Even more confusing, the story references Zoe's trilogy of Companion Chronicles, but they're not required listening. This story is by John Dorney, and while it's not twisty like of his stories are, it's unique in that the secondar characters behave more realistically than characters in a Doctor Who story usually would. The security guard tries to piece together what's going on, instead of just shouting at people. When one of his colleagues acts strangely, he reports it to his manager. The manager, being confronted with evidence that one of her employees might not be who she says, does some research to find out. It's all quite reasonable until the slavering monsters turn up and the slaughtering starts.