Portrait of a Lady

Lady Christina #1.3

Released: 23 August 2018

Listened: 5/21/23

With this story, we start getting into the sort of thing you might expect from Lady Christina: some real James Bond stuff, with UNIT thrown in for good measure. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work. Tim Dawson has some nice elements, but they don’t really add up to a Doctor Who story. There’s a painting done with psychic paint, so everyone sees it differently. It’s a cool concept, but ultimately it’s just the MacGuffin that everybody wants to get their hands on. There’s a couple of minor characters who Christina seems to be employing, for some reason, even though that doesn’t sound like her. There’s a villain with an undersea base, so that’s very James Bond. There’s a Sontaran who’s being mind-controlled into serving as a henchman, which is an interesting idea, but not a ton comes of it. Warren Brown is great as Sam Bishop, although he spends more of this story on the back foot than Sam usually does, but it’s Christina’s story, not UNIT’s. He gets away with calling her “Chris,” which certainly seems like a flirty move, even if there’s not much overt flirting going on. But it feels like it’s trying to cram in a little too much Roger-Moore-era Bond. The 200 has a bunch of gadgets now; which feels odd. Exotic locations are to be expected, but they travel halfway around the world in an awfully short time for a 50-minute story. It just doesn’t succeed at what it’s trying to do.