I was often distracted by the soundtrack, all-guitar rock so reminiscent of that of the Doof Warrior that I kept expecting Max and Furiosa to show up (and the incidental companions here are all female soldiers, so yeah, Vulvalini, too), and so giggled a lot, but the music does work for this story, which features Seven at his shouty angriest, Ace at her wargirliest, and Hex as Rory before Rory. Plus a mad scientist engineering biological control for Daleks and, well, Daleks! ( )

Came close to being an interesting story of the Seventh Doctor being manipulative with the time stream again (and trying to shield his companions), with some surprisingly good good John-Foxon-tries-to-be-Keff-McCullough music. Unfortunately it is badly let down by two terrible performances from the guest cast - Kate Ashfield and Bindya Solanki, who are both fairly well known actors but utterly fail to convince here as the officer and sergeant in charge of fighting off the Daleks. (Solanki is slightly better in the scenes on her own without Ashfield, but this is not saying much.) BF occasionally gets an under par performance (indeed, more often than not the regulars are the ones to blame) but it's rare to have two of them in the one play.

The second episode of The Three Companions was a bit dull in getting Two, Polly, Ben and Jamie together on the planet where Something is Going to Happen. ( )