When the first installment of DCTT -- "At The Temple Of The Fourth" -- aired last year, I was impressed. Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred did their usual fine job as the Seventh Doctor and Ace, and I also quite enjoyed John Sessions' delectably villainous portrayal of General Tannis. The writing had a gloriously mythic quality to it which reminded me of the opening moments of "The Deadly Assassin". The sound, overseen by Jon Taylor, was superb -- even via RealPlayer -- and Nik Romero's incidental music was superior. I was very much looking forward to the rest of the story.

What a disappointment.

It's ironic, indeed, that my one major criticism of "At The Temple Of The Fourth" -- new companion Antimony, who in the first episode seems to exist mainly to thump people -- ends up being one of DCTT's better aspects. Kevin Eldon's performance gets better with each episode. His sequences on Earth -- such as his belief that a dinosaur must have killed the Saints -- are quite amusing. It's something of a shame, really, that he's dispensed with long before the end of the serial.

The second, third and fourth installments -- "Planet Of Blood", "The Child" and "No Child Of Earth" -- aren't as good as "At The Temple Of The Fourth", but they're not awful. Sessions continues his good work, and Stephen Fry -- who only has a few lines of dialogue in the first part -- makes the Minister of Chance a most intriguing character over the course of these segments.

Less interesting were the scenes involving Ace and Casmus. The cod philosophy was tenable for the short sequence in "At The Temple Of The Fourth", but grows increasingly tedious over the course of these episodes. Leonard Fenton does a reasonable job as Casmus, but the character's ultimately a total and utter bore. Moments such as Ace's test with the stalagmites struck me as gapingly obvious, and the whole thing gave me the impression of a writer thinking his material is far more clever than it really is.

These episodes also begin to show how ill-conceived the whole story structure of DCTT really is. The Doctor disappears for huge stretches of time, recalling some of the less laudable characteristics of the New Adventures. Massive chunks of the plot -- Santiny, Alpha Canis, even the search for Nessican to a lesser extent -- are really just empty distractions (this is even confirmed by the dialogue). They could easily have been removed, or at least pared down considerably, without the story being affected. As a result, this entire stretch feels like little more than prettily-written padding; certainly, outside of the tiresome Ace/Casmus scenes, the plot development here is minimal.

There are other oddities. For example, we never find out just how Ace came to be imprisoned on Tannis' spaceship in the first place. Did the Doctor just leave her there for Casmus to rescue? If so, why not drop her off someplace a little less hostile? The story also seems to imply -- and perhaps I'm just misunderstanding something here -- that there are actually only a handful of Time Lords in existence, and they all make an appearance (or, in the case of Antenor, are referred to) in DCTT. As noted above, I'm not at all concerned with DCTT jibing with other versions of post-"Survival" Doctor Who, but I'd expect at least reasonable congruity with the TV series itself, and obviously this concept conflicts horribly with any number of stories.

Then we come to the final part, also called "Death Comes To Time". If the middle segments were a step down from the pilot episode, this last installment is several flights of stairs down from its predecessors. Indeed, it's difficult to believe that the same person who wrote the almost lyrical "At The Temple Of The Fourth" penned this embarrassment.

What goes wrong? Almost everything. First we endure even more distractions with Ace's trip to Anima Persis (although I did like Jon Culshaw's Golcrum here, who provides some much-needed levity). But this is nothing compared to the story's return to Earth and the events thereafter. The scene set in a NASA control room is one of the single most excruciating pieces of Doctor Who fiction ever, accompanied by American accents so atrocious that "The Gunfighters" could be actual documentary footage of 1881 Tombstone in comparison. I think it's saying something that the very next scene -- in which, mind-bogglingly, both George W Bush (written like a congenital idiot) and Tony Blair (written like a British Superman) appear -- is actually an improvement.

The rest of the episode is scarcely better, featuring as it does a totally gratuitous appearance by the Brigadier (who, rather ludicrously, actually introduces himself as "the Brigadier" and not "Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart"), the degeneration of the once-splendid Tannis into the realm of comic-book villainy, and the far-too-easy despatching of the seemingly mighty Canisian forces.

I'm still not quite sure what to make of the climax. The death of the Doctor and his "passing the torch" to Ace is not, in of itself, a bad idea, but -- much like Doctor Who Magazine's infamous killing of Ace at the hands of a "badly-drawn giant flea" -- it really deserves a better story to occur in.

On the other hand, the revelation that the Doctor (and all Time Lords, for that matter) actually possesses massive, godlike powers strikes me as very unwise. Seasons Twenty-Five and Twenty-Six and the New Adventures walked a fine line in developing the Doctor's abilities, but by and large they kept things small-scale. The ability to knock someone out with a well-placed finger to the forehead is one thing; the ability to reshape time and space at will, as the Doctor apparently does at the end of "Death Comes To Time", is quite another.

Indeed, I find it rather antithetical to the entire premise of the Doctor's character -- that a keen mind and the help of your companions is all it takes to overcome adversity. Even the controversial portrayal of the Seventh Doctor as a behind-the-scenes manipulator in some New Adventures adheres to this theme, albeit in a rather darker sense. Turning the Doctor into a demi-god does not. And while, certainly, the message of DCTT is clear -- that great power must be used only when it's absolutely required -- the fundamental subversion of the Doctor's nature seems to me to be both unwelcome and unnecessary.

Furthermore, the idea that the Doctor would voluntarily give up his life because "the age of the Time Lords is past" also appears to be out of keeping with his established character. The Doctor does not follow rules; he shuns authority in the same way that most people shun Pauly Shore movies. This, then, strikes me as rather spurious motivation for the Doctor to give up, use his almighty power, and shuffle off this mortal coil.

After such a promising beginning, the dismal conclusion of "Death Comes To Time" is perhaps the most disappointing turn of events for Doctor Who since the cancellation of the series itself. It's particularly frustrating that so much good Doctor Who fiction is read and listened to by only a small audience, while DCTT garners the honour of being the most widely accessible entry in the Doctor Who canon since the TV movie.

Even more frustrating, though, is that Dan Freedman and company clearly have the skills -- both technical and creative -- to pull off a truly impressive Doctor Who production. The unfulfilled promise of "At The Temple Of The Fourth" is proof enough of that. "Death Comes To Time", however, is not that production.

4/10.

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