The Doctor and Peri’s travels with the mercurial Turlough continue, but nothing lasts forever… and Turlough seems to know it.
Trials of love, sacrifice and war lie ahead, and beyond them all lurks something else: the ever-approaching spectre of death.
1. Save the Date by Matthew Sweet
London, 1969, and the Eternal Joy dating agency has a new secretary: Miss Perpugilliam Brown.
Peri’s undercover. Her mission: to find the source of the sonic boom that rang out across London, discover the secrets of Eternal Joy’s big pink computer… and set the Doctor and Turlough up on a double date with two young ladies.
2. Poison’s Reach by Paul Sutton
The civilisation of Freefall is powered by a natural radiation stream rising from its moon. That’s the official story.
Engineer Sandra Silva knows the truth. She’s determined to expose the Stelta Corporation’s crimes, and she has a trio of time-travelling sightseers on her side.
Turlough is about to learn that, to achieve a worthy goal, sometimes the ultimate sacrifice has to be made…
3. Broken Home by AK Benedict and Guy Adams
Once a traitor, always a traitor?
Vislor Turlough returns to Trion at last - and promptly hands the Doctor and Peri over to the occupying forces. Has Turlough learned any lessons from the Time Lord he was once tasked with killing? And in order to liberate his broken home, who is he willing to sacrifice?
Save the Date: Cute, has a very sweet Sixie moment that I really loved, not much to say about it really, 3.5 stars
Poison’s Reach: Mostly just a really solid and exciting story but nothing very special, but the ending really elevated it for me, 4 stars
Broken Home: Great ending to this arc, really nice character stuff for all three of them, and a bit I really loved for Peri, 4.5 stars
Really enjoyed this arc. Adding Turlough into the mix felt like it helped them make good use of Older Peri again after much of the first box set felt largely indistinguishable from TV era Peri. And I really enjoyed this trio, it might genuinely have become one of my favorite TARDIS teams and I’ll really miss them together.
Surprised to see that Poison’s Reach is so hated by some people. I feel like its worst offense is just being fairly stock and predictable for the most part, but I’ve seen several people reacting like it shot their dog
I just did this and I don’t understand why people are acting this way. I didn’t like it, gave it 1 star but that’s all it was to me a very mediocre story. It felt like part 3/4 of a 4 parter which was weird? If it had a longer runtime perhaps it’d be better and more fleshed out. Some of the acting was so hammed up.
Oh yeah the villain was giving his absolute most cartoon evil performance, especially near the end lmao. Personally found that it strangely worked but could very much get people not vibing with it.
Started this boxset today with Save the Date. Despite my love/hate relationship with Sweet’s stories, this one was pretty good. I enjoyed seeing how The Doctor and Turlough differed on their double date and Badland’s performance was cool. I just think it needed more time to flesh out its conclusion, because what it gave us was a little half baked. 7/10
Just finished Poison’s Reach. Much like Save the Date, I think its problems stem from a lack of time. Lots of world-building left its climax wanting for more exploration. The Turlough stuff was good though.
Definitely a mixed story, but certainly not 2.71/5. I’d give it 7/10
Just a side note, but I’m also starting to notice a pattern with how bad these cliffhangers are becoming. I don’t know what it is, but they’re certainly less impactful than they used to be.
As Turlough’s number one fan, I think Broken Home just changed my life. I’m utterly speechless (I’m not speechless, I just wrote a 782 word review), 10/10
Broken Home was phenomenal. The music in this set was stellar, I really hope we get a music suite for this set. Really great set, and while I’m sad the “arc” has ended, I’m glad we got an end and that it wasn’t open-ended like a lot of BF companions/ranges are.
I gotta say part of me did genuinely think for a minute there that they might actually kill him off and I kinda would’ve respected the hell out of that
Finished the set today with Broken Home and (I’m definitely catching heat for this) honestly found it kind of lacklustre.
It’s fine, but its hindered by the fact that I’ve already done 5hrs of the whole ‘is Turlough trustworthy’ to the point where it lacks any of the tension and threat that I should be feeling from a story like this. It probably doesn’t help that the villains where one-note warmongers whose main feature is being twice the size of a human. 6/10
