Doctor Who: Valhalla - Review


I've never been a fan of single Seventh Doctor releases, just with Sylvester McCoy on his own. He needs to be with someone, Mel, Ace, Hex, he needs a companion and having heard the snooze fest that was Kingdom of Silver, I always treat an alone Seventh Doctor story with trepidation.

Imagine my surprise when I put Valhalla into my CD player and started listening and found things were going well. McCoy's sombre performance was brilliant, the plot even seemed grown up and clear, if a little childish at times. And the acting from the secondary characters wasn't all that bad either.

Then it all fell apart when the giant termite army turned up.

There is a tendency in Doctor Who to make the baddie - no matter what it is - a Dalek, plant, virus or robot, need to talk to the Doctor. And this can work well when trying to convey the plot. But it doesn't work when the baddies are giant termites. What you want is for something like them to be scary, not sounding like something out of Dad's Army.

I literally had to force myself through this one as I am never one to really give up on an audio play. Valhalla is one of those stories that it is best to give it a miss, unless you like this kind of silly story with giant termites.

In fact, this one of the few releases where I don't recommend paying full price for quality entertainment, this is one to scour Amazon or EBay for. Or for skipping altogether.

Oh dear. And it had started so well...

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