Doctor Who: Black Thursday / Power Game

The second part of the ‘Kamelion trilogy' consists of two hour-long stories, unconnected beyond the fact that they take place consecutively and that both have a theme of Kamelion getting everyone in trouble. Both are a little off-the-beaten-track for DW which listeners may find a good or a bad thing, depending on their tastes.

• Black Thursday – The TARDIS arrives in a Welsh mining village in 1902. (Unusually, it's a real village, close to Ebbw Vale, and the story is apparently loosely inspired by real events). It's what I'd describe as a semi-historical - there are no SF elements beyond the presence of the travellers, but the fact that one of the travellers is a psychically susceptible shape-changing robot is absolutely key to the plot. It's a good story, dealing with the extreme danger of mining at that point in history and the ties that are so integral to communities of that type.

Obviously, we know that Kamelion is going to go wrong at some point, since there doesn't seem to be much else to do with the character but it's still quite alarming when he does. One minor downside is that the character who can loosely be described as the villain is a stereotype, standing out as less believable than the others, but he's a minor element in something relatively short, so there likely wasn't space to make anything more of him. But it's still a good, and dramatic, story. 4 stars.

• Power Game – I'm less sure what to make of this one, but it certainly wins points for originality. Essentially, Tegan becomes trapped in an '80s game show based on the real-world BBC program The Adventure Game (itself a forerunner of The Crystal Maze). It's mostly light-hearted, with the Doctor and Turlough wandering through York trying to work out where she and Kamelion have got to and then trying to deal seriously with the bizarreness of the situation once they discover the answer.

This is aided by the fact the game show elements evidently have cheesy '80s era computer graphics - although this is something that would work better if we could see them rather than having them described. The plot, on the other hand is a bit daft and much of what's going on is basically hand-waved so a lot likely depends on far you can immerse yourself in the surreal concept without worrying too much about how it's supposed to be possible. 3 stars.