Doctor Who The Morton Legacy

The TARDIS arrives in 19th century London (Polly guesses at the 1860s, but not based on any particular evidence) and is almost immediately stolen, as it so often was during the black-and-white era. The Doctor and his companions soon become sidetracked in their attempts to get it back and what follows is a relatively sedate supernatural mystery story.

Much of the story consists of the characters trying to investigate the provenance and nature of a strange necklace that may somehow be linked to a “locked room” murder. As a result, two out of the three episode endings are just regular story beats rather than genuine cliffhangers, although some real peril does get introduced around the half-way point. Even that isn't due to the “monster”, despite its appearance in the opening scene (which would be the pre-title teaser in a modern TV show), but to an entirely different twist in the plot.

Whether you like this may well depend on what you think of the pace. It came across to me as rather like a Call of Cthulhu scenario with investigators spending most of their time piecing together the background to the real threat. Or, to take a more appropriate analogy, I could also liken it to Black Orchid, a story that's similarly low on action and horror, and does, in fact, have some overlapping themes with this. There's also the rather major issue of what the nature of the monster eventually turns out to be - it's quite a twist on the usual Doctor Who ending and, while I found that refreshing, others might find it too much of a departure.

I found the narration less intrusive than in the previous two releases, although it's still not truly necessary, and there's a really limp romance subplot that's so weak that even one of the characters involved doesn't notice it's there. But all of the characters have significant parts to play and they're generally well written, with the companions arguably playing a bigger role in the resolution than the Doctor does. All of this makes for a good, if somewhat unusual, DW story with a number of turns to the plot along the way.