Doctor Who: The Third Doctor Adventures, Volume 4

Two 2-hour stories with, as usual, one in the UNIT era, and one set in space.

• The Rise of the New Humans – The Doctor and Jo investigate a private hospital where the former patients have been turning up dead... and strangely mutated. As is clear from the cover art, this throws an unusual twist on the UNIT stories of the era by having the villain behind it all be not the Master, but the Meddling Monk. The difference in persona between the two renegade Time Lords is played up, resulting in some good exchanges between him and the Doctor. It's also a decent story, moving from straight investigation towards an action-filled finale as things start to get out of control.

The weakness, however, isn't in the Monk but in the Doctor. Treloar has got the hang of the voice by this point (arguably sounding more convincing than Katy Manning does as 20-year-old Jo), but the writing lets him down. Three is at his most arrogant here, and when the Monk accuses him of pomposity it's hard not to end up agreeing. He ignores Jo trying to tell him something significant, insisting that she must just be imagining it, and blusters his way through the story with little indication of any compassion for its victims. It's perhaps not wholly out of character for the TV series of the day but throwing so many of Three's worst qualities into one 2-hour story feels like overdoing it, especially in the modern day. At least Jo is well-written, even if she does fall into her common TV role of hostage at one point. 3 stars.

• The Tyrants of Logic – The villains of this story are also obvious from the cover picture; here, the Doctor is facing Invasion-era cybermen chasing down a mysterious crate that contains something important for their survival. The Third Doctor is, of course, the only Doctor other than Eight not to face the Cybermen on TV and only once before in an audio (and that was a Companion Chronicle). But, largely because of the key role it gives to Jo, it doesn't feel at all out of place here, with references to both Second and Fourth Doctor encounters also being included to place it within continuity.

The story is set on a snowy colony world that has been abandoned to the point that it appears to have a population of just three, all of whom have been shaped in some way by the recent cyber-wars. It's an effective character piece, especially in the way that it emphasises why the Doctor needs companions and puts Jo's devotion centre-stage. There are some good ideas in it, too, with the cybermen employing nanotech (though not actually referred to as such, perhaps in a nod to the ‘70s ambience) and a subplot about the local wildlife. A strong Cyberman story with a better grasp of its lead characters than its predecessor in this volume. 4.5 stars.