Doctor Who: The Warehouse

Being set on a vast Amazon-style warehouse in space, it's hard to avoid comparisons between this and the recent TV episode Kerblam!. In fact, however, the plots are entirely different, with the resemblance actually being closer to the '70s story The Face of Evil. That's because the warehouse has stopped functioning due to an erratic computer, with the people on the jungle planet below having developed a literal cargo cult in an effort to restore its deliveries through prayer.

I can't say that I went into this with particularly high expectations, and it's possible that it's solely for that reason that I ended up preferring it to the previous story, We Are the Daleks. Either way, there's quite a lot going on here, with some nice ideas about the set-up of the warehouse, which, aside from its computer problems also has a rodent infestation and some mysterious mould in the biscuit aisle. The plot has a surprising number of twists in it, as these various strands are woven together, and there's a good use of the limited cast to suggest a setting rather larger than we see.

Mel's skills are once again on display here, although, in this case, it's a little implausible that, as a programmer, she's also skilled in repairing computer hardware. Other than that, she does get a reasonable amount to do, and is considerably less annoying than she was written in the TV series. (Just as one example, she'd likely have a done a lot of screaming at the giant rats on TV, but here she doesn't scream at all, and seems quite capable and together).