Doctor Who: Tomb Ship

The Doctor and Nyssa find themselves exploring a labyrinthine spaceship designed as the tomb for an alien God-King. For a story apparently inspired by a large number of sources, from Tomb Raider and Indiana Jones to Alien and Warhammer 40K, for the most part it brings across little of the excitement of any of them. This may be because navigating a maze full of traps is something that works better as a video game than it does as a story; something it's more interesting to try and do yourself than to watch somebody else attempting.

In fairness, there is more to the story than this, as a callous archaeologist pushes her own sons into danger to try and get to the treasure at the heart of the tomb, dogged by a mysterious stranger already trapped there. The characters are well-drawn and distinctive, and there's plenty of bickering between the brothers and general unpleasantness from the expedition leader, but it doesn't elevate the story as much as its clearly intended to. There are also giant insects in the corridors, but they don't do terribly much except got shot at and occasionally jump people - which would probably look cooler on video than it does to just listen to.

Things finally change in the last 30 minutes, with the tomb on the verge of destruction, and the conflict between the various characters finally coming out into the open. This part is quite dramatic and exciting, at least giving a pay-off to what has gone before, but up until then, the story, while competent, is merely average and not terribly memorable.

I did, however, like the surprise revelation near the end of part 3, and look forward to seeing what they do with its repercussions in the next story.