Doctor Who: Trail of the White Worm

“Whisht, lads, haad yor gobs...” Coming from the part of the country that I do, I am very familiar with the legend of the Lambton Worm, on which the first half of this two-parter is loosely based. Having said which, Bram Stoker's adaptation of the tale, Lair of the White Worm, is clearly used as much of the source material here, including transposing the original legend to Derbyshire.

The Doctor and Leela arrive outside a Peak District village in 1979 as it is being menaced by the aforementioned wyrm. For the most part, this early half of the story is rather good, setting up the mystery and having Leela encounter the Master (as is clearly indicated on the cover, so I don't consider this a spoiler), whose involvement with things is also initially opaque. The explanation for the wyrm is a bit daft, but, on the plus side, the story is sprinkled with references to the time period, from Lord Lucan to Pan's People, and Leela is given a decent action role.

And then the Master's allies turn up, and the story takes a bit of a nose-dive. As will be apparent to fans from the title and cover of the second half, The Oseidon Adventure, these are the Kraals, one of the less dramatically successful of the Fourth Doctor's TV foes. They don't really work any better here than they did in the original TV story (which, notably, is also quite good until they actually turn up), and the fact that the main human villain is a ridiculous pantomime character doesn't help, either.

The parts where the focus is on the Master, rather than the Kraals and their bumbling ally, work a little better, and there's more than one plot twist taking advantage of Oseidon's android technology. But the damage has been done, and any human element of the story, as seen in the first half, has departed in favour of megalomaniacal scheming.

So, four stars for the first half, and just three for the second, although it's far from a complete loss. It is, though, a bit of a pity that Big Finish didn't make it clearer that this is a two-part story, considering that the two halves are sold separately. You have been warned.