Downtime

 "I thought I was in Cromer..."

I know: still suffering Doctor Who withdrawal.

This is another one of those curious oddities from, ahem, "the Wilderness Years", as we Doctor Who fans call the '90s. I saw Shakedown not long ago, I enjoyed it despite its endearing flaws, so I thought I'd watch this. Any good?

Well... no. I mean, on paper, it seems good. Filmed on location, a sequel to The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear, loads of old actors and characters. And yet...

The direction is flat. Marc Platt's script has it's character moments and lots of nice metatextual lines, but it's a mess. There's a heavy focus on Victoria, with Deborah Watling being very good, and a welcome appearance from her real life father Jack Watling as Professor Travers. Nick Courtney is superb, as ever, as the Brig, and has a nice little family subplot. And, yeah, this is totally why UNIT today is led by Kate Lethbridge-Stewart.

Yet Elisabeth Sladen, despite being very good, is woefully underused as Sarah Jane Smith, and there's a little too much going on. And, despite some good character stuff, the plot is very muddled and oddly paced. And yes... inevitably, the whole thing looks very cheap.

This is an interesting curiosity, perhaps, and far from terrible, with very real good points. But it's not exactly great, sadly.