Three's A Crowd

The TARDIS brings the Doctor, Peri and Erimem to a space station in the future, and on the planet it orbits a new Earth colony is ready to begin. The trouble is, though, the colony is not going according to plan, and the people living there seldom venture out of their quarters; living in isolation has made it almost impossible for them to socialize without attacks of nerves. All this goes on under the watchful eye of the colony's leader, Auntie, but is Auntie also watching as the colonists are murdered by forces unknown?

Erimem is still suffering from the effects of her encounter with the anceint evils in the Himalayas, and it has made her distant from the Doctor and Peri. Peri wants Erimem to feel liek she is part of the crew again but as soon as they arrive on the colony the inevitible happens and Erimem is lost in a transmat cubicle and dropped on the colony. The Doctor doesn't pay as much heed to Erimem's personal issues as Peri feels he should, but after so many companions the Doctor may be used to their adjustments to life on board the TARDIS. And anyways, he has bigger things to worry about: big lizard people hunting down the colonists for sport. Auntie promises the people in her charge a return to their home planet now that the colony is folding, but their departure from the planet only delivers them into the hands of the hunters.

Auntie isn't evil. She's a woman trying to cope with an impossible situation; to defy the invaders outright will only bring about mass slaughter, but letting them be picked off one by one buys her time to hope for help to arrive. And it's not as if her robot, Butler, is much help, armed though he is. I'm thinking C3P0 on a caterpillar track. And white, for some reason.

Did I like Three's a Crowd? Yes. I believe I did - more for the characterizations and interplay of the regular TARDIS crew than anything else. It's been a while since I actually listened to it - and I am trying to get caught up here - and the one thing that stands out the most is just that; the TARDIS crew manage to heal their wounds and carry on. The last major blow to the dynamic was the death of Adric, and since then Nyssa, Tegan, Turlough and Kamelion have all left as matters of routine, the most marked of them being Tegan following her posession by the Mara (and maybe Kamelion seeing as he's dead), but Erimem's suffering and confusion brings some of the most human moments in the series to life - at least, in the series to date if we are to look at the Big Finish audios in their linear progressions with the rest of the show. The new series on TV right now takes these things farther and throws all new light on them - but we're not quite there yet...

NEXT EPISODE : BLOOD AND HOPE