Serpent In The Silver Mask

 Serpent In The Silver Mask by David Llewellyn 

I'm a sucker for a sci-fi murder mystery. My two favorite stories of all time are Chimes of Midnight and Save Our Souls, both unique twists on the sci-fi murder mystery format, and another favorite of mine is Vesuvius Rising, a peak example of how to do the job well. Serpent is an incredibly charming script, certainly, but it is missing the central thing I feel that would make it rise up against similar stories in the Doctor Who murder mystery genre- because when this genre is not done well, all I feel is a strong feeling of "this has been done before." and Serpent is really strong Fifth Doctor material, it knows how to play it's cards. It has a few interesting ideas to twist onto this, a family of clones (all played by the same actor in an absolute tour de force of a performance, holy cow) a murder mystery time travel plot, The murderer specifically going out of their way to be as similar to the Doctor as possible - all intriguing individual elements. But does it all come together perfectly as all the best murder mysteries do? Not neccessarily. Serpent's best bits are in it's humor and ability to poke fun at itself. The army of baby dolls in the ventilation shafts, the incredibly horny woman who wants to plant one on poor Fivey, and Adric and Nyssa being utter shit at going undercover. But as it stands? The final twist of who the murderer is is pretty much what I expected even though it's clearly going for a humongous shock, and the murderer also is incredibly stupid. An initially creepy and competent villain gradually going from awesome to a bit shit is always disappointing (just look at the Shadow in the Armageddon Factor!) But at the very least, Serpent has it's own decisive identity and while isn't the most original or mind-blowing story,  it's a really really fun two-hour runaround, and I won't say no to that: 8/10

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