The Blazing Hour

 The Blazing Hour by James Kettle

"You’re quite a demoralizing person to be around at times, dear. Have a scone."

The Blazing Hour is a genuinely harrowing experience, sci-fi with a very cynical view on life, and one that's terrifyingly believable. Indeed, that's the entire point of it. It's a story about how in the face of disaster, when thousands of lives are threatened, politicians shuffle and gasp "What about the economy?" If you can't tell, it's really not a very fun two hours, and while I respect it and can say that "wow, that was a good piece of writing," I did not actually enjoy it at all, it was rather agonizing to go through. Peter Davison is on top form, as always, and while I do appreciate that the second and second to last Main Range stories are Five and Turlough outings, Turlough isn't really very good. He's long been one of my least favorite companions based on how after his initial trilogy, he gets rather suddenly dull. His characterization quite simply amounts to "occasionally slimy, but his heart's in the right place," and really this isn't utilized well by Kettle's script. Granted, I've not seen a single story bar Enlightenment utilize Turlough well, but even still. There's potential to be had here with a setting of devious figures, and you can reflect Turlough well through them, give him a foil and some basic character stuff to do while on the planet. His sections of the story can be a little slim especially since the two most vivid characters, the Doctor and Violet Hardaker sort of are off doing other things. As such, the story sort of loses it's tension as it goes on. Speaking of Violet, she's a wicked creature and one of the best human villains in a Doctor Who story in quite some time. A subtly evil figure who covers everything she does with pleasantries and niceties - you can see that she seems like a respectable leader, you can tell why she was elected, and that's why it's all the better and more effecting as we gradually learn she has a heart of black. All in all, The Blazing Hour's pretty nice, I suppose, but it's really really not a fun thing to experience, it was very stressful, and not in an "escapism" way, more in a "oh, right, now I remember all of those scary things going on in the world right now" way. A tough listen. 6/10