BBC Audio adventure, Sept. 7, 1998
This short tale has some interesting moments as Sam and the Doctor fight some Reptogans and get caught in their feud. It all turns out okay, as it normally does for the Doctor, but there are a few sequences that make this stand out. The aliens don’t trust the Doctor, which is different from the usual, and can’t tell when one of their own is around but disguised. Perhaps that’s because of how good their technology is? This is obviously the followup to the first Sam/Dr. story and he’s deciding how soon to return her to her home. She will stay, as they usually do, and this struggle cements the deal, I think.
They each get their own little adventure with the Doctor tracking down his errant Reptogan and having to follow the bounty hunter version to the hidden lair. Meanwhile, Sam just uses the alien tracker and gets poisoned on the way in. How she survives through the whole encounter with the poison in her system is a bit odd since at one point, she seems about to just succumb to it. They both survive, naturally. And everything moves along at a brisk pace, just right for this type of short tale. A very good little story all-in-all!
8th Doctor and Sam adventure
read by: Paul McGann
writer: Peter Anghelides