Reviews

Doctor Who: Paper Cuts by Marc Platt

cecesloth's review

2.0

This series' first misstep. Paper Cuts has some nice themes and imagery, good enough for a second star, but the execution of everything else is baffling. The plot simultaneously feels like its missing scenes and yet repeating itself, the characters are uninspiring stereotypes, but worst of all is the non-existent handling of Charley/Mila. You can tell the story was written before the latter was thought up, so it just feels like a generic Charley story save for one scene at the end. Really disappointing

nwhyte's review

"Marc Platt is a bit hit and miss for me (is he the only writer for Old Who who is still at it?) but Paper Cuts was a real hit. We return to another alien monarchy of the Third Doctor era, Draconia, or rather off Draconia, in the orbiting mausoleum of the Draconian emperors; the Draconian version of chess ('Sazou') is prominent; the Sixth Doctor and Charley (though it isn't really Charley, of course) expose long-hidden dynastic secrets; Platt plays with life and death and crossing between them, and the whole thing is very much up to the standards of his Seventh Doctor TV story, Ghost Light. Big Finish makes the scripts of the stories available to us subscribers after a decent interval, but I have never yet downloaded one - this time I will."

kateofmind's review

4.0

This would be another five star Sixie story except for the fact that it's the immediate successor to the cliffhangered PATIENT ZERO. This play, while exceptionally awesome in every other way, does so little to address the state of things as left by the prior story that it might as well have just ignored it altogether. And yeah, this improves a bit at the very end, but it's pretty unsatisfying.

That aside, though, this is fantastic. Great characters, inventive setting, fascinating monsters, everything you want from a Doctor Who story. When I'm doe being mad at the Mila problem, I might yet give it a fifth star