Doctor Who Infinity: The Horror of Flat Holm.

Release Date: Nov. 25, 2019. Written by: Mike Collins. Art by: Patrick Goddard. Color by: John-Paul Bove. Performed by: Ingrid Oliver, Richard Franklin, Nicholas Briggs. Released by: Tiny Rebel Games. Platform Used: Steam Deck.


THE PLOT:

After UNIT loses contact with its base on the island of Flat Holm, Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and her scientific advisor, Osgood (Ingrid Oliver) lead a team to investigate.

The base was established decades earlier, after a ship was sunk off the coast of the island. Mike Yates (Richard Franklin) joined a team that included his former superior, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, UNIT zoologist Charlie Guarneri (Nicholas Briggs), and a companion-less Fourth Doctor. At that time, the Doctor was able to resolve the crisis. Or so he thought.

Now the past is coming back to haunt UNIT. It will be left to Kate and Osgood to find a more permanent solution, this time with no Doctor around to help them...

The Doctor and UNIT arrive on the isle of Flat Holm.

CHARACTERS:

The Doctor: Dumb question: Why is this a Fourth Doctor story? We've got a Doctor who is: (a) working with UNIT; (b) irritable because the Brigadier didn't tell him everything; and (c) prone to speeches about both the environment and the arms race. Oh, and he resolves the situation by lashing up a gadget. This is so much the Third Doctor that it isn't even funny. This isn't a complaint about the story - But throughout, I couldn't help but feel that the wrong incarnation was being used!

Mike Yates: He's no longer with UNIT, for reasons that are obvious enough for anyone who saw Invasion of the Dinosaurs. Still, he's happy to be reunited with the Doctor and Benton. The sergeant holds no grudges and even defers at points to his old captain (another reason this should have been a Third Doctor story - It actually would make more sense if Yates was still a captain). Richard Franklin performs the 1970s story and, to the surprise of no one who has heard either the Hornet's Nest releases or his Big Finish Companion Chronicles, he does a splendid job.

Osgood: Ingrid Oliver narrates the present-day plot, and she's also good. Osgood remains the ultimate Doctor fangirl, at one point even going on a digression about a completely unrelated adventure - stopping herself, but also telling us to ask her about it later because it's a great story. She quickly develops suspicions about what's happening, but she is hesitant to share those with Kate.

Kate Lethbridge-Stewart: When it becomes clear that things are amiss on the island, she doesn't hesitate in taking charge and pressing forward. Osgood at one point is too hesitant in giving instructions to the UNIT soldiers. Kate promptly barks at them to listen to their scientific advisor. The ending scene, between Kate and Osgood, is a lovely little moment for both characters.

A battle (via match puzzle) between UNIT and an enemy.
The puzzles do a good job of matching the story context.

GAMEPLAY:

Like Orphans of the Polyoptera, this is a Doctor Who Infinity title - which means that it's basically a Match Three game. As if to justify my decision to review the Infinity titles separately, the gameplay here is much better judged than in the earlier title.

There isn't as much variety in the puzzles as in the earlier title, but that's actually a good thing. In Polyoptera, the constantly shifting puzzle types left me feeling as much like a beginner at the end of the game as the beginning. Here, the decision to limit the game to just a few puzzle types of gradually escalating difficulty allowed to me properly master the gameplay instead of having to constantly learn a new set of rules. 

The puzzles also match the story. You're usually not just attempting to match colors. Instead, the goal is to defeat enemies by placing the correct orbs in the correct positions, or by navigating a unit to a destination point to escape danger. In short, gameplay and narrative complement each other, which is much more satisfying than when the puzzles merely interrupt the story every few minutes.

The Doctor tries to rescue a team member
from the clutches of a giant octopus.

THOUGHTS:

The Horror of Flat Holm was the last of Doctor Who Infinity's stories. I think that's a shame. Based on this title, Tiny Rebel Games had mastered the format. The story is well put together. There's a twist at the midpoint that I didn't expect, but that also made perfect sense. And, as noted, the puzzles are well-integrated into the narrative, far more so than in the earlier Infinity title I reviewed.

The story moves smoothly between present and past threads, the two timelines complementing each other rather than distracting. For most of the running time, the past story is the dominant one, establishing the backdrop for Kate and Osgood's crisis. Then the final quarter or so becomes entirely Kate and Osgood's tale, with their entanglements a direct result of the Doctor's prior adventure. It's a nifty idea, one I wouldn't mind seeing used in the actual television series.

It's quite well-paced. Outside of one twist, most of the plot developments are easy see coming. One character might as well be wearing a red shirt, given how obvious his fate is. Still, the story moves swiftly from one event to the next, there's some decent atmosphere, and I remained hooked throughout.

The only area in which I found this story to be weaker than Orphans of the Polyoptera is the heavy recycling of artwork. The art itself is good, and helps to set the mood... but there are too few character portraits, and they are reused too frequently.

The Doctor holds the sonic screwdriver while dramatically pointing at the background. Moments of exposition feature the Doctor, Mike, Benton, and Guest Character standing in a row like a chorus line. Oh, and a few panels show the Doctor kneeling, looking pensive. It's very effective the first time we see it. Not so much the next two times. It's a shame there couldn't have been just a few more character portraits in the mix, as the recycling becomes actively distracting (and occasionally unintentionally comical) after a while.

The Doctor points dramatically into the background.
By the end, this gesture becomes a lot less dramatic.

OVERALL:

I think The Horror of Flat Holm features the wrong Doctor, and it suffers from too much reuse of too few art assets. That aside, I really enjoyed this, both as a story and as a game. It merges elements of "Classic Who" and "New Who" to strong effect, the gameplay suits the story, and Ingrid Oliver and Richard Franklin do a fine job narrating the two threads.

Orphans of the Polyoptera left me disinclined to mourn Infinity's end. The Horror of Flat Holm, by contrast, has me really wishing that Tiny Rebel Games had found the success to keep going. I still have three other titles to go, and I'll judge each on its own merits - but their final outing shows that at least at the end, they had figured out how to use this format well.


Overall Rating: 8/10.

Set during: Season 13

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Doctor Who Infinity: The Orphans of the Polyoptera.

4 episodes. Written by: Gary Russell. Released by: Tiny Rebel Games.


THE PLOT:

The Doctor and Jo find themselves in an English village in 1942... but the bombs that fall as they arrive are not German. The Doctor recovers one and is startled to find it is organic - chitinous, like an insect shell.

Lily, a teenage girl, begs them for help and takes them to an injured priest. The Doctor is unable to save the man's life - but as he dies, the priest asks them to save "the orphans." Lily takes them to a derelict mansion, where the Doctor discovers a time portal that leads to 1842. There, an old enemy lurks in a nearby mine, plotting to use the Doctor's timeship to rule over time and space...

The Doctor and Jo help Lily, a young orphan.

CHARACTERS:

The Doctor: Portrayed at a remove, with his dialogue either paraphrased by Jo's narration or delivered in unvoiced comic book-style bubbles. The result is a fairly bland characterization of the 3rd Doctor, with none of the intemperance or flair Pertwee always brought to the role. Save for a brief but excellent moment in which he marvels at an alien being, the rest of the story reduces him to a simple problem-solver and little else.

Jo Grant: With the narrative presented much like a Big Finish Companion Chronicle, as a tale being related by Jo many years after the fact, it's more her story than the Doctor's. Katy Manning does her usual splendid job with the narration, bringing to life Jo's fundamental bravery and decency - alongside her tendency to rush into danger without thinking first.

Enemies are bizarrely vulnerable to
the Doctor successfully matching gems...

GAMEPLAY:

Doctor Who Infinity was the follow-up to Tiny Rebel Games' enormously successful Doctor Who Legacy. Like their earlier title, gameplay takes the form of a series of puzzles in which the player matches colored gems. Unlike the earlier title, there is far more emphasis on telling a coherent story. Story sections can run for several minutes before the next puzzle, and the puzzles themselves vary in style and goal in order to tie in with and advance the narrative.

I love this idea... in theory. In practice, the results are mixed. Different puzzles have very different sets of rules, which makes it difficult to pick up on an overall pattern. Some puzzles are basic matching ones. Others involve fighting enemies. Still others require you to arrange gems in a certain pattern within a single turn. Because the rules and objectives keep changing, you're given little chance to "get good" at one type of game before you're playing something completely different.

That said, most of the puzzle types recur throughout the story. The constantly switching puzzles are aggravating for the first two episodes, with a lot of trial-and-error involved in figuring out exactly how to play each type. By the final two parts, however, most players will have a decent grasp on the basics, and these last two installments are far more enjoyable as a result.

Oh, and one tip, unless you enjoy aggravation: Go directly into settings and disable the timer.  Unless you have ninja-like reflexes, a few of those one-turn puzzles border on the impossible if you don't do that first.

Illustrations are in the style of a comic book.

THOUGHTS:

I suspect most of my gameplay thoughts, both positive and negative, will recur for each of the Doctor Who Infinity stories. Still, I've decided to review each story individually. With scripts by different writers, performed by different actors, I feel certain my reactions to the individual stories will differ, even if my thoughts on the gameplay end up remaining the same.

Writer Gary Russell has indicated that The Orphans of the Polyoptera will be his last work of Doctor Who fiction. Russell is most notable for overseeing what I consider the golden age for Big Finish productions' range of audio stories. At a time when Who was off-air, he made sure that the audios offered a variety of story types, with a sense that each story was important in itself, making each month's release an event despite the occasional misfire.

While I will always respect his stewardship of Big Finish's first several years, I'm afraid
I've never been as fond of his actual writing. His Doctor Who stories as a writer are regularly competent in pacing and structure, but in my opinion have rarely been standouts.

This is true of Orphans as well. Russell's fannish tendencies are on full display: It's not only a sequel to a famous (if subpar) television story, but also to a story from an old Doctor Who annual. Continuity references are made to both The Three Doctors and The Curse of Peladon.  Meanwhile, Who clichés are worked in at the end, complete with a ranting villain and the Heroic Self-Sacrifice (TM) of a guest character we barely know and therefore feel nothing for.

That said, Russell's strengths are also in evidence.  The story is well-structured. The first episode layers in clues to the identity of the returning monster, so that the revelation falls neatly into place instead of coming out of nowhere. Pacing is fast but controlled, and the tale visualized through attractive illustrations drawn very much in the style of a comic book, complete with multi-panel presentations for action/suspense scenes. The episodic structure also works well, with effective cliffhangers that would have fit entirely with the Third Doctor's television era.


OVERALL:

The Orphans of the Polyoptera is a decent story, but it's far more successful on that level than as a game. Despite too many continuity references and some unfortunate clichés, it's an entertaining tale that's wonderfully performed by Katy Manning. The gameplay is uneven, however. Several puzzles are fun, particularly as it goes along, but too many others are just plain aggravating.  It's never good when the worst part of a video game is the "game" part, which proves to mostly be the case here.

I did largely enjoy it, particularly the latter episodes; and I expect I'll enjoy the remaining installments as works of fiction if nothing else. But given how much fun the same creators' Doctor Who Legacy was, I can't help but feel a bit disappointed that the gameplay isn't more enjoyable.


Overall Rating: 5/10.

Preceded by: The Three Doctors
Followed by: The Carnival of Monsters

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