The Satanic Mill [AUDIO/2015.10.12]

★★☆☆☆

  The first series of Doom Coalition comes crashing down in this rather lacklustre adventure, shoddily directed (a surprise from Ken Bentley, usually such a strong director) and crafted. It's not exactly offensively bad, far from it, but I'd say it's a case of Doom Coalition shooting itself in the foot; with its previous two stories displaying the utmost confidence to do whatever they like, The Satanic Mill feels like a hasty finale scrambled together as an afterthought, injecting the series with its central villain and the MacGuffin (the Regeneration Codex) just to make sure everyone remembers what the entire boxset's all about. Problem is... this is a very unmemorable installment.

  Thankfully, a few saving graces (namely Paul McGann, Nicola Walker, Hattie Morahan and Mark Bonnar) do their best to make this as engaging as possible, and succeeds to some extent. There are character moments that establish how good they are together (a particular example, if I recollect, is when Liv affectionately grumbles about how similar Helen is to the Doctor by being attracted to trouble), and those were the moments I had most fun with.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ  

  It's a pity that The Satanic Mill ends up being the weakest of the first boxset, considering its place as the final story. It has the least amount of interesting ideas, and even the production side of things fails to save this story from overall boredom. The Eleven feels more like a generic megalomaniacal villain at this point, which is a shame in itself due to his very interesting conception.