I like pseudo-historicals a lot, so that obviously helps, but I enjoyed this (deliberately) confusing and word-dense mystery all round - except for one significant fail I'll mention in a bit, which is why it was 4* for me instead of 5.
The 'Gothic' atmosphere of 'Auld Reekie' in the 1820s came through very strongly - Edinburgh filled with darkness, disease, depravity - and death. A city where the dead don't stay buried - or even stay dead...
I got very confused in the first half of the story and was then pleased to discover that we were
supposed to be confused
, trapped in a time bubble where perceptions are hazy and the reset button is pressed again and again. Where characters come and go and roles are exchanged as the story plays out - again and again... And only Time-sensitive 'Daft Jamie' sees through the Scotch mist to the repeating realities. I thought David Tennant was excellent as the tragic character, a doomed but honest man in a dark and confusing place.
'Carnival of Monsters' is a favourite Third Doctor story of mine and I remembered the people of the
S.S. Bernice while I was listening to this. For though this is the
real Edinburgh being looped round in Time, 'Doctor Knox' is just another cheap showman using alien technology he doesn't really understand, to create a 'peep-show' occupied by living people. I liked that his supposedly noble medical motives turned out to be just a secondary 'cover' - there's nothing noble about this Knox
or his associates.
He's brilliantly played by Leslie Phillips and the (happily) quite lengthy conversational scenes between him and the Doctor and Evelyn were highlights of the story for me. And I did enjoy the deep irony of the Doctor telling Knox off for having a stolen TARDIS!
This is 'the one with Burke and Hare' and for me they were another "highlight", a properly disgusting pair of hypocritical villains, claiming to be aiding 'science' but with no regard for anything beyond money and Knox's orders. And certainly with no regard for human life - as shown not only in the infamous murders but also their revolting attitude towards Mary, a 'lady of the night' who's clearly far better than either of them.
Which brings me to what I thought was the significant 'fail' of the story. The Doctor is not only fascinated to meet two notorious figures from history, he lavishes praise on them for their grave-robbing (in the name of 'science' - when for them it's in the name of money!), refers to the dead as 'lumps of meat' and doesn't seem too bothered that when 'supplies' ran short, Burke and Hare took the living as well as the dead. This is simply
wrong for his character and imo should never have reached the final script. We know that Time Lords respect and honour their dead, with caskets and storing their memories in the Matrix, so even if the Doctor wasn't compassionate about death (which of course he is), his own culture would be as revolted as ours by what the 'resurrection men' did.
And nobody values life and the right to life more highly than the Doctor. He'll try to save even his worst enemy and
never believes 'the end justifies the means'. Whatever the scientific benefits of their 'work' might be in time, Burke and Hare were murderers and the Doctor would never, ever congratulate or praise people like them.
So that was the one problem with this story for me, otherwise I thought this was another very good story in the Evelyn sequence, a darkly atmospheric historical with a Time twist. 4*