Main Range 73: Thicker Than Water (spoilers)

If the wonderful 'Arrangements for War' was a "Mills and Boon"-style romantic drama, then to me this sequel seemed more like 24 meets a 'soap', a hospital soap given that half the cast are doctors - and indeed, Doctors!

I enjoyed "Emergency Ward Világ"; for me it's not as excellent as the previous story but it's a solid 4*.

Where 'Arrangements for War' was spread over weeks, this time the continuous action piles in thick and fast with never a dull moment and scarcely time to breathe. Stuff happens a lot, there's a political plot which turns out to be concealing another darker plot, characters are revealed to be better than we imagined (and much worse) and the villain (who for once I spotted a mile off; the smooth posh guy is usually the villain in soapland!) finally kills himself right in front of the Doctor in a way so obvious and melodramatic that I assumed the Doctor must have preferred the 'tidy' solution and only pretended to be surprised when he keeled over.

Melodrama is the order of the day this time round - when the villain pushes Mel down a liftshaft to Certain Death, only for her to be caught by the Doctor at the bottom!, I think we can be fairly sure of the intended story style. How lucky it wasn't Seven trying to catch Ace though, or Second and Jamie... Sixie and Mel are the perfect power-to-size combination to pull this trick off!

And in the best soap style, a Special Guest Star turns up out of the blue (box!) and makes an Amazing Revelation that Y is in fact the Long Lost Son of X !! (Watch the next gripping episode of 'Doctors and Companions' to find out more! ) I did know the 'revelation' but I didn't know when it was revealed, so I was properly surprised when the Doctor popped in to visit Evelyn.

I liked that there was a definitive 'final' story for Evelyn with a peaceful ending in retirement with Rossiter. And I'm very pleased there are still more stories to come in this listen-through. (But I did wonder why, since it turns out the Doctor knew about Evelyn's faulty heart all along, why didn't he take her to some advanced medical facility where they could fix it literally in a heartbeat?)

But it was very nice to see that the Doctor did go back to visit a former Companion - twice. Once to prove something to Mel, admittedly, but once for the best of motives, to see and bring good news to an old friend.
Evelyn fully deserved it!

Hello again.

I am currently working my through my collection of Sixth Doctor stories (yes still, I started in 2016 during the hiatus!) and will reach Thicker than Water after The Sandman. I'll let you know my thoughts.